Sparky says Lyndon LaRouche is a human Douche bag!

I remember in the late 70s he tried to join the Young Spartans' League under false pretenses as a Marxist Jew and they pantsed the jerk ... everybody who works for him is either a tool or full of hate.

Lyndon LaRouche at a news conference in Paris in February 2006.

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922 in Rochester, New Hampshire) is an American political activist and founder of several political organizations in the United States and elsewhere, jointly referred to as the LaRouche movement. He is known as a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run for the Democratic nomination for President in every election cycle since 1980 and having contested the 1976 election as the candidate of the now-defunct U.S. Labor Party--a total of eight attempts.

There are sharply contrasting views of LaRouche. His supporters regard him as a brilliant and original thinker, while his critics in the United States regard him as a political extremist, a conspiracy theorist, a cult leader and/or an anti-Semite.^[1]LaRouche denies these characterizations. [31] The Heritage Foundation has said that he "leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history." ^[2] But the LaRouche organization was also described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security Council, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world."^[3]

LaRouche and his organization are active world-wide, and his writings appear in many languages. By the mid-1980s, LaRouche had assembled a "worldwide network of contacts in governments and in military agencies," and had private meetings with Jose Lopez Portillo when he was Mexico's president, Argentine President Raul Alfonsin and the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. [32].

LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in 1988 for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations, but continued his political activities from behind bars until his release in 1994 on parole. Former U.S. Attorney General and activist Ramsey Clark charged that his case "involves a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge." ^[4] However, a Federal Appeals court upheld LaRouche's conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider a final appeal.

He is currently listed as a director and contributing editor of the Executive Intelligence Review News Service, part of the LaRouche movement. [33] He has written extensively on economic, scientific, and political topics as well as on history, philosophy and psychoanalysis.

Early life, 1922–1947

LaRouche Movement

Lyndon LaRouche LaRouche's political views U.S. Presidential campaigns United States v. LaRouche People Helga Zepp-LaRouche Michael Billington Amelia Boynton Robinson Janice Hart Jeremiah Duggan Political organizations LaRouche Movement National Caucus of Labor Committees Citizens Electoral Council LaRouche Youth Movement Schiller Institute European Workers Party

Defunct

California Proposition 64

North American Labour Party

Party for the Commonwealth of Canada

Parti pour la république du Canada

U.S. Labor Party

LaRouche is the son of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Sr. (June 1, 1896 - December 1983) [34] and Jessie Lenore Weir (November 12, 1893 - August 1978) [35]), a descendant of Elder Brewster from the Mayflower and other prominent Yankee families on his mother's side. [36] He was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the oldest of three children. He attended the School Street elementary school until 1936, when the family moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, after his father, the son of an immigrant from Quebec, resigned from his job as a shoe salesman at the United Shoe Machinery Corporation in Rochester to set up his own business, becoming, as LaRouche's biography states, "a technologist and internationally active consultant in the footwear industry." ^{[citation needed]}

In a 1974 interview, LaRouche described his childhood as that of "an egregious child, I wouldn't say an ugly duckling but a nasty duckling."^[5] According to his 1979 autobiography, The Power of Reason, he began to read at "about age five," and was called "Big Head" by the other children at school.^[6] He was told by his parents, who were both Quakers, that under no circumstances could he fight with other children even in self-defense.^[7] This advice led to "years of hell" for him from bullies at school. ^[8] As a result of this bullying, and because of the social isolation resulting from his precocity, he spent much of his time alone, taking long walks through the woods^[9] and identifying in his mind with great philosophers:

I survived socially by making chiefly Descartes, Leibniz and Kant my principal peers, looking at myself, my thoughts, my commitments to practice in terms of a kind of collectivity of them constructed in my own mind.^[10]

By contrast, he joked, the childhood peers from whom he had felt so alienated had been "unwitting followers of David Hume."

LaRouche elaborated on his early intellectual development in a second autobiography (1988) in which he reports that between the ages of twelve and fourteen, he read philosophy extensively, embracing the ideas of Leibniz, and rejecting those of Hume, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Rousseau, and Kant.^[11] It is unclear from LaRouche's writings whether he actually studied all these philosophers at such an age, or simply formed opinions about them based on general impressions.

By 1940 the Lynn Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quaker) was discussing censuring LaRouche for spreading libelous material and gossip about other members and in 1941 the Lynn Meeting agreed to expel him, removing him from the group: "We believe Lyndon H. LaRouche [Jr.] is guilty of stirring up discord in this meeting; that he is responsible for circulating material injurious to the reputation of valued Christian workers; and believe that his conduct brings the Christian religion into public disrepute. We recommend the appointment of a committee to deal with him and to endeavor to reclaim him in a spirit of Christian love." [37] His family all resigned in sympathy, asking to be removed from the membership of the meeting in October 1941.

LaRouche writes of this conflict in his autobiography, characterizing it as a quarrel with the American Friends Service Committee, stemming from several issues: the disappearance of a trust fund, the Austin-Cross fund, which had been set up by friends and relatives of LaRouche to meet the financial needs of the Silsbee Street Meeting House; resistance by LaRouche's father and others to an attempt to recruit them to the support of Soviet communism; and theological disagreements. LaRouche ultimately renounced Conscientious Objection and served in World War II, a decision he describes as one of the most important in his life.^[12]

His parents later formed and led their own independent congregation in Boston, the Village Street Monthly Meeting, which met from 1964 to 1979, and in which LaRouche was an active member. [38] According to New England Quaker documents, "this was ostensibly as a Quaker meeting, though its relations with New England Yearly Meeting seem to have been decidedly unFriendly. They were never listed in the Yearly Meeting minutes, as most independent meetings were. Lyndon LaRouche, seems to have been a key member." ^[13]

LaRouche enrolled at Northeastern University, Boston, but left in 1942 after receiving poor grades. As a Quaker, he was at first a conscientious objector during World War II, joining a Civilian Public Service camp where King reports that he "promptly joined a small faction at odds with the administrators,"^[14] but in 1944 he joined the Army as a non-combatant, serving in India and Burma with medical units and ending the war as an ordnance clerk. While in India, he developed an interest in and sympathy for the Indian Independence movement. He reports in his autobiography that many GIs feared that they would be asked to support British forces in actions against Indian independence forces, a prospect which he says "was revolting to most of us."^[15]

While still in the CO camp, LaRouche had begun discussing Marxism with fellow camp inmates and soon became a Marxist. While travelling home from India on the troopship SS General Bradley in 1946, he met Don Merrill, a fellow soldier, who was also from Lynn. Merrill won LaRouche over to Trotskyism on the journey home. Back in the U.S., LaRouche attempted to resume his education at Northeastern, intending to major in physics, but left again because of what he called academic "philistinism." ^[16]

1948–1967 LaRouche and Trotskyism

In 1948, LaRouche returned to Lynn after dropping out of college and began attending meetings of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)'s Lynn branch. He joined the party the next year, adopting the pseudonym Lyn Marcus for his political work. According to LaRouche's autobiography, he "never encountered a member of the SWP who understood anything of Marx's economics or method." By his account, he joined the SWP after receiving assurances from SWP vice-presidential candidate Grace Carlson that the SWP was a "movement open to exploring new ideas of the type I identified." ^[17]

LaRouche obtained work as a management consultant in New York City, advising companies on how to use computers to maximise efficiency and speed up production. In 1954, he married fellow SWP member Janice Neuberger. By 1961, the LaRouches lived in a large apartment on Central Park West. His activity in the internal life of the SWP was minimal due to his preoccupation with his career.

In 1964, while still in the SWP, LaRouche became associated with a faction called the Revolutionary Tendency, which had been expelled from the party and was under the influence of the British Trotskyist leader Gerry Healy, leader of the British Socialist Labour League.^{[citation needed]} For six months, LaRouche worked closely with American Healyite leader Tim Wohlforth, who later wrote:

LaRouche had a gargantuan ego. Convinced he was a genius, he combined his strong conviction in his own abilities with an arrogance expressed in the cadences of upper-class New England. He assumed that the comment in the Communist Manifesto that "a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class…" was written specifically for him. And he believed that the working class were lucky to obtain his services.

