Views of Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche movement

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

This article is about the political views of Lyndon LaRouche. For an overview of his organization, see LaRouche Movement.

The political views of Lyndon LaRouche are the source of much controversy. LaRouche's critics and supporters often have difficulty interpreting or agreeing on the meaning of statements he has made, and must analyse the implications of those statements. This is complicated by the fact that LaRouche's views have changed considerably over time, particularly during the 1970s when he abandoned much of his Marxist philosophy. In addition, two of LaRouche's most outspoken critics claim to have discovered coded messages in his writings. LaRouche has advocated numerous conspiracy theories, such as conspiracy theories about the September 11th attacks on the United States.[5]

Overview

These are views that the LaRouche network presents as the most essential features of LaRouche's political and philosophical outlook.

LaRouche regards government as an expression of the highest aspirations of the citizenry. He believes that the material and cultural progress of humanity is the proper concern of government, and that the state does not serve a merely negative function, e.g., to ward off hostile foreign powers or restrain criminals. LaRouche regards "freedom" as the right to participate in what he sees as the progress of humanity, which requires certain minimum standards of material well-being and universal public education to equip the citizen to play that role. In LaRouche's view, the political system which enables this to occur is the republic.

The LaRouche network has taken a stand on a number of controversial issues:

• They have called for a moratorium on Third World debt.
• They have opposed the so-called counterculture, and the legalization of recreational drugs, arguing that these create a "bread and circuses" culture of self-centered hedonism, and a highly manipulable population. LaRouche calls for a revival of classical culture, particularly in the domain of public education.
• They have supported nuclear energy and other complex technologies often opposed by the environmentalist movement, arguing that human survival depends on a progression of technologies (see LaRouche on Economics.)
• They defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment scandal, claiming that those who called for Clinton's resignation or impeachment following the Monica Lewinsky scandal were hiding their true motives.
• They opposed the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• They opposed, from 1979 onwards, the deregulation of trucking, airlines, telecommunications, public utilities, and financial services in the U.S., during a period when deregulation was embraced by the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
• They opposed the United Nations and other international organizations, particularly the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, in cases where LaRouche says they interfere with the concept of the Westphalian state and the Platonic ideal of a "perfectly sovereign nation-state republic". This holds especially true for their conduct toward the nations of the Third World, and LaRouche further argues that this conduct represents neo-colonialism.

Political science

LaRouche's views on politics come out of his ideas about epistemology. In 1978, he wrote The Secrets Known Only to the Inner Elites, in which he claimed the history of European civilization is a battle between two conflicting images of man, one proposed by Plato and the other proposed by Aristotle (this analysis is similar to the one published a century earlier by the German poet/philosopher Heinrich Heine[6]). LaRouche favors the Platonists and opposes the Aristoteleans. As LaRouche describes it, Plato and his followers saw the universe as an ongoing process of creation, in which man plays a central role through his powers of cognition. Aristotle and his followers, on the other hand, saw the universe as static and fixed, with humans being just another species of animal.

According to LaRouche, the political expression of Platonism is the republican current, while the rival Aristotelean camp is oligarchical. The republicans seek a form of society which cherishes the creative mental powers of the individual, and seeks to cultivate those powers as the key to economic and cultural progress. The oligarchs seek to suppress the mental powers of the individual, because they prefer a fixed, feudal form of society and consider change to be disruptive and dangerous.

In LaRouche's opinion, the conflict between these two camps is the essence of politics, and all of the contemporary notions about "left vs. right" and "liberal vs. conservative" are a red herring.

LaRouche emphasizes the importance of the Renaissance as a point in the history of Europe when there was a major resurgence of Platonic thinking. European culture gradually embraced the idea of progress, a radical shift from feudalism, which was characterized by the Aristotelean view of the universe as fixed and unchanging.

LaRouche believes that the American Revolution and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution mark a watershed in history, as the most successful attempt to put the republican theory of politics into practice. He also places great importance on the Monroe Doctrine, believing that it is the mission of the United States to oppose colonialism and imperialism.

Economics

Although he has no academic qualifications, LaRouche has written extensively on economic subjects. LaRouche views economics as the "mother of the sciences," consequently, LaRouche often combines discussion of economics with a discussion of science, philosophy and culture.

Although LaRouche espoused Marxism in the 1960s, he abandoned that in favor of what he calls the "American System" in the 1970s. The term "American System" was originally associated with Henry Clay. LaRouche also says that this school of thought is based on the economic policies of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's advisor Henry Carey, as well as those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In practice, this means massive state investment in infrastructure projects, such as the locks and dams now decaying all over America, and such necessary protectionist measures as protective tariffs.

LaRouche believes that capitalism is not, as Marxists argue, the principal enemy of progress. LaRouche has developed the theory described above, in which he says that an oligarchical faction within the financial community is in fact that principal enemy of progress. This elite conspiracy, he says, predates and transcends both capitalism and socialism.

LaRouche has said that a fundamental question of economics is the problem of diminishing resources. He argues that this can be overcome through the creative power of the human mind, which makes it possible to harness elements of nature that were once considered useless, such as oil, and then find new resources before the old ones have been depleted. Thus, in LaRouche's theory, the principal subject of economics is the ability of the cognitive powers of the individual human mind to make new "discoveries of universal principles." These discoveries, LaRouche says, lead to revolutions in technology, which re-define man's relationship to nature in a non-linear way (LaRouche's most recent book on economics, entitled The Economics of the Nošsphere, praises the ideas of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky.) Such revolutions, he says, are contingent on the viability of the culture, on its capacity to absorb and transmit new ideas: LaRouche asserts that the most historically successful variety of culture is what he terms the classical culture of Ancient Greece during the time of Plato, or the culture of Europe in the centuries following the Renaissance. A small note to this, the centuries following the Renaissance had their moments, but LaRouche focuses on specific people, showing specific and truthful principles.

