Lyndon LaRouche

Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon LaRouche at a news conference in Paris in February 2006
Born	Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (1922-09-08) September 8, 1922 Rochester, New Hampshire, United States
Occupation	Activist
Political party	U.S. Labor Party, Democratic
Spouse	Helga Zepp
Parent(s)	Jessie Lenore Weir (1893–1978) Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Sr. (1896–1983)

See also: Views of Lyndon LaRouche

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922) is an American self-styled economist, political activist, and the founder of several political organizations, known collectively as the LaRouche movement. He has been a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run in eight elections since 1976, once as a U.S. Labor Party candidate and seven times as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. He has written extensively on economic, scientific, and political topics as well as on history, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

LaRouche was sentenced to 15 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. His defense attorney, Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General, argued that the case represented an unprecedented abuse of power by the U.S. government in an effort to destroy the LaRouche organizations. LaRouche and his defenders believe the prosecution was a politically motivated conspiracy involving government officials, numerous others, and a mass-media brainwashing campaign.

LaRouche is currently listed as a director and contributing editor of the Executive Intelligence Review News Service, part of the LaRouche movement.

There are sharply contrasting opinions on LaRouche. Supporters have described him as the greatest living economist, and a political leader in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King. Critics have called him an extremist, a conspiracy theorist, a political cult leader, a fascist, and/or an antisemite. The Heritage Foundation has said that he "leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history". In 1984, LaRouche's research staff was described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security Council, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world".

Life

Early life, 1922–1947

LaRouche is the son of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Sr. (June 1, 1896 – December 1983) and Jessie Lenore Weir (November 12, 1893 – August 1978). The elder LaRouche was the son of a French Canadian immigrant from Quebec, and his wife was a descendant of Elder Brewster from the Mayflower and other prominent Yankee families. Lyndon LaRouche Jr. was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the eldest of three children. He attended the School Street elementary school until 1936, when the family moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, after his father 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."

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." 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. He was told by his parents, both of whom were Quakers (his father had converted from Roman Catholicism in order to marry his mother), 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 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 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.

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. He graduated from Lynn English High School in 1940.

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." 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.

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. 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."

LaRouche enrolled at Northeastern University, but left in 1942 after receiving poor grades. As a Quaker, he was at first a conscientious objector (CO) 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," 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. LaRouche describes his decision to renounce Conscientious Objection and serve as one of the most important in his life. 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 that he says "was revolting to most of us."

While still in the CO camp, LaRouche had begun discussing Marxism with fellow camp inmates and soon became a Marxist. While traveling 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."

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."

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. Their son, Daniel, was born in 1956. 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. 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.

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. His ex-wife and other SWP members from that time dispute this. During these years, LaRouche developed an interest in economics, cybernetics, psychoanalysis, business management, and other subjects. He and his wife separated in 1963 and were subsequently divorced.

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 partner, 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. This assertion is contradicted by the autobiographical material in a 1974 work where he depicts himself as having been a staunch Marxist revolutionary since 1945. However, 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 University, 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 Harlem residents, transit workers, and the tenant movement. LaRouche and his associates issued statements supporting the New York City strike by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) that fall and criticized advocates of community control of the public schools. According to LaRouche's autobiography, his main opponents on this issue were the New Left groupings, which 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, "there were ugly anti-Semitic noises from various groups..."

LaRouche created his own 'tendency' or faction within Columbia SDS once his following had grown large enough. It competed with both the 'action faction,' 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 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 for not emphasizing work among trade unionists and tenants. 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.

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.

1970s

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." 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.

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.

LaRouche founded the U.S. Labor Party in the early 1970s. Described in the press as a "self-professed Communist organization",LaRouche called it 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.

"Operation Mop-Up"

In 1973, according to press accounts, the NCLC adopted violent and disruptive tactics under LaRouche's direction. According to the press reports, 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 nunchaku. LaRouche called these attacks "Operation Mop-up."

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." 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.

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.

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.

LaRouche wrote in 2000 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 1973 document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 1992.

