On the week of the Coachella lineup launching, the owner of AEG (parent company to Coachella Festival and London’s O2 Arena), has come under fire for reports of alleged far-right activism.
Consequence of Sound have reported that billionaire Philip Anschutz has used the revenue from AEG to provide substantial financial support for anti-LGBTQ organisations, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, the National Christian Foundation and the Family Research Council. According to a report in the Washington Post, groups on this list are “aggressively working to chip away at the equal rights of LGBTQ Americans.”
Anschutz also put also has a history of putting his support behind anti-gay legislation such as Colorado’s Amendment 2 which aimed to give landowners and employers the right to discriminate against homosexuals.
He also takes frequent meetings with to discuss strategy with the billionaire Koch brothers, two of the country’s leading anti-environmentalist activists. His financial support to the Koch brothers has also been funnelled into a number of climate change science denial organisations, as Greenpeace notes.
Uproxx and Afropunk first noted Anschutz which prompted the reporting across the music press.