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Lyndon Larouche and the New American Fascism

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This book is probably the best-researched book on the LaRouche cult to be published. The LaRouche cult has started many organizations over the years, basically to present different faces to the broad public. King's book tries to show how a charismatic leader could bring a communist cadre organization out of the student left, transform it into an opportunistic fundraising machine and cozy up to the fascist right in this country, all while purporting to be the cadre who would help save the world from the evil villains (as they identify them) of the moment. Clearly the book ends while the cult still survives behind various front organizations, so if you feel impressed with the LaRouchies, then do yourself a favor: before you commit your savings or make major career decisions on behalf of that group, read this book.

Some years ago, I encountered the LaRouche movement; since then I have learned and wanted to learn much about them and about LaRouche especially. I learned about King's book from their literature and did not expect it to be flattering, but I did expect it to contain information that would shed some light on the man and the movement. Although there were some informative bits and I didn't have high expectations for the book, it was still worse than I expected. When LaRouche and his associates criticized King's book, they did make an effort to explain where King was coming from and why he wrote the book. Unfortunately, I found little or no corresponding explanation of LaRouche in King's book. King does a good job of providing a bookful of anecdotes about LaRouche but his work as a whole exhibits little depth and makes at best a weak attempt at analysis.

Who the heck is Lyndon LaRouche? Where does he come from? Where is he trying to go? Why did he leave his comfortable management consulting practice to start a political movement? Who are his followers? Where do they come from? Why are they so loyal? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Why has LaRouche been so popular with certain groups in America? Doesn't the fact that he is popular with these people say something informative about some sectors of American society? Why is it that virtually every remnant of the New Left of the 1960s has long ago disappeared while the LaRouche movement still exists in 1999? How has this longevity been possible? For the last eight years, I have not found entirely satisfactory answers to these questions, and I was hoping that Dennis King, who I thought would be the best expert on LaRouche outside of the movement itself, would be able to shed some light on this conundrum of a man and a movement. I have my own theories, but I'd really like to hear those of someone who has been watching these guys for 20 years or more.

Overall, the book is a disappointment; it seems muddled at times and answers none of the really big questions.

This book exposes the threat to American society which is being imposed by Lyndon LaRouche and his cult of mindles zombies. Having been taken in by a one-time organizer of a faction within the Students for a Democratic Society, his followers blindly follow an ideology based on hate. The Jews are the object of the hatred...LaRouche follows a revisionist philosophy which denies the holocaust, denounces rock n roll and calls for a neo-European society. Therefore,it all leads to the idea of neo-Naziism in America.King is exhorting the readers to wake up to stop the nonsense that leads to genocide the world over...Of course this book should be required as part of a classroom curriculum.

A bit heavy-handed at times, and more than a tad biased, Dennis King has still managed to patch together the only factual history of the LaRouche organization. My only real complaint is that it has not been reissued with updated information, carrying the story of this politico-cult to it's current status as some kind of latter-day Hole In The Wall Gang in suburban Washington DC.

It is rare when someone is able to so profoundly understand how a politically subversive man and his organization can infiltrate into American life. If we learn anything from Dennis King, it is that American liberty can be used for good and it is vulnerable to those who would destroy it. In the latter case, the only remedy is for Americans to understand and to take action against men like Lyndon LaRouche and his fanatical followers. Particularly important in Lyndon LaRouches and the New American Fascism is a magnificent analysis of the "code" language that is used by these fanatics to confuse the public, while communicating with others who are like-minded. Dennis King ought to be commended for great effort to protect the Constitution and the American republic!

Dennis King has given us a startling insight into right wing lunacy in Ameica and its interreaction with the greater community. Laouche used, and was used by, important contemporaries.

There are few other sources that show the links between the radical right and the mainstream as well. They are not alone.cd. Timothy McVeigh.

The LaRouche Movement is probably the strangest (and most well known) political fringe group in America. They have even been mentioned on "The Simpsons"! But what are they, what are they *really*?

Essentially, there are two alternative analyses of LaRouche and his movement. Some believe he is a crazy cult leader, or just crazy. This is probably the majority opinion. Others regard LaRouche as a quite serious agent provocateur, either a covert neo-Nazi and anti-Semite, or (in some versions) a covert Communist. The author of this book, Dennis King, supports the second idea: LaRouche knows what he's doing, he's a Nazi and anti-Semite, a right-wing extremist who changes his public political colours depending on who he is addressing this week. Dennis King is a long time LaRouche watcher, and has a website devoted to exposing both the LaRouchians and a strangely similar movement around one Fred Newman.