LaRouche possessed a marvelous ability to place any world happening in a larger context, which seemed to give the event additional meaning, but his thinking was schematic, lacking factual detail and depth. It was contradictory. His explanations were a bit too pat, and his mind worked so quickly that I always suspected his bravado covered over superficiality. He had an answer for everything. Sessions with him reminded me of a parlor game: present a problem, no matter how petty, and without so much as blinking his eye, LaRouche would dream up the solution. ^[18]

He remained in the SWP until his expulsion in 1965. He maintains that he was soon disillusioned with Marxism, dropped out of the SWP in the mid-1950s, and resumed his activism only at the prompting of the FBI citing national security concerns. In an interview on the Pacifica Radio network, LaRouche said that he returned to the SWP because he believed that only the Left was likely to combat what he called the "utopian" danger coming from the Right, typified by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. ^{[citation needed]} His ex-wife and other SWP members from that time dispute this. ^{[citation needed]} During these years, LaRouche developed an interest in economics, cybernetics, psychoanalysis, business management and other subjects. His wife left him in 1963 (they had a son, born in 1956) and, in the late 1960s, Janice Neuberger LaRouche became a leader of the New York City branch of the National Organization for Women.

In 1965, LaRouche left Tim Wohlforth's group and joined the Spartacist League, which had split from Wohlforth. He left after a few months and wrote a letter to the SWP declaring that all factions and sections of the Trotskyist Fourth International were dead, and announcing that he and his new common-law wife, Carol Larrabee (also known as Carol Schnitzer), were going to build the Fifth International.

In 1966, the couple joined the Committee for Independent Political Action (CIPA), a New Left/Old Left coalition that was running independent anti-war candidates in New York City elections, and formed a branch in Manhattan's West Village.

The formation of the Labor Committees, 1967-1969

He began teaching classes at New York City's Free School on dialectical materialism and attracted around him a group of undergraduates and graduate students from Columbia University and the City College of New York, several of whom were involved with the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), itself very prominent in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the 1988 version of his autobiography, LaRouche writes that he was not really a Marxist when he gave his lectures at the Free School but that he used his familiarity with Marxism to win students away from the New Left counterculture. Indeed, what LaRouche began to write and teach in the late 1960s was somewhat different from orthodox Marxism, supplementing the doctrine of class struggle with a strong emphasis on the dangers of a supposedly parasitical finance capital as opposed to industrial capital; he would continue with this latter emphasis in the following decade while abandoning for the most part the use of Marxist jargon.

LaRouche's followers were heavily involved in the 1968 student strike and occupation of Columbia, and attempted to win control of the university's SDS and PLP branches by putting forward a political program linking student struggles with those of blacks in Harlem, tenants and transit workers. During the same time frame, LaRouche and his associates were intervening into the New York City teachers' strike that fall, on the side of the union, which was led by Al Shanker. According to LaRouche's autobiography, his main opponents in this were the New Left groupings, who LaRouche claims were being directed from behind the scenes by McGeorge Bundy and the Ford Foundation. LaRouche also says of this conflict that, on the part of those who were attacking the largely Jewish teachers' union, "[t]here were ugly anti-Semitic noises from various groups..."^[19]

LaRouche's growing following allowed him to create his own tendency within Columbia SDS competing with the "Action Faction," led by Mark Rudd (which soon became the Weather Underground) and the "Praxis Axis," which saw students as the vanguard of the revolution. LaRouche organized his faction as the "SDS Labor Committee," which would later develop strong influence within SDS chapters in Philadelphia. He criticized the SDS and the New Left in general, for allowing itself to be influenced by the counterculture, which he abhorred, and not enough toward labor. Wohlforth attended one of LaRouche's meetings in New York during this period, and writes:

Twenty to 30 students would gather in a large apartment and sit on the floor surrounding LaRouche, who now sported a very shaggy beard. The meeting would sometimes go on as long as seven hours. It was difficult to tell where discussions of tactics left off and educational presentation began. Encouraging the students, LaRouche gave them esoteric assignments, such as searching through the writings of Georges Sorel to discover Rudd's anarchistic origins, or studying Rosa Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital. Since SDS was strong on spirit and action but rather bereft of theory, the students appeared to thoroughly enjoy this work. ^[18]

After its expulsion from SDS in 1969 for supporting the New York City teachers' strike, the SDS Labor Committee became the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), while continuing to function in some SDS chapters outside New York. Despite its name, it had no significant connection with the labor movement and viewed intellectuals as the revolutionary vanguard. According to Dennis King, NCLC's internal life became highly regimented over the next few years. Members gave up their jobs and private lives and became entirely devoted to the group and its leader. The movement developed an internal discipline technique, "ego stripping," which was intended to reinforce conformity and loyalty to LaRouche.^{[20] [21]}

"Operation Mop Up"

A 1973 internal FBI letter recommended that, as part of its COINTELPRO, the FBI provide anonymous aid to a background investigation by the Communist Party USA, which wanted to eliminate LaRouche as a political threat.

In 1973, according to some press accounts, the NCLC adopted violent and disruptive tactics under LaRouche's direction. According to the Village Voice, NCLC members physically attacked meetings of the Communist Party and later of the SWP, and other groups who were classed by LaRouche as "left-protofascists." According to the New York Times, they also attacked CP members on the street and used numchukas (Korean martial arts weapons). LaRouche called these attacks "Operation Mop-up." ^{[22] [23]}

The NCLC argued that they were acting merely in self-defense, but according to Dennis King, their rhetoric suggested otherwise. "From here on in," LaRouche proclaimed at a mass meeting of his East Coast followers, "the CP cannot hold a meeting on the East Coast....We'll mop them up in two months." ^[24] His newspaper echoed this call in an editorial:

We must dispose of this stinking corpse [the CP] to ensure that it cannot act as a host for maggots and other parasites...Our job is to pulverize the Communist Party.^[25]

According to LaRouche's autobiography, violent altercations between his organization and New Left organizations actually began in 1969, preceding the period referred to as "Mop up." He writes:

It was Rudd's Bundy-funded faction which launched the first violence against us, at Columbia... Other organized physical attacks against my friends would follow, inside the United States and abroad. Communist Party goon-squad attacks began in Chicago, in summer 1972, and continued sporadically up to the concerted assault launched during March 1973. During 1972, there was also a goon-attack on associates of mine by the SWP.^[26]

According to King, LaRouche halted Operation Mop Up after police in New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Boston arrested several of his followers on assault charges, and after the CP, the Socialist Workers Party, and other leftist groups formed joint defense teams and began to win battles against the Mop Up squads.^[27]

LaRouche has claimed that "the FBI was orchestrating its assets in the leadership of the Communist Party U.S.A., to bring about my personal 'elimination'," [39] citing a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. [40]

The 1974 "brainwashing" scare

In 1974, The New York Times reported on a belief inside the LaRouche organization that one of LaRouche's followers had been kidnapped and brainwashed by the CIA to become a Manchurian Candidate-style assassin against LaRouche. ^[28] The LaRouche group announced at a national conference that the plot involved the CIA and KGB, and that the brainwashed would-be assassin was Chris White, a 26-year-old British national who had married LaRouche's ex-girlfriend, Carol Schnitzer, before moving with her to London to organize a British branch of the NCLC.^[29][30] King writes:

...members from across the country had gathered in New York for the conference. The suspense began to mount as alarming rumors emanated from LaRouche's apartment. It was said that White had been tortured and brainwashed in a London basement by the CIA and British intelligence, who had programmed him first to kill his wife upon the utterance of a trigger word and then to finger LaRouche for assassination by Cuban exile frogmen.

LaRouche mobilized the entire NCLC. They passed out fliers on a massive scale in New York and other cities, describing White's alleged tortures in lurid detail. The national office issued over forty press releases in a two-week period. LaRouche and the Whites filed a complaint with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and launched a lawsuit against the CIA. NCLC members frantically solicited their parents and friends to serve on an Emergency Commission of Inquiry.^[31]

1971–1979

On December 2, 1971 LaRouche engaged in a spirited debate with leading Keynesian economist Abba Lerner at Queens College, in New York City. The debate pertained to arguments put forward in a leaflet by LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees, specifically on the questions of the wage and price controls and austerity policies being put into place at that time by the Nixon administration, and by Brazil's military regime. Lerner offered a qualified defense of those policies against LaRouche's claim that they represented a revival of the ideas of Hjalmar Schacht. According to the only published accounts, those of the LaRouche organization, Lerner said, “But if Germany had accepted Schacht's policies, Hitler would not have been necessary.” LaRouche supporters claim that Lerner's friend, the late philosopher Sidney Hook, attended the debate and stated, "LaRouche won the debate" but "will lose much more as a result of that." [41] LaRouche interpreted Hook's remark to mean that the "establishment" in economics departments in academia would unite against him and no longer debate him, for fear of another upset. [42]

In 1971, LaRouche organized the New Solidarity International Press Service as a wire service for his publications. He founded the weekly Executive Intelligence Review and co-founded the Fusion Energy Foundation.

