Republic article

Neo-conservative roots were planted first by Rockefeller

A strange marriage a century ago between Christian missionaries and cut-throat capitalists created the world’s first billionaire, and it’s a marriage still working for men like Harper and Bush

by Dan Adleman


"...Rockefeller Sr, the founder of Standard Oil, used Christian missionaries in the American west to soften up and gather intelligence on the Native American communities that inhabited oil-rich land. In Thy Will Be Done: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, authors Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett point out that the evangelization process insidiously mollified the natives, weakening their communal social structure and subverting their will to defend themselves against exploitation. In 1902, Rockefeller’s right-hand man, Baptist preacher Fred Gates, wrote him a letter praising their exploits: “We are only in the very dawn of commerce, and we owe that dawn to the channels opened up by Christian missionaries. . . . The effect of the missionary enterprise of the English speaking peoples will be to bring them the peaceful conquest of the world." Little could Gates or Rockefeller have known just what a profound impact this symbiotic neo-conflation of seemingly disparate agendas would have on the trajectory of the American empire.

John D Rockefeller would become America's first billionaire. And Standard Oil, accused of unethical monopolizing tactics, was eventually broken up into Exxon, Mobile, Chevron, and a number of other oil giants that still dominate the industry today. When a young Nelson Rockefeller took up the gauntlet of his grandfather’s vast economic empire and further diversified the family’s fortune into ranches, banks, mines, weapons, and supermarkets, he also parlayed his wealth into unprecedented political capital. He and his brother David, CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, went on to play integral roles in every administration from WWII onward..."