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Lyndon LaRouche

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Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922) is an American politician, and a perennial candidate for President of the United States. While he associates himself with the Democratic Party, he has never been that party's nominee for office and he is not accepted within the mainstream of the party, although he has won the acceptance of Democratic Party mavericks such as Senator Eugene McCarthy and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. He has also won some non-binding Democratic state primaries, including North Dakota in 1992 and Michigan in 2000. He believes that a monetary-financial crisis akin to the Great Depression is imminent. He is a candidate in the 2004 US Presidential Election. In his early political career LaRouche often used the pseudonym Lyn Marcus.

His political views are extremely controversial and are characterized by his belief in a number of complex conspiracy theories, involving global plots to establish a frightening New World Order, involving such figures as the British Royal Family (especially the Duke of Edinburgh), George P. Shultz, and George H. W. Bush and other circles of international bankers engaging in what he has characterized as a "synarchist" political movement of the oligarchy. A typical claim is that the government of East Germany-- with the complicity of U.S. government and private organizations! -- framed the murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme on him. This claim was corroborated on Swedish national radio in August of 1992, by a leading former East German Stasi officer, Dr. Herbert Brehmer. LaRouche's opponents on the political conservative right have characterized him as a fascist and a communist, his opponents on the political liberal and socialist left have characterized him as a fascist, Bonapartist, and a right-wing populist. LaRouche characterizes himself as an FDR Democrat.

Early Marxist career

LaRouche began his career within the Marxist left. He was a member of the (Trotskyist) Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1948 until 1965. In 1965, he left the SWP and was briefly associated with Tim Wohlforth's American Committee of the Fourth International and then Jim Robertson's Spartacist League. Both groups had recently left the Socialist Worker's Party over the issue of Cuba and Castro.

LaRouche then declared the Fourth International to be bankrupt and left the Trotskyist factions of the Marxist movement. This was not unusual for people to do at the time, as the post World War II era created much confusion and factionalism within the Trotskyist movement due to the success of Stalinism. Gradually, LaRouche moved into the allegedly opportunist and rightward drifting elements within the New Left, calling for a 5th International.

LaRouche was involved in the highly activist and volantarist "vanguard" element in 20th century "Leninist" Marxism, which is considered by other Marxist schools as anything ranging from a slight defect to a complete and total break with Marxism - given Marxism's self proclaimed historical grounding as an egalitarian worker's movement.

LaRouche's beliefs were anti-Stalinist but vanguardist. LaRouche considers himself, and has proclaimed publicly, to possess superior mental capacities that make him the best qualified to lead, (today, he claims that he is at the peak of his mental prowess at the age of 81). His claims to being uniquely qualified for leadership put him at odds with Wolforth and Robertson who also fell out among themselves for the same reason.

It was here that LaRouche, whose was still known by his pseudonym of Lyn Marcus, was impressed and shaped by the notion that history is made by great men, Leaders of Men, and not by the struggle of contending classes as Karl Marx had said. Though this was never stated in any of the Trotskyists' works, since Trotskyism considers itself to be Marxism, LaRouche was shaped by how these organizations existed in fact. He was influenced into thinking that he was in fact the great man who could save history because he subscribed to the belief that the individual Trotsky could have had the power to set the USSR on a historical journey completely alien to what we know of and consider to be 'Stalinism'.

LaRouche would disagree with the above characterization of his ideas. LaRouche uses the formulation that certain historical individuals, including Socrates, Jesus, Jeanne d'Arc(Joan of Arc), Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, chose a sense of identity in accord with what Friedrich Schiller called the Sublime -- put simply, a decision to live for the benefit of mankind, rather than for some ephemeral, personal gain -- and that such individuals, by their own volition, are responsible for the progress of humanity. LaRouche asserts that any human being may choose the same path.

NCLC

After these entanglements, he formed his own National Caucus of Labor Committees, recruiting members from the collapsing New Left. The NCLC was very strongly catastrophist claiming that economic crisis was on the immediate horizon. For this reason, the NCLC had to build a leadership to prepare for the onrushing crisis. This led them to act in a very sectarian fashion towards rival leftist groups. This culminated, according to one version of the story, in Operation Mop Up in which the NCLC decided to eliminate the Communist Party by physically attacking their meetings. The NCLC, however, obtained a document throught the Freedom of Information Act: it is a memo from the FBI station head in New York City, written to national headquarters on November 23, 1973. It states that infiltrators had been successfully placed in the leadership of the CPUSA, who had convinced the party heads that their problems could be solved by the "physical elimination of LaRouche."

