Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:11, 17 January 2005

False information about Berlet corrected

Hi,

My first article about LaRouche was for the Chicago Sun Times (1979), not High Times (1981). --Cberlet 22:46, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Let's not have another revert struggle: NPOV

Contrary to the claims of Weed Harper, I did not make the edits that he deleted. However, the wording about Dennis King that he has restored is highly biased and reflects the pro-LaRouche perspective in a way that violates Wicki norms through a personal attack on King. Dennis King is a well-known investigative journalist with a highly-regarded book from a commercial publisher on how to conduct investigations. LaRouche is a convicted criminal with a history of making idiosyncratic conspiracist statements that often reflect bigotry. I am placing a NPOV flag on this page and calling for another discussion about the manners and editing tactics of the LaRouche supporters. I further propose that the wording on King be restored to a non-biased text--Cberlet 14:38, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I reverted to a version by CBerlet, not from it. I realize you didn't write to passage I reverted to; you were just the last person to edit the article before that passage was changed.

Regarding your claims about LaRouche and King, you are simply spouting your opinions. If King is a "well-known investigative journalist with a highly-regarded book," it is certainly not reflected by a substantial number of references on Google. Having read his book, I would have to say that King has "a history of making idiosyncratic conspiracist statements" about LaRouche. Weed Harper 15:02, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think the tag is misleading. I am proposing to go back to the version that is not biased against Dennis King. Counting Google search totals is not a proper way to conduct any type of serious research. The King book is in its third edition and listed as a resource in The Reporter's Handbook published by the trade group Investigative Reporters and Editors.--Cberlet

Chip Berlet

Chip Berlet is now editing this article and complaining about bias, which is ironic, considering that in his day job, he is one of the most prolific slanderers of Lyndon LaRouche (see Chip Berlet: Journalist and conspiracy researcher Mark Evans wrote, "Chip Berlet and his sidekick Dennis King, author of Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, have made careers out of their postgraduate preoccupation of being 'LaRouche watchers.' To them, Lyndon LaRouche, recently released from prison, is the Great Beast. Berlet and King's own political trajectory, in shades of The Big Chill, a path parallel in its revisionism and no less bizarre than that of the despised object of their fixated animosity, LaRouche himself.".)

The number of public personalities who consider LaRouche to have been a political prisoner is pretty impressive. How curious it is, therefore, that Berlet, who proclaims himself to be a researcher and tracker of "government intelligence abuse," should turn out to be one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the government frameup. Moreover, Berlet, who does a lot of finger pointing at other leftists whom he considers to be guilty of fraternizing with rightists (such as Ralph Nader, Alexander Cockburn, and Ramsey Clark), jumped lustily into bed with the John Birch Society and Richard Mellon Scaife in the course of pursuing his anti-LaRouche campaign. Some people might regard this as a particularly odoriferous kind of hypocrisy. --HK 21:33, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

HK: this sort of comment is precisely what the talk pages are not for. If you think CBerlet's additions are not NPOV, say why, for each edit. Merely calling him hypocritical--whether or not it is true--without discussing the merits of his edits, is totally inappropriate and doesn't help us construct an NPOV article DanKeshet 00:58, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Move Criminal Case Info?

The material on several pages relating to LaRouche is often redundant. I propose moving the section on this page on the LaRouche criminal cases to the US v. LaRouche page. I also propose moving the discussion of the John Train meetings to that page, at the same time moving the same discussion from the Chip Berlet pages. There is no point in having this same material in several places. It takes up space and makes a serious debate over the merits of the text cumbersome. --Cberlet 14:05, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Train meeting info is not merely of interest to the LaRouche legal case. It underscores something that is essential to an understanding of Lyndon LaRouche's role in politics, that being that he has been the target of one of the most massive propaganda campaigns in post-WWII history. The fact that you, Chip, played a role in that propaganda campaign, is essential to an understanding of your own role in politics, and your desire to expunge it from your own Misplaced Pages article is understandable, while also self-serving and unacceptable. --HK 16:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Herschel, the problem is that your role here is also self-serving, though not quite so directly, because you're a member of the LaRouche organization.

Chip, the reason for repeating material is that the causal reader can't be expected to read every article in the LaRouche series, so any material that is relevant to an understanding of the person or group belongs in the article, even though it may be dealt with more fully in another article. But if you feel there's too much material on the trial, a lot of it could be moved to U.S. v. LaRouche, and similarly if you feel there's too much about the trial in your article (especially in yours, because you were not the subject of it), you could similarly move most of it to the U.S. v. LaRouche article. Slim 20:13, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Recent anonymous edits

Given the unusually controversial nature of this article, I think that anonymous editors who intend major revisions should either get themselves a user name, or use the one that they already have. Regarding the most recent edits by one 205.188.117.11, it is unacceptable to insert that "Dennis King, however, cites statements from 'The Case of Walter Lippmann" and other LaRouche writings on the political state that King interprets as amounting to right-wing totalitarianism.". LaRouche has been mischaracterized so many times by King and Berlet, that only direct quotes should be used to back up claims by these putative sources.--HK 16:04, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mark Evans

Weed, you keep inserting the same Mark Evans quote into this and several other Misplaced Pages articles. Could you please find out who he is, whether he's a journalist, and who he writes for? The website you're quoting doesn't seem to be a legitimate publication. Perhaps they picked up an article by Evans that was published elsewhere, but there's no citation. Many thanks, Slim 01:07, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Propose Remove Duplicate material on Criminal Conviction

