LaRouche movement
Encyclopedia
The LaRouche movement is an international political and cultural network that promotes Lyndon LaRouche
and his ideas. It has included scores of organizations and companies around the world. Their activities include campaigning, private intelligence gathering, and publishing numerous periodicals, pamphlets, books, and online content. It characterizes itself as a Platonist Whig movement which favors re-industrialization and classical culture, and which opposes what it sees as the genocidal conspiracies of Aristotelian oligarchies such as the British Empire. Outsiders characterize it as a fringe movement and it has been criticized from across the political spectrum.
The movement had its origins in radical leftist student politics of the 1960s, but is now generally seen as a right-wing, fascist or unclassifiable group. It is known for its unusual theories and its confrontational behavior. In the 1970s members allegedly engaged in street violence. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of candidates, some with only limited knowledge of LaRouche or the movement, ran as Democrats
on the LaRouche platform. None were elected to significant public office.
In 1988, LaRouche and 25 associates were convicted on fraud charges related to fund-raising, prosecutions which the movement alleged were politically motivated and which were followed by a decline in the group's influence which lasted for several years. The movement was rejuvenated in the 2000s by the creation of a youth cadre, the LaRouche Youth Movement, and by their prominent opposition to the Bush/Cheney administration and the Obama health care reform plan.
LaRouche's wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche
, heads political and cultural groups in Germany connected with her husband's movement. There are also parties in France, Sweden, and other European countries, and branches or affiliates in Australia, Canada, the Philippines, and several Latin American countries. Estimates of the movement range from five hundred to one thousand members in the United States, spread across more than a dozen cities, and about the same number abroad. Members engage in political organizing, fund-raising, cultural events, research and writing, and internal meetings. It has been categorized as a political cult by some journalists. According to reporters, members believe they are solely responsible for the protection of civilization and some work long hours for little pay to further their mission. The LaRouche movement has been accused of repeatedly harassing public officials, politicians, journalists, ex-members, and critics. The movement has had a number of notable collaborators and members.
LaRouche-affiliated political parties have nominated many hundreds of candidates for national and regional offices in the U.S.
, Canada
, Sweden
, Denmark
, Germany
, Australia
and France
, for almost thirty years. In countries outside the U.S., the LaRouche movement maintains its own minor parties, and they have had no significant electoral success to date. In the U.S., however, they are active in the Democratic Party, and individuals associated with the movement have successfully sought party office in some elections, particularly Democratic County Central Committee posts.
and the International Caucus of Labor Committees (ICLC) are international organizations that mobilize on behalf of the LaRouche Movement. Schiller Institute conferences have been held across the world. The ICLC is affiliated to political parties in France
, Italy
, Germany
, Poland
, Hungary
, Russia
, Denmark
, Sweden
, Mexico
, the Philippines
, and several South American countries. Lyndon LaRouche, who is based in Loudoun County, Virginia
, United States
, and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche
, based in Wiesbaden
, Germany, regularly attend these international conferences and have met foreign politicians, bureaucrats, and academics.
LaRouche himself has been a candidate for U.S. president eight times, running in every presidential election from 1976 to 2004. The first was with his own party, the U.S. Labor Party
. In the next seven campaigns he campaigned for the Democratic Party
nomination. In support of those efforts he has created campaign committees and a PAC
, and has attempted to gain entrance to caucus
es, debates, and conventions
for himself and supporters. He was a successful fundraiser
in 2004 by some measures, and received federal matching funds
. See Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns
.
In 1986 the LaRouche movement placed its AIDS
initiative, Proposition 64
, on the California
ballot, which lost by a 4-1 margin. It was re-introduced in 1988 and lost again by the same margin. Federal and state officials raided movement offices in 1986. In the ensuing trials, leaders of the movement received prison terms for conspiracy to commit fraud, mail fraud, and tax evasion. See LaRouche criminal trials.
In 1986, LaRouche movement members Janice Hart
and Mark J. Fairchild won the Democratic Primary elections for the offices of Illinois Secretary of State and Illinois Lieutenant Governor
respectively. Up until the day following the election, major media outlets were reporting that George Sangmeister, Fairchild's primary opponent, was running unopposed. 21 years later Fairchild asked, “how is it possible that the major media, with all of their access to information, could possibly be mistaken in that way?” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III
was favored to win this election, having lost the previous election by a narrow margin amid allegations of vote fraud. However, he refused to run on the same slate with Hart and Fairchild. Instead, Stevenson formed the Solidarity Party
and ran with Jane Spirgel as the Secretary of State nominee. Hart and Spirgel's opponent, Republican incumbent Jim Edgar
, won the election by the largest margin in any state-wide election in Illinois history, with 1.574 million votes.
After the Illinois primary Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) blasted his own party for pursuing a policy of ignoring the "infiltration by the neo-Nazi elements of Lyndon H. LaRouche," and worried that too often, especially in the media, "the LaRouchites" are "dismissed as kooks." "In an age of ideology, in an age of totalitarianism, it will not suffice for a political party to be indifferent to and ignorant about such a movement," said Moynihan. Moynihan had previously faced a primary challenge in 1982 from Mel Klenetsky, a Jewish associate of LaRouche, and had called Klenetsky "anti-Semitic."
In 1988, Claude Jones won the chairmanship of the Harris County
Democratic Party in Houston, only to be stripped of his authority by the county executive committee before he could take office. He was removed from office by the state party chairman a few months later, in February 1989, because of Jones's alleged opposition to the Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis
, in favor of LaRouche.
The LaRouche movement is reported by multiple sources, including journalists Jason Berry
and George Johnson
, to have had close ties to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party of Saddam Hussein
. It was a leading opponent of the UN sanctions
against Iraq in 1991 and the subsequent Gulf War
in 1992. Supporters formed the "Committee to Save the Children in Iraq". LaRouche blamed the sanctions and war on "Israeli-controlled Moslem fundamentalist groups" and the "Ariel Sharon-dominated government of Israel" whose policies were "dictated by Kissinger and company, through the Hollinger Corporation, which has taken over The Jerusalem Post for that purpose." Left-wing anti-war groups were divided over the LaRouche movement's involvement.
In 2000, the Democratic nominee in Wyoming for the Senate, Mel Logan, was a LaRouche follower; the Republican incumbent, Craig Thomas, won in a 76%-23% landslide. In 2001, a "national citizen-candidates' movement" was created, advancing candidates for a number of elective offices across the country.