LaRouche distanced himself from the left, and claimed that his new socio-political movement transcends all traditional categories of left (socialist/liberal) and right (nationalist/hierarchical/conservative).

In addition, most left groups have formally characterized his movement and ideology as fascist or neo-fascist. This is based on the allegations of organized physical attacks on left groups, in particular the Socialist Worker's Party (of which he was a member for several decades) and the Communist Party.

Cult accusations

Some, including numerous former members, have stated that the LaRouche organization is a cult. Many families have attempted interventions and in a few cases, youth who associated with the LaRouche group have disappeared and are still missing. The youth groups are composed partly of college dropouts: from one current member's account, members work six days a week, often 12 or more hours a day, with the first part of the seventh day set aside for reading literature (often classical) and the second part for a group meeting. Some members live together, with the organization paying for their living expenses.

A list of LaRouche youth groups can be found at the bottom of this page. Larouche-affiliated groups exist throughout the world; LaRouche's opponents charge that an Australian group called the Citizens Electoral Council encouraged people to go into debt so they could give more money to the CEC, and put members through "psycho sessions," in which they try to "create a new person," according to a former member.

According to LaRouche's enemies, his ideas are intended to be palatable and friendly to the American sensibility and are not stated to be upon the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler or Marx, but rather based on Alexander Hamilton, Plato, Karl Friedrich Gauss, and others. LaRouche's supporters simply respond that these latter thinkers are those that LaRouche says he respects, and he means what he says.

Financial base

LaRouche's financial base of support, outside of many five and ten dollar contributions gathered by LaRouche organizers in public places like schools and shopping areas, comes from smaller proprietors and family businesses, professionals, and workers. His movement receives no foundation money. According to the Federal Election Commission statistics, LaRouche had more individual contributors to his 2004 Presidential Campaign, than any other candidate, until the final quarter of the primary season, when John Kerry surpassed him. LaRouche advocates restoring the U.S. as a "producer society," as opposed to a "consumer society", which he has likened to the Roman Empire: LaRouche opposes "free trade" or Laissez-faire, globalization and outsourcing, and advocates major FDR-style infrastructure projects for both the U.S. and the Third World nations. LaRouche has paid special attention to Wal-Mart, arguing that Wal-Mart typifies the low-wage operations which, along with large trusts and banks, represent ruin to the small proprietors and organized labor.

From the perspective of conventional leftist analysis, the class of small proprietors and producers should feel threatened by the propertyless mob. LaRouche, however, cites The Harmony of Interests by American economist Henry C. Carey, as an example of the "American System" of economics: that a competent national policy will benefit all sectors of society, rather than pitting one sub-group against another. LaRouche hails the policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt as an historical example of this approach, consistent with the commitment in the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, to defend the general welfare.

Theory of elites

LaRouche divides the powerful and wealthy groupings of the elite into two categories - industrialists and usurers. Speculation and usury are considered by LaRouche two of the causes of social ills, holding back the constitutional mandate of the government to promote the general welfare. An example of a once-industrial firm would be General Motors, whereas examples of usurers would be J. P. Morgan or the Rothschilds, Chase Manhattan Bank, or any family or grouping of bankers, investors, stock traders, that invest in a speculative manner, rather than productively. LaRouche does not advocate the abolition of financial corporations, but calls for them to be subject to strict government regulation.

His philosophy (which he claims is not an ideology) is premised upon what some may call an idealization of the European Civilization of the 15th and 16th centuries, in particular the Renaissance, and states that he holds itself to be opposed to the Enlightenment Rationalists of the 18th century, as well as the existentialism of the 19th and 20th century.

LaRouche is opposed to racism and his political organization is ethnically diverse.

Accusations of communism

Many right groups have characterized LaRouche's movement and ideology as communist, despite LaRouche's public break with the left. According to Joel Skousen of the John Birch Society, "LaRouche and his wife have ties to far-left and Communist factions in Europe. I've always suspected LaRouche to be a leftist rather than on the right. I don't trust his claimed sources, which are most likely passing on Russian disinformation." Rightists regard LaRouche's support for strong government regulation of companies involved in infrastructure such as transportation, electrical power generation and transmission, public health, telecommunications, and finance, as evidence that he is in fact a leftist. They are also highly suspicious of LaRouche's ties to leaders of Third World countries, as well as Russia, India, and China, where LaRouche and his wife have travelled and lectured extensively. LaRouche has met with numerous heads of state from these countries, consulting in particular with leaders that wish to pursue development of infrastructure in opposition to the austerity demands of the International Monetary Fund. LaRouche developed particularly close relationships with the President of Mexico, José Lopez Portillo, and the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who was also head of the Non-Aligned Movement.