Other than a short paragraph mentioning the criminal conviction, the details belong on the United States v. LaRouche page. What is here in this section is not just duplicate material, it is largely pro-LaRouche propaganda solely from LaRouche publications. This is just another ruse to post pro-LaRouche propaganda. I will wait for other comments, but given that even HK agrees this material is duplicate, I propose it be deleted here.--Cberlet 22:39, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I feel the material should stay here. We say that the conviction was a defining moment, so it makes sense to say more about it. We need published references, however, that the named supporters did, indeed, offer support; and those who are involved with the LaRouche movement should either be removed, or their connection should be made clear. The names are Arturo Frondizi, former President of Argentina; figures from the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement such as Amelia Boynton Robinson, James Bevel, and Rosa Parks; former Minnesota Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Eugene McCarthy; Mervyn Dymally, who chaired the Congressional Black Caucus; and artists such as classical vocalist William Warfield, violinist Norbert Brainin, former 1st Violin of the Amadeus Quartet, and classical violinist Norbert Brainin. I would also like to see a published reference for Brainin's quote. With references, I feel the list can stay in this article (although if the consensus is to move it, I have no problem with that). Without references, it should be in neither article. Slim 05:56, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

Cites do not support new sentence on criminal convictions

Here is the current sentence inserted by Weed who deleted my text:

"Beginning in the late 1970s, calls for an investigation of LaRouche were issued by the Heritage Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League, followed by articles in the New York Times ]."

The cited article makes no such claim, it merely refers to the reports as slanders.

Here are the underlying cites to the sentence in the LaRouche article:

"20. The June 1978 Heritage Foundation “Institution Analysis” Report authored by Francis Watson entitled “U.S. Labor Party,” utilizing a bizarre set of formulations gathered from such “sources” as the hard-line Maoist October League newspaper, and the Socialist Workers Party newspaper, The Militant. Branding LaRouche a violent extremist, it was distributed to hundreds of U.S. corporate heads and institutional leaders. In March 1978, the ADL began a systematic harassment and defamation campaign, working through the Jewish Community Relations Council to demand that LaRouche’s views be banned from public locations, and publishing the lie in various press outlets that LaRouche was the most dangerous and violent right-wing extremist around. See, e.g., the Berkeley Barb, August 1978, “Who Are the Terrorists,” where ADL Western Coordinator David Lehrer spread this defamation against LaRouche. Finally, in 1979, the ADL put these defamations out in its own name in an ADL Fact-Finding report.

22. On October 7 and 8, 1979, the New York Times published the Blum and Montgomery slander piece under the titles, “U.S. Labor Party: Cult Surrounded by Controversy,” and “One Man Leads U.S. Labor Party on Its Erratic Path.” Then, an editorial titled “The Cult of LaRouche,” is published on October 10, 1979.

Unless someone can cite a call for an investigation into illegal fundraising in these underlying documents, I propose that my original text, or some edited variation of it, be restored. --Cberlet 19:08, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Weed, your citation doesn't back up your claim. Chip, as far as I'm concerned you can add any relevant material so long as it's carefully referenced, and doesn't make any claims beyond the citations. In other words, you can't interpret what the citations say. You can only describe what they say, and no connections should be drawn between incidents unless those connections are clear from the citations.

Also, we need citations for all the names above of people who expressed their support for LaRouche while he was in jail, otherwise I'm removing them from the article. One other thing: we should probably concentrate on Political views of Lyndon LaRouche because the page is protected, and it's not good to leave it protected if we're not discussing it.

On the bright side, we're all going to be excellent encylopedists after all this practise! SlimVirgin 20:25, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

The citations appeared in a full page ad which was run in the New Federalist, Roll call (circulated in the U.S. Congress) and the Washington Post. I have the hard copy of the New Federalist. --HK 16:14, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We need a citation e.g. Washington Post, January 19, 2005, and page number if you know it; and we also need to know which of them are members of, or otherwise associated with, the LaRouche organization, so we can make that clear. Many thanks, SlimVirgin 18:43, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

HK, thanks for adding the citation. I looked at it and couldn't find the list of newspapers that it ran in, so I've removed the reference to the others and identified that the New Federalist is a LaRouche publication. If you find solid references for other publicaitons then we can add them by name. Cheers, -Willmcw 20:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Supporters claim"

I count at least nine instances in this article where it it says that "supporters claim..." or "supporters allege..." and in none of these cases are the supporters identified or cited. It would help the article if we could reduce these anonymous claims and provide names and citations for claims and allegations. (Obviously, unidentified "critics claim..." references should be kept to a minimum too, but I can only find one similar case). -Willmcw 20:31, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This paragraph may be inaccurate:

LaRouche is characterized by his critics as a conspiracy theorist. He is frequently described as an extremist or a cult leader, and is accused of being a fascist and anti-Semite. He denies these charges, and his followers regard him as a major political figure.

Ignoring the middle sentence, we have the assertion that LaRouche denies that he is a theorist about conspiracies. I find it implausible that he would deny theorizing about conspiracy theories, or that we should give such an assertion any credence if he does. Every single direct thing that I have read of his, either quoted or written, touches on conspiracy theory. Perhaps someone can show me a quotation of LaRouche denying being a conspiracy theorist. In the meantime, I'll edit to remove that from being disputed. (Another problem is that it implies that being a fascist or anti-semite prevents one from being a major political figure- basically it's a non-sequitor.) -Willmcw 00:49, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I will try to put in some time replacing "supporters claim" with actual quotes. If I remember right, in the last round of "LaRouche wars" where the main anti-LaRouche editor was AndyL, he objected to quotes because he felt it gave LaRouche too much of a forum, and preferred generalized characterizations, so Herschel and I did it that way as a compromise.

Now as to conspiracy theory, I found this quote from LaRouche:

"Second, there are populist forms of "conspiracy theories," such as those circulated by ideologues of the John Birch Society, which are identical to, or about as bad, or perhaps sometimes worse hokum, than those which the U.S. Department of Justice dispenses. We shall turn to that matter below.