By the mid-1970s, LaRouche and his movement were no longer promoting a socialist agenda. Readings of Marx and Lenin were off the reading list of LaRouche's followers, and would be replaced by Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich Schiller, Plato, Avicenna, Nicolas of Cusa and others. A key factor in the shift on economics may be found in the published articles of NCLC Executive Committee member Allen Salisbury on Henry Carey and the American System school of political economy, culminating in his book, The Civil War and the American System. The LaRouche organization, after some deliberation and dissent, adopted Salisbury's thesis, that the American System approach was different from, and superior to, either Marxism or laissez-faire capitalism, and the organization's publications rapidly reflected this re-assessment. Another book was published, a collection of source documents entitled The Political Economy of the American Revolution. LaRouche also became a strong advocate of nuclear energy and directed energy technologies for ballistic missile defense.

LaRouche founded the U.S. Labor Party in the early 1970s as a vehicle for electoral politics, maintaining that both the major parties had abandoned the American System economic policies that the LaRouche organization had embraced (LaRouche named Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin as exemplars of this school of thought). LaRouche argued that his theoretical developments in physical economics made clear that the American System was the system of political economy best suited to make nations credit-worthy producer economies.

LaRouche visited Baghdad in 1975, during which he made a presentation to the Baath Party conference on the topic of his "Oasis Plan," a proposal for Arab-Israeli peace based on the joint construction of massive water projects. LaRouche has also maintained contacts and meetings with Israeli peace activists including Nahum Goldmann (1978), then head of the World Jewish Congress, and a meeting with Abba Eban, former Israeli representative to the UN. During 1975, LaRouche's newspaper New Solidarity began running articles favourable to Iraq, and extensively quoting Saddam Hussein, at that time Iraq's vice-president.

In 1976, he ran for President of the United States as a U.S. Labor Party candidate, polling 40,043 votes (0.05%). This campaign was the first to broadcast a paid half-hour television address, which gave LaRouche the opportunity to air his views before a national audience. This was to become a regular feature of later campaigns during the 1980s and 1990s.

In a September 24, 1976 op-ed in the Washington Post, entitled "NCLC: A Domestic Political Menace," Stephen Rosenfeld wrote: "We of the press should be chary of offering them print or air time. There is no reason to be too delicate about it: Every day we decide whose voices to relay. A duplicitous violence prone group with fascistic proclivities should not be presented to the public unless there is reason to present it in those terms."

In 1977, he married Helga Zepp, a German political activist.

Since the fall of 1979, the LaRouche movement has conducted most of its U.S. electoral activities within the framework of Democratic Party primaries, despite the disapproval of the Democratic National Committee.

Criticism of LaRouche, 1979-1985

The most common criticism of LaRouche in the mainstream press is that he is a conspiracy theorist. For more information, see Political views of Lyndon LaRouche.

Some of LaRouche's most outspoken opponents are to be found among those who remained in the Left, after LaRouche and his followers had moved away from Marxism, as well as among conservatives and liberals. According to Tim Wohlforth and Dennis Tourish:

The parallel between LaRouche's thinking and that of the classical fascist model is striking. LaRouche, like Mussolini and Hitler before him, borrowed from Marx yet changed his theories fundamentally. Most important, Marx's internationalist outlook was abandoned in favor of a narrow nation-state perspective. Marx's goal of abolishing capitalism was replaced by the model of a totalitarian state that directs an economy where ownership of the means of production is still largely in public hands. The corporations and their owners remain in place but have to take their orders from LaRouche. Hitler called the schema "national socialism". LaRouche hopes the term "the American System" will be more acceptable.^[32]

In 1977-78, a large amount of material began to be published in LaRouche publications that was regarded as anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League and other outside observers as well. LaRouche associate Jeffrey Steinberg has claimed that criticism of LaRouche coming from the ADL and related organizations was an extension of the FBI COINTELPRO program. [43]

LaRouche has unambiguously denounced the policies of Mussolini and Hitler. ^{[33] [34]} But he has also advanced, according to Dennis King and others, ideas which appear to be modelled on fascist and even Nazi racialist concepts.^{[35] [36]} King described some ex-NCLC members as believing that LaRouche was borrowing ideas from the Nazis. Don and Alice Roth, two members who quit in 1981, reported in their resignation statement that anti-Semitic Holocaust jokes had become rife in the organization.^[37] In an examination of LaRouche's writings on political theory, King argues that LaRouche was really advocating a fascist-style state in which all political dissent would be crushed. ^[38] LaRouche, however, says that the model he advocates is that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Linda Hunt ^[39] and Dennis King ^[40] have described LaRouche's dealings beginning in the early 1980s with German scientists and engineers who served under the Nazi Regime in World War Two (and some of whom came to the United States after the war under Operation Paperclip and ended up with NASA,) suggesting that LaRouche's collaboration with these scientists and engineers implies support for fascism. They also point to the fact that LaRouche was among the critics of the U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations.

In 1979, a two-part article appeared in The New York Times that was strongly critical of LaRouche. ^[41] Also in 1979, Chip Berlet wrote his first of several articles about LaRouche for the Chicago Sun Times, while King wrote a 12-part series for the Manhattan weekly Our Town. Other in-depth critiques of LaRouche and his organization would be published over the next six years by the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Heritage Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, and the League for Industrial Democracy.

In 1981, Berlet, King and a Detroit journalist, Russ Bellant, released a set of documents that they claimed revealed a pattern of potentially illegal activity by LaRouche and his followers, and called for the government to investigate. ^[42] LaRouche claimed all of this negative publicity was part of a "defamatory campaign [which] laid the political groundwork for a later, new wave of corrupt Justice Department operations launched at, once again, the instigation of Henry Kissinger." ^[43]

A LaRouche source alleges that Dennis King and Chip Berlet, along with representatives of NBC and the ADL, attended meetings to plan attacks on LaRouche in the press, with funding and other assistance provided by conservative activists John Train and Richard Mellon Scaife. See John Train Salon.

LaRouche has also been criticized from the political Right. The Heritage Foundation released a report, which stated that despite what they describe as LaRouche's appearance as a right-wing anticommunist, he takes political stands, "which in the end advance Soviet foreign policy goals." Longtime LaRouche critic Daniel O. Graham, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has stated that he believes LaRouche is an "unrepentant Marxist-Leninist" who pretended to be right-wing in order "to suck conservatives into giving him money." [44]

In 1979, a former member of LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party, Gregory Rose, published an article in National Review alleging that LaRouche had established contacts with Palestinian political organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and also with the Iraqi mission to the United Nations in New York. Rose also alleged that LaRouche at this time was in contact with Soviet diplomats, while also linking up with ultrarightists such as Willis Carto of the Liberty Lobby and Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan grand dragon Roy Frankhouser. ^[44]

Alleged coded discourse

Dennis King claims to have found what he terms "euphemisms,"^[45] "semantic tricks,"^[46] and examples of "symbolic scapegoating" ^[47] in LaRouche's writings which he claims contradict LaRouche's published condemnations[45] of Anti-Semitism. For example, King claims that LaRouche's published attacks on the neo-conservatives include a disguised form of anti-Semitism. King further says these examples bolster his argument (which also references certain images used in LaRouche publications) that LaRouche is a fascist whose world view secretly centers on anti-Semitism and includes a "dream of world conquest." He claims that certain photos of barred spiral galaxies and of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory plasmoid experiments which appeared in LaRouche's New Solidarity newspaper and Fusion magazine, are "reminiscent of the swastika" and of the Nazi "theory of spiraling expansion/conquest." ^[48] He also points to a 1978 illustration in New Solidarity of Queen Elizabeth at the top of a Star of David -- and certain headlines (in more recent LaRouche publications) such as "How the Venetian Virus Infected and Took Over England" -- to bolster his argument that LaRouche's attacks on a "British" oligarchy are often coded attacks on international Jewry.^{[49] [50]} This latter claim is disputed by author Daniel Pipes, who writes: "Dennis King insists that [LaRouche's] references to the British as the ultimate conspirators are really `code language' to refer to Jews. In fact, these are references to the British." ^[51]

Robert L. Bartley, writing in The Wall Street Journal, criticizes the title of a LaRouche-sponsored pamphlet ("Children of Satan") attacking the neoconservatives. He quotes the pamphlet's assertion that a "cabal of [Leo] Strauss disciples, along with an equally small circle of allied neo-conservative and Likudnik fellow-travelers" have plotted a "not-so-silent coup." Noting that "Mr. LaRouche has chosen an Aryan-nation phrase for Jews (descendants of Cain, who was the result of Satan seducing Eve, in this perfervid theology)," Bartley terms the "Children of Satan" title "overt anti-Semitism." He also suggests that the use of the terms "Straussian" and "Neo-conservative" may be coded anti-Semitism when used by LaRouche and other writers. ^[52]

(see also Children of Satan.)