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. 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. 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 more than 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.

Post-1974

By the mid-1970s, LaRouche and his movement were no longer promoting a socialist agenda. Marx and Lenin were off the reading list for LaRouche's followers and were 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 Charles 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 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 Abba Eban, former Israeli representative to the UN. During 1975, LaRouche's newspaper New Solidarity began running articles favorable to Iraq and extensively quoting Saddam Hussein, at that time Iraq's vice-president.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche in 2006

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, LaRouche married Helga Zepp, a leading activist in the German branch of his organization.

1980s

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

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 half-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. In one of thsoe telecasts LaRouche called the Democratic Party's Presidential candidate, former Vice President Walter Mondale, "an agent of influence" of Soviet intelligence services. The Associated Press reported that over 1,000 people complained to television stations and newspapers about the spot, which CBS was legally obligated to air.

Strategic Defense Initiative

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, LaRouche says that he sought to share with the new administration his interest in the use of lasers as defensive weapons against nuclear missiles.

A LaRouche supporter and former head of West German Military Counterintelligence (MAD), General Paul-Albert Scherer, said in 1992 that LaRouche, whom he described as a "scientific-technological strategic expert", had been the "originator" of the SDI, which was adopted as an official program by President Reagan in March 1983." Scherer also said that LaRouche hads been involved in "backchannel" communications between the Reagan administration and the Russian embassy, during the year prior to Reagan's announcement of the policy.

A different view was provided by retired Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, who had formerly headed the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and was the founder of High Frontier Inc. Graham, who presented himself as the actual originator of the SDI policy, complained about the attempts of LaRouche to take credit for the idea, which Graham characterized as "a technological end-run on the Soviets". Graham said that LaRouche's followers had "mounted a furious attack on me personally. Even today I get mail asking if I'm in league with LaRouche."

LaRouche has since attributed the collapse of the Soviet Union to his promotion of SDI.

Other events in the 1980s

LaRouche's promotion of space colonization included dealings with German scientists and engineers who worked under the Nazi government of Germany during the Second World War, some of whom came to the United States after the war under Operation Paperclip and ended up with NASA. Among these scientists were Arthur Rudolph, and several other Peenemunde rocket experts, including Krafft Arnold Ehricke, Adolf Busemann, Konrad Dannenberg, and Hermann Oberth. According to Dennis King, LaRouche collaborated with Ehricke on ideas about the colonization of the Moon and Mars. After Ehricke's death LaRouche sponsored the " Krafft Ehricke Memorial Conference" and in 1988 delivered a national TV broadcast entitled "The Woman on Mars." LaRouche also had a relationship with Karl-Adolf Zenker and Paul-Albert Scherer, West German Admiral and former head of West German Military Intelligence, respectively, who both served in the German military in World War II. When Rudolph was forced to renounce his U.S.citizenship after an investigation into his past, LaRouche supporters formed a defense fund for him.

The Wheat Building in Leesburg, Virginia, a national office of the LaRouche movement in the 1980s

In 1981, Chip Berlet, Dennis 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.

In April 1982 LaRouche and his wife traveled to India, where they met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on April 24. Shortly thereafter, on May 23, he met with Mexican President José López Portillo. (A Mexican official told the New York Times that LaRouche had arranged the meeting by representing himself as an official of the Democratic Party. At the time, one of LaRouche's organizations was the National Democratic Policy Committee, which had no connection to the Democratic Party. However, Portillo continued to maintain a relationship with LaRouche and his movement, and Portillo went on to endorse LaRouche's candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1999.) The following year LaRouche returned to India for a second meeting with Gandhi. In addition, LaRouche met with Argentine President Raúl Alfonsín.

In 1982, U.S. News and World Report sued New Solidarity International Press Service and Campaigner Publications 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.

In 1984, Helga Zepp-LaRouche created the Schiller Institute in Germany, and her husband Lyndon was one of its founding members, along with his close friends American Civil Rights Movement leader Amelia Boynton Robinson and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, an important leader of the French Resistance. It became the global umbrella organization for his ideas.