In 2006, LaRouche Youth Movement activist and Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee member Cody Jones was honored as "Democrat of the Year" for the 43rd Assembly District of California, by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. At the April 2007 California State Democratic Convention, LYM activist Quincy O'Neal was elected vice-chairman of the California State Democratic Black Caucus, and Wynneal Innocentes was elected corresponding secretary of the Filipino Caucus.
In November 2007, Mark Fairchild returned to Illinois to promote legislation authored by LaRouche, called the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act of 2007, that would establish a moratorium on home foreclosure
s and establish a new federal agency to oversee all federal and state banks. He also promoted LaRouche's plan to build a high-speed railroad to connect Russia and the United States, including a tunnel under the Bering Strait
.
In 2009, the LaRouche movement printed pamphlets showing President Barack Obama
and Hitler laughing together, and posters of Obama wearing a Hitler-style mustache. In Seattle, police have been called twice in response to people threatening to tear the posters apart, or to assault the LaRouche supporters holding them. At one widely reported event, Congressman Barney Frank
referred to the posters as "vile, contemptible nonsense."
In March 2010, LaRouche Youth leader Kesha Rogers won the Democratic congressional primary in Houston, Texas' 22nd District. The following day, a spokeswoman for the Texas Democratic Party stated that "La Rouche members are not Democrats. I guarantee her campaign will not receive a single dollar from anyone on our staff."
The harassing of individuals and organizations is reportedly systematic and strategic. Some of the targets are prominent individuals, while others are common citizens speaking out against the movement. The group itself refers to these methods as "psywar techniques," and defends them as necessary to shake people up; George Johnson
has written that, believing the general population to be hopelessly indoctrinated by the mass media, they "fight back with words that stick in one's mind like shards of glass." He quotes movement member Paul Goldstein saying: "We're not very nice, so we're hated. Why be nice? It's a cruel world. We're in a war and the human race is up for grabs."
In the 1960s and 1970s, LaRouche were accused of fomenting violence at anti-war rallies with a small band of followers. According to LaRouche's autobiography, it was in 1969 that violent altercations began between his members and New Left
groups. He wrote that Mark Rudd
's faction began assaulting LaRouche's faction at Columbia University. "Other organized physical attacks against my friends would follow, inside the United States and abroad," he wrote. "Communist Party goon-squad attacks began in Chicago, in summer 1972, and continued sporadically up to the concerted assault launched during March 1973. During 1972, there was also a goon-attack on associates of mine by the SWP
."
According to the Village Voice and the Washington Post the National Caucus of Labor Committees
(NCLC), an organization founded and controlled by LaRouche, became embroiled in the early 1970s in conflicts with other leftist groups, culminating in "Operation Mop-Up" which consisted of a series of physical attacks on members of rival left wing groups.
During "Operation Mop-Up," LaRouche's New Solidarity reported NCLC confrontations with members of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party. One incident took place April 23, 1973 at a debate featuring Labor Committee mayoral candidate Tony Chaitkin
. The meeting erupted in a brawl, with chairs flying. Six people were treated for injuries at a local hospital. In Buffalo, two NCLC organizers were arrested and charged with 2nd degree felonious assault after an attack that left one person with a broken leg and another with a broken arm. Dennis King writes that LaRouche halted the operation when police arrested several of his followers on assault charges, and after the groups under attack formed joint defense teams.
In the mid-1973 the movement formed a Revolutionary Youth Movement to recruit and politicize members of street gangs in New York City and other eastern cities. In September 1973 ten members of the NCLC were arrested for causing a melee at a Newark City Council meeting that involved 100 demonstrators, reported to be the third incident that week. The NCLC reportedly trained some members in terrorist and guerilla warfare. Topics included weapons handling, explosives and demolition, close order drills, small unit tactics, and military history.
In November 1973, the FBI issued an internal memorandum that was later released under the Freedom of Information Act. Jeffrey Steinberg, the NCLC "director of counterintelligence", described it as the "COINTELPRO
memo", which he says showed "that the FBI was considering supporting an assassination attempt against LaRouche by the Communist Party USA." LaRouche wrote in 1998:
The FBI was concerned that the movement might try to take power by force. FBI Director Clarence Kelly testified in 1976 about the LaRouche movement:
The LaRouche movement is reported to have harassed and threatened various federal agents from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, in some cases reportedly directed by the security unit run by Jeffrey and Michelle Steinberg. Two young followers, Abi Steinberg and Andrea Konviser, told of calling FBI agents in the middle of the night to tell them dirty jokes in 1974, and such calls were reported again in 1978.
In the later 1970s, the U.S. Labor Party came into contact with Roy Frankhouser
, a convicted felon and government informant who had infiltrated a variety of extremist groups. The LaRouche organization believed Frankhouser to be a federal agent who had been assigned to infiltrate right-wing and left-wing groups, and that he had evidence that these groups were actually being manipulated or controlled by the FBI and other agencies. Frankhouser introduced LaRouche to Mitchell WerBell III
, a former Office of Strategic Services
operative, paramilitary trainer, and arms dealer. Some members allegedly took a six-day "anti-terrorist" course a training camp operated by WerBell in Powder Springs, Georgia. LaRouche denied in 1979 that the training sessions took place. WerBell introduced LaRouche to covert operations specialist General John K. Singlaub
, who later alleged that members of the movement implied in discussions with him that the military might help "lead the country out of its problems", a view which he rejected. WerBell also introduced LaRouche to Larry Cooper, a Powder Springs, Georgia
police captain. Cooper, Frankhouser and an associate of Frankhouser named Forrest Lee Fick later made allegations about LaRouche. Cooper said in an NBC broadcast interview in 1984 that LaRouche had proposed the assassination of Jimmy Carter
, Zbigniew Brzezinski
, Joseph Luns
, and David Rockefeller
. Frankhouser made numerous allegations about LaRouche, including that he said prosecutor William Weld
"does not deserve to live. He should get a bullet between the eyes." A spokesman for the movement "denied LaRouche had ever made such a statement". In 1984, LaRouche said that he had employed WerBell as a security consultant, but that the allegations coming from Werbell's circle were fabrications that originated with operatives of the FBI and other agencies.
