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LaRouche movement
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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. He is perhaps best known for being a "perennial candidate" for President of the United States. He is currently listed as a director and contributing editor of the Executive Intelligence Review News Service, part of the LaRouche Movement .

Although LaRouche has no formal qualifications, he has written extensively on economic, scientific, political, historical, and cultural topics as part of his political views. There are sharply contrasting views of LaRouche himself. He is well-known and highly regarded in Russia, China , and many developing countries. His followers regard him as a brilliant individual who has been unfairly persecuted for political reasons. According to the Executive Intelligence Review, the late former U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential aspirant Eugene McCarthy called LaRouche "a man who has brought Plato and Schiller back into politics -- and was sent to jail for it."

His critics in the US regard him as a conspiracy theorist, crackpot, attention-seeker and political extremist, while Chip Berlet, Dennis King, and others have described him as a fascist, a cult leader, a homophobe, and an anti-Semite. He has also been labelled an "unrepentant Marxist-Leninist" by Lt.Gen. Daniel O. Graham, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, along with other high-ranking U.S. intelligence officers. . LaRouche denies all of these characterizations.

LaRouche has run for the Democratic nomination for President in every election year since 1976, including in 1992 while he was in prison, a record of eight attempts. Generally, electoral support for the LaRouche Movement has been inconsequential, despite the fact that LaRouche has received some support in Democratic presidential primaries; the zenith of electoral support for LaRouche's movement may have been the 1986 Democratic Party primary in Illinois, in which two of his followers were nominated for statewide office.

LaRouche was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 1988 for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax code violations, but continued his political activities from behind bars until his release in 1994 on parole. LaRouche's imprisonment was protested by public figures from around the world, and former US Attorney General 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."

1922–1947 Early life

File:Ac.larouche2.jpg
Lyndon LaRouche speaking

LaRouche is the son of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Sr. (June 1, 1896 - December 1983) and Jessie Lenore Weir (November 12, 1893 - August 1978) ), a descendant of Elder Brewster from the Mayflower and other prominent Yankee families on her mother's side. He was born on September 8, 1922, 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, 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." LaRouche grew up speaking French and German, as well as English.

According to a critical biographer, Dennis King, LaRouche has described his childhood as that of "an egregious child, I wouldn't say an ugly duckling but a nasty duckling" (p.4). King writes that LaRouche had learned to read by the age of five, and was called "Big Head" by the other children at school. He was also bullied, after being told by his parents, who were both Quakers, that under no circumstances could he fight with other children even in self-defense. This advice led to "years of hell" for him from bullies at school, as a result of which he spent much of his time alone, taking long walks and finding solace in the works of Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant, later describing the bullies in his autobiography The Power of Reason as "unwitting followers of David Hume" (p.5).

By 1940 the Lynn Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quaker) was discussing censuring him for spreading libelous material and gossip about other members and in 1941 the Lynn Meeting agreed to "disown" (expel) Lyndon LaRouche, removing him from the group: "We believe Lyndon H. LaRouche 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." His family all resigned in sympathy, asking to be removed from the membership of the meeting in October 1941.

His parents later formed and led their own independent congregation in Boston, the Village Street Monthly Meeting in which LaRouche was an active member, which met from 1964 to 1979. According to official 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, an independent Presidential candidate, seems to have been a key member. The meeting was active at least through 1979."

LaRouche enrolled at Northeastern University in Boston, but dropped out 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," (, p. 6), but in 1944 he joined the United States Army as a non-combatant, serving in medical units in India and Burma.

During this period, he read works by Karl Marx and became a Marxist. While travelling home from India on the troop ship 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 United States, LaRouche attempted to resume his education at Northeastern, intending to major in physics, but again dropped out, because of what he called academic "philistinism" ( p.7).

1948–1968 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.

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.

LaRouche remained in the SWP until his expulsion in 1965. He now 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 claims that he returned to the SWP because he believed that only the Left was likely to combat what he calls the "utopian" danger coming from the Right, typified by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. His ex-wife and other SWP members from that time dispute this. During these years LaRouche developed his interests in economics, cybernetics, psychoanalysis, business management and other subjects. Janice left him in 1963 (they had one son, Daniel, born in 1956) and, in the late 1960s, she became a leader of the New York City branch of the National Organization for Women.

In 1964, while still in the SWP, LaRouche became a supporter of 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. Those familiar with the Left in this period believe that LaRouche was heavily influenced by Healy's catastrophism. 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 was 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.

In 1965, LaRouche left Wohlforth's group and joined the Spartacist League, which had split with 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 New Left Committee for Independent Political Action and formed a branch in New York's West Village. He began giving classes for the New York Free School on dialectical materialism and attracted around him a group of graduate students from Columbia University, many of whom were involved with the Maoist Progressive Labor (PL) group, 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 lecture at the Free School but that he used his familiarity with Marxism merely as a "passport" in order to win students away from the New Left counterculture, which, he claims, was financed for nefarious purposes by the Ford Foundation.

LaRouche's movement was heavily involved in the 1968 student strike and occupation of Columbia and attempted to win control of the university's SDS and PL branches by putting forward a political program linking student struggles with those of blacks in Harlem. His growing following allowed him to create a third tendency within the SDS competing with the two dominant tendencies, 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". He criticized SDS, and the New Left in general, for being too oriented toward the counterculture and not enough toward labor. He held meetings in the Columbia area. Wohlforth attended one 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.

1969–1973 NCLC, and "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.

After its expulsion from the SDS in 1969 the SDS Labor Committee became the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). 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 was highly regimented. 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.

Around this time there were reports in The New York Times and other newspapers of LaRouche members being kidnapped and forced to admit to being brainwashed. The LaRouche group announced at a national conference it had discovered a brainwashing or assassination plot by the CIA and KGB involving top member 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.

King continues:

"…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.
King: pp. 27-28 .

Following this, the NCLC adopted violent and disruptive tactics under LaRouche's direction. According to articles in the Village Voice and other publications, 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." These attacks were called "Operation Mop-up."

The NCLC claimed that they acted in self-defense, even though all other accounts say that it was the NCLC that initiated the violence. LaRouche writes that "the FBI was orchestrating its assets in the leadership of the Communist Party U.S.A., to bring about my personal 'elimination',", citing a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

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. 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."

According to Dennis King, some ex-NCLC members who left the group at this time say that LaRouche was studying the career of Adolf Hitler and consciously adopting the tactics of the early Nazi Party. However, LaRouche consistently denounces the economic and other policies of Mussolini and Hitler in his writings and speeches. He makes clear that the model he advocates is that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The NCLC engaged in activity such as associating with the far-right Liberty Lobby.

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 famed philosopher Sidney Hook attended the debate and stated, "LaRouche won the debate" but "will lose much more as a result of that." 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.

Also in 1971, LaRouche founded the U.S. Labor Party 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 names Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt 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.

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, to be replaced by texts by Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich Schiller and Plato. A key factor in the shift 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.

In 1974, 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. These contacts culminated in LaRouche's visit to 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. Rose also alleged that LaRouche at this time was in contact with Soviet diplomats.

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.

LaRouche asserts that much of the hostile characterizations of him and his ideas that came during this period was the result of a coordinated attack on the LaRouche movement, in conjunction with an FBI program named COINTELPRO.

Beginning in 1979, the LaRouche movement has also conducted some of its activities within the framework of the Democratic Party, despite the disapproval of the Democratic National Committee.

Beginning in the late 1970s, the Heritage Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, and The New York Times began publishing material highly critical of the LaRouche organization, which LaRouche claims was part of a "defamatory campaign laid the political groundwork for a later, new wave of corrupt Justice Department operations launched at, once again, the instigation of Henry Kissinger." In 1981, journalists Russ Bellant, Chip Berlet, and Dennis King released a set of documents to the press which they claimed revealed a pattern of potentially illegal activity by LaRouche and his followers. They called for government investigations.

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Dennis King and Chip Berlet

Chip Berlet wrote his first of several articles about LaRouche in 1979 for the Chicago Sun Times. LaRouche sued Berlet and King for defamation, along with NBC News and the Anti-Defamation League, but LaRouche lost the case, and the same jury awarded damages to NBC.

A New York Supreme Court ruled in a defamation suit brought by LaRouche that it is "fair comment" to describe LaRouche as an anti-Semite.

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.

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 sought to share his knowledge with the new administration, hoping that these weapons could be used against nuclear missiles.

LaRouche and his representatives met with Reagan administration Energy Secretary Donald Hodel, Interior Secretary James G. Watt, Science Adviser Dr. George Keyworth, and State Department official Richard Morris in early 1981. Later that year Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche met with CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman. 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 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."
General Paul-Albert Scherer (ret.), Press Conference at the National Press Club, Washington, DC., May 6, 1992;

A military specialist who advocated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), retired Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, has complained about the LaRouche 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. 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." There is no independent verification outside of LaRouche group media, however, of the claim that LaRouche originated or played a major role in the development of "Star Wars" missile defense.

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. He also opposed the zero-growth policies of the Club of Rome and formed a countergroup named "Club of Life" on the issue. LaRouche has also had contact with some foreign leaders. On May 23, 1982, 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).

In 1982, U.S. News and World Report sued for damages, alleging that LaRouche reporters were impersonating its reporters in phone calls. Lyndon LaRouche and his aide, Jeffrey Steinberg, gave depositions that revealed that their policy was for reporters only to pretend to be from non-existing 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.

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."

Other events in the 1980s

In 1984, LaRouche participated in the founding of the Schiller Institute with his current wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

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.

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 furious 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. Within weeks of the assassination, NBC television in the US broadcast a story alleging that LaRouche was somehow responsible. Later, the suspect was released. From time to time over the years, suspicions regarding a potential LaRouche connection to the murder have surfaced.

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."

Also 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.

During the 1980s, the print and electronic media rarely mentioned LaRouche's name without the prefix, "political extremist." The LaRouche campaign in 1988, conducted while LaRouche was on trial, attempted to poke fun at this practice by broadcasting a national TV spot, which featured a montage of clips of different TV announcers, all saying "political extremist Lyndon LaRouche."

During its libel lawsuit, NBC raised the issue of LaRouche's "conversion" from Marxism to pro-American conservatism, suggesting that it was, in fact, faked. The Heritage Foundation released a report, which stated that despite 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." Other former high-ranking intelligence officials have joined Graham in this belief.

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, who 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. LaRouche was released on parole in 1994.

Meanwhile, in 1992 the father of an adult (members of the Du Pont family) involved with the LaRouche movement paid several people to have his son abducted and "deprogrammed". Lewis du Pont Smith objected and his father sought to have him declared incompetent. The incident resulted in serious legal repercussions but no criminal convictions for those involved.

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.

On December 1, 1998, while sharing the podium with Helga Zepp-LaRouche before a meeting of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics in Mexico City, former President López Portillo said "it is now necessary for the world to listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche."

When LaRouche ran for president again in 1996 the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Don Fowler, refused to allow LaRouche to be considered as a candidate or receive delegates. (LaRouche had received enough votes from a Louisiana parish to earn 2 delegates.) LaRouche sued under the Voting Rights Act and lost. He appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and lost there as well, in 1999, on the grounds that freedom of association permits political parties to reject members.

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.

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. The Democratic Party refused to grant any delegates to LaRouche on the grounds that he did not support the party's platform. Also in 2000, the Democratic nominee in Wyoming for the Senate, Mel Logan, was a LaRouche follower; the Republican incumbent, Craig Thomas, won in a 76%-23% landslide.

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.

LaRouche and his organizations opposed the US invasion of Iraq. LaRouche was cited by an op-ed in the Syria Times as "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." LaRouche critic 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."

2004

File:Larouche-congress.jpg
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.

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 media 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 dumped from the Republican ticket.

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, 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. LYM members aggressively disrupted Democratic Party candidates' events during the 2004 campaign, occasionally leading to arrests.

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 claim 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".

2005

In November of 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.

2006

LaRouche attended the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which was addressed by humorist Stephen Colbert. LaRouche praised Colbert's presentation. Other attendees expressed concern that LaRouche was seen having an extended discussion with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

Note on biography

Separating fact from fiction in LaRouche's biography is made difficult by the barrages of conflicting accounts generated by the LaRouche movement and its critics. LaRouche writes in his autobiography that he developed his ideas in the 1950s and has advocated them consistently ever since. His followers claim he is a world-renowned economist and philosopher. LaRouche claims to have pioneered such ideas as the International Development Bank, the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars," and the so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge. He also claims that he was used by the Reagan administration as a "back-channel" for negotiations with the Soviet Union. There is no independent verification of these claims.

The only substantial biography of LaRouche is Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, by Dennis King (Doubleday, 1989). King, an investigative journalist, charges LaRouche with developing an intellectualized version of fascism mixed with political cultism and anti-Semitism (see Political views of Lyndon LaRouche.)

Works

Lyndon LaRouche has written hundreds of articles, pamphlets, and books published mostly by his own press. These include his autobiography The Power of the Reason (1980), There Are No Limits to Growth (1983), and a second autobiography, The Power of Reason 1988. His 1984 textbook, So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics, circulates internationally in several languages, as does his 1991 The Science of Christian Economy. His longest book, published as a hardback textbook in the mid-1970's, is "Dialectical Economics: An Introduction to Marxist Political Economy".

LaRouche in popular culture

  • LaRouche is often referenced in popular culture. He is typically portrayed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. In "Treehouse of Horror VII" episode of The Simpsons, Homer declares LaRouche to be right about an unstated conspiracy involving aliens, bio-duplication, and nudity. 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 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.
  • "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-1980s had a series of skits called "Lyndon LaRouche Theatre", dramatizing some of the more outrageous claims made by LaRouche. For example, one skit shows Queen Elizabeth II as a drug dealer.
  • "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 1980, an issue of the 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 followers live in caves outside Chicago in a post-nuclear Holocaust USA.
  • LaRouche was a frequent target for satire in the 1980s Bloom County comic strip. One example was "The Great LaRouche Toad-Frog Massacree" , which appeared as an introduction to a 1988 collection of Bloom County comics.
  • LaRouche is mentioned in the Dave Barry book Dave Barry's Money Secrets:
"In 2004, for example, $800,000 of earmarked U.S.taxpayer dollars went to Lyndon LaRouche, a convicted felon and complete space loon who has been running for president since 1980, and who has claimed, among other things, that Walter Mondale was a Soviet agent and Queen Elizabeth II is a drug dealer."

References

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Bibliography

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

External links

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