3min chapter

The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly cover image

Episode 75: Simon Winchester

The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly

CHAPTER

The Wilkes Brothers and the Laws of Trespass

Simon Tisdall: How much land in the United States is owned privately by big landholders, including Ted Turner and John Malone. He says some who bought land simply for sport try to keep people off the land with security fences or shoot them away. The most notorious of these are a pair of ultra right wing evangelical Christians called the Wilkes brothers - they grew up in far west Texas. They're being very dog in mangerish about that, their land holdings, which to my way of thinking is a bad thing.

00:00
Speaker 2
Talk about it just briefly, that we're getting toward the end, Simon, but you have another chapter which is called accumulation of space. I didn't realize how much land in the United States is owned privately by big landholders, including Bill Gates and Ted Turner and John Malone. Say something about that.
Speaker 1
Yes, well, the big land owners, Malone and Ted Turner, both of course, television barons, they have bought in Ted Turner's case its mostly in the American western. He has done some good, I mean, that sounds rather personalizing to say so, he's very keen on restoring the herds of the American bison, which had been decimated in the 19th century by people coming down from Chicago and shooting at them to the astonishment of the Native Americans from railway trains. I mean, a terrible slaughter of their food stuff. So bison are coming back thanks to a landowner. John Malone owns a huge amount more in the east, particularly in May, not enough, and he owns and they're worried that his superintendency of the big forests in May and may not be so congenial as Ted Turner's attitude towards his western holdings. The big villains of the piece though are those who bought land simply for sport, if I can put it that way, and try to keep people off the land, to in other words to invoke the laws of trespass to shoot people away. And the most notorious of these are a pair of, I don't want to offend anybody, but ultra right wing evangelical Christians and followers of the former president, they're called the Wilkes brothers, and they grew up in far west Texas. And they and their youth created some of the chemicals that go into making fracking liquids and made a huge amount of money and they were very successful. And then the Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund bought the pair of them out for four and a half billion dollars. So all of a sudden these two young Christian evangelical right wingers had two and a half billion dollars each to spend with pocket money. And they decided land because probably they listened to the guy with the windman, Joe D'Ahera, saying there's nothing, it's the only thing that lasts. So they bought the time of doing this broadcast about 700,000 acres in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, but they don't let people on it. And they put up security fences and barriers and lights and cameras and so forth. And people in the west who have been accustomed to say yes, they're a big landowner here, but they have a generally sort of tolerant attitude to people like us who want to come walk or hike or fish or whatever, the Wilkes brothers do not. So they're being very dog in mangerish about that, their land holdings, which to my way of thinking is a bad thing.

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