LaRouche supports extensive government intervention, both in terms of regulating sectors of the economy that are essential to the well-being of the nation (infrastructure), and in terms of providing credits for investment in infrastructure projects and science projects such as NASA that are too large and long-term for any private firm to pursue. LaRouche points to policies such as Abraham Lincoln's transcontinental railroad and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority as examples of successful economic policy. LaRouche also supports the selective use of government's power both to tax and to issue credits (see national bank) as a means of encouraging productive investment, while discouraging speculation. He calls for greater federal investment in science and technology, particularly the space program and nuclear energy, with an emphasis on nuclear fusion.

He believes that if governments do not play a strong role in directing national economies, the gap will be filled by several kinds of monopolies and cartels. It is because of this that LaRouche opposes Free Trade and globalism and supports protectionism.

LaRouche maintains that supranational financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund are committed to a policy of looting the living standards of the world's populations through austerity and speculation, while contracting the actual productive base of these economies -- a policy that he claims is a revival of the economic approach of the German central banker Hjalmar Schacht, who held office both before and during the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler. To remedy this, LaRouche proposes a new international conference, modeled on the Bretton Woods conference, for the purpose of reorganizing a bankrupt monetary system, and eliminating most of the presently unpayable debt. For example, he advocates the retroactive cancellation of all financial derivatives contracts. He proposes that new credits be created for very large infrastructure projects all over the world; LaRouche has published specific proposals for such projects in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North and South America, and Australia. LaRouche considers it to be the unfinished mission of the United States of America to end any form of colonialism, which he associates in particular with the austerity policies of the International Monetary Fund in the post-1972 period.

LaRouche-Riemann Method

The LaRouche-Riemann Method was built on the application of Bernhard Riemann concepts to the theories of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

LaRouche posits axiomatically non-linear notions of individual human cognition to the science of physical economy, established in the late 17th century by Gottfried Leibniz. LaRouche claims to have located the determining, non-linear factor in increase of society's potential relative population-density in the relation to the development of advanced productive designs. In his subsequent search for a measurable standard for this treatment of the role of human cognition, LaRouche adopted the Leibniz-Gauss-Riemann standpoint, as represented by Riemann's 1852 habilitation dissertation to form the LaRouche-Riemann Method.

With the formulation of this method, LaRouche claims success as a long-range forecaster. LaRouche says that he predicted that if the policies of the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies persisted, the second half of the 1960s would experience a series of international financial-monetary crises, leading toward a breakdown in the existing Bretton Woods system. The LaRouche-Riemann Method predictions for the future include a systemic crisis, and a general breakdown crisis" of the global system if monetarist forms of austerity measures are continued.

Triple Curve

The "Triple Curve" or "typical collapse function", is an economic model developed by LaRouche which purports to illustrate the growth of financial aggregates at the expense of the physical economy and how this leads to an inevitably collapsing bubble economy.

According to this model, speculative gains in financial markets are sustained by diverting monetary flows out of the real economy, into financial markets. This is sustained, increasingly, by looting the economic basis through large-scale attrition in basic economic infrastructure, and by driving down the net after-inflation prices paid for wages and production of operatives. Thus, the charting economic data should show a "Triple Curve":

• A hyperbolic curve, upward, of financial aggregates;
• A slower, but also hyperbolic curve, upward, of monetary aggregate needed to sustain the financial bubble;
• An accelerating, downward, curve in net per-capita real output. This reflects the accelerated looting of the physical economy's base to sustain the financial bubble.

LaRouche developed this concept, which was an outgrowth of his theories of physical principle, dating from a project he conducted during the late 1940s and early 1950s. These theories arose out of his opposition to Bertrand Russell devotee Norbert Wiener's efforts, as in the latter's 1948 "Cybernetics," to apply information theory to communication of ideas. As part of that same project, he also opposed what he calls Russell devotee John von Neumann's efforts to degrade real economic processes to solutions for systems of simultaneous linear inequalities.

Marxist roots

Lyndon LaRouche began his political career as a Marxist but he and his National Caucus of Labor Committees abandoned this outlook in the 1970s. LaRouche no longer opposes capitalism as an economic system, and his analysis of political events is no longer phrased in terms of class. To LaRouche, the main enemy is now the conspiracy of financiers he calls the Synarchist International.

During and after the period of his break with orthodox Trotskyism, LaRouche's theory was influenced by what he called his "Theory of Hegemony" which was derived from Lenin's view of the role of intellectuals in being a vanguard helping workers develop their consciousness and realise their leading role in society. He was also influnced by Gramsci's concept of a hegemon as an intellectual and cultural elite which directs social thought. LaRouche's theory saw himself and his followers as being able to become such a hegemonic force. He rejected, however, Gramsci's notion of "organic intellectuals" being developed by the working class itself. Rather, the working class would be led by elite intellectuals such as himself.

LaRouche was also influenced by his readings of Rosa Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital and Karl Marx's Capital developing his own "theory of reindustralization," arguing that the west would attempt to industrialize the Third World, particularly India, and attempt to solve the economic crisis both by developing new markets in the Third World and using its cheap and surplus labor to increase profits and minimise costs (see neocolonialism.) This attempt would be unsuccessful, however, and would lead to catastrophic economic collapse. To oppose this, LaRouche argued for a "reindustrialization" of the United States with himself at the vanguard of the effort allowing him to personally resolve the crisis of capitalism. Though his arguments have since been stripped of their quasi-Marxist language and citations, his core theories have remained essentially the same since the late 1960s.

Tim Wohlforth writes:

This scheme, which shaped LaRouche writings and agitation in the late '60s and early '70s, was presented in an increasingly frenetic manner, bolstered by predictions of economic doom. LaRouche was a crisis-monger of the highest order. LaRouche and his followers became increasingly convinced that the fate of the world rested with their group and their great leader. The problem lay with the stupidity of the nation's leaders and the boorishness of the masses. If only LaRouche were in power, all the world's troubles - perhaps even the rats problem in New York City - would be resolved swiftly.

