Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Restyled for the New …

1 5555544444 Lyndon larouche has served his federalprison term and is hotly campaigning as aDemocratic presidential candidate while glo-bally spewing out prescriptions for saving economy . His influence is far-reaching in the ,Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Australia andelsewhere, via print media, the worldwide web, radioand cable TV, electoral campaigns, and speaking engage-ments. He writes reams of treatises on everything fromcurrent political and economic issues to history, culture,science and philosophy even crusading to revisethe tuning of the musical s something strange and cultish about larouche but it s hard to figure out exactly what he s up to. Muchof his message appears to be innocuous, kooky, contradic-tory, esoteric or shamelessly inflammatory. But under-neath the weirdness lies a far-right world an apparently inexhaustible supply of money forpublic outreach, larouche adherents are emerging inever greater numbers on campuses and street corners and finding recruits.

2 What is the attraction? First of all,the LaRouchites appeal to people under false pretensesusing progressive issues such as support for Palestineand opposition to war and corporate globalization. Inaddition, larouche s vast and detailed treatises on eco-nomic and political affairs spark interest among thoseLyndon larouche : Fascism Restyled for the New Millenniumby Helen know something is terribly wrong with the systemand are looking for big answers worthy of their big ques-tions. Moreover, larouche s practice of minutely ad-dressing every issue with grandiose references to historythrough the ages and Greek and German philosophersstrikes a chord with individuals who are sick of beingcondescended to by today s dumbed-down, commercial-ized people need to know that larouche is a far-right ideologue and that those who have studied himconsider his message very dangerous indeed.

3 Eventhough he furiously accuses all manner of people of be-ing Nazis, his own brand of politics both employs stan-dard elements of Fascism and revisions that may initiallythrow some people off example, while fascist movements have historicallybeen stridently nationalist, larouche is working hard toestablish allies in many countries outside the UnitedStates, particularly on the question of opposition to freetrade. But he and his co-thinkers want to replace capitalistglobalism with protectionism, a cornerstone of nationalisteconomic policy. On this platform, a larouche crony fromthe Brazilian state of S o Paulo, Dr. Eneas Carneiro of therightist Party for Rebuilding of National Order (PRONA),was elected overwhelmingly to the federal congress inOctober 2002. In June of that year, Carneiro had endorsedLaRouche s presidential campaign and awarded himhonorary citizenship of S o fascists have also traditionally been out-front white supremacists and anti-Semites.

4 larouche isdefinitely racist and anti-Jewish. But he also is makingovertures to African Americans and denies anti-Semitism. This reflects the increasingly diverse popula-tion of the United States, where Caucasians will soon be aminority. For any extremist movement to gain a massfollowing in today s USA, it is going to have to find away to bring people of color on board. And larouche istrying hard to make this best analysis of Fascism comes from socialist revo-lutionary Leon Trotsky, who witnessed its emergence asa new political phenomenon in Spain, Italy and Germanyin the 1930s and 40s. He desperately tried to get socialistparties from different tendencies to work together in aunited front to defeat their deadly opponents, but he wasnot defined Fascism as a mass upsurge based onthe middle class that arises during periods of acute eco-nomic crisis and has the goal of saving capitalism bysmashing the radical and labor movements.

5 The middleclasses are susceptible to fascist demagogues, becausewhen small businesses and entrepreneurs seek the cause oftheir economic misfortunes, they are as apt to blame theworkers as they are to fault the system. If the Left can twin them over, the middle class can go to the far fascists first attack the most isolated ormarginalized sectors of the working class: ethnic andracial minorities, women, queers, the disabled, and oth-ers. Far-right movements typically use the rhetoric ofopposition to big government and big business, whiledefending free enterprise a position similar to thelibertarians. To add to their allure, nazis use mysticism,leader worship, and the fascists took power in Germany, Italy andSpain, they instituted totalitarian police states and auster-ity measures that reduced the working class to virtualslavery.

6 (In Germany the fascists literally enslaved Jews,national minorities, radicals and others in forced laborcamps, in addition to committing wholesale genocide.)The fascist states provided huge subsides to big businessand took over the management of leading industries,9999988888running them for the benefit of the owners preservingfree enterprise through state of the best guides to understanding thisphenomenon are Fascism : What It Is and How to Fight It byLeon Trotsky and Fascism and Big Business by DanielGu Trotskyist analysis of Fascism is crucial in castinglight on the political trajectory of the larouche move-ment. The LaRoucheites definitely have a Great Leader inthe form of the all-knowing larouche . Their major ap-peal is clearly to the disgruntled middle class, given theirlack of any program for labor or the poor.

7 They are veryupfront that they are on a mission to rescue the Ameri-can form of political-economy (which is capitalist, eventhough larouche dislikes the term). They call for savingthe presidency and saving the republic. They look forscapegoats and invoke Master-Race-type definitive work on larouche is Dennis King sextensive book, Lyndon larouche and the New Another valuable resource is a study by ChipBerlet and Joel Bellman, Lyndon larouche : FascismWrapped in an American Flag. 4 Both of these works,however, only cover larouche s development as far asthe the Left to far rightfieldBecause larouche is currently soft-pedaling his mostextreme ideas, it is crucial to know his background inorder to understand his real nature. His followers denyor are ignorant of this history, but it is well very brief summary:Born in 1922, Lyndon larouche joined the SocialistWorkers Party (SWP) in 1949 and remained involved for17 years under the pseudonym Lyn Marcus.

8 Clara Fraser,a Freedom Socialist Party founder who was also in theSWP during this period, recalled Marcus as a perennialnonentity at SWP national conventions. He never seemedconnected with any particular branch, though he regu-larly contributed interminable and incomprehensiblearticles on economics and the united front to the partydiscussion 1965, larouche was expelled from the SWP forworking with British Trotskyist Gerry Healy to brewinternal dissension. Three years later, he founded a groupcalled the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC),which initially carried on in the Marxist tradition as afaction in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).Things changed dramatically in the 1970s. Provokedby the rise of the feminist movement, larouche literallyand publicly went berserk. He published outrageousravings in the pages of his newspaper, New venomous articles were overflowing with sexist,racist, homophobic and paranoid 1973, larouche became convinced that the CIAhad brainwashed NCLC members with a subconsciousdirective to kill him.

9 In response, he subjected his follow-ers to deprogramming sessions in which they werelocked up, deprived of sleep and food, and tormentedwith accusations that they harbored homosexual,incestuous, and homicidal same year, larouche launched Operation Mop-Up, in which NCLC members in numerous cities physi-cally attacked members of the Communist Party, the So-cialist Workers Party and Maoists with metal pipes,clubs, chains and brass swung definitively from the left to the very,very far right. He established links to white buddied up to Mafia-connected Teamsters union bu-reaucrats and helped sabotage rank-and-file dissidents inTeamsters for a Democratic Union. His group created a11111111111010101010mega-million-dollar empire as paid informants for and other governments (including the white regimein South Africa, the Shah of Iran, the Marcos governmentin the Philippines, plus Iraq, Italy, Thailand, Mexico,Argentina, Taiwan and others).

10 larouche had a warmfriendship with the Reagan administration, based onshared support of the Star Wars space-based missiledefense initiative as well as intelligence and advice prof-fered by larouche to government departments includingthe National Security 1989, larouche was convicted of tax evasion and ofbilking $34 million from senior citizens. He served onlyfive years of a 15-year sentence. Since he got out of prisonin 1994, he has rebuilt his network of misinformation andpropaganda but in a much subtler examination of his past exposes larouche s truepolitics. Although the most Nazi-like elements of his ide-ology are currently undercover, not much has reallychanged. In fact, his early obsessions chillingly reappearas consistent symbols in his current writings. The follow-ing pages analyze larouche s stance on key of the American systemof political-economy Because capitalism is oppressive by nature, attemptsto produce a kinder, gentler free enterprise systeminevitably fail especially during the economic down-turns that are endemic to this chaotic, unplanned, waste-ful method of like larouche gain strength during theseperiods of economic collapse.