In 1974 and 1975, the NCLC targeted the United Auto Workers
(UAW), United Farm Workers
(UFW), and other trade unionists. They declared open war and dubbed their campaign "Operation Mop Up Woodcock", a reference to their violent anti-communist campaign of 1973 and to UAW president Leonard Woodcock
. The movement staged demonstrations that turned violent. They issued pamphlets attacking the leadership as corrupt and perverted. The UAW said that members had received dozens of calls a day accusing their relatives of homosexuality, reportedly at the direction of NCLC "security staff". Leaflets called an Ohio local president a "Woodcocksucker". The leadership of the AFL-CIO
was also attacked. During the same period, the LaRouche movement was closely associated with the Teamsters
union which was in a jurisdictional dispute with the UFW.
LaRouche put substantial effort into his first Democratic Primary, held February 1980 in New Hampshire
. Reporters, campaign workers, and party officials received calls from people impersonating reporters or ADL staff members, inquiring what "bad news" they had heard about LaRouche. LaRouche acknowledged that his campaign workers used impersonation to collect information on political opponents. Governor Hugh Gallen
, State Attorney General Thomas Rath and other officials received harassing phone calls. Their names appeared on a photocopied "New Hampshire Target List" acquired by Associated Press
, found in a LaRouche campaign worker's hotel room; the list stated, "these are the criminals to burn – we want calls coming in to these fellows day and night". LaRouche spokesman Ted Andromidas said, "We did choose to target those people for political pressure hopefully to prevent them from carrying out the kind of fraud that occurred in Tuesday's election." A New Hampshire journalist, Jon Prestage, had a tense interview with LaRouche and several of his associates, and was threatened if he used the interview in his story. A LaRouche associate denied responsibility for the dead cats.
In the mid-1980s LaRouche moved his headquarters from New York City to Leesburg, Virginia
. The movement invested in real estate, opened offices, started a newspaper, bought a radio station, and opened a bookstore. Hundreds of followers settled in the area. The newspaper, The Loudoun County News, ran advertisements for local merchants without their authorization to give the impression of community support, and claimed harassment when challenged. Residents, including Agnes Harrison and Leesburg Mayor Robert Sevila, reported that armed guards quickly appeared and pointed guns at people who stopped along the road outside LaRouche's estate. Local critics reported receiving threatening phone calls. LaRouche followers handed out leaflets in front of a church which said that five local residents had "allied themselves knowingly with persons and organizations which are part of the international drug lobby."
A Leesburg businessman who told a reporter about rumors of injuries to animals, including a horse who was poisoned and a dog who had been skinned, was sued for $2 million, and when the suit was dismissed by a district judge the LaRouche movement appealed it to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Leesburg Garden Club was singled out for attention. LaRouche called it a "nest of Soviet fellow travellers," whose members were "cacking busybodies in this Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves." Warren J. Hammerman, chairman of the National Democratic Policy Committee, said "Because the drug-running threat is Soviet-backed and the Garden Club is fighting LaRouche on drugs, they are serving as Soviet agents."
According to courtroom testimony by FBI agent Richard Egan, Jeffrey and Michelle Steinberg, the heads of LaRouche's security unit, boasted of placing harassing phone calls all through the night to the general counsel of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) when the FEC was investigating LaRouche's political contributions.
During the grand jury hearings followers picketed the courthouse, chanted "Weld is a fag", distributed leaflets accusing Weld of involvement in drug dealing, and "sang a jingle advocating that he be hanged in public".
The Schiller Institute
sent a team of ten people, headed by James Bevel
, to Omaha, Nebraska
, to pursue the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations
in 1990. Among the charges investigated by the grand jury was that the Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman and other men had sex with a 15-year old woman at a party held by the bank's owner. The LaRouche groups insisted there was a coverup. They distributed copies of the Schiller Institute's New Federalist newspaper that contained accusations about leading Omaha citizens, especially Wadman. They went door-to-door in Wadman's neighborhood telling residents that their neighbor was a child molester. When Wadman took a job with the police department in Aurora, Illinois
, LaRouche followers went there to demand that he be fired, and after he left there they followed him to a third city to make accusations.
In the 1970s, Nelson Rockefeller
was a central figure in the conspiracy theories espoused by LaRouche. An FBI file described the LaRouche movement as "clandestinely oriented group of political schizophrenics who have a paranoid preoccupation with Nelson Rockefeller and the CIA." Rockefeller's nomination for U.S. Vice President was strongly opposed by the LaRouche movement, and its members heckled his appearances. Federal authorities were reported to be concerned that the movement's hatred of Rockefeller would turn violent.
A special target of LaRouche's attention is Henry Kissinger
. LaRouche called Kissinger a "faggot", a "British agent", a "Soviet agent of influence", a "traitor", a "Nazi", and a "murderer", and linked him to the murder of Aldo Moro
. His followers heckled and disrupted Kissinger's appearances. The same year a member of LaRouche's Fusion Energy Foundation
, Ellen Kaplan, shouted "Is it true that you sleep with young boys at the Carlyle Hotel?" at Kissinger on an airport terminal while he and his wife, Nancy, were on their way to a heart operation. In response, Nancy Kissinger grabbed the woman by the throat. Kaplan pressed charges and the case went to trial. In 1986 Janice Hart held a press conference to say that Kissinger was part of the international "drug mafia". Asked whether Jews were behind drug trafficking Hart replied, "That's totally nonsense. I don't consider Henry Kissinger a Jew. I consider Henry Kissinger a homosexual."
A LaRouche organization distributed almost-pornographic posters of Illinois politician Jane Byrne
, and called other female politicians "prostitutes" and their husbands "pimps", according to Mike Royko
. In 1986, two LaRouche candidates, Janice Hart
and Mark Fairchild, won surprise victories in the Democratic primaries for two statewide positions in Illinois, Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor. Campaign appearances by democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III
, who refused to share the ticket with them and shifted instead to the "Solidarity Party" formed for the purpose, were interrupted by a trio of singers that included Fairchild and Chicago Mayoral candidate Sheila Jones. Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan
's home was visited late at night by a group of LaRouche followers who chanted, sang, and used a bullhorn "to exorcise the demons out of Neil Hartigan's soul". Hart and an associate were charged with disorderly conduct when they handed a piece of raw liver to the Roman Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland
of Milwaukee who was addressing a synagogue in Glencoe
, saying that it represented the "pound of flesh extracted by Hitler" during the Holocaust. Before the primaries a group of LaRouche supporters reportedly stormed the campaign offices of Hart's opponent and demanded that a worker "take an AIDS test".