I knew about the LaRouche Movement already as a teenager. The reason is simple: we have them in Sweden as well! The Swedish branch of the LaRouchites, known as EAP, was very active about 30 years ago. They constantly slandered Olof Palme, an important and high profile Swedish politician who was prime minister 1969-76 and 1982-1986. He was assassinated in 1986. Palme was a Social Democrat, and it's interesting to note that the EAP went after him both during their "Communist" phase and their "far right wing" phase. And yes, they really did went after him! On several occasions, EAP agitators ran after Palme in the streets of Stockholm after political meetings, asked him slanderous questions at press conferences, or attempted to come as close as possible to him at May Day rallies, carrying placards with Palme depicted in full Nazi regalia. At least once, a massive fight erupted between the EAP and Social Democrats at a May Day rally. EAP's accusations against Palme were bizarre and noxious: they claimed he was descended from Nazis, that he had been a patient at a mental asylum, that he was a substance abuser, and so on. When Palme was assassinated, the police arrested a former EAP member as a suspect. He was later found to be innocent - and crazier than even the LaRouchians! My point is that although the LaRouchians were very small (they never got more than circa 300 votes in an national election), they were *very* notorious. Everyone knew about them. Strangely, the EAP have been quietly forgotten for the past twenty years or so, although they still have literature tables, pass out leaflets, stand in elections, etc.

As a teenager, me and my buddies actually discussed the EAP, and wondered what on earth they were. Most considered them right wing extremists (this was their "Star Wars" period). However, students active in the Young Conservatives believed that they were a Communist sect pretending to be right-wing. The same debate goes on in America, I believe.

Whatever the LaRouche movement may be today, they certainly used to be a kind of left wing group. LaRouche formed his organization in 1969, under the long and unwieldy name National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). Its political opinions and practices were weird and cultish from the start, but they were generally regarded as left wing, and (as King points out), they were probably not stranger than many of the Maoist groups! King believes that LaRouche turned fascist in 1973, during "Operation Mop Up", when NCLC thugs physically attacked and seriously injured members of the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party. These tactics effectively isolated the NCLC from the rest of the left, making it easier for LaRouche to complete the transformation into a fully fledged fascist group. King further believes that LaRouche developed his coded anti-Semitic conspiracy theories after contacts with the neo-Nazi Liberty Lobby. This was around 1974-75. However, LaRouche and his followers still claimed to be Communists. I've read back issues of EAP's newspaper, and they supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and Jaruzelski's military coup in Poland in 1981. Bizarrely, they also supported Reagan! In 1984, LaRouche changed his political line and became an outspoken supporter of Reagan's Cold War II *against* the Soviet Union, claiming that the Orthodox Church had taken power in Moscow. Thus began his openly "right wing" phase. It's precisely this strange and contradictory message that make many people regard LaRouche as clinically insane, and his movement as harmless cranks. The more or less incomprehensible theoretical articles in LaRouchian publications add to this impression.

King believes otherwise, and argues at length that the seemingly confused message of LaRouche is perfectly intelligible, being a coded anti-Semitic conspiracy theory with Nazi affinities. He also details LaRouchian contacts with circles in the Reagan administration, Soviet officials, Klansmen and the Iraqi embassy. Since the book was written, LaRouche has flip flopped politically again: he opposed Bush Senior, supported Bill Clinton, and opposed both Gore, Bush Junior and Obama. Although Obama's foreign policy is identical to the one LaRouche ostensibly called for during the Bush years, LaRouche nevertheless denounces Obama as a "new Hitler" and a "genocidal Nazi". Agent provocateur?

Although I despise Lyndon H. LaRouche jr. (and don't doubt that he really doesn't like Jews), I nevertheless find King's analysis unconvincing. I might be wrong, of course. I haven't spent most of my life chasing Lyn! Still, the most likely explanation of the LaRouche phenomenon is nevertheless that he is an unserious cult leader, incapable and probably uninterested in *real* political influence. I base this on the following considerations. While anti-Semitism does indeed exist all across the political spectrum, it has nevertheless been mostly associated with right-wing political movements, and these have combined anti-Semitism with nationalism and White supremacism. It's hard to imagine that a multi-racial cult such as the NCLC, which recruits Blacks, Hispanics and even secularized Jews, while demanding free immigration, can really become the core of a fascist movement. King himself points out that the NCLC often refrained from taking over Democratic party branches, even when they could easily have done so, or that LaRouche blew his major TV appearance by babbling on about a mission to Mars, when right-wing populism would have suited him better. King believes that this was some kind of master move. A more sober interpretation is the opposite: LaRouche is either politically very inept, or a cynical cult leader who knows very well that his operation can only succeed in relative political isolation. The NCLC simply cannot become a mass movement, nor will LaRouche let it become one! The constant political gyrations back and forth, or the incomprehensible message, has a certain obedience cult logic, but it makes absolutely no sense politically speaking. True, fascists often combine ideas from both the left and the right, but only if it makes sense! Combining Greater Russian chauvinism with Stalinist Communism makes excellent sense in today's Russia, just as combining German nationalism with quasi-socialist appeals to the unemployed workers made sense in the Weimar republic. Claiming to support both the USSR and Reagan in 1980 makes absolutely no sense at all, not to mention LaRouche's most bizarre article (I think it was published the year before) in which he *both* supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, *and* denies the Holocaust. Now, what kind of political movement can possibly be built around *that*? Note also LaRouche's recent attacks on Obama, whose foreign policy he logically should support (judging by his message during the eight years of Bush's presidency).

Despite this, I nevertheless recommend "Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism". It's the only really comprehensive survey of the LaRouche movement to be published. People interested in this particular group, or political extremism at large, must start with this book.

The abusive reviews of this book are obviously the work of LaRouche supporters. Although Lyn's organization is now a pitiful shell of its old, well-funded self, King's book remains an important reference for anyone concerned with the stinkier fringes of American politics.

Unfortunately, however, the volume gives the reader little understanding of LaRouche's charisma or the personal history that must lie behind his more bizarre rantings -- especially his wierd psychosexual theories. His contempt/fear for women and his obsession with anal and fecal imagery makes it seem likely he is tormented by homosexual desire. LaRouche's identification with Socrates (making his followers attractive young Athenians in love with him) tends to confirm this. Perhaps another book on LaRouche remains to be written, ideally by someone qualified to dispense thorazine.

In the meantime, King's account of the LaRouche group's shadowy connections and neo-Nazi ideology is the definitive study of a "little man" who puffed himself up to world-historical dimensions: a figure at once dangerous and absurd.

Although the author's biographical material is interesting, his one-sided attack on LaRouche is misleading and completely incorrect. He takes LaRouche's anti-fascist comments out of context (ridiculously at times) to paint LaRouche himself as a "Fascist". LaRouche's bad press in the American media is enough without this nonsense. I was very disappointed.

It's funny how much King relies on the LaRouche organization's own (probably self-aggrandizing)history of itself. There is an obscure document, published by LaRouche's Campaigner magazine in 1974, titled "The Conceptual History of the Labor Committees," and King's book seems to take most of that "history" at face value. LaRouche's involvement in the Columbia University student disruption of 1968, for instance, seems to me to be less than King and LaRouche portray. King goes to great lengths to prove that LaRouche is an obscurantist Nazi, based on a code theory espoused in a book called Eagle and Cross (I think), that examines how neo-Nazis communicate with one another in Germany, where free speech doesn't extend quite that far. I think it's wrong on some details, but a fair question to all the LaRouchians out there: where would your man have stood in 1939? Certainly not with the evil British Empire! King's book unfortunately doesn't touch what has been disparaged as the "pitch putsch" of 1989--maybe that happened too late for inclusion. That was when the Schiller Institute, headed by LaRouche's wife Helga Zepp, initiated a campaign to lower standard orchestral pitch by a little more than a quarter-tone, based on the theory that said pitch had been creeping upwards over the past century and a half due to Romantic conductors and composers who sought a more strenuous sound. The result, according to the Schiller Institute, were two-fold: wrecking instruments and voices whose upper limits were being exceeded; and sacrificing compositional integrity of classic works (e.g. Mozart's Fantasy in C, K. 256), because the internal workings of the music exploited register shifts at certain pitches, and the pitch rise made the register shift happen too low. A lot of big names signed on to this effort, but the funny thing was how metaphysical the LaRouche analysis became, with galaxies and mitochondria all being "scientifically" tied into the proper tuning. The LaRouchian tuning also was not self consistent--best I could figure they were putting forth two separate and distinct proposals, A=432 and C=256.