NYT finally published something.
3 Likes
New York Magazine:
Deceptive to the end, LaRouche passes from the scene having migrated from Marxism to quasi-fascism, and from fake Democratic to fake German allegiances. It’s never been clear to what extent Lyndon LaRouche was a con man, or just a megalomaniac who drank too deeply of his own Kool-Aid. But he left a lot of damage in his wake. And in the end, the drug dealer Elizabeth II got the last laugh by outliving him.
5 Likes
Back in 1979, the new york times published this expose of the “US Labor Party”. The onebox provides a completely inaccurate summary. , I’ve taken the liberty of quoting some choice bits from this two part article.
Beginning in 1976, the party voluntarily transmitted “intelligence” reports on left‐wing movements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police departments. In 1977, the group attempted to commercialize its intelligence network. According to former members, reports on anti‐apartheid groups were prepared for South Africa, student dissidents were investigated for the Shah of Iran’s Savak, and the anti‐nuclear movement was examined for power companies.
…
According to former members and incidents described in party publications, a frequently used tactic — particularly when members are selling the group’s literature or disrupting meetings of other organizations— is to try to incite violence through insults.
“Those guys are really maniacs,” said one former member. “I’ve seen them. If you don’t buy a paper, you’re a pig or smell bad or they call you a Nazi. They get two inches from a person’s face and cut them to pieces. They can get anybody to hit them in a second. They love it, getting bloody. They talk about it all thetime.”
When members do elicit a reaction, they file assault charges and include the incident in accounts of “assassination attempts.”
…
For those inside the sunless structure of the party, enclosed by rigid psychological and social strictures, life moves from crisis to crisis as Mr. LaRouche announces new plots of assassination or looming thermonuclear war. “Every few weeks there’s a new reality, different from the one before but just as absolute,” said a former member. “It seems like the system was designed so that people have no time to think.”
Mr. LaRouche brooks no questioning of his revelations. “All previous reality is canceled,” he once said in arguing one of his points.
…
Members routinely are asked to take out substantial loans and give the money to the party. The party makes the loan payments, but if the member quits, he remains responsible for the balance — an incentive for some to stay in.
Psychological pressures are great. Often party officials pick the person a member is to live with. If a member wants to leave the group, his partner is ordered to live apart from him. Mr. LaRouche has published his own psychological theories, including discussions of impotence, fear of homosexuality and denigration of women.
…
The party’s founder has conducted grueling encounter sessions to keep members in line. According to the accounts of former members, those who doubt Mr. LaRouche are summoned before a small group and grilled about their fears and guilt until they break down. Husbands or wives are asked about their partners’ sexual practices.
In one case, former members said, a man was ordered by Mr. LaRouche to stop having sexual relations with his wife because he was becoming “politically impotent.”
…
The Labor Committee began to undergo dramatic changes in the middle of 1972, when Mr. LaRouche’s second wife left him for a young English member of the party living in London. Mr. LaRouche spent several months in West Germany and returned with what one former member described as a messianic vision. Whereas internal debate and discussion had previously characterized the Labor Committee, the leader began making dictatorial pronouncements. Those who disagreed were said to be either Central Intelligence Agency agents or afraid of their mothers.
Mr. LaRouche began forming ideas of a vast conspiracy against him, led by the Rockefeller family and anything having to do with England. He spent much of his time in his bathrobe in his New York apartment, surrounded by a security force. Cartons of canned food, acquired fora “siege” lined the halls.
Upon his return to New York, Mr. LaRouche announced to the membership, without consultation with the party’s executive committee, Operation Mop‐Up. It was a two‐month period of violence in March and April 1973, in which Labor Committee gangs attacked Communist Party members, disrupted meetings of many left‐wing groups and attempted to intervene in strikes to assert Mr. LaRouche’s “leadership” of the Left. According to former members, some par ticipants carried guns and attempts were made to acquire a cache of weapons.
3 Likes
In Australia LaRoucheites manifest themselves in the form of the Citizens Electoral Council, though they don’t mention his name in their literature. They turn up in every election and they never get any votes to speak of.
Every now and then I see them set up at a card table on the street in central Melbourne with stacks of leaflets. While I’ve got a long term interest in cranks and political nutters, I avoid this lot, as I’ve never before seen people who give off such a powerful “angry loser” vibe.
I wonder how their movement will take losing a guru?
2 Likes
So that’s what inspired Westboro Baptist Church’s trolling tactics.
1 Like
Remember the “campaign” to build a Transrapid from Paris to Moscow?
The only party which produced more brainfucked advertising is indeed the Naturgesetzpartei with their flying yogis.
I often wondered how they would finance themselves.
3 Likes
LaRouche parlayed his global network into a private intelligence agency that sometimes brought in revenue from corporations and other clients and even earned it entrée to the national security community. LaRouche’s intelligence operatives enjoyed a cozy relationship with members of the Reagan administration. In a 1985 Washington Post story, Norman Bailey, a Reagan National Security Council staffer, recounted meeting with LaRouche organization members numerous times—and with LaRouche himself three times. Bailey described LaRouche’s group as “one of the best private intelligence services in the world.”
Cults with spy agencies… Always a bad idea.
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