In 1984 a reporter for a LaRouche publication buttonholed President Ronald Reagan
as he was leaving a White House
press conference, demanding to know why LaRouche was not receiving Secret Service
protection. As a result, future press conferences in the East Room
were arranged with the door behind the president so he can leave without passing through the reporters. In 1992, a follower shook hands with President George H.W. Bush at a campaign visit to a shopping center. The follower would not let go, demanding to know, "When are you going to let LaRouche out of jail?" The Secret Service had to intervene.
During the 1988 presidential campaign, LaRouche activists spread a rumor that the Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
, had received professional treatment for two episodes of mental despression. Media sources did not report the rumor initially to avoid validating it. However at a press conference a reporter for a LaRouche publication, Nicholas Benton, asked President Reagan whether Dukakis should release his medical records. Reagan replied "Look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid." Within an hour after the press conference Reagan apologized for the joke. The question received wide publicity, and was later analyzed as an example of how journalists should handle rumors. Republican candidate Vice President George H.W. Bush's aides got involved in sustaining the story, and Dukakis was obliged to deny having had depression. To avoid the negative backlash on his own campaign, Bush made a statement urging Congress to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act, which he signed upon gaining office and which became one of his proudest legacies.
At a 2003 Democratic primary debate repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, Joe Lieberman
quoted John McCain
, "no one's been elected since 1972 that Lyndon LaRouche and his people have not protested". The first reported incidence of heckling by LaRouche followers was at the Watergate hearings in 1973. Since then, LaRouche followers have interrupted events featuring J. Bowyer Bell
, Andrew Bernstein
, Julian Bond
, Jerry Brown
, Richard R. Burt, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush
, Jimmy Carter
, Wesley K. Clark, Howard Dean
, John Edwards
, Bob Kerrey
, John Kerry
, Lawrence Klein
, Richard Lamm
, Joseph Lieberman, Sir Robert Mark
, Paul Martin
, Walter Mondale
, Ralph Nader
, Oliver North
, Ross Perot
, Rick Santorum
, Sergio Sarmiento, Paul A. Volcker, and Leonard Woodcock
. LaRouche followers have disrupted political debates, college classes, meetings of a United Nations
development study group and of Ayn Rand
supporters on university campuses, and even a Columbus Day parade in New York City.
Joe Klein
writes that Boston's The Real Paper
decided to write an article about the LaRouche movement as a result of the violence in 1973. One reporter who attended a NCLC meeting was thrown against a wall. LaRouche called Klein "a liar and a degenerate", and Klein's family began receiving threatening calls. Journalist Charles Fager says that his article on LaRouche for the paper was spiked because of legal and physical threats.
Chicago Tribune
columnist Mike Royko
wrote several times of being harassed by the LaRouche movement, which he had covered since at least 1979. He once traced to the LaRouche movement leaflets which claimed that he had undergone a sex-change operation. (He wrote that it did not bother him as he had evidence to the contrary.) Royko wrote that, after writing about a LaRouche front group called "Citizens for Chicago", his assistant found a note attached to her apartment door that had a bullseye and a threat to kill her cat. LaRouche followers denied the allegation. In 1986, LaRouche followers picketed Royko's newspaper offices calling him a "degenerate drug pusher" and demanding that he take an AIDS test. When LaRouche was imprisoned in 1989, Royko wrote a column to inform LaRouche's fellow inmates about the history of cat killing and suggested that "any cat-lovers among them do whatever they feel is appropriate." LaRouche sought an injunction to prevent the column, which the suit said used "fighting words", from being printed in the paper near his jail but his request was rejected by the Circuit Court.
Dennis King began covering LaRouche in the 1970s, publishing a twelve-part series in a weekly Manhattan newspaper, Our Town, and later writing or cowriting articles about LaRouche in New Republic
, High Times, Columbia Journalism Review
, and other periodicals, culminating in a full length biography published in 1989. King describes numerous instances of harassment and threats. Leaflets accusing King, a news paper publisher, and the newspaper's lawyer of being criminals, homosexuals, or drug pushers. One leaflet included King's home address and phone number. He says that in 1980 he received a phone call threatening him with rape and murder, one of an estimated 500 abusive or hang-up calls he received by 1985. In 1984 a LaRouche newspaper, New Solidarity, published an article titled "Will Dennis King Come out of the Closet?", copies of which were distributed in his apartment building. His family also received calls that included threats to murder King. Jeffrey Steinberg denied the movement had harassed King. LaRouche said that King had been "monitored" since 1979, "We have watched this little scoundrel because he is a major security threat to my life."
In 1984, Patricia Lynch was a co-produceer of an NBC news piece and a TV documentary on LaRouche. She was then impersonated by LaRouche followers who interfered with her reporting. LaRouche sued Lynch and NBC for libel, and NBC countersued. During the trial followers picketed the NBC's offices with signs that said "Lynch Pat Lynch", and the NBC switchboard received a death threat. A LaRouche spokesman said they had no knowledge of the death threat. In later years LaRouche accused NBC or its reporters of various charges. At a press conference in 1986 he refused to take questions from the NBC reporter, saying "How could I talk to a drug pusher like you." In addition to charge of drug dealing, LaRouche publications also accused NBC of plotting his assassination.
The state editor of the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania
reported that a LaRouche TV crew led by Stanley Ezrol talked their way into his house in 1985 implying they were with NBC, then accused him of harassing LaRouche and interrogated him about why he had written what they alleged were negative stories about LaRouche. At the end of the interview" Ezrol asked "Have you ever feared for your personal safety?", which the editor found to be "chilling". Another LaRouche group, including Janice Hart
, forced their way into the office of The Des Moines Registers editor in 1987, then harangued him over his papers's coverage of LaRouche and demanded that certain editorials be retracted because the paper's "economic policies stink".