LaRouche's opponents on both the right, and the left (see below), accuse LaRouche of having hidden or "coded" messages in his pronouncements; thus, when LaRouche denounces communism, or fascism, it is suggested that he has some ulterior motive for doing so, and he must in fact be secretly sympathetic to that which he denounces. It is interesting to note that Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose tradition LaRouche professes to uphold, was also accused by his opponents of being sympathetic to either fascism, or communism (depending on the audience to which the charges were being directed).

Accusations of fascism

Many left groups have characterized LaRouche's movement and ideology as fascist or neo-fascist. They describe several qualities that they say define him as an independent, anti-communist political agitator. These include, firstly, his alleged organized physical attacks on left groups. Leftists see this sort of political violence as a hallmark of fascism, and compare it to attacks by Benito Mussolini's Black shirts and Hitler's Brown shirts against socialists and communists.

Secondly, LaRouche's financial base of support comes, in part, from smaller proprietors and family businesses, groups that Hitler and Mussolini initially based themselves upon before their movements picked up momentum. After Hitler and Mussolini were recognized by their respective nations' largest productive and investment firms as salvation from and a bulwark against the anarchy and left-socialism of the masses below, their base of support also later then came to include the largest and wealthiest firms.

Thirdly, critics see the alleged violence against leftists as a tacit message to ruling sectors that he can control and contain a mass movement in their interests while crushing opposition mass movements.

Some critics see LaRouche as a "crypto-fascist", holding that LaRouche understands that fascism has a bad name, and that the American psychology is very anti-fascist in name. This means that a fascist movement in the United States would have to, as one of its platforms, state they are anti-fascists and produce a number of coherent theoretical works opposing fascism. In LaRouche's theory, classical fascism is the apparent right wing thrust of what he calls a synarchist (literally, 'against anarchy') movement of International Bankers, and socialism/marxism/liberalism is it's left wing. Also, LaRouche's anti-racism makes it hard to tag him a fascist, but it should be noted historically that the original fascist movement - Mussolini in Italy - was not based on a theory of racial superiority. The racism associated with Fascism is largely due to the influence of National Socialism and Hitler.

LaRouche creates an ideology primarily out of those philosophers who had nothing or little to do with the intellectual roots of classical fascism (e.g Nietzsche, Social Darwinism) but also those who had little to do with, or historically further removed from, the intellectual roots of Marxism - which LaRouche had reinvented himself as a staunch opponent.

Whereas classical fascism, in its general theory of who now rules the world, entails an elaborate conspiracy of International Bankers who simultaneously support the most of evil of the capitalists and the most dangerous of the left-socialists (or communists, or anarchists). The classical fascist (conspiracy) theory then, is that the apparent forces of left and right are an illusion created by a single ruling elite of International Bankers. In the Hitlerite version of this theory, these International Bankers are themselves either mostly or totally controlled by International Jewry.

Support from the Civil Rights Movement

Although, since the late 1960s, LaRouche and his movement have been under continual attack from both Rightists and Leftists, LaRouche has enjoyed strong support from the veterans of the American Civil Rights Movement of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the early 1990s, while LaRouche was in prison (see below), full page advertisements, calling for LaRouche to be exonerated, appeared in papers such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Among the signators were Civil Rights leaders such as Amelia Boynton Robinson (the heroine of Bloody Sunday), Rev. Hosea Williams, Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, James Bevel, Rosa Parks, and Benjamin Chavis. Additionally, Amelia Boynton Robinson became co-founder and Vice-Chairperson of the Schiller Institute, and James Bevel became LaRouche's running mate in the 1992 Presidential campaign, in which LaRouche ran from prison.

Propaganda

The propaganda of LaRouche is often both anti-capitalist and patriotic or nationalist, appealing mostly to small proprietors, but also the unemployed, students, and wage workers. The political organization they are allied with in Russia are the Nationalists, and in Italy LaRouche has the "Italian Solidarity Movement", MSI. However, they claim their end goal is to save the 'real' economy, to salvage and rescue that sector of the economy which makes actual goods, as opposed to speculation, which creates no actual wealth. LaRouche calls this "Hamiltonian economics" or "American System economics", but some of LaRouche's opponents on the Left maintain that it is what has been called "state-capitalism" by Lenin and John Maynard Keynes or "corporatism" by Mussolini.

LaRouche accuses many of his prominent critics, including Dennis King, Chip Berlet and John Rees, of being part of a government-affiliated conspiracy against him. His publications cite eyewitness reports of a series of meetings held in 1983 at the Manhattan home of investment banker John Train, with the particpation of Berlet, King, Rees, and also Roy Godson, then a consultant to the National Security Council and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB); Mira Lansky Boland, head of Fact Finding at the Washington, D.C. offices of the Anti- Defamation League of B'nai B'rith; at least one representative of Freedom House, a private research organization headed by PFIAB Chairman Leo Cherne; Richard Mellon-Scaife, a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman, whose tax-exempt foundation would later come under federal criminal investigation for illegally financing the arming of the Nicaraguan Contras (Mellon-Scaife later became notorious for his involvement in the Paula Jones case, and other activities intended to discredit President Bill Clinton); and several dozen journalists from major national media outlets, including NBC-TV, Readers Digest, Business Week, The New Republic and The Wall Street Journal. Larouche's group intimates that the Madrid bombings were carried out by the synarchists and openly accuses Sept. 11 as being part of an attempted coup d'état, done by high-ranking officials, against the American government.

The complex domain

The germ of all his publicly stated political views since his reinvention as an anti-communist, is an understanding of what he terms "the complex domain". By this, scientists such as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann mean the domain of the universal physical principles, or natural laws, pertaining to both science and art, the interaction of which with man's sense organs produces the apparent, but paradoxical sensible universe. The resolution of such paradoxes by the method of creative hypothesis and proof-of-principle experiment, is the source of all knowledge.

From this platonic understanding, LaRouche identifies the only true political conflict, as that between oligarchism, which declares man a kind of domesticable herd animal, and government based on the general welfare, which declares him made in the mental image of the Creator. In the latter, the only efficient agenda is the development of mankind's characteristic faculty for discovering, transmitting, and employing universal physical principles.

Criminal record

In December of 1988, LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy and mail fraud in regards to the methods used by his organization to solicit in the alleged amount of $294,000 of unrepaid loans. The alleged conspiracy, was a conspiracy to obtain the loans, with no intention to repay. To prepare for the trial, the government first filed, on April 20, 1987, an unprecedented involuntary bankruptcy petition against two LaRouche-controlled publications companies on whose behalf the loans had been solicited, ending all possibility of loan repayment. On October 25, 1989, Judge Martin V.B. Bostetter ruled the government's action was illegal. Bostetter said the government acted in "objective bad faith" and the bankruptcy was obtained by a "constructive fraud on the court." However, the appeal on the conspiracy and fraud charges went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court; at each stage of the appeals process, the courts declined to hear the appeal.

LaRouche was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison in Minnesota, though he was given an early release in 1993 after serving five years. He ran his 1992 electoral campaign from prison. Prominent radical political figure and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has helped to try to clear LaRouche's name, arguing that investigators and political opponents had gone overboard in their accusations. Clark wrote in 1995, in a letter to then serving Attorney General Janet Reno: "I bring this matter to you directly, because I believe it 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."

During the 2004 Presidential campaign, LaRouche has characterized his imprisonment and subsequent release, with one sentence: "Bush put me in, and Clinton got me out." However, there were in fact thousands of political leaders who campaigned for LaRouche's release. In addition to leaders of the American American Civil Rights Movement (see above), there were many elected officials from the U.S. and around the world, including the following officials of various nations:

  • RNDr. Jozef Miklosko, former Vice-Prime Minister of former Czechoslovakia
  • Prof. Dr. Hans R. Klecatsky, former Justice Minister, Austria
  • Gen. (ret.) Edgardo Mercado Jarrin, former Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister of Peru
  • Gen. (ret.) Joao Baptista de Oliveira Figueredo, former President of Brazil
  • Nedzib Sacirbey, M.D., Ambassador at Large, Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
  • Arturo Frondizi, former President of Argentina (recently deceased)
  • Manuel Solis Palma, former President of Panama
  • Dr. Abdelhamid Brahimi, former Prime Minister of Algeria (1984-1988)


See also: Party for the Commonwealth of Canada, North American Labour Party

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