Chip Berlet suggests that the commentary on Iraq by LaRouche-affiliated publications, which is incorporated into some Arab and Muslim commentaries, represents conspiracism and anti-Semitism, especially through the use of what Berlet describes as "stereotyped descriptions of the neoconservative network and their power." [46] ent this catastrophe, LaRouche advocates preparation for total war with Great Britain." ^[53]

Robert L. Bartley, writing in The Wall Street Journal, criticizes the title of a LaRouche-sponsored pamphlet ("Children of Satan") attacking the neoconservatives. He quotes the pamphlet's assertion that a "cabal of [Leo] Strauss disciples, along with an equally small circle of allied neo-conservative and Likudnik fellow-travelers" have plotted a "not-so-silent coup." Noting that "Mr. LaRouche has chosen an Aryan-nation phrase for Jews (descendants of Cain, who was the result of Satan seducing Eve, in this perfervid theology)," Bartley terms the "Children of Satan" title "overt anti-Semitism." He also suggests that the use of the terms "Straussian" and "Neo-conservative" may be coded anti-Semitism when used by LaRouche and other writers. ^[54]

(see also Children of Satan.)

Chip Berlet suggests that the commentary on Iraq by LaRouche-affiliated publications, which is incorporated into some Arab and Muslim commentaries, represents conspiracism and anti-Semitism, especially through the use of what Berlet describes as "stereotyped descriptions of the neoconservative network and their power." [47]

LaRouche files multiple libel suits

Between 1978 and 1984 LaRouche filed several libel suits.

• In 1978, he sued the ADL; however, a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that it was "fair comment" to describe LaRouche as an anti-Semite.

• In 1979, LaRouche sued Our Town and King, while the same defendants were also sued (along with the ADL) by Computron Technologies Corporation, a computer company closely associated with LaRouche. However, in 1981, LaRouche voluntarily dismissed his case against Our Town, which continued to vigorously criticize him. And that same year, the officers of Computron broke with LaRouche, denounced him, and stopped pursuing their case against Our Town and the ADL. [48]

• In 1984, LaRouche filed a defamation suit in federal court (Eastern District of Virginia) against Berlet, King, NBC and the ADL. LaRouche dropped his case against Berlet and King but the case against NBC and the ADL went to trial. At issue, among other things, was a statement by ADL fact-finding director Irwin Suall on national TV calling LaRouche a "small-time Hitler." LaRouche lost the case, with the jury awarding $3 million in damages to NBC (an amount later reduced by Judge James Cacheris to $200,000). ^{[55] [56]} When LaRouche appealed the outcome of the trial, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in rejecting his arguments, set forth a three-prong test (later called the "LaRouche test") to decide when anonymous sources must be named in libel cases, and concluded that revealing NBC's sources had not been necessary in the LaRouche-NBC case. ^{[57] [58][59]}

Political activity in 1980s

Despite having become a registered Democrat, LaRouche was harshly critical of Jimmy Carter in the November 1980 election, with whom he had competed for the Democratic Party nomination.

Beginning in 1980, LaRouche became a regular feature on American television during election years, when he was able under U.S. election law to purchase numerous 1/2 hour spots on prime time TV for political talks to the general public. The high point of this activity was in 1984, when he was able to raise enough money to purchase 14 spots.

SDI

LaRouche had become interested in the possible uses of lasers and other directed energy weapons during the 1970s. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, LaRouche says that he sought to share his knowledge with the new administration, hoping that these weapons could be used against nuclear missiles. Later that year Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche met with CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman. [49] [50] Long-time LaRouche supporter and former head of German Military Intelligence, General Paul-Albert Scherer, has said:

In the Spring of 1982 here in the Soviet Embassy there were very important secret talks that were held.… The question was: Did the United States and the Soviet Union wish jointly to develop an anti-ballistic missile defense that would have made nuclear war impossible? Then, in August, you had this very sharp Soviet rejection of the entire idea.… I have discussed this thoroughly with the developer, the originator of this idea, who is the scientific-technological strategic expert, Lyndon LaRouche. The [Soviet] rejection came in August, and at that point the American President Reagan decided to push this entire thing out into the public eye, so he made his speech of March 1983. ^[60]

A military specialist who advocated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), retired Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, has complained about LaRouche's attempts to take credit for SDI. "They also mounted a furious attack on me personally. Even today I get mail asking if I'm in league with LaRouche," said Graham. [51] LaRouche countered, "President Reagan's initial version of SDI was consistent with what I had introduced into U.S.-Soviet back-channel discussions over the period beginning February 1982. However, immediately thereafter, the mice went to work. Daniel Graham, the leading opponent of SDI up to that time, now proclaimed himself the virtual author of the policy, and was used, thereafter, to remove all of the crucial elements from the original policy." [52] There is no independent verification of either Graham's or LaRouche's statements.

Dennis King cites the view of Steven Bardwell, a physicist and former head of LaRouche's Fusion Energy Foundation, who wrote, after leaving the LaRouche organization, that LaRouche's goal was not a defensive version of SDI but an offensive "first strike" version and that LaRouche had privately talked about "Doomsday weapons," such as "cobalt bombs with fans." ^[61] LaRouche supporters maintain, however, that LaRouche always presented SDI as defensive, including when he discussed it with Reagan administration officials prior to Reagan's announcement, and that LaRouche had hoped it would be a "science driver" to revive the economies of both the United States and the Soviet Bloc. [53][54]

The Schiller Institute

In 1984, LaRouche co-founded (along with his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche), the Schiller Institute, which was to be a global umbrella organization for his ideas. He was joined in this effort by several of his close friends, including American Civil Rights Movement leader Amelia Boynton Robinson, and an important leader of the French Resistance, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade.[55][56]

Other events in the 1980s

Latin American issues

LaRouche opposed Reagan's support for Britain in the Falklands War (LaRouche referred to the war by the Argentine name, the Malvinas War), arguing that the policy was in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. LaRouche also strongly opposed the Reagan Administration's arming of the Nicaraguan Contras.

Club of Life

LaRouche opposed the zero-growth policies of the Club of Rome and formed a countergroup named the "Club of Life."

Meetings with Third World leaders

In April of 1982 LaRouche and his wife travelled to India, where they met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on April 24.[57] Shortly thereafter, on May 23, he met with Mexican President José López Portillo, and advised him to suspend foreign debt payments (which was done in August 1982), and to declare exchange controls and nationalize Mexico's banks (done in September 1982). The following year LaRouche returned to India for a second meeting with Gandhi. In addition, LaRouche met with Argentine President Raul Alfonsin [58].

Moon-Mars Project

LaRouche collaborated with Krafft Arnold Ehricke and numerous other NASA scientists to promote the idea of colonization of the moon and mars. This culminated in a national TV broadcast by LaRouche in 1988 entitled "The Woman on Mars."^[62]

U.S. News and World Report complaint

In 1982, U.S. News and World Report sued for damages, alleging that LaRouche reporters were impersonating its reporters in phone calls. LaRouche and his aide, Jeffrey Steinberg, gave depositions that revealed that their policy was for their staff to pretend to be from non-existent publications, and that they had infiltrated the campaigns of competing presidential nominees. Without admitting guilt, the LaRouche group agreed not to impersonate U.S. News reporters in the future. [59]

German reunification

On October 12, 1988, LaRouche gave a speech in Berlin, Germany, in which he said that "that the time has come for early steps toward the re-unification of Germany, with the obvious prospect that Berlin might resume its role as the capital." [60]

LaRouche's California AIDS initiative

In 1986, LaRouche launched the Proposition 64 initiative in California, which would have placed AIDS back on that state's List of Communicable Diseases subject to Public Health law. Opponents claimed that the measure could have instituted quarantines and sexual contact tracing. After its defeat it was reintroduced two years later and again defeated. LaRouche has given speeches and written articles in opposition to gay rights that his critics consider homophobic.^[63][64]

Olof Palme assassination

Following the Olof Palme assassination on February 28, 1986, the Swedish branch of the LaRouche Movement, European Workers Party, came under scrutiny as literature published by the party was found in the apartment of the first suspect of the murder, Victor Gunnarsson. Also, the hate campaigns against Olof Palme run by the LaRouche Movement since the beginning of the '70s, made the party interesting from a investigative point of view. [61] Within weeks of the assassination, NBC television in the U.S. broadcast a story alleging that LaRouche was somehow responsible. [62] Later, the suspect was released. From time to time over the years, suspicions regarding a potential LaRouche connection to the murder have surfaced. ^[65]

According to LaRouche researcher Dean Andromidas, there was a radio broadcast on Swedish National Radio in August of 1992 by Herbert Brehmer, former leading operative of the East German Stasi and author of Auftrag: Irreführung. Wie die Stasi Politik im Westen machte. Andromidas said that Brehmer "explained how his Department 10, responsible for disinformation, put into motion a preplanned disinformation operation to pin the blame for the murder of Palme on LaRouche and his Swedish associates." [63]

Democratic primary election successes

In 1986, two supporters of LaRouche, Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, won the Democratic party nominations in Illinois for the offices of Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State, respectively. This was the first time that LaRouche supporters had won statewide nominations. The Illinois Democratic party renounced the nominations, with the Democratic candidate for governor instead running on a "Solidarity" ticket; the Republican Party swept the elections, winning by over a million votes.