From the 1970s to the 2000s, LaRouche followers have staffed card tables in airports and in front of post offices, state offices, college quads, and grocery stores. The tables have typically carried posters with topical slogans. LaRouche followers have been noted for using a confrontational style of interactions. In 1986, the New York state elections board received dozens of complaints about people collecting signatures on nomination petitions, including allegations of misrepresentation and abusive language used towards those who would not sign.
In the mid-80s, the Secretary of State of California, March Fong Eu
, received numerous complaints from the public about harassment by people gathering signatures to qualify the "LaRouche AIDS Initiative
" for the state ballot. She warned initiative sponsors that permission to circulate the petitions could be revoked unless the "offensive activities" stopped. An altercation in 1987 between a LaRouche activist and an AIDS worker resulted in battery charges filed against the latter, who was outraged by the content of some of the material on display; she was found not guilty.
In California in 2009, several grocery chains sought restraining orders, damages and injunctions against LaRouche PAC activists displaying materials related to Obama's health care plan in front of their stores, citing customer complaints. In Edmonds, Washington
, a 70-year old man from Armenia
grew irate at the comparisons of Obama and Hitler. He grabbed fliers and tussled with LaRouche supporters, resulting in assault charges against him.
(NALP) nominated candidates in federal elections in the 1970s. Its candidates only had 297 votes nationwide in 1979. LaRouche himself offered a draft constitution for the commonwealth of Canada in 1981. The NALP later became the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada
and that ran candidates in the 1984, 1988 and 1993 elections. Those were more successful, gaining as many as 7,502 votes in 1993, but no seats. The Parti pour la république du Canada (Québec)
nominated candidates for provincial elections in the 1980s under various party titles. The LaRouche affiliate now operates as the Committee for the Republic of Canada.
's Party for Rebuilding of National Order (PRONA) is described as a "LaRouche friend" and one of its members has been quoted in the Executive Intelligence Review as saying "We associate ourselves with the wave of ideas which flow from Mr. LaRouche's prodigious mind". PRONA gained six seats in the Chamber of Deputies in 2002. However there is no independent evidence that the PRONA or its leaders recognize LaRouche as an influence on their policies, and it has been described as being part of the right-wing Catholic integralist political tradition.
The Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) has been described as an offshoot of LaRouche's Labor Party in Mexico. During peace talks to resolve the Chiapas conflict
, the Mexican Labor Party and the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) attacked the peace process and one of the leading negotiators, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who it accused of formenting the violence and of being controlled by foreigners. Posters caricaturing Ruiz as a rattlesnake appeared across the country.
The movement strongly opposes perceived manifestations of neo-colonialism, including the International Monetary Fund
, the Falklands/Malvinas War
, etc., and are advocates of the Monroe Doctrine
.
LaRouche supporters gained control of the formerly far-right Citizens Electoral Council
(CEC) in the mid-1990s. The CEC publishes an irregular newspaper, The New Citizen. Craig Isherwood and his spouse Noelene Isherwood are the leaders of the party. The CEC has opposed politician Michael Danby
and the 2004 Australian anti-terrorism legislation
. For the 2004 federal election, it nominated people for ninety-five seats, collected millions of dollars in contributions, and earned 34,177 votes.
The CEC is particularly concerned with Hamiltonian
economics and development ideas for Australia. It has been critical of Queen Elizabeth II
's ownership of an Australian zinc mine and believes that she exerts control over Australian politics through the use of prerogative power. It has been in an antagonistic relationship with the B'nai B'rith
's Anti-Defamation Commission, which has been critical of the CEC for perceived anti-semitism. It has asserted that the Liberal Party
is a descendant of the New Guard
and other purported fascists such as Sir Wilfrid Kent Hughes
and Sir Robert Menzies
. The CEC also claims to be fighting for "real" Labor policies (from the 1930-40s republican leanings of the Australian Labor Party
).
(BüSo) (Civil Rights Movement Solidarity) political party is headed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
, LaRouche's wife. It has nominated candidates for elective office and publishes the Neue Solidarität newspaper. Zepp-LaRouche is also the head of the German-based Schiller Institute
. In 1986 Zepp-LaRouche formed the "Patriots for Germany" party, and reportedly ran a full slate of 100 candidates. The party received 0.2 percent of the 4 million votes. In Germany, the leader of the Green Party, Petra Kelly
, reported receiving harassing phone calls that she attributed to BüSo supporters. Her speeches were picketed and disrupted by LaRouche followers for years.
Jeremiah Duggan
, a Jewish student from the UK attending a conference organized by the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Youth Movement in 2003, died in Wiesbaden, Germany, after he ran down a busy road and was hit by several cars. The German police said it appeared to be suicide. A British court ruled out suicide and decided that Duggan had died while "in a state of terror." Duggan's mother believes he died in connection with an attempt to recruit him; a spokesman for the German public prosecution service said the mother simply cannot accept that her son committed suicide. The High Court in London ordered a second inquest in May 2010, which was opened and adjourned.
Solidarité et Progrès, headed by Jacques Cheminade
, is the LaRouche party in France
. Its newspaper is Nouvelle Solidarité. The French LaRouche Youth Movement is headed by Elodie Viennot. Viennot supported the candidacy of Daniel Buchmann for the position of mayor of Berlin.
Sweden has an office of the Schiller Institute: Schillerinstitutet/EAP in Sweden, and the political party European Worker's Party (EAP). The former leader of the EAP, Ulf Sandmark (replaced by Hussein Askary in 2007) started out as a member of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League
(SSU), and was assigned to investigate (some would say infiltrate
) the EAP and the left-posturing ELC. During this time, he was recruited to EAP and had his membership in SSU revoked. Following the Olof Palme assassination
on February 28, 1986, the Swedish branch of the EAP came under scrutiny as literature published by the party was found in the apartment of the initial suspect, Victor Gunnarsson
. Also, the attacks against Olof Palme
run by the LaRouche movement since the beginning of the 1970s made the party a target for investigation. Within weeks of the assassination, NBC
television in the U.S. broadcast a story alleging that LaRouche was somehow responsible. Later, the suspect was released.
In Denmark
, four candidates for parliament on the LaRouche platform (Tom Gillesberg, Feride Istogu Gillesberg, Hans Schultz and Janus Kramer Møller) won 197 votes in the 2007 election (at least 32,000 votes are needed for a local mandate). The Danish LaRouche Movement (Schiller Instituttet) have recently published their first newspaper, distributing 50,000 around Copenhagen and Aarhus
.