Fascism

According to LaRouche, the first fascist state was France under Napoleon Bonaparte. European oligarchical forces, he claims, intervened in the French Revolution to prevent it from becoming a republican, American-style revolution, and steered it instead toward becoming a bloodbath followed by a dictatorship. LaRouche calls this the beginning of modern synarchism, a revival of feudal-Venetian methods.

Most contemporary definitions of fascism emphasize components such as racism, chauvinism, militarism, and authoritarianism. Organizationally, fascist movements are characterized by the use or advocacy of violence, lack of internal democracy and regimentation in the service of charismatic personal leadership. Racism, and specifically anti-Semitism, are often characteristics of fascists and fascist parties, but are generally not held to be essential elements of fascism.

LaRouche, however, points to a specific economic policy as the foundation of fascism: it is a situation where the financial system has become insolvent, and rather than put it through a bankruptcy reorganization, the ruling powers attempt to prop it up by cannibalizing the workforce through radical austerity and forced-labor policies. LaRouche identifies these policies particularly with German finance minister Hjalmar Schacht, whom LaRouche considers to be instrumental in bringing Adolf Hitler to power. With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1972, LaRouche warned that key financial institutions of the world were committed to a revival of Schacht's policies, first in the form of intensified exploitation of the Third World, and increasingly with respect to the economic policies of the more wealthy nations toward their own populations. He also accuses the Neo-conservatives of being modern-day fascists:

Today, the systemic principle of modern fascism, as traced from Tomas de Torquemada and Napoleon Bonaparte's Martinist political tailor, Count Joseph de Maistre, is also costumed in such cloaks as those worn by the neo-conservatives of the Mont Pelerin Society and American Enterprise Institute.[7]

LaRouche himself frequently describes his enemies as fascists or proto-fascists. On the other hand, LaRouche himself is frequently described by left-wing writers and orators as a fascist. Journalist Dennis King used this thesis in the title of his book Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism.

Fascism is a difficult word to define, and has been debased since World War II by its frequent use of a term of general abuse.

LaRouche does not openly advocate American nationalism or militarism. Operation Mop-Up, which consisted of violent physical attacks on left-wing meetings, is the genesis of most accusations of LaRouche being a fascist; however, the LaRouche network has not engaged in physical violence against its political opponents since the 1970s. In fact, the LaRouche movement has opposed most recent U.S. military actions, including both invasions of Iraq, the bombing of Yugoslavia, and attacks on Grenada and Panama.

The perceived abusive and demagogic nature of his political speech also leads to him being accused of being a fascist.

Since the 1980s, a new set of theories about fascism has gained attention in academia. These include the work of Roger Griffin (fascism as a right-wing populist movement calling for heroic rebirth - palingenesis) and Emilio Gentile (the sacralization of politics). Using these and related theories, critics such as Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons have described LaRouche as a neofascist.

According to Berlet and Lyons:

"Though often dismissed as a bizarre political cult, the LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology....Beginning in the 1970s, the LaRouchites combined populist antielitism with attacks on leftists, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and organized labor. They advocated a dictatorship in which a 'humanist' elite would rule on behalf of industrial capitalists. They developed an idiosyncratic, coded variation on the Illuminati Freemason and Jewish banker conspiracy theories. Their views, though exotic, were internally consistent and rooted in right-wing populist traditions."

Berlet & Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America, p. 273.

Several critics of LaRouche argue that his ideas about economics are not original and are similar to the policies of Germany under Bismarck; and the corporatism of Italy under Benito Mussolini, Spain under Francisco Franco, and Portugal under Antonio Salazar.

According to research conducted by journalist Dennis King, LaRouche developed an intense interest in fascism in the 1970s, and began to adopt some of its slogans and practices, while maintaining an outward stance of anti-fascism. King generally claims that LaRouche's public statements do not reflect his actual views.

As for moving from the left to the right, historically a number of fascists started out as socialists, and critics argue this is the case with LaRouche.

Conspiracy Theories

LaRouche steered the NCLC away from the Marxist left while retaining some of the slogans and attitudes of the left. LaRouche's critics, particularly Dennis King and Chip Berlet, characterize his new orientation as conspiracy theory worldview, or conspiracism. They say the Marxist concept of the ruling class was converted by LaRouche into a conspiracy theory, in which world capitalism was controlled by a cabal including the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, Henry Kissinger, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

LaRouche writes, "to conspire is human," and while dismissing what he calls the "populist forms of 'conspiracy theories,'" such as those of the John Birch Society, he also crticizes the critics of "conspiracy theorizing," as typified by Daniel Pipes:

The pervasive fraud in Pipes' dogma, is that he evades the fact, that the primary issue is whether a certain type of, or particular report of a conspiracy is truthful, or not. On this account, he perpetrates the widely practiced fraud of petitio principii: asserting that the mere evidence that a conspiracy is implied in an argument of a case, is presumptive proof that that argument is therefore axiomatically false, without further consideration.,

In the 1960s and 1970s, LaRouche was particularly focused on the supposed danger posed by globalists such as Nelson Rockefeller believing that they were attempting to rescue a debt-strapped international financial system by imposing austerity and forced-labor programs on impoverished populations in order to facillitate debt collection. LaRouche called this "Fascism with a Democratic Face," and charged that it was similar to the tactics of German Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht.

LaRouche has also argued that Adolf Hitler was brought to power by the British; Menachem Begin's "policies are indistinguishable... from Nazi policies"; The Beatles were "a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications; and that rogue elements within the American military took part in, or planned, the September 11, 2001 attacks as part of a coup d'état.

In "An Open Letter to President Brezhnev" (June 2, 1981) LaRouche identified those pushing the world toward war as "the forces behind the World Wildlife Fund, the Club of Rome, and the heritage of H. G. Wells and the evil Bertrand Russell."

LaRouche claims there is also a conspiracy by the "Establishment" and the press it allegedly controls to deny him coverage and prevent his views becoming known.