Criminal conviction and imprisonment (1988–1994)

By the 1980s, LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche had built an extensive political network, including the Schiller Institute in Germany, headed by Zepp-LaRouche, and branches in several other countries. The LaRouche organization devoted much of its energy to the sale of literature and the soliciting of small donations at airports and on university campuses; it also solicited donations by phone. Press reports alleged that this fundraising activity sometimes involved tax law violations, the conversion of publication sales into donations for LaRouche political campaigns that were then matched by the Federal Election Commission, and fraudulent soliciting of "loans" from vulnerable elderly people.

In October 1986, the FBI and Virginia state authorities raided the LaRouche headquarters in Leesburg in search of evidence to support the persistent accusations of fraud and extortion. LaRouche and six associates were charged with conspiracy and mail fraud related to fundraising. LaRouche was also charged with conspiring to hide his personal income since 1979, the last year he had filed a federal tax return. In December 1988, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia convicted LaRouche and his associates, and LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. LaRouche served five years of his sentence and was paroled. The convictions of LaRouche and his associates were a defining moment in the history of the LaRouche network. LaRouche supporters insisted that LaRouche was jailed, not for any violation of the law, but for his beliefs.

LaRouche did not stop all political activity while in prison. He ran for president again in 1992, met with international personages, and gave interviews. During part of his imprisonment he shared a cell with televangelist Jim Bakker at the Federal Medical Center located in Rochester, Minnesota. Bakker later wrote of his astonishment at LaRouche's detailed knowledge of the Bible. According to Bakker, LaRouche received a daily briefing each morning by phone, often in German. Bakker reports that on more than one occasion LaRouche had information days before it was reported on the network news. Bakker also writes that his cellmate was paranoid and convinced that their cell was bugged.^[66] LaRouche was released on parole in 1994.

• For more information on the case, see United States v. LaRouche

Meanwhile, in 1992, the father of Lewis du Pont Smith, an adult member of the Du Pont family who had joined the LaRouche movement, was indicted along with four associates for planning to have his son and daughter-in-law abducted and "deprogrammed". The incident resulted in serious legal repercussions but no criminal convictions for those indicted, including private investigator Galen Kelly. The father also tried unsuccessfully to have his son declared incompetent in order to block him from possibly turning over his inheritance to the LaRouche organization.

1994–present

LaRouche continued his political activity upon his release from prison in 1994, concentrating much of his attention on Third World nations. He was invited to Brazil by members of the city council of São Paulo, and was made an honorary citizen of that city on June 12 of that year.

In 1995, he wrote to a Swedish newspaper declaring that Olof Palme was assassinated because of his knowledge of the Irangate scandal. [64]

In the 1996 Democratic presidential primaries, LaRouche received enough votes in Louisiana and Virginia to get one delegate from each state. However, the Democratic Party refused to grant any delegates to LaRouche, asserting that he is a convicted felon with political beliefs that are "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic," [65] LaRouche sued in federal court, claiming a violation of the Voting Rights Act. LaRouche and his supporters argued that the decision disenfranchised the voters who had cast their votes for LaRouche.[66] After losing in the district court the case was appealed to the First District Court of Appeals, which sustained the lower court.[67] (See also Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns.)

During the 2000 Democratic primaries, LaRouche scored in double digits in multiple states, with his best showing in Arkansas, where he received 22% of the vote to Vice President Al Gore's 78%. In the Kentucky primary, LaRouche placed third with 11%, behind Gore and Bill Bradley. Again the Democratic Party again refused to grant any delegates to LaRouche. In the most recent election (2004,) he issued an open letter in response to the reiteration of Fowler's claims, in which he said "Specifically, the allegation that my expressed political beliefs are explicitly racist and anti-Semitic, is not only a lie; but it is, rather, you, by your actions, who have condoned and promoted the aims sought by an implicitly racist overturn of the Voting Rights Act."[68]

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, LaRouche mobilized his supporters in defense of Clinton. They formed a group called the "Committee to Save the Presidency," which petitioned nationwide against resignation or impeachment. LaRouche asserted that the same people and institutions that had attacked him were behind the attacks on Clinton.

Beginning in January, 2001, shortly before the inauguration of George W. Bush, to the present day, LaRouche began holding regular webcasts on the average of one every 1-2 months. These were public meetings, broadcast in video, where LaRouche gave a speech, followed by 1-2 hours of Q and A over the internet. [69]

In 2001 and 2003, he toured India, speaking at various conferences and university seminars. He has also traveled to Russia, where on several different occasions, LaRouche publications report that he has addressed both the Economics Committee of the Russian State Duma and the Russian Academy of Sciences, most recently in 2001. [70]

2003 invasion of Iraq

LaRouche and his organizations opposed the US invasion of Iraq. LaRouche was cited by an op-ed in the Syria Times as "[a]mong the US voices of reason" for asserting that the war is the result of a "1996 Israeli government policy that is being foisted on the President by a nest of (pro-Israel senior officials) inside the U.S. government." [71]

LaRouche youth movement

A significant change in the LaRouche organization since LaRouche was released from prison has been the development of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) beginning in 1999. Often described as a cult, which employs brainwashing techniques, ^{[citation needed]} the LYM's recruitment of young people in the 18-25 year-old age bracket has reportedly brought more members into the LaRouche organization than at any time in the past. On September 9, 2003, members of the LYM interrupted a debate of the Democratic candidates for president at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and disrupted Democratic Party candidates' events during the 2004 campaign, occasionally leading to arrests. ^{[citation needed]}

Jeremiah Duggan

International publicity about LaRouche was sparked in 2003 and 2004 after Jeremiah Duggan, a Jewish student from the UK who was attending a conference and cadre school in Germany organized by the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Youth Movement, died in mysterious circumstances in Wiesbaden. LaRouche publications say Duggan was suicidal, and the German police on the scene maintained that Duggan's death appeared to be a suicide. A British court, however, ruled out suicide, and decided that Duggan died while "in a state of terror." [72]

2004

The cover of a LaRouche campaign pamphlet from 2004, with a polemic against the Congress for Cultural Freedom

LaRouche entered the primary elections for the Democratic Party's nomination in 2004. He was not one of the major candidates invited to the primary-season debates, although he did participate in some alternative forums for minor candidates. He ran even though his home state of Virginia is one of a handful of states, which still has lifetime denial of the vote to ex-felons, which can be overturned only on appeal to the governor. (Neither the Constitution nor Federal statute law requires Presidents to be registered voters.) The Democratic Party did not consider his candidacy to be legitimate and ruled him ineligible to win delegates. He gained negligible electoral support.

In its 2004 assessment of presidential candidates, the National Right to Life Committee gave LaRouche a grade of 75% and declared that he is "pro-life in every way (against euthanasia, capital punishment, etc)." LaRouche also met with and lobbied Congress with Maxim Ghilan, an Israeli peace activist and poet. ^{[citation needed]}

LaRouche was endorsed by at least two Democratic state representatives in 2004, Erik Fleming of Mississippi and Harold James of Pennsylvania, though Fleming later expressed regret at becoming involved, calling that endorsement "the worst mistake of all."

LaRouche was present in Boston during the 2004 Democratic National Convention but did not attend the convention itself. He held a press conference in which he declared his support for John Kerry and pledged to mobilize his organization to help defeat George W. Bush in the November presidential election. He also waged a campaign, begun in October 2002, to have Dick Cheney resign or be dropped from the Republican ticket. [73]

2005

In November 2005, an eight-part interview with LaRouche was published in the People's Daily of China, covering his economic forecasts, his battles with the American media, and his assessment of the neoconservatives. ^[67]

2006

LaRouche attended the performance of Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner; LaRouche praised Colbert's presentation. [74] According to Byron York, White House correspondent for the National Review, LaRouche was seen "chatting" at the event with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. [75]

On October 23, 2006, a group of LaRouche Youth Movement members twice disrupted a Connecticut U.S. Senate debate between Alan Schlesinger, Ned Lamont and Joseph Lieberman. According to The Day, as Joe Lieberman spoke, the hecklers "sang a harmonized ode targeting Vice President Dick Cheney, which, according to the group's website, is unofficially titled 'The Fat-Ass Nazi Song'." [76]

Works

Lyndon LaRouche has written hundreds of articles, pamphlets, and books published mostly by his own press. Over the years he has displayed a certain penchant for unusual and catchy essay titles such as "Why Poetry must begin to Supersede Mathematics in Physics," "Beneath the Waters of Chappaquiddick," "Why Jimmy Carter Is Not a Christian," "Now, Do You Sleep with One Eye Open?",^[68] "Secrets Known Only to the Inner Elites," and "Bush Demands His Own Impeachment." His earliest book, published as a hardback textbook in the mid-1970's, is Dialectical Economics: An Introduction to Marxist Political Economy. He subsequently wrote a book on political theory, The Case of Walter Lippmann (1977); his autobiography The Power of Reason (1980); There Are No Limits to Growth (1983); and a second autobiography, The Power of Reason 1988. His 1984 popularization of his economic theories, So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics, circulates internationally in several languages, as does The Science of Christian Economy, and other prison writings, (1991). LaRouche issued The Road to Recovery (1999) in conjunction with his 2000 Presidential campaign. LaRouche's most recent book is The Economics of the Noosphere (2001.) [77]

LaRouche in popular culture

LaRouche is often referenced in popular culture. He is typically portrayed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. One characterization of LaRouche's ideas, by one-time NBC reporter Mark Nykanen, was that "he believes the Queen of England pushes drugs"; this has been repeated by so many other commentators, that it is widely believed that LaRouche actually said it.[78]

• In "Treehouse of Horror VII" episode of The Simpsons, which aired shortly before the 1996 presidential election, Homer finds President Bill Clinton and his Republican opponent Bob Dole imprisoned, nude, inside an alien spaceship, and exclaims: "Oh, no. Aliens, bio-duplication, nude conspiracies. Oh, my God. Lyndon LaRouche was right!" In "The Old Man and the Lisa," Mr. Burns promises to take the residents of Springfield Retirement Castle (who are working for him) to the most duck-filled pond they've ever seen if they meet their quota, and Grampa Simpson comments that "that's how they got me to vote for Lyndon LaRouche!"
• In "Time Again and World," the sixth episode of the second season of the science fiction television series Sliders, the heroes visit a parallel universe where LaRouche is the President of the United States.
• In the Futurama episode "A Head in the Polls", the character Bender seeks to join the heads of U.S. presidents that are kept in a museum in jars. He is told that he could have a spot in the closet of presidential losers, upon which Bob Dole (from within the closet) states: "Bob Dole needs company... LaRouche won't stop with the knock knock jokes!"
• Excerpts from a rambling LaRouche speech appear on the track "Lyndon LaRouche vs. the Abominable Snowman (You Can't Put the Genie Back Into the Bottle)" by the experimental music group "Sons of Bitches."
• The followers of LaRouche were referred to in an episode of the webcomic Ozy and Millie. [79]
• "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-1980s had a series of skits called "Lyndon LaRouche Theatre", satirizing his national TV ads by casting them as a parody of Masterpiece Theatre (LaRouche typically spoke from an armchair in a library.) For example, one skit shows Queen Elizabeth II as a drug dealer. (The author of these skits, comedian Al Franken, broke his glasses helping security personnel remove a LaRouche follower who was heckling Howard Dean during the 2004 Presidential primary season in New Hampshire.[80])
• "The Lyndon B. LaRouche Love Club" was the name of a hardcore punk band in Santa Cruz, California, in the early 1980s, combining the names of LaRouche and Lyndon B. Johnson.
• LaRouche is mentioned in the movie "So I Married an Axe Murderer": "Look. He's giving Tony all that Lyndon H. LaRouche rubbish again."
• In 1983, an issue of Howard Chaykin's American Flagg comic book series included a full page drawing of U.S. Labor Party (LaRouchian) soldiers in gas masks. The caption underneath describes the U.S.L.P. as an anti-British and anti-Semitic cult and says its members live in caves outside Chicago (this is in a post-nuclear holocaust USA) and are led by a mysterious LaRouche successor named "Decker."
• LaRouche was a frequent target for satire in the 1980s Bloom County comic strip. One example was "The Great LaRouche Toad-Frog Massacree," [81] which appeared as an introduction to a 1988 collection of Bloom County comics.
• In an episode of Blue Collar TV the character Larry the Cable Guy confuses baseball player Adam LaRoche's name with Lyndon LaRouche.
• In the "Assassins" expansion set of Illuminati: New World Order, a collectible card game published by Steve Jackson Games, LaRouche appears as a Personality.
• On an episode of MXC called "Squeeze Out the Vote" where Democrats, Republicans, and Independents faced one another, the sideline announcer was named Lyndon LeDouche based on the name of regular sideline announcer Guy LeDouche, and based on the word play of real names so prevalent in the show.

Notes

1. ^
   • Berlet, Chip. "Protocols to the Left, Protocols to the Right: Conspiracism in American Political Discourse at the Turn of the Second Millennium." Reconsidering "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion": 100 Years After the Forgery, October 30–31, 2005, Boston.
   • Berlet, Chip & Bellman Joe. "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag", Political Research Associates, March 10, 1989.
   • Berlet, Chip & Lyons, Matthew. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Guilford, 2000. ISBN 1-57230-562-2
   • Fraser, Clara. Revolution, She Wrote, Red Letter, 1998. ISBN 0-932323-04-9. See chapter called "LaRouche: Sex Maniac and Demagogue".
   • Gilbert, Helen. Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Restyled for the New Millennium, Red Letter, 2003. ISBN 0-932323-21-9
   • King, Dennis. Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, New York: Doubleday, 1989. ISBN 0-385-23880-0 Online text at [1].
   • Mintz, John. "Ideological Odyssey: From Old Left to Far Right", The Washington Post, January 14, 1985.
   • Wohlforth, Tim. "A '60's Socialist Takes a Hard Right", Political Research Associates, March16, 2006.
2. ^
3. ^ "Some Officials Find Intelligence Network 'Useful'", The Washington Post, January 15, 1985
4. ^ Clark, Ramsey. [2] "Open Letter to Janet Reno," posted on LaRouche presidential campaign website, 2004.
5. ^ Paul L. Montgomery, "How a Radical-Left Group Moved Toward Savagery" The New York Times, January 20, 1974
6. ^ Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., The Power of Reason: A Kind of Autobiography, New York: The New Benjamin Franklin Publishing House, 1979, p. 39
7. ^ Ibid, p. 38
8. ^ Ibid
9. ^ Ibid, p. 55
10. ^ Ibid, p. 58
11. ^ LaRouche, Lyndon. The Power of Reason: 1988, Executive Intelligence Review, 1987, p. 17
12. ^ LaRouche, Lyndon. The Power of Reason: 1988. Executive Intelligence Review, 1987, p. 18-20.
13. ^ http://www.neym.org/GuideToRecordsRSOF_1997.pdf
14. ^ Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, p. 6
15. ^ LaRouche, Lyndon. The Power of Reason: 1988. Executive Intelligence Review, 1987, p. 37-38.
16. ^ King, p.7
17. ^ LaRouche, Lyndon. The Power of Reason: 1988. Executive Intelligence Review, 1987, p. 62-64.
18. ^ ^{a b} Wohlforth, Tim. "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascist Demagogue. A '60's Socialist Takes a Hard Right, Political Research Associates.
19. ^ LaRouche, Lyndon. The Power of Reason: 1988. Executive Intelligence Review, 1987, p. 116.
20. ^ Paul L. Montgomery, "How a Radical-Left Group Moved Toward Savagery," The New York Times, January 20, 1974.
21. ^ King, pp. 17-18, 20, 25-26.
22. ^ Nat Hentoff, "Of Thugs and Liars," The Village Voice, January 24, 1974.
23. ^ Paul L. Montgomery, "How a Radical-Left Group Moved Toward Savagery," The New York Times, January 20, 1974
24. ^ "Death of the CPUSA," New Solidarity, April 9, 1973.
25. ^ "Operation Mop-Up: The Class Struggle Is for Keeps," New Solidarity, April 16, 1973.
26. ^ LaRouche, Lyndon. The Power of Reason: 1988. Executive Intelligence Review, 1987, p. 117.
27. ^ King, pp. 23-24.
28. ^ Paul L. Montgomery, "How a Radical-Left Group Moved Toward Savagery," The New York Times, January 20, 1974.
29. ^ King, Chapter 4, pp. 25-31 [3]
30. ^ Chip Berlet and Joel Bellman, "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag," Political Research Associates briefing paper, Part One, March 10, 1989 [4].
31. ^ King, pp. 27-28.
32. ^ Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth, On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.
33. ^ [5]
34. ^ [6]
35. ^ King, see esp. Chapters 7, 10 and 27 through 30[7]
36. ^ Chip Berlet and Joel Bellman, "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag," Political Research Associates, March 10, 1989 [8]
37. ^ King, "Jews Quit LaRouche Cult: Anti-Semitic 'ashtray joke' and denial of Holocaust cited," Our Town, April 12, 1981[9]
38. ^ King "LaRouche: A Dictatorial Mind at Work," New America, April-May 1982[10]
39. ^ Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991
40. ^ King, Chapter 10 [11]
41. ^ Howard Blum and Paul Montgomery, "U.S. Labor Party: Cult Surrounded by Controversy," New York Times, October 7, 1979, and "One Man Leads U.S. Labor Party on His Erratic Path," New York Times, October 8, 1979
42. ^ [12]
43. ^ [13] He's a Bad Guy, But We Can't Say Why, Schiller Institute Website
44. ^ Gregory F. Rose, "The Swarmy Life and Times of the NCLC," National Review, March 30, 1979
45. ^ King, Chapter 29 [14]
46. ^ King, Chapter 6, pp. 43-46 [15]
47. ^ King, Chapter 17, pp. 146-147 [16]
48. ^ See King, chapter 10, p. 76 [17]
49. ^ Dennis King, "Nazis Without Swastikas" (pamphlet), New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1982, citing and reproducing illustration in LaRouche, "Micky Mouse & Pluto Move to Washingtion, New Solidarity, October 17, 1978
50. ^ [18]
51. ^ Pipes, Daniel, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From, Simon & Schuster (Free Press), 1997, p. 142
52. ^ [19] Robert L. Bartley, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2003
53. ^ Pipes, Chapter 1, "Conspiracy Theories Everywhere."
54. ^ Robert L. Bartley, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2003[20]
55. ^ [21]
56. ^ "Judgment Is Reduced in LaRouche-NBC Case," The New York Times, February 24, 1985.
57. ^ LaRouche v. National Broadcasting Company, 780 F.2d 1134, 1139 (4th Cir. 1986).
58. ^ [22] "The LaRouche Case: Addendum 1, The John Train Salon," Executive Intelligence Review website
59. ^ Memo from AOL libel suit, Electronic Frontier Foundation
60. ^ Scherer, Paul Albert, General (ret.) Press conference, National Press Club, Washington, DC., May 6, 1992.
61. ^ Steven Bardwell, "Third Rome Hypothesis," NCLC internal document, January 13, 1984, quoted in King, p. 75
62. ^ "The Woman on Mars," video aired on national TV by the LaRouche Democratic Campaign in 1988, LaRouche in 2004 website
63. ^ Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "The End of the Age of Aquarius?" EIR (Executive Intelligence Review), January 10, 1986, p. 40.
64. ^ Berlet and Bellman, Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag.
65. ^ SOU 1999:88. Granskningskommissionens betänkande i anledning av Brottsutredningen efter mordet på statsminister Olof Palme (Swedish), official Swedish government report on the Palme investigation.
66. ^ Bakker, Jim, I Was Wrong, 1996, Thomas Nelson Publisers, Nashville. (p. 250)
67. ^ People's Daily, November 22, 2005. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30]
68. ^ Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., in Campaigner Special Report 23, "Innoculate U.S. Against Cult Epidemic," New York: Campaigner Publications, 1978.

Further reading

• 2003 Personal Financial Disclosure for Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. PDF
• The Cult Controversy includes a 1995 series on LaRouche by John Mintz and links to other Washington Post articles on LaRouche .
• No Joke (the effect LaRouche has on young recruits) – Washington Post, October 2004
• Lyndon LaRouche - SourceWatch article
• The disownment of Lyndon LaRouche Austin Meredith, 2005, Brown University, the Kouroo Contexture: The History of Quakerism (PDF)
• Dennis King on LaRouche An archive of dozens of articles on LaRouche by Dennis King and others; full text of Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism and reviews from the mainstream and alternative press; interviews with King by Neenyah Ostrom and other journalists
• Lyndon LaRouche/Executive Intelligence Report An archive of articles and materials highly critical of LaRouche, collected by the Rick Ross Institute.
• Articles about LaRouche from Political Research Associates by Chip Berlet and others.
• Partners in Bigotry: The LaRouche Cult and the Nation of Islam by Nizkor Project
• Lyndon Larouche/Executive Intelligence Review Series of articles from the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults
• True History of Lyn Marcus (Lyndon LaRouche) and the Labor Committees 1975 article published by the International Workers Party whose members joined LaRouche's NCLC for a period in the early 1970s.
• The cult and the candidate by Terry Kirby, July 2004 (The Independent of London)
• Larouche Exposed – Pasadena City College
• Letter on LaRouche Youth Movement – UC San Diego forum
• Pre-1990 Larouche quotes, from primary-source documents, by Chip Berlet and Chicago Lawyer newspaper
• Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag, Chip Berlet and Joel Bellman
• Lyndon LaRouche's Long Campaign, (Newsday article on LaRouche's record of eight consecutive Presidential campaigns)
• Larouche Exposed, Pasadena City College
• Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, review of book by Dennis King
• Anti-LaRouche article from the Australian paper, The Age, from the website of Rick Ross
• "Global financial crisis is coming" : interview with Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. by Yong Tang in the People's Daily (part 1 of 8)
• Building a World Without Poverty, Violence, and War:what are the roles of LaRouche and Mary Baker Eddy? by Rolf A. F. Witzsche

1. Beyes-Corleis, Aglaja (1994). Verirrt: Mein Leben in einer radikalen Politorganisation. Herder/Spektrum. ISBN 3-451-04278-9.

LaRouche publications:

• LaRouche Political Action Committee
• Executive Intelligence Review: LaRouche Publications
• Twenty First Century Science and Technology – LaRouche-affiliated Science organization
• Philippine LaRouche Society
• "He's a bad guy, but we can't say why" LaRouche response to the various accusations against him
• The Bizarre Case of Baroness Symons – LaRouche response to the recent Independent and Washington Post articles
• World Larouche Youth Movement
• Schiller Institute
• Schiller Institut (in German)
• Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (in German)

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American Flagg!

American Flagg #1.

American Flagg! is a comic book series created by Howard Chaykin which was published by First Comics from 1983 to 1989, and was set around the United States government in the early 2030s. Writers included Alan Moore, and J.M. DeMatteis.

Publishing history

American Flagg was one of the first titles to be published by the newly formed First Comics in 1983. It proved to be a major success for Chaykin and First Comics and fans were won over by Chaykin's handling of more mature themes not common in comics at the time, the intense mix of satire and science fiction and his dynamic and expressive art. The first twelve issues form one complete story which has become a huge influence upon current comic creators such as Brian Michael Bendis and Warren Ellis.

After issue 12, Chaykin continued the story but began to lose interest in the title. Chaykin began to concentrate on other projects such as his revamp of The Shadow for DC Comics and Time², which was introduced in a one-off special of American Flagg! in 1986. Eventually Chaykin left to be replaced on a regular basis by J.M. DeMatteis after seeing Alan Moore write several issues. The Moore issue was not well received and the DeMatteis run saw the title's sales decline. Chaykin returned to the title for a brief run but the series was cancelled in March 1988 and relaunched a few months later as Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!. This run saw Chaykin return to artwork duties as well as writing the series but it failed to recapture its early success and was cancelled after only twelve issues.

The first twelve issues were released by First as a series of graphic novels but after the collapse of First they went quickly out of print. Dynamic Forces and Image Comics reprinted the first twelve issues in both hardcover and paperback editions in 2006.

Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Chaykin's cover for the first American Flagg!

hardcover edition from Dynamic Forces.

The story takes place in the year 2031, after a series of worldwide crises called the Year of the Domino (1996) has forced the U.S. government and the heads of major corporations to relocate to Hammarskjold Center, on Mars ("temporarily, of course"). In the wake of the American government leaving the planet and the Soviet Union collapsing from Islamic insurrections, there was a power shift throughout the world, with Brazilian Union of the Americas and the Pan-African League becoming the new superpowers on Earth.

However, the exiled American government, its corporate backers, and a group of technicians in the defected Soviet lunar colony of Gagaringrad form the Plex: a giant, interplanetary union of corporate and government concerns that conduct commerce and govern the United States from its capital on Mars. Many population centers are grouped around massive, fortified arcologies called Plexmalls and the law is enforced by the Plexus Rangers, the absentee Plex's Earthside militia.

The Plex has formed the Tricentennial Recovery Committee, to get America "back on track for '76", but the TRC is in reality a plan to sell the United States off to the new superpowers and to leech off the remaining inhabitants before gaining true self-sufficiency. As a result, the Plex has outlawed non-combat related education, organized sports such as basketball and personal aircraft, restricted media to only one outlet, the Plex itself (although it has multiple channels), and advocates and glorifies the use of political violence amongst independent policlubs by providing money and firearms for its hit TV show Firefight All Night LIVE!, and covertly sterilizes the population by using a combo contraceptive and antibiotic called Mañanacillin to reduce the population.

This all changes when former television star Reuben Flagg is drafted and transferred to Chicago's Plexmall to replace the local Ranger Hilton "Hammerhead" Krieger's fallen partner. He witnesses widespread graft and corruption throughout the Plexmall, but also a series of subliminal messages implanted in a television show that are causing outbreaks of gang violence. After he uses his emergency powers to interrupt the broadcast, he not only ends the violence, but also brings forth a series of events that causes the Plex to send in covert agents, the death of Hilton, and the unveiling of Q-USA, a secret pirate TV station owned and operated by Krieger that opens Flagg's eyes to the nature of the Plex.

As the series progressed, Chaykin took less and less of a direct role in scripting and plotting the stories out, and by the third year of its run, he really had nothing to do with the book any more. Stories began to violate wildly the rules that Chaykin had explicitly stated in the writer's bible for the series (For instance, California was said to have slid into the Pacific Ocean, but in the final year of the book, California was merely shown to have been abandoned for reasons that were vague at best), and characterizations began to drift considerably as well. (Flagg, for instance, abandoned his interest in 30s Jazz, and was frequently shown listening to late-60s rock, as well as becoming more of a traditional stern-jawed good-guy hero) Complex stories were replaced by cartoonish over-the-top weirdness (As when Flagg meets up with an army of "Reuben Flagg Worshippers," or, as some disgruntled ex-readers called them, "Flaggots.") Whatever spark had flourished in the early years of the book was lost, and readership declined rapidly. After trying and failing several times to shore up declining interests, it was decided to lure Chaykin back into the writer's seat. "American Flagg!" wrapped up its principle storyline in issue 50. By this time, Reuben Flagg had traveled to Mars, overthrown the Plex, and become President of the United States. He then decided to separate Illinois from the United States and run it as his own personal fiefdom. All issues of this series took place in the year 2031.

The next year, the comic was re-launched under the name Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! and picked up from where the earlier book had left off. (In 2032) There is some difference of opinion as to whether this new book was intended to be a limited run, or open ended as is the norm with comics. In either case, it ended after twelve issues. Though it definitely came as a breath of fresh air after the previous 24 issues of drek, it still never quite managed to recapture the fun of its initial early-80s run. The first four issues of this book were mostly geared towards cleaning up the mess that American Flagg universe had deteriorated into in the previous couple years. Flagg was arrested in Europe, the Plexmall was destroyed in an accident, and Illinois re-joined the Union. Eventually sprung from Spandau prison, Flagg makes his way to Russia, where he again takes a job as a Plex Ranger, and has several adventures before eventually marrying.

The final issue ends with a 'photo album' of the Flagg's future domestic life, with lots of kids, a screaming shrew of a wife, and a balding, overweight Flagg himself.

Characters

• Reuben Flagg, born in 2000 at Hammarskjold Center, Mars, to Axel and Rebecca Flagg, was a stand-up comic and popular television star of the show Mark Thrust, Sexus Ranger. After he was made superfluous by CGI technology, he joined the Plexus Rangers and emigrated to Earth, being stationed in the Chicago Plexmall. Flagg is Jewish, and his parents' "undesirably bohemian" attitudes have given him an idealistic view of the United States that runs contrary to the Plex. He has a desire to set things right again, and through inheriting Q-USA, begins to set on that path.
• Raul the cat, an intelligent, talking orange tabby housecat. With the exception of his intelligence and his ability to speak (an ability whose origin is never explained), he appears to be otherwise a normal house pet. However, he has a customized set of cybernetic gloves, designed by Mandy Krieger, that give him opposable thumbs.
• Hilton "Hammerhead" Krieger, was Flagg's superior at the Chicago Plexmall. A founder of the Genetic Warlords motorcycle gang, but after his 13th arrest, the Plex drafts him because of his criminal experience. Intending to take advantage of the fledgling organization, he meets his future wife Peggy and stayed with the Rangers. He doesn't trust anyone, not C.K., the mayor, not his wife Peg, not his daughter Mandy, and, while he was a Plexus Ranger, he especially did not trust the Plex. He ran an underground pirate television station called Q-USA that broadcast illegal sports, pornography, and pre-collapse movies and television shows. He is killed by a Plex secret agent, and gives Flagg the station.
• Amanda "Mandy" Krieger, daughter of Hilton, she is the air traffic controller for O'Hare Chicago Plexport. However, since the O'Hare Plexport only receives two flights a week, Mandy spends her time tinkering with electronics or getting into mischief. She later becomes a deputy to Flagg.
• Jules "Deathwish" Folquet, captain of the Skokie Skullcrushers basketball team. Despite his punk appearance, his hulking size and the extreme nature of the sport he plays, Jules is quite intelligent. He is referred to as the "king of the two finger lobotomy." He first teams with Flagg to resolve a hostage crisis, but later forms the Video Rangers auxiliaries, and then becomes a Ranger deputy. He also later hosts a talk show with Raul called the "Him and It Show". In the second series, he renounces his violent ways, and, through a remarkable series of events, becomes Pope.
• Charles Keenan Blitz, also known as The Honorable C.K. Blitz, a co-founder of the Genetic Warlords along with Hilton Krieger, also ended up getting drafted into the Plexus Rangers, but ended up leaving to become mayor of Chicago. Blitz has his hand in every deal, regardless of how illegal it may be; is extremely wealthy and corrupt; and has killed political opponents. As a side venture, he runs the Skokie Skullcrushers blackmarket basketball team. He is usually flanked by his two robot bodyguards, Bert and Ernie, named after "a private joke no one under 40 understands". He has had affairs with Mandy Krieger and with Peggy Krieger, while Hilton was fighting a brushfire war in Carracas, which lead to her being kicked out by Hilton and giving birth to...
• Medea Blitz, the offspring of C.K. and Peggy. Early in the series, Medea is a wild child and hangs out with Cyril Farid-Khan, gang leader of current Genetic Warlords. She has a secret affair with Hilton Krieger, but after his murder, is considered a suspect and is involved in a traffic accident, which causes her to miscarry Krieger's child. In order to clean up her act, C.K. Blitz has her join the Plexus Rangers to straighten her out. As the series progresses, Medea is shown to become more and more accepting of the Rangers and becomes a decent team player in Flagg's group.
• Sam Louis Obispo also known as Ned Beaumont, also known as Tom Slick. A hustler Reuben meets in Havana while escorting the Skokie Skullcrushers, he later partners with Flagg for most of his time in South America. He has an affair with the wealthy daughter of the Brazilian ambassador, which causes all sorts of problems for Flagg and himself.
• William Windsor-Jones, but his best friends just call him Bill. Bill is the youngest member of the Witnesses, a gang of octogenarian rebels. He helps Flagg out from time to time, giving him intelligence and technical support. He later has becomes a newscaster for Q-USA. Bill is Prince William, and the rightful heir to the now-abolished British throne.

External links

• Dynamic Forces listing of the American Flagg! hardcover
• History of First Comics

Normally the PP Guru does hold any malice towards political organizations who want to see Diet Coke Dubya and his little sick band of caffained soft drink swindlers drawn, quartered, and impeached - but these little LaRouche fucks who sit all day in their jerk-off cubicles are just as bad at swindling as the neo-cons who supposedly used to run this country (now that the demmies are back in major ops - everything's going to be just fine again - trust the PP Guru). The PP Guru thought it was fine at first, he talked to this brainwashed cronie named Todd for a bit: thought the idea of going after Cheney with a grandoise schemes of impeachment was a noble idea and the PP Guru liked what he was hearing- but then Todd started sprouting off about $400 dollar donation fees: But sorry, Todd, the PP Guru, although employed steadily in the entertainment biz, doesn't have a checkbook wide enough to cover that dreamboat aspiration. The PP Guru was kind and generous enough out of his kind heart to fork over 4 bucks to cover maybe a pamphlet or two. That was fine at first- but then the PP Guru started getting a rash of annoying phone calls demanding a $400 donation. The PP Guru never said to Todd or his L. Ron Hubbard cock sucking like flunkies that PP Guru was obliged to give them $ 400. Then they had the audacity to even ask the PP Guru if he could give them the routing number off of one of his blank checks- What the fuck? Does the PP Guru stutter - what part of either the PP Guru doesn't have the available for your rip-off scheme do you not understand? Then the phone calls started coming in after 10 o'clock on a Saturday night!! Sorry Todd, but that's the time when the PP Guru lifts his tunic and gives thee praise to porn stars hour. AND THEY ARE NO INTERRUPTIONS AND NO EXCEPTIONS! So this one is for you, Todd - because you're on the PP Guru's shitlist now- and believe the PP Guru - it's not a place to feel safe in.

~

PP Guru