The Movimento Solidarietà - Associazione di LaRouche in Italia (MSA) is an Italian
political party headed by Paolo Raimondi that supports the LaRouche platform.
Ortrun Cramer of the Schiller Institute became a delegate of the Austria
n International Progress Organization
in the 1990s, but there is no sign of ongoing relationship.
Polish newspapers have reported that Andrzej Lepper
, who leads the populist Samoobrona party, was trained at the Schiller Institute and has received funding from LaRouche, though both Lepper and LaRouche deny the connection.
In February 2008, the LaRouche movement throughout Europe began a campaign to prevent the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon
, which according to the U.S.-based LaRouche Political Action Committee "empowers a supranational financial elite to take over the right of taxation and war making, and even restore the death penalty, abolished in most nations of Western Europe." LaRouche press releases suggest that the treaty has an underlying fascist agenda, based on the ideas of Sir Oswald Mosley
.
LaRouche Society calls for fixed exchange rate
s, US/Philippine withdrawal from Iraq, denunciation of former US Vice President Dick Cheney
, and withdrawal of U.S. military advisor
s from Mindanao
. In 2008 it also issued calls for the freezing of foreign debt payments, the operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, and the immediate implementation of a national food production program. It has an office in Manila
, operates a radio show and says on its website, "Lyndon LaRouche is our civilization's last chance at world peace and development. May God help us." On the matter of internal politics, LaRouche operative Mike Billington
wrote in 2004, "The Philippines Catholic Church, too, is divided at the top over the crisis. The Church under Jaime Cardinal Sin
, who is now retired, had given its full support to the 'people's power' charade for the overthrow of Marcos
and Estrada
, but other voices are heard today." Later that year, he wrote that
According to Billington, representatives of LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review
and Schiller Institute
had met with Marcos in 1985, at which time LaRouche was warning that Marcos would be the target of a coup, inspired by George Shultz and neoconservatives in the Reagan administration, because of Marcos' opposition to the policies of the International Monetary Fund
. In 1986, LaRouche asserted that Marcos was ousted because he hadn't listened to LaRouche's advice: "he was opposed to me and he fell as a result."
The LaRouche movement is reported to have had close ties to the Ba'ath Party of Iraq
.
The LaRouche movement, and the Schiller Institute in particular, were reported in 1997 to have campaigned aggressively in support of the National Islamic Front
government in Sudan
. They organized trips to Sudan for state legislators, which according to the Christian Science Monitor was part of a campaign directed at African Americans.
, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world."
According to its masthead, EIR maintains international bureaus in Bogotá
, Berlin
, Copenhagen
, Lima
, Melbourne
, Mexico City
, New Delhi
, Paris
, and Wiesbaden
, in addition to various cities in the U.S. EIR staffers have provided testimony to various congressional committees, and an archive of EIR is maintained by the British Library of Political and Economic Science.
In 1996, EIR published the list of MI-6 agents provided by former MI-6 officer Richard Tomlinson
.
One element of EIR was the Biological Holocaust Task Force, formed in 1973 to study and anticipate the effects of IMF Conditionalities
on the populations of the Third World
, particularly in Africa
. It was headed by Dr. John Grauerholz.
The president of EIR News Service is Linda de Hoyos.
, a low-powered AM radio station that covered western Maryland, northern Virginia, and parts of West Virginia. It was sold in 1991.
In 1991, the LaRouche movement began producing The LaRouche Connection, a Public-access television
cable TV program. Within ten months it was being carried in six states. Dana Scanlon, the producer, said that "We've done shows on the JFK assassination, the 'October Surprise' and shows on economic and cultural affairs". Scanlon won an award for producing more than 30 segments.
s every 1–2 months. These were public meetings, broadcast in video, where LaRouche gave a speech, followed by 1–2 hours of Q and A over the internet. In his January 3, 2001 webcast, shortly before the inauguration of George W. Bush
, LaRouche warned that the incoming Bush administration would attempt to govern by crisis management
, "...in other words, just like the Reichstag fire
in Germany."
(ADL) was sued by the U.S. Labor Party
, the National Caucus of Labor Committees
, and several individuals including Konstandinos Kalimtgis, Jeffrey Steinberg, and David Goldman
, who claimed libel, slander, invasion of privacy, and assault on account of the ADL's accusations of anti-Semitism. A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that it was "fair comment
" to describe them as anti-Semites
.
United States v. Kokinda was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990. The case concerned the First Amendment rights of LaRouche movement members on Post Office property. The Deputy Solicitor General arguing the government's case was future Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts. The Court confirmed the convictions of Marsha Kokinda and Kevin Pearl, volunteers for the National Democratic Policy Committee, finding that the Postal Service's regulation of solicitors was reasonable.
, the movement is based on a commitment to "a just new world economic order," specifically "the urgency of affording what have been sometimes termed 'Third World nations,' their full rights to perfect national sovereignty, and to access to the improvement of their educational systems and economies through employment of the most advanced science and technology."
The LaRouche movement has attracted devoted followers and developed some specific and elaborate policy initiatives, but has also been referred to variously as Marxist, fascist, anti-Semitic, a political cult
, a personality cult, and a criminal enterprise. In 1984, LaRouche's research staff was described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the United States National Security Council
, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world". The Heritage Foundation
calls it "one of the strangest political groups in American history", and The Washington Monthly
calls it a "vast and bizarre vanity press".
The LaRouche movement is seen as a fringe political cult
.
Journalist and John Birch Society
activist John Rees
wrote in his Information Digest that the movement has "taken on the characteristics more of a political cult than a political party", and that LaRouche is given "blind obedience" by his followers. He has also called the movement a "cult of personality
". In rebuttal, LaRouche called the accusations of being a cult figure "garbage", and denied having control over any of the groups affiliated with him.
According to longtime critics Chip Berlet
and Matthew N. Lyons:
In the summer of 2009, LaRouche followers came under criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler. Media figures as politically widespread as Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart criticized the comparison.
According to the Washington Post, LaRouche has told his followers that they are "golden souls", a term from The Republic of Plato
. In his 1979 autobiography he contrasted the "golden souls" to "the poor donkeys, the poor sheep, whose consciousness is dominated by the infantile world-outlook of individual sensuous life". According to Dennis King, LaRouche believed that cadres "must be intellectually of a superior breed—a philosophical elite as well as a political vanguard". In 1986, LaRouche said during an interview, "What I represent is a growing movement. The movement is becoming stronger all the time..."