Lawsuit against NBC

NBC aired a news segment and a "First Camera" report on LaRouche in 1984. Produced by Pat Lynch, the reports included interviews with former members of the movement who gave details about their fundraising practices and alleged that LaRouche had spoken about assassinating U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The report said that an investigation by the IRS would lead to an indictment.

LaRouche filed a defamation suit in federal court (Eastern District of Virginia) against NBC, the ADL, and others. Judge James C. Cacheris presided. At issue, among other things, was a statement by ADL fact-finding director Irwin Suall on national TV calling LaRouche a "small-time Hitler." The LaRouche organization later alleged that the NBC programs were the result of a series of meetings. attended by various journalists, operatives of the ADL, a well known right-wing financier, a consultant to the National Security Council, and both left-wing and right-wing activists. The meetings were said to have been held in Manhattan and to have planned what an anonymous writer described as a "campaign of defamation against LaRouche" in conjunction with government criminal and national security probes of LaRouche and his associates. On the first day of the trial, Judge Cacheris ruled that Pat Lynch would not be required to name her sources for the "First Camera" program.

File:Ibykus Farm combined.jpg

"Ibykus Farm", LaRouche's home in the mid-1980s.

LaRouche lost his case and NBC won its countersuit, with the jury awarding it $3 million in damages in what has been called one of the more celebrated countersuits by a libel defendant. The award was reduced by Judge Cacheris to an eventual payment of $258,459. LaRouche failed to pay the damages, pleading poverty. Federal District Judge Claude M. Hilton described LaRouche's testimony about being almost penniless as "completely lacking in credibility". In 1986, in the same case, LaRouche said that he did not know who had paid the rent on the estate, or for his food, lodging, clothing, transportation, bodyguards, or lawyers since 1973. The judge fined him for failing to answer. After he signed an order to allow discovery of LaRouche's personal finances, a cashier's check was handed over to the court to end the case. 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.

1986 electoral success

In 1985, LaRouche wrote of using AIDS as a campaign issue. Sponsored by the "Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee" (PANIC), the so-called "LaRouche Initiative" qualified for the California ballot in 1986, with the signature gatherers mostly paid for by LaRouche's Campaigner Publications. Proposition 64 would have placed AIDS on that state's List of Communicable Diseases. Opponents said that the measure could have required universal testing and the quarantine of infected individuals, while proponents denied those would be requirements and said it simply allowed for public health measures to be taken. 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. AIDS was a leading plank in his political platform during his 1988 presidential campaign. Saying that "the AIDS issue is going to make me a national folk hero", he vowed to quarantine its "aberrant" victims who are "guilty of bringing this pandemic upon us."

In March 1986, Janice Hart and Mark Fairchild won the Democratic primary for state-wide offices in Illinois. Their success surprised the political establishment and brought national attention to LaRouche and his movement. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Adlai Stevenson III, temporarily left the Democratic Party rather than run on the same slate as the LaRouche movement members, and the LaRouche candidates lost in November.

Criminal indictment and imprisonment (1986–1994)

Main article: LaRouche criminal trials

Federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia

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 indicate that numerous state and federal agencies were investigating fundraising activities that may have involved tax law violations, the conversion of publication sales into donations for LaRouche political campaigns that were then matched by the Federal Election Commission, fraudulent soliciting of "loans" from vulnerable elderly people, and credit-card fraud.

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. LaRouche and six associates were charged with conspiracy to obstruct the investigation and mail fraud related to fundraising. After many delays it became a mistrial. A different grand jury charged LaRouche 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 and his defenders published advertisements in major newspapers which bore the names of hundreds of elected officials from the US and other countries, insisting that LaRouche was jailed, not for any violation of the law, but for his beliefs (see attempts at exoneration.) LaRouche and his publications charged the prosecution was a politically motivated conspiracy involving government officials, numerous others, and a mass media brainwashing campaign.

LaRouche alleged systematic government misconduct:

The record shows, that for nearly thirty years, elements of the U.S. Department of Justice have been engaged in worldwide political targeting of me and my associates. This includes early 1970s operations run in conjunction with Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's U.S. State Department. During the last ten years or so of that period, some U.S. officials, and others, have challenged the relevant agencies with some of the evidence which shows, that those prosecutions and correlated harassment of me and my associates, had been clearly fraudulent, politically motivated targeting."

One of LaRouche's attorneys, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, wrote that his case involved "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."

However, jury foreman Buster Horton told the Washington Post (17 December 1988) that it was the failure of LaRouche aides to repay loans that swayed the jury in the Virginia case, and that the jury "all agreed [LaRouche] was not on trial for his political beliefs. We did not convict him for that. He was convicted for those 13 counts he was on trial for."

LaRouche continued to campaign while in prison. He ran for Congress in 1990, seeking to represent the 10th District of Virginia. He received less than 1% of the vote. 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 convinced that their cell was bugged. In Bakker's view, "to say LaRouche was a little paranoid would be like saying that the Titanic had a little leak." LaRouche was released on parole in 1994.

1994–1999

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 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," 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. After losing in the district court the case was appealed to the First District Court of Appeals, which sustained the lower court. (See also Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns.)

In 1999, Chinese media reported that LaRouche was one of two U.S. scholars to attack the Cox Report, a congressional investigation that accused the Chinese of stealing U.S. nuclear weapons secrets. LaRouche called the report "intrinsically fraudulent" and "a reflection of the kind of scientific illiteracy" of its writers. According to China Daily, he said its purpose was to undermine U.S.-Chinese relations. An article in EIR blamed the report on Vice President Al Gore and characterized it as an effort by Gore to undermine the Clinton administration policies.

2000s

LaRouche supporters in Chicago, 2007

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 refused to grant any delegates to LaRouche. In the 2004 election 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."

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.

In January 2001, shortly before the inauguration of George W. Bush, LaRouche began holding regular webcasts 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. In his January 3, 2001 webcast, LaRouche warned that the incoming Bush administration would attempt to govern by crisis management, "...in other words, just like the Reichstag fire in Germany."

In 2002, LaRouche commenced a campaign to have Vice President Dick Cheney removed from office.

In 2001 and 2003, LaRouche toured India, speaking at various conferences and university seminars.

Chinese press coverage

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. In 2006, Economic Daily, a Chinese newspaper runs directly by the Chinese State Council published an extensive biographical article on LaRouche. In December 2008, LaRouche was interviewed by China Central Television and Chinese Biz News, with the discussion focusing on his economic forecasts. In 2009, China Youth Daily published a new article of this type in which it was reported that LaRouche had forecast the 2008 financial collapse in July 2007. Many people scoffed at his warning, the paper said, but after one year it came true, as had all of his earlier forecasts.

Russia

In August 2006, LaRouche was interviewed on Vremya, one of the most popular Russian TV news programs, along with former Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, American journalist Seymour Hersh, and others, on the topic of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. According to Executive Intelligence Review, LaRouche was interviewed on the Russian web portal KM.ru in May 2007. KM.ru reportedly referred to LaRouche as a "major American economist and political figure", going on to say that "[he] was one of the first to launch a fight against the global financial oligarchy and its chief financial institutions: the World Bank, and the IMF. His forecasting track record is unparalleled." 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 2007.

LaRouche has actively collaborated with Russian politician Sergey Glazyev, and in 1999 the LaRouche organization published an English language edition of Glazyev's book, Genocide– Russia and the New World Order. More recently, it also published The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism by economist Stanislav Menshikov. Both books include introductions written by LaRouche. In 2008, Menshikov described LaRouche as being "among those few economists who look at the root causes, and therefore see what others cannot see".

In 2007, a paper by LaRouche was presented at an April 24 conference in Moscow on the recently announced Russian plan to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait. LaRouche has long advocated this tunnel project as part of his proposal for a "Eurasian Land Bridge."

On May 15, 2007, LaRouche was a featured guest and speaker at a special ceremony held at the Russian Academy of Sciences to commemorate the 80th birthday of Stanislav Menshikov. His presentation was published in a special issue of the Russian magazine, Forum. While in Russia, LaRouche conducted numerous other meetings and interviews, including with the Anti-Globalist Resistance Group (www.anti-glob.ru,) and the Russian web portal KM.ru. He was also interviewed on the "A+ in Economics" program on the Spas TV satellite network. Spas TV is a project of the Russian Orthodox Church. On September 29 an interview with LaRouche was published in Russian by the "RP Monitor", which in its introduction described LaRouche as a "world class social philosopher, colorful public policy figure, enthusiast for scientific and technological progress, denouncer of world oligarchy, and the author of many bold economic development projects."

Electoral and lobbying activities

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 supporter, Washington D.C., 2005

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.

In 2005 LaRouche campaigned against the privatization of Social Security, asserting that this was an issue that could successfully mobilize the population against the policies of the Bush administration. LaRouche drafted legislation in 2006 that would rescue the failing U.S. auto industry by having the federal government intervene to retool it for the purpose of building machinery for infrastructure development. This initiative was unsuccessful. In August 2007, LaRouche authored the "Homeowner and Banks Protection Act of 2007", designed to freeze mortgage rates, halt foreclosures, and prevent banks from closing their doors due to insolvency. His organization and particularly his youth movement began lobbying both the congress and also state and local governments for the passage of this legislation, in what they characterize as an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the subprime mortgage crisis.

Financial crisis of 2007–2009

LaRouche was credited by press in Italy, Argentina, and Mexico as the economist who successfully forecast the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Covering a press conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on December 17, 2008, Ivo Caizzi of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera referred to LaRouche as "the guru politician who, since the nineties, has announced the crash of speculative finances and the need for a New Bretton Woods." The article asserts that Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti is "an attentive reader" of LaRouche's anti-Free Market and anti-Marxist writings. LaRouche was hosted at the Parliament by Italian Europarliamentarian Mario Borghezio of the Northern League. In a translation on a LaRouche website, Borghezio is quoted calling LaRouche "an heretical economist who had forecast the financial crisis much in advance, and who has long since developed a lucid and deep analysis of the distortions in the world economic system." Italian Senator Oskar Peterlini, in a July 2009 speech before the Senate, called LaRouche an expert in the field who had predicted the crisis.

The Argentine paper Rebanadas de Realidad published a commentary on December 17 by Chilean poet Ximena Gautier Greve, who says that LaRouche warned of the present crisis exactly ten years ago. In January 2009, Mexican Congressman Roberto Badillo Martínez (PRI - Veracruz) wrote an article in Siempre!, which he credits the "great American thinker and politician Lyndon Larouche" with having forecast the present crisis several years ago.

Health care debate

LaRouchePAC poster, Alhambra, California, 2009

LaRouche's comparisons of U.S. President Barack Obama to German dictator Adolf Hitler in 2009 have generated controversy. LaRouche has called Obama's actions "impeachable," without actually calling for impeachment, due to his support of health insurance reform that LaRouche says is comparable to Hitler's Action T4 euthanasia program. The LaRouche movement has printed pamphlets with a picture on the front showing Obama and Hitler laughing together, and have made posters of Obama wearing a Hitler-style mustache. In Seattle, police have been called twice in response to people who were offended by the posters threatening to tear them apart or to assault the LaRouche supporters holding them. In one notable event, Rep Barney Frank referred to the posters as "vile, contemptible nonsense."

Criticism

Since the 1970s, LaRouche and his organization have been criticised from across the political spectrum, including by the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Heritage Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, and the League for Industrial Democracy. In 1979, a two-part article appeared in the New York Times that was strongly critical of LaRouche. 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. Also 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. 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."

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. 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."

Allegations of anti-Semitism

A number of organizations, publications, and individuals have alleged that LaRouche is guilty of both overt and "coded" anti-Semitism, including the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Anti-Defamation League, Senator Daniel Moynihan, Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe, and writers Mike Royko, Dennis King, Chip Berlet, and Robert L. Bartley. However, LaRouche condemned anti-Semitism in 2006 when he wrote "Religious and racial hatred, such as anti-Semitism, or hatred against Islam, or, hatred of Christians, is, on record of known history, the most evil expression of criminality to be seen on the planet today." In more recent times, LaRouche has been criticised for referring to "Jewish gangsters" and "Christian Zionists" "bought by money, the so-called Zionist money" in a speech to the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, a controversial think-tank of the League of Arab States that was set up in 1999 and later shut down by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

The Anti-Defamation League quoted LaRouche as saying that Zionism is "the state of collective psychosis through which London manipulates most of the international Jewry" and calling the ADL "Britain's Zionist Gestapo". The ADL wrote, "The use . . . of anti-Jewish hate propaganda, the injection of anti-Semitic poison into the American political bloodstream, adds an extra and insidious dimension to the bizarre conspiracy theories and political hallucinations of the LaRouchites."

Dennis King and Chip Berlet assert that anti-Semitic writings by LaRouche trace back to as early as early as 1973, when, for instance, LaRouche claimed that Jewish culture is "merely the residue left to the Jewish home after everything saleable has been marketed to the Goyim." Both King and Gregory F. Rose (the latter writing in National Review) write that LaRouche made connections with neo-Nazi and fringe ultra-conservatives, including Willis Carto, in the mid-1970s. King argues that Carto was one of the influences on the turn to the right but that LaRouche's "war on Jews began in earnest" after a 1977 sojourn in Germany during which he "became fearful of leftwing terrorists. He hunkered down in his villa and did some hard thinking." King asserts that some Jewish members quit the movement due to anti-Semitic jokes, Holocaust denial, and a perceived resemblance between LaRouche's writings and Mein Kampf. To placate others, King asserts, LaRouche redefined the meaning of "Jew": "To be a real Jew, [LaRouche] suggested, one must repudiate the State of Israel, Zionism, and the mainstream leadership of the Jewish community." King compares LaRouche's writings with various Nazi and other anti-Semitic tracts going back to the 1890s and finds a common theme of connecting Jewish power with the British Empire. King points to what he says are assertions by LaRouche that all of the main power centers in Britain are controlled by Jewish families.

Allegations of fascistic tendencies

LaRouche publications strongly denounce fascism and warn that it is an ever-present danger. LaRouche says that the model he advocates is that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He has stated that descriptions of him as a neo-fascist or anti-Semite "originate with the drug lobby or the Soviet operation — which is sometimes the same thing." However, it has been repeatedly alleged that LaRouche and his movement have fascist aspects, starting as early as 1974. In 1976 Julian Bond called LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party "a group of leftwing fascists". By the mid-1980s LaRouche's following was called a "fascistic cult". Notable individuals that have described LaRouche or his movement as having fascist or neo-fascist aspects include Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jesse Jackson, Clara Fraser, Stephen J. Solarz, Bob Hattoy, Lenora B. Fulani, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Malik Shabazz, and Manning Marable. Dennis King, Chip Berlet, Russ Bellant, and Tim Wohlforth allege that LaRouche covertly supports fascistic policies. According to 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.

LaRouche has advanced, according to Dennis King and others, ideas which appear to be modeled on fascist and even Nazi racialist concepts. 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. King also argues that LaRouche's relationships with former Nazi rocket scientists and his defense of accused Nazi war criminals are an expression of pro-Nazi sympathies.

Allegations of coded references

A number of commentators, including Laird Wilcox, John George and Daniel Pipes, have discussed claims by Dennis King that there are coded references in LaRouche's writings. Wilcox and George write that "Dennis King goes to considerable lengths to paint LaRouche as a neo-Nazi, even engaging in a little conspiracy-mongering of his own. King maintains, for example, that words like "British" were really code words for 'Jew.'" Daniel Pipes writes that "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." Pipes, however, also alleges that "LaRouche places a British-Jewish alliance at the center of his conspiracism."

King also claims that LaRouche's published attacks on Henry Kissinger include a disguised form of anti-Semitism. King makes an argument (which also references certain images used in LaRouche publications) that LaRouche is a neofascist 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." 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.

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.

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." Berlet also contributed to a segment in the Encyclopedia Judaica which states that LaRouche is a "notorious antisemite", and among those who use "conspiracy allegations moved into more mainstream circles through bridging mechanisms" in a way that often masks the "original overtly anti-Jewish claims by using coded rhetoric" and thus is a "major source of such masked antisemitic theories globally."

Former LaRouche follower Linda Ray, writing in In These Times, has also alleged euphemistic LaRouchian methods of communicating. She recalls reading in New Solidarity about a subhuman oligarchical species centered in London: "Although I knew it did not make scientific sense, I presumed that it was a deep intellectual metaphor that was over my head." She says that years later, when she was shown the Star of David picture with Queen Elizabeth at the top, "I quickly replied...'It is just a graphics art symbol'--which I naively thought for years. But as soon as I said it out loud I realized that I sounded ridiculous. It was as if I was waking from a nightmare."

In popular culture

In popular culture, LaRouche is typically portrayed as a comically paranoid conspiracy theorist — Scott McLemee for Inside Higher Ed saying that "LaRouche himself has long since become the walking punchline to a very strange joke." On April 19, 1986, Saturday Night Live aired a skit satirizing LaRouche's national TV ads. The skit portrayed Queen Elizabeth II and Henry Kissinger as drug dealers. Episodes of The Simpsons and Futurama have portrayed LaRouche as a crank. In 2008, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in referring to made up history, coined the term: "LaRouche Version of History."

Books

• LaRouche, Lyndon H. Dialectical Economics An Introduction to Marxist Political Economy. Lexington, Mass: Heath, 1975. ISBN 0669853089
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. The Case of Walter Lippmann A Presidential Strategy. New York: Campaigner Publications, 1977. ISBN 0918388066
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. How to Defeat Liberalism and William F. Buckley 1980 Campaign Policy. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. Co, 1979. ISBN 0933488033
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. The Power of Reason A Kind of Autobiography. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. House, 1979. ISBN 0933488017
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. Will the Soviets Rule During the 1980's. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. Co, 1979. ISBN 0933488025
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. Basic Economics for Conservative Democrats. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. Co, 1980. ISBN 0933488041
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. What Every Conservative Should Know About Communism. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. Co, 1980. ISBN 0933488068
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. Why Revival of "SALT" Won't Stop War. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. Co, 1980. ISBN 0933488084
• LaRouche, Lyndon H., and David P. Goldman. The Ugly Truth About Milton Friedman. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1980. ISBN 0933488092
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. There Are No Limits to Growth. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1983. ISBN 0933488319
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics? A Text on Elementary Mathematical Economics. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984. ISBN 0943235138
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. Imperialism The Final Stage of Bolshevism. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984. ISBN 0933488335
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. The Power of Reason, 1988 An Autobiography. Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, 1987.ISBN 0943235006
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. In Defense of Common Sense. Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1989. ISBN 0962109533
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. The Science of Christian Economy. Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1991. ISBN 0962109568
• LaRouche, Lyndon H., and Paul Gallager. Cold Fusion: A Challenge to U.S. Science Policy. Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1992. ISBN 0962109576
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. Now, Are You Ready to Learn About Economics? Washington, D.C.: EIR News Service, 2000. ISBN 0943235189
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. The Economics of the Nöosphere Washington, D.C.: EIR News Service, 2001. ISBN 0943235200

References

• Bakker, Jim (1996). I was wrong. Nashville: T. Nelson. ISBN 9780785274254.
• Berlet, Chip. (2000). Right-wing populism in America : too close for comfort. Critical perspectives. New York: Guilford Press. ISBN 1572305681 9781572305687 1572305622 9781572305625. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Berlet, Chip (1989-03-10). "Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag". PublicEye.org. Retrieved 2008-10-06. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Davidson, Osha Gray. (1990). Broken heartland : the rise of America's rural ghetto. New York; Toronto; New York: Free Press ; Collier Macmillan Canada ; Maxwell Maxmillan [i.e. Macmillan] International. ISBN 0029070554 : 9780029070550. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Fraser, Clara (1998). Revolution, she wrote. Seattle, WA: Red Letter Press. ISBN 0932323049 9780932323040. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
• George, John (1996). American extremists : militias, supremacists, klansmen, communists & others. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573920584 9781573920582. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Gilbert, Helen (2003). Lyndon LaRouche : fascism restyled for the new millennium (1st ed. ed.). Seattle WA: Red Letter Press. ISBN 9780932323217. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Jacobs, Harold (1971). Weatherman. Berkeley: Ramparts Press. ISBN 0671207253 9780671207250. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
• Johnson, George (1983). Architects of fear : conspiracy theories and paranoia in American politics. Los Angeles; Boston: J.P. Tarcher ; Distributed by Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0874772753 : 9780874772753. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• King, Dennis (1989). Lyndon LaRouche and the new American fascism (1st ed. ed.). New York: Doubleday. ISBN 9780385238809. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Knight, Peter (2003). Conspiracy theories in American history : an encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1576078124 9781576078129 1576078132 9781576078136. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
• LaRouche, Lyndon (1979). The power of reason : a kind of autobiography (1st ed. ed.). New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Pub. House. ISBN 9780933488014. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• LaRouche, Lyndon (1987). The power of reason, 1988 : an autobiography. Washington D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review. ISBN 9780943235004.
• Mintz, John (1987-01-31). "Prosecutor Moves to Disarm LaRouche Guards; Lawyer for Security Men Tells Judge They Would Not Resist Law Enforcement Officers". The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). pp. c.03. ISSN 0190-8286. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Mintz, John (1987-09-22). "Jury Selection Begins in LaRouche Fraud Case; Lawyers Say Trial, Which Could Last 3 Months, Promises to Be One of the Strangest". The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). pp. a.14. ISSN 0190-8286. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Mintz, John (1987-10-20). "Trial of LaRouche and 7 Aides May Be Delayed; Case of One Defendant May Be Severed, Heard First in Boston Federal Court". The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). pp. a.06. ISSN 0190-8286. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Mintz, John (1987-10-21). "Judge Delays Trials of LaRouche, Six Associates; Case of Former Ku Klux Klan Leader Frankhouser Is Severed and Will Be Tried First". The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). pp. a.10. ISSN 0190-8286. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Mintz, John (1987-12-18). "Defense Calls LaRouche, Followers `Most Annoying'; Trial Begins for Leesburg Group Accused of Obstructing Probe Into Its Fund-Raising". The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). pp. a.18. ISSN 0190-8286. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Pipes, Daniel (1997). Conspiracy : how the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0684831317 9780684831312. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
• RODERICK, KEVIN (1986-10-14). "Authorities See Pattern of Threats, Plots Dark Side of LaRouche Empire Surfaces". Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext). p. 1. ISSN 0458-3035. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Tourish, Dennis (2000). On the Edge. M.E. Sharpe. p. 246. ISBN 0765606399, 9780765606396. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Weir, David (1983). Raising hell : how the Center for Investigative Reporting gets the story. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. ISBN 0201108593 : 9780201108590 0201108585 9780201108583. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Wohlforth, Tim. "A '60's Socialist Takes a Hard Right". PublicEye.org. Retrieved 2008-10-06.

External links

• LaRouche Political Action Committee
• Executive Intelligence Review
• World Larouche Youth Movement
• Schiller Institute
• The Cult Controversy includes a 1995 series on LaRouche by John Mintz and links to other Washington Post articles on LaRouche.
• Ancestry of Lyndon LaRouche
• 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
• Beyes-Corleis, Aglaja (1994). Verirrt: Mein Leben in einer radikalen Politorganisation. Herder/Spektrum. ISBN 3-451-04278-9.
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