The "British" conspiracy

According to Chip Berlet and Dennis King, LaRouche has always been stridently anti-British and has included Queen Elizabeth II, the British Royal Family, and others, in his list of conspirators who are said to control the world's political economy and the international drug trade.[8]. In addition, "The Sexual Congress for Cultural Fascism" (2004) names the British Fabian Society as a potential source of international conspiratorial authority, citing the membership of prominent British democratic socialists and social democrats, especially within the Labour Party and the British government.

In 1999, an article in the LaRouche-controlled Executive Intelligence Review accused senior advisers to the Royal family and MI6 of planning to assassinate him, after a British women's magazine called Take a Break published a critical article about him. [9]

On August 2, 1999, Debra Hanania-Freeman, national spokeswoman for LaRouche, issued the following statement about the alleged threat: "After consulting with security experts familiar with the modus operandi of British intelligence networks, we are treating the piece as a cover for an MI6 order, probably with direct backing from someone in the royal household, to assassinate Lyndon LaRouche.... The inflammatory article ... reflects a growing hysteria around Buckingham Palace, over the growing global influence of LaRouche's ideas and his continuing exposé of the British oligarchy...

"We are also passing the information on to the White House so they can assess whether the article also constitutes a threat to the security of President Clinton." [10]

LaRouche is known for alleging conspiracies by the British. This is based primarily on three books authored by members of his organization:

• Dope, Inc. by David Goldman, Konstandinos Kalimtgis and Jeffrey Steinberg, 1978 (ISBN: 0918388082): this book discusses the history of narcotics trafficking, beginning with the Opium War, and alleges that British interests continued to dominate the field up to the modern era, for example through money laundering in British offshore banking colonies. The heart of the conspiracy, according to LaRouche, was the financial elite of the City of London.

• The Civil War and the American System by Allen Salibury, 1979 (ISBN : 0918388023): alleges that British interests encouraged and financed the secession movement and supported the Confederacy against the Union in the American Civil War, because they preferred North America to be a primitive agrarian economy that they could dominate through policies of free trade.

• The New Dark Ages Conspiracy by Carol White, 1980 (ISBN: 093348805X): alleges that a group of British intellectuals led by Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells attempted to control scientific progress in order to keep the world backward and more easily managed by Imperialism. In this conspiracy theory, Wells wished Science to be controlled by some kind of priesthood and kept from the common man, while Russell wished to stifle it altogether by restricting it to a closed system of formal logic, that would prohibit the introduction of new ideas. This conspiracy also involved the promotion of the counterculture.

LaRouche publications have also frequently referred to a speech by Henry Kissinger made at Chatham House in 1982, as evidence for a theory that Kissinger was a British agent. In this speech, Kissinger said that he preferred the post-war policy of Churchill over that of FDR, and stated that "In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department."[11]

John Train Salon

The "John Train Salon" is the name given by supporters of LaRouche to three meetings they allege took place between 1983 and 1985 at the home of New York investment banker John Train. Articles published by the LaRouche organization claim that these meetings, which were attended by a number of journalists and others, were held in order to plan the publication of articles critical of LaRouche. [12] According to a sworn affidavit submitted in court by a researcher for LaRouche publications[13], one participant, Michael Hudson, told a LaRouche investigator that the meetings were held to "coordinate national magazine stuff about you guys, and work with Federal law enforcement to deny you funding and tax exemption, is the delicate way to put it." [14][15] According to the LaRouche organization, those who attended the meetings included:

• John Train, a New York investment banker, who hosted the meetings
• Chip Berlet, political analyst
• Dennis King, journalist
• John Rees, journalist
• Roy Godson, academic, then a consultant to the National Security Council and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB)
• Mira Lansky Boland, head of fact-finding at the Washington, D.C. offices of the Anti-Defamation League and former employee of the CIA
• Richard Mellon Scaife, a Pittsburgh businessman known for contributing to conservative causes
• Journalists from NBC (Patricia Lynch), Readers Digest, Business Week, The New Republic and The Wall Street Journal

In 2006, a new series of articles appeared in LaRouche-affiliated publications.[16][17][ [18]] They claimed that the "Train Salon" had entered a new phase, focussed on controlling the political environment on college campuses, suppressing opposition to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the policies of the neoconservatives, and halting student recruitment by the LaRouche Youth Movement. It is claimed that this conspiracy includes "the Bradley Foundation; John Train's own Northcote Parkinson Fund; Stalinist turned right-winger David Horowitz; Campus Watch guru Daniel Pipes; the Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, and Mont Pelerin Society founder Edwin Feulner. They also claim that despite regular "media-hyped food fights against one another," David Horowitz and Chip Berlet are essentially on the same side in this matter.

Children of Satan

Beginning in 2003, LaRouche's presidential campaign committee distributed a series of pamphlets entitled "Children of Satan," which were later consolidated into a book by the same name. The pamphlets charged that there was a conspiracy dominated by what are called Straussians (followers of Leo Strauss) within the Bush administration, and that the dominant personality in this conspiracy was Dick Cheney. LaRouche claimed that these conspirators deliberately misled the American public and the US Congress in order to initiate the US invasion of Iraq. They claimed that the Straussians created the Office of Special Plans in order to fabricate intelligence and bypass tradional intelligence channels.

An important part of this theory was the LaRouchian analysis of the ideas of Leo Strauss, which borrowed heavily from the writings of Shadia Drury. Neoconservative commentators, led by Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, have condemned LaRouche's views on this subject, and worry that it may have influenced other commentators who subsequently published a similar analysis, such as Seymour Hersch and James Atlas of the New York Times.

Culture and identity

File:LYM.jpg

LaRouche Youth chorus performing Bach

LaRouche wrote a series of articles while imprisoned for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax evasion in the 1990s, in which he discussed the relationship of artistic creativity to scientific creativity, and how an original discovery may be communicated to others; these articles were entitled "On the Subject of Metaphor."

LaRouche frequently recounts an incident which took place during his wartime service:

Later, as a young man, shortly after the close of World War II, I first heard a recorded performance by conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, while I was stationed temporarily at an army camp outside Calcutta, India. My recognition of the qualitative superiority of Furtwängler's conducting, an effect which I later identified with his use of the phrase "playing between the notes," had a profound impact, in its contribution to shaping my view of Classical artistic composition in general. [19]

Central to LaRouche's theory of economics (see above) is the idea that there are certain higher mental capacities, associated with hypothesis formation, that are the essential topic of study in economics, and LaRouche came to believe that classical art, and in particular classical music, provided the most useful domain in which to investigate these capacities. Consequently, classical music has played a central role in the history of LaRouche and his network, and brought LaRouche into a collaborative relationship with artists such as Norbert Brainin and William Warfield.

LaRouche's views about several other areas of culture have been controversial; especially comments about Jews and the Holocaust, women and feminism, and AIDS and homosexuals.

Jews and the Holocaust

Although LaRouche condemns anti-Semitism in his published writings[20], he has been accused of anti-Semitism and also Holocaust denial.

From the early 1970s he regularly criticized Zionism. In NCLC publications during the 1970s, some Jewish individuals were accused of running the slave trade, controlling organized crime, and the drug trade. LaRouche also claimed that the "Zionist lobby" significantly influenced the U.S. government. Any American professing "Zionist loyalties" was, he said, a "national security risk." However, during this period LaRouche publications such as Campaigner magazine often promoted Philo of Alexandria and Maimonides as positive examples of the "Platonic humanist current in Judaism," and most of the leadership of the NCLC was Jewish. In 1979 the LaRouche publication Campaigner published an issue entitled "Zionism is not Judaism."

Dennis King has described LaRouche as expressing anti-Semitic ideas in both open and coded form. As an example of the open form, King cites LaRouche's statement (under the pen name L. Marcus) in The Case of Ludwig Feuerbach (1973), where he said that "Jewish culture ... is merely the residue left to the Jewish home after everything saleable has been marketed to the Goyim." As an example of the coded form, King alleges that when LaRouche and his followers use the term "British" in certain contexts which King characterizes as "conspiracist" or "racialist", they actually mean "Jewish." One example is an unsigned editorial in the official LaRouche newspaper New Solidarity in 1978 which states: "America must be cleansed for its righteous war by the immediate elimination of the Nazi Jewish Lobby and other British agents from the councils of government, industry, and labor." King also writes that a photograph from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory of a fusion experiment, published in various LaRouche publications, was "reminiscent of the swastika."[21]

LaRouche has also been accused of Holocaust denial. In 1978, LaRouche wrote (in "New Pamphlet to Document Cult Origins of Zionism," New Solidarity, December 8, 1978) that only 1.5 million Jews died during World War II:

It is argued that the culmination of the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi holocaust proves that Zionism is so essential to 'Jewish survival' that any anti-Zionist is therefore not only an anti-Semite, but that any sort of criminal action is excusable against anti-Zionists in memory of the mythical 'six million Jewish victims' of the Nazi "holocaust."

This is worse than sophistry. It is a lie. True, about a million and a half Jews did die as a result of the Nazi policy of labor-intensive "appropriate technology" for the employment of "inferior races," a small fraction of the tens of million of others - especially Slavs - who were murdered in the same way Jewish refugee Felix Rohaytin proposes today. Even on a relative scale, what the Nazis did to Jewish victims was mild compared with the virtual extermination of gypsies and the butchery of Communists.

LaRouche places the word "holocaust" in inverted commas.

LaRouche's critics claim he is a "disguised anti-Semite," in that he takes the classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and substitutes the word "Zionist" for the word "Jew", and ascribes the classical anti-Semitic caricature of the "scheming Jew" to particular Jewish individuals and groups of Jews, rather than to the Jews as a whole. According to LaRouche:

The Czarist Okhrana's Protocols of Zion include a hard kernel of truth which no mere Swiss court decision could legislate out of existence. The fallacy of the Protocols of Zion is that it attributes the alleged conspiracy to Jews generally, to Judaism. A corrected version of The Protocols would stipulate that the evil oaths cited were actually the practices of variously a Paris branch of B'nai B'rith and the evidence the Okhrana turned up in tracing the penetration of the Romanian branch of B'nai B'rith (Zion) into such Russian centres of relevance as Odessa...

LaRouche's stated principal target in his article is "Zionism." Zionism is a Jewish political movement supporting the creation and, since 1948, defense of Israel as a Jewish state. LaRouche believes that Zionism is an underground conspiracy existing since the 16th century. "Modern Zionism was not created by Jews, but was a project developed chiefly by Oxford University," LaRouche says.

In 1978, the same year LaRouche's article cited The Protocols, the LaRouche group published Dope, Inc.: Britain’s Opium War against the U.S., which cited the Protocols and defended its authenticity, liking the "Elders of Zion" to the Rothschild banking family, the British Royal family, and the Italian Mafia, and the Israeli Mossad, General Pike, and the B'nai B'rith.(Dope, Inc.) Later editions left out cites to The Protocols. This is the genesis of the claim that LaRouche has said the Queen of England runs drugs. When asked by an NBC reporter in 1984 about the Queen of England and drug running, LaRouche replied, "Of course she's pushing drugs...that is in a sense of responsibility: the head of a gang that is pushing drugs; she knows it's happening and she isn't stopping it." (NBC News, First Camera, March 4, 1984, transcript from NBC News, excerpt used with permission).

Today, LaRouche says, Zionism is controlled by the financiers of London: "Zionism is the state of collective psychosis through which London manipulates most of the international Jewry", and "Zionist cultism is among the most important of the levers through which British criminality and miscalculation is plunging the world towards [war]."

LaRouche denies equating "Zionism" with Judaism. "You cannot be a Zionist and also a Jew," he writes.

LaRouche has never explicitly repudiated the views expressed in the 1978 article. In 1980, New York state Judge Michael Dontzin ruled that: "Upon consideration of the voluminous evidence presented to the court, it is clear that ADL's characterization of plaintiffs as anti-Semitic constitutes fair comment. Plaintiffs have continuously expressed highly critical views about prominent Jewish figures, families and organizations, such as ADL and B'nai Brith and have connected them with plaintiffs' critical views on Zionism, Zionists, Mid-East foreign policy and international monetary policies." [22].

In recent years, however, LaRouche may have modified his views on these subjects. In 1999, he published an article called "A Personal Statement from Lyndon LaRouche on Music, Judaism, and Hitler," referring several times to "the Jew." [23] In the course of a discussion on Moses Mendelssohn, he says: "Germany can never be truly freed from the legacy of Hitler's crimes, until the contributions of German Jews, in particular, are celebrated as an integral part of the honorable history of Germany." The article contains several other statements in similar vein, including praise for Walther Rathenau, a Jewish business figure.

In the same article, he acknowledges that the Holocaust is neither "mythological" nor "Zionist": "We cannot allow 2,000 years of Jewish survival in Europe to be buried under the faceless stone epitaph which speaks only of a bare 13-odd years of Hitler's Holocaust." He explicitly states that "Yes, Hitler killed millions of Jews," a seeming contradiction of his 1978 statement that only 1.5 million died. This article has been perceived as a welcome modification of his controversial views of the Holocaust. In recent years, LaRouche publications have begun to feature articles praising the Yiddish Renaissance, such as I.L. Peretz, Father of the Yiddish Renaissance. LaRouche and his organization have also maintained a public dialogue with Israeli and Jewish leaders, such as Maxim Ghilan, who advocates peaceful reconciliation with the Palestinians. LaRouche supporters cite these and other recent statements in asserting that LaRouche is not an anti-Semite.

The charge of anti-Semitism in the LaRouche network resurfaced in the media in 2004 in accounts of the death of a young Jewish student, Jeremiah Duggan, who had been attending a Schiller Institute event in Germany; and in criticism of how the LaRouche group framed the issue of the U.S.-led war in Iraq in ways that recalled anti-Semitic stereotypes.

LaRouche delivered a speech which was highly critical of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. This speech, and related articles from the LaRouche movement, attacked Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites [24].

Chip Berlet argues that LaRouche indirectly expresses anti-Semitism throught the use of "coded language" and by attacking neoconservatives.. According to Berlet:

Antisemitic conspiracism is aggressively peddled to progressives by several rightwing groups including the international network run by Lyndon LaRouche, a frequently unsuccessful US presidential candidate. While LaRouche rhetoric can seem bonkers, his followers are successful in recruiting students on college campuses and in networking with some Black Nationalist groups. Sometimes Arab publications circulate articles from LaRouche group analysts. When LaRouche publications condemn the neoconservative policy advisers to President Bush as the ‘Children of Satan’, it echoes historic antisemitic rhetoric about evil Jewish conspiracies tracing back to medieval Europe. [25]

Daniel Levitas writes:

For almost three decades, Lyndon LaRouche has engaged in political activities that have been chameleonlike in their shifts from left to right; however, he has been consistent in creating and elaborating conspiracy theories that contain a strong dose of antisemitism. Daniel Levitas, "Antisemitism and the Far Right: "Hate" Groups, White Supremacy, and the Neo-Nazi Movement," in ed. Jerome A. Chanes, Antisemitism in America Today: Outspoken Experts Explode the Myths, (New York: Birch Lane Press/Carol Publishing, 1995), pp. 191-192.

Women and feminism

In 1972 LaRouche's second wife, Carol Larrabee (also known as Carol Schnitzer), left him for Christopher White, a younger man who was a member of the LaRouche network in Britain. Following the personal crisis of his marital breakdown, his writings became, in the view of some critics, anti-feminist to the point of misogyny, and obsessed with sex.

According to Chip Berlet and Joel Bellman:

[LaRouche's] previous conspiratorial inclinations had now grown into a bizarre tapestry weaving together classical conspiracy theories of the 19th century and post-Marxian economics. He began articulating a `psycho-sexual' theory of political organizing. Sexism and homophobia became central themes of the organization's theories....The problem with making the revolution, LaRouche apparently had concluded, was that women are castrating bitches. One former member left in disgust when she was told women's feelings of degradation in modern society could be traced to the physical placement of female sexual organs near the anus which caused women to confuse sex with excretion.

In an article, "The Sexual Impotency of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party", LaRouche wrote:

The classical case is the sexually athletic Macho who regards himself as a successful performer in bed, the Macho who has much to say and think respecting his capacities for various modes of penetration and frequency and cubic centimeters of ejaculations. The ugly secret of the matter is that he is almost totally sexually impotent. [26]

In 1974 and 1975, on the heels of Operation Mop-Up, the LaRouche organization issued an article called "Beyond Psychoanalysis," [27] which instituted a regime of "ego-stripping" sessions and what has been called social coercion, in which individuals would be subjected to incessant group criticism.

According to disaffected ex-members, LaRouche's theories of sexual dynamics and female domination of men resulted in a breakdown of relations between the sexes and the break up of dozens of relationships as women were attacked for being "sadistic bitches" and "witches," and for "mother-dominating" men.

A September 1973 editorial in the NCLC's Campaigner charged that "[c]oncretely, all across the U.S.A., there are workers who are prepared to fight. They are held back, most immediately, by pressure from their wives."

In an August 16, 1973 internal memo, "The Politics of Male Impotence," LaRouche told his followers:

The principle source of impotence, both male and female, is the mother. ... [T]o the extent that my physical powers do not prevent me, I am now confident and capable of ending your political — and sexual — impotence; the two are interconnected aspects of the same problem. ... I am going to make you organizers — by taking your bedrooms away from you until you make the step to being effective organizers. What I shall do is to expose to you the cruel fact of your sexual impotence, male and female. ... I shall destroy your sense of safety in the place to which you ordinarily imagine you can flee. I shall not pull you back from fleeing, but rather destroy the place to which you would attempt to flee. [28]

AIDS and Gays

LaRouche activists formed the "Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee" (PANIC) in 1986 and in 1988 the "Prevent AIDS Now In California" (also PANIC) committee, each of which placed initiatives on the state ballot. The measures would have required that AIDS be returned to the California state list of communicable diseases, which are subject to Public Health laws.

"The initiative declares that people who have AIDS, or who are "carriers" of the virus generally believed to cause AIDS, would have an "infectious, contagious and communicable" condition. The initiative would require that people in these categories be reported to public health authorities," wrote the Wall Street Journal. "Opponents, including state political and medical leaders and gay-rights activists, say there is little simple or reasonable about the initiative. AIDS victims and those exposed to the virus — many of whom, researchers believe, probably will never contract the disease — could be barred from jobs involving the handling of food and could be banned from working in, or even attending, schools. The initiative also could bar people from traveling without permission of health officials, opponents say. Possible use of the state's quarantine powers has led Bruce Decker, chief fund-raiser of the opposition effort and head of a state advisory committee on AIDS, to raise the specter of "concentration camps" for AIDS patients. [29] Both measures were overwhelmingly defeated at the polls. [30][31]

The argument in support of Proposition 69 which appeared in the Voter's Guide published by the State of California said that "These measures are not new; they are the same health measures applied, {by law,} every day, to every other contagious disease." [32]

Opponents of these initiatives characterized them as anti-gay. Since the gay community was initially one of the major sectors of the population to be affected by AIDS in the United States, the relationship of the disease to so-called gay lifestyles was hotly contested; among the measures which could have been implemented, had the initiative passed, were sexual contact tracing, which was depicted as an invasion of privacy by opponents of the initiatives, and possibly the closing of bathhouses or other environments where anonymous sexual contacts might take place. Under public health law, persons with communicable diseases may be subject to quarantine at the discretion of the health department; this possibility was raised to suggest that LaRouche wished to use the measure to persecute gays. Jean V. Hardisty, then director of Political Research Associates, charged that the "initiatives sought, in effect, to require quarantine for people with AIDS."[33]

In 1986, the LaRouche publication, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) published a transcript of a speech by LaRouche, where he said the following about gay people, AIDS and civil rights:

"We have another purpose in fighting AIDS, for our fighting AIDS — for our inducing people to do what they should have done anyway without our speaking a word. Government agencies should have done this. There should be no issue! But government agencies didn't! That's the issue. Why didn't they? Because of a cultural paradigm shift. They did not want, on the one hand, to estrange the votes of a bunch of faggots and cocaine sniffers, the organized gay lobby, as it's called in the United States. (I don't know why they're "gay," they're the most miserable creatures I ever saw! The socalled gay lobby, 8% of the population, the adult electorate; the drug users. There are 20 million cocaine sniffers in the United States, at least. Of course it does affect their mind; it affects the way they vote!"

"What was the problem? The problem was the cultural paradigm shift. If someone comes up and says, "Yeah, but you can't interfere with the civil rights of an AIDS victim" — what the devil is this? You can't interfere with an AIDS victim killing hundreds of people, by spreading the disease to hundreds of people, which will kill them, during the period before he himself dies? So therefore, should we allow people with guns to go out and shoot people as they choose? Isn't that a matter of the civil rights of gun carriers? Or, if you've got an ax — if you can't aim too well, and just have an ax or a broad sword — shouldn't we allow people with broad swords and axes to go out and kill people indiscrimately as they choose, as a matter of their civil rights?

"Where did this nonsense come from? Oh, we don't want to offend the gays! Gays are sensitive to their civil rights; this will lead to discrimination against gays!

"They're already beating up gays with baseball bats around the country! Children are going to playgrounds, they go in with baseball bats, and they find one of these gays there, pederasts, trying to recruit children, and they take their baseball bats and they beat them up pretty bad. They'll kill one sooner or later. In Chicago, they're beating up gays that are hanging around certain schools, pederasts; children go out with baseball bats and beat them up-which is perfectly moral; they have the civil right to do that! It's a matter of children's civil rights!"

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "The End of the Age of Aquarius?" EIR (Executive Intelligence Review), January 10, 1986, p. 40.

In the 1970s and 1980s, LaRouche and his supporters frequently wrote articles containing animosity toward gay people. In 1986, an editorial in the LaRouche publication Illinois Tribunal wrote that "... as a category, gays and lesbians do not represent a valid voting constituency, and neither do prostitutes, drug pushers, child molesters, warlocks, witches, pornographers, or others who are morally equivalent." ("End Harold Washington's Consistently Disgusting Career," Illinois Tribunal, July 7, 1986, editorial page).

LaRouche has written that history might not judge harshly those who joined lynch-mobs and beat gay people to death with baseball bats to stop the spread of AIDS:

"The lynchers…are a special variety of political revolutionary, and express, spontaneously, the conspiratorial and other ethical characteristics of political revolutionaries….

"The impact of this pattern of developments on Britain's youth gangs of violence-prone football fans is predictable. One can read their general line of thinking in advance. Since the idea of touching the person of the carrier is abhorrent, stones and the nadiest approximation of a collection of baseball bats, come to mind. Certain individuals, of known haunts, first suggest themselves as easy targets....

"The point is fast approaching, that increasing portions of these populations will focus upon the fact, that a dead AIDS carrier ceases to be a carrier. If governments were to proceed with repeated mass-screenings of the population, and isolation of carriers, the likelihood of a teenager lynch-mob phenomenon would be small. If not, then other ways of reducing the number of carriers will become increasingly popular.

"In that case, the lynch-mobs might be seen by later generations’ historians, as the only political force which acted to save the human species from extinction." Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "Teenage Gangs’ Lynchings of Gays is Foreseen Soon," New Solidarity, February 9, 1987, p. 8.

LaRouche seemed later to modify his views. In a town meeting which was webcast on December 11, 1999, LaRouche said:

"Look, take the case of AIDS, which I've been attacked for by all kinds of crazy people. I proposed that we mobilize $40 billion from the Federal government — that's back in the middle of the 1980s — to combat a danger, an epidemic disease of a new type, which implicitly threatens all mankind, which has — it's also in the United States, and it's in Africa: In Africa, because of environmental conditions and other tropical-disease conditions, the rate of spread of AIDS is now that most of the population of black Africa is threatened by virtual extinction — not total extinction, but near-extinction.

"We have a little better conditions in the United States. Some people get drugs which they can't afford in Africa, because Al Gore won't let them, among other reasons. But that we're all victims of it. Who cares about whether the guy's a homosexual? It's irrelevant! It's a human being who is suffering from a disease, who needs help and protection--in the interests of the General Welfare. Who wants to make a category of "homosexuals"? I don't believe in it; it's not a legitimate category. It's just people, people who are suffering and dying.[34]"

Classical Culture or Eurocentrism?

LaRouche often disparages the counterculture. In 1978, he wrote that "The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division (Tavistock) specifications, and promoted in Britain by agencies which are controlled by British intelligence." ("Why Your Child Became A Drug Addict," Campaigner Special Report, 1978).[35]

What LaRouche supporters see as praising classic culture, LaRouche critics see as a bias against non-White, non-European, non-patriarchal, non-heterosexual cultures and identities. For example, LaRouche has written: "Can we imagine anything much more viciously sadistic than the Black Ghetto mother?" (Internal memo, "The Politics of Male Impotence," - Lyndon H. LaRouche, writing as Lyn Marcus, New York: NCLC 1973). [36]

He has also disparaged pre-revolutionary Chinese culture, and chastised the Chinese communists for failing to replace it with Western classical culture:

"The paranoid state is characteristic of the 'village commune' culture. Objectively, the model 'oriental village commune' is characterized by the fixing of the mode of production with a rigidity paralleling the behavioral stagnation of lower animal life....All the cognitive and related cultural achievements of capitalist development in music, philosophy, and so forth, are symptomatically denounced as 'in favor of the philosophical and cultural ideological relics of pre-1949 China's long barbarian past. Out of this hideous muck comes first a reactionary, actually counterrevolutionary rejection of the working class..." (Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "What Happened to Integration?" The Campaigner, (Journal of the National Caucus of Labor Committees), Vol. 8, No. 8, August 1975, pp. 5-40; quote from section: "The Maoism Parallel," pages 26-27)."

On the other hand, LaRouche routinely praises the tradition of Confucius. [37]

Notes

• ^1 Berlet & Bellman 1989.
• ^2 Berlet & Lyons 2000.
• ^3 Berlet 2005.
• ^4 Fraser nd.
• ^5 Gilbert 2003.
• ^6 King 1989.
• ^4 LaRouche 2004.
• ^7 Mintz 1985.
• ^8 Wohlforth nd.

References

• Berlet, Chip and Joel Bellman. (1989) Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag. Political Research Associates.[38]
• Berlet, Chip and Matthew N. Lyons. (2000). Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press. Section on LaRouche.
• Berlet, Chip. (2005). "Protocols to the Left, Protocols to the Right: Conspiracism in American Political Discourse at the Turn of the Second Millennium," (dedicated to Jeremiah Duggan), paper presented at the conference: Reconsidering "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion": 100 Years After the Forgery, The Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University, October 30-31, 2005.
• Beyes-Corleis, Aglaja (1994) Verirrt: Mein Leben in einer radikalen Politorganisation, Herder/Spektrum, ISBN 3-451-04278-9
• Fraser, Clara. LaRouche: Sex Maniac & Demagogue. [39].
• Gilbert, Helen (2003) Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism restyled for the new Millennium, Red Letter Press, ISBN 0-932323-21-9. [40].
• King, Dennis (1989) Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-23880-0
• Mintz, John. (1985). Ideological Odyssey: From Old Left to Far Right. Washington Post.[41].
• U.S. Labor Party Investigating Team (Kostandinos Kalimtgis, David Goldman, Jeffrey Steinberg), Dope, Inc.: Britain’s Opium War against the U.S., New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1978. On the Protocols, see pp. 31-33; on the Rothschilds, see the chart on pp. 154-155, consult index for more than 20 page entries on the Rothschilds.
• Wohlforth, Tim. (n.d.) A '60's Socialist Takes a Hard Right.[42]

External links

Supportive

• The Substance of Morality
• LaRouche Political Action Committee
• World Larouche Youth Movement
• Schiller Institute

Critical

• The Cult Controversy includes a 1995 series on LaRouche by John Mintz and links to other Washington Post articles on LaRouche
• LaRouche's Virginia conviction, The Washington Post, December 17, 1988
• No Joke (the effect LaRouche has on young recruits) – Washington Post, October 2004
• Pre-1990 Larouche quotes, from primary-source documents
• The 'Our Town' series on LaRouche and other articles on his politics by Dennis King and others; reviews of King's book on LaRouche from the mainstream and alternative press; interviews with King by Neenyah Ostrom and other journalists
• Articles about LaRouche from Political Research Associates by Chip Berlet and others.
• Partners in Bigotry: The LaRouche Cult and the Nation of Islam by Nizkor Project
• Lyndon Larouche/Executive Intelligence Review Series of articles from the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults
• True History of Lyn Marcus (Lyndon LaRouche) and the Labor Committees 1975 article published by the International Workers Party whose members joined LaRouche's NCLC for a period in the early 1970s.
• The cult and the candidate by Terry Kirby, July 2004 (The Independent of London)

Train Meetings

• The John Train Salon, Statement issued by the LaRouche in 2004 campaign committee
• The John Train Salon and the Evidence of Criminal Fraud Filed with Fourth Circuit Court, LaRouche publication, undated, no byline; retrieved January 3, 2004
• The John Train Salon Delivered Perjured Testimony in the 'Get LaRouche' Trials, LaRouche publication, undated, no byline; retrieved January 3, 2004
• Article on John Rees by Chip Berlet
• Disinfopedia article on LaRouche, refers to the Train meetings, published by the Center for Media & Democracy, undated; retrieved January 4, 2004
• John Train's Press Sewer: Is Goebbels on Your Campus?
• Who's Who in the Goebbels Zoo
• The Bottom Feeders of Cheney/Train Campus Thought Police