During the criminal trials of the late 1980s, LaRouche called upon his followers to be martyrs, saying that their "honorable deeds shall be legendary in the tales told to future generations". Senior members refused plea agreements that involved guilty pleas as those would have been black marks on the movement.
Former members report that life within the LaRouche movement is highly regulated. A former member of the security staff wrote in 1979 that members could be expelled for masturbating or using marijuana. Members who failed to achieve their fundraising quotas or otherwise showed signs as disloyal behavior were subjected to "ego stripping" sessions. Members, even spouses, were encouraged to inform on each other, according to an ex-member. Although LaRouche was officially opposed to abortion, a former member testified that women were encouraged to have abortions because "you can't have children during a revolution." Another source said some group leaders coerced members into having abortions. John Judis
, writing in The National Review, stated that LaRouche followers worked 16-hour days for little wages.
Former members have reported receiving harassing calls or indirect death threats. They say they have been called traitors. New Solidarity ran obituaries for three living former members. Internal memos have reportedly contained a variety of dismissive terms for ex-followers. One former member said that becoming a follower of LaRouche is "like entering the Bizarro World of the Superman comic books" which makes sense so long as one remains inside the movement.
In 1992, the father of Lewis du Pont Smith, an adult member of the Du Pont family
who had joined the LaRouche movement, was indicted along with four associates for planning to have his son and daughter-in-law abducted and "deprogrammed
". The incident resulted in serious legal repercussions but no criminal convictions for those indicted, including private investigator Galen Kelly
. The father also successfully had his son declared "incompetent" to manage his financial affairs in order to block him from possibly turning over his inheritance to the LaRouche organization.
Kenneth Kronberg
, who had been a leading member of the movement, committed suicide in 2007, reportedly because of financial issues concerning the movement. His widow, Marielle (Molly) Kronberg, had also been a longtime member. She gave an interview to Chip Berlet
in 2007 in which she made critical comments about the LaRouche movement. She was quoted as saying, "I'm worried that the organization may be in danger of becoming a killing machine." In 2004 and 2005, Kronberg made contributions of $1,501 to the Republican National Committee
and the election campaign of George W. Bush
, despite the LaRouche movement's opposition to the Bush administration. According to journalist Avi Klein, LaRouche felt that this "foreshadowed her treachery to the movement." Kronberg had been a member of the movement's governing National Committee since 1982 and was convicted of fraud during the LaRouche criminal trials.
Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. is an American political activist and founder of a network of political committees, parties, and publications known collectively as the LaRouche movement...
and his ideas. It has included scores of organizations and companies around the world. Their activities include campaigning, private intelligence gathering, and publishing numerous periodicals, pamphlets, books, and online content. It characterizes itself as a Platonist Whig movement which favors re-industrialization and classical culture, and which opposes what it sees as the genocidal conspiracies of Aristotelian oligarchies such as the British Empire. Outsiders characterize it as a fringe movement and it has been criticized from across the political spectrum.
The movement had its origins in radical leftist student politics of the 1960s, but is now generally seen as a right-wing, fascist or unclassifiable group. It is known for its unusual theories and its confrontational behavior. In the 1970s members allegedly engaged in street violence. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of candidates, some with only limited knowledge of LaRouche or the movement, ran as Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
on the LaRouche platform. None were elected to significant public office.
In 1988, LaRouche and 25 associates were convicted on fraud charges related to fund-raising, prosecutions which the movement alleged were politically motivated and which were followed by a decline in the group's influence which lasted for several years. The movement was rejuvenated in the 2000s by the creation of a youth cadre, the LaRouche Youth Movement, and by their prominent opposition to the Bush/Cheney administration and the Obama health care reform plan.
LaRouche's wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is a German political activist, wife of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and founder of the LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute and the German Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party .She has run for political office several times in Germany, representing small...
, heads political and cultural groups in Germany connected with her husband's movement. There are also parties in France, Sweden, and other European countries, and branches or affiliates in Australia, Canada, the Philippines, and several Latin American countries. Estimates of the movement range from five hundred to one thousand members in the United States, spread across more than a dozen cities, and about the same number abroad. Members engage in political organizing, fund-raising, cultural events, research and writing, and internal meetings. It has been categorized as a political cult by some journalists. According to reporters, members believe they are solely responsible for the protection of civilization and some work long hours for little pay to further their mission. The LaRouche movement has been accused of repeatedly harassing public officials, politicians, journalists, ex-members, and critics. The movement has had a number of notable collaborators and members.
Political organizations
In 1986, LaRouche testified that there is "no such thing as a LaRouche organization". A spokesman said LaRouche was like the "guiding light" of a variety of "separate organizations".LaRouche-affiliated political parties have nominated many hundreds of candidates for national and regional offices in the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, for almost thirty years. In countries outside the U.S., the LaRouche movement maintains its own minor parties, and they have had no significant electoral success to date. In the U.S., however, they are active in the Democratic Party, and individuals associated with the movement have successfully sought party office in some elections, particularly Democratic County Central Committee posts.
International
The Schiller InstituteSchiller Institute
The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
and the International Caucus of Labor Committees (ICLC) are international organizations that mobilize on behalf of the LaRouche Movement. Schiller Institute conferences have been held across the world. The ICLC is affiliated to political parties in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, and several South American countries. Lyndon LaRouche, who is based in Loudoun County, Virginia
Loudoun County, Virginia
Loudoun County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and is part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the county is estimated to be home to 312,311 people, an 84 percent increase over the 2000 figure of 169,599. That increase makes the county the fourth...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is a German political activist, wife of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and founder of the LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute and the German Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party .She has run for political office several times in Germany, representing small...
, based in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
, Germany, regularly attend these international conferences and have met foreign politicians, bureaucrats, and academics.
Political activities
U.S. Labor Party
The U.S. Labor Party was a political party formed in 1973 by the National Caucus of Labor Committees . It served as a vehicle for Lyndon LaRouche to run for President of the United States in 1976, but it also sponsored many candidates for local offices and Congressional and Senate seats between...
. In the next seven campaigns he campaigned for the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
nomination. In support of those efforts he has created campaign committees and a PAC
Political action committee
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...
, and has attempted to gain entrance to caucus
Caucus
A caucus is a meeting of supporters or members of a political party or movement, especially in the United States and Canada. As the use of the term has been expanded the exact definition has come to vary among political cultures.-Origin of the term:...
es, debates, and conventions
Political convention
In politics, a political convention is a meeting of a political party, typically to select party candidates.In the United States, a political convention usually refers to a presidential nominating convention, but it can also refer to state, county, or congressional district nominating conventions...
for himself and supporters. He was a successful fundraiser
Fundraiser
A fundraiser is an event or campaign whose primary purpose is to raise money for a cause. See also: fundraising. A fundraiser can also be an individual or company whose primary job is to raise money for a specific charity or non-profit organization...
in 2004 by some measures, and received federal matching funds
Matching funds
Matching funds, a term used to describe the requirement or condition that a generally minimal amount of money or services-in-kind originate from the beneficiaries of financial amounts, usually for a purpose of charitable or public good.-Charitable causes:...
. See Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns
Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns
Lyndon LaRouche's U.S. Presidential campaigns were a staple of American politics between 1976 and 2004. LaRouche ran for president on eight consecutive occasions, a record for any candidate, and has tied Harold Stassen's record as a perennial candidate. LaRouche ran for the Democratic nomination...
.
In 1986 the LaRouche movement placed its AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
initiative, Proposition 64
California Proposition 64 (1986)
Proposition 64 was a proposition in the state of California on the November 4, 1986 ballot. It was an initiative statute that would have restored Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome to the list of communicable diseases...
, on the California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
ballot, which lost by a 4-1 margin. It was re-introduced in 1988 and lost again by the same margin. Federal and state officials raided movement offices in 1986. In the ensuing trials, leaders of the movement received prison terms for conspiracy to commit fraud, mail fraud, and tax evasion. See LaRouche criminal trials.
In 1986, LaRouche movement members Janice Hart
Janice Hart
Janice Hart was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Illinois Secretary of State in 1986.Hart, a political unknown and a LaRouche movement activist since the age of 17, unexpectedly won the Democratic Party's nomination. Her opponent, Aurelia Pucinski, came from a politically-prominent...
and Mark J. Fairchild won the Democratic Primary elections for the offices of Illinois Secretary of State and Illinois Lieutenant Governor
Lieutenant Governor of Illinois
The Lieutenant Governor of Illinois is the second highest executive of the State of Illinois. In Illinois, the lieutenant governor and governor run on a joint ticket, and are directly elected by popular vote. Candidates for lieutenant governor run separately in the primary from candidates for...
respectively. Up until the day following the election, major media outlets were reporting that George Sangmeister, Fairchild's primary opponent, was running unopposed. 21 years later Fairchild asked, “how is it possible that the major media, with all of their access to information, could possibly be mistaken in that way?” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III
Adlai Stevenson III
Adlai Ewing Stevenson III is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981.-Education, military service, and early career:...
was favored to win this election, having lost the previous election by a narrow margin amid allegations of vote fraud. However, he refused to run on the same slate with Hart and Fairchild. Instead, Stevenson formed the Solidarity Party
Solidarity Party
The Solidarity Party was an American political party in the state of Illinois. It was named after Lech Wałęsa's Solidarity movement in Poland, which was widely-admired in Illinois at the time .The party was founded in 1986 by Senator Adlai Stevenson III in reaction to the Democratic Party's...
and ran with Jane Spirgel as the Secretary of State nominee. Hart and Spirgel's opponent, Republican incumbent Jim Edgar
Jim Edgar
James Edgar is an American politician who was the 38th Governor of Illinois from 1991 to 1999 and Illinois Secretary of State from 1981 to 1991. As a moderate Republican in a largely blue-leaning state, Edgar was a popular and successful governor, leaving office with high approval ratings...
, won the election by the largest margin in any state-wide election in Illinois history, with 1.574 million votes.
After the Illinois primary Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) blasted his own party for pursuing a policy of ignoring the "infiltration by the neo-Nazi elements of Lyndon H. LaRouche," and worried that too often, especially in the media, "the LaRouchites" are "dismissed as kooks." "In an age of ideology, in an age of totalitarianism, it will not suffice for a political party to be indifferent to and ignorant about such a movement," said Moynihan. Moynihan had previously faced a primary challenge in 1982 from Mel Klenetsky, a Jewish associate of LaRouche, and had called Klenetsky "anti-Semitic."
In 1988, Claude Jones won the chairmanship of the Harris County
Harris County, Texas
As of the 2010 Census, the population of the county was 4,092,459, White Americans made up 56.6% of Harris County's population; non-Hispanic whites represented 33.0% of the population. Black Americans made up 18.9% of the population. Native Americans made up 0.7% of Harris County's population...
Democratic Party in Houston, only to be stripped of his authority by the county executive committee before he could take office. He was removed from office by the state party chairman a few months later, in February 1989, because of Jones's alleged opposition to the Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
, in favor of LaRouche.
The LaRouche movement is reported by multiple sources, including journalists Jason Berry
Jason Berry
Jason Berry is an investigative reporter in New Orleans, an American author and film director. He is renowned for pioneering investigative reporting on sexual abuse in the priesthood of the Catholic Church....
and George Johnson
George Johnson (writer)
George Johnson is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics , and writes for a number of publications, including The New York...
, to have had close ties to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party of Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
. It was a leading opponent of the UN sanctions
United Nations Security Council Resolution 661
In United Nations Security Council Resolution 661, adopted on August 6, 1990, reaffirming Resolution 660 and noting Iraq's refusal to comply with it and Kuwait's right of self-defence, the Council took steps to implement international sanctions on Iraq under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter...
against Iraq in 1991 and the subsequent Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
in 1992. Supporters formed the "Committee to Save the Children in Iraq". LaRouche blamed the sanctions and war on "Israeli-controlled Moslem fundamentalist groups" and the "Ariel Sharon-dominated government of Israel" whose policies were "dictated by Kissinger and company, through the Hollinger Corporation, which has taken over The Jerusalem Post for that purpose." Left-wing anti-war groups were divided over the LaRouche movement's involvement.
In 2000, the Democratic nominee in Wyoming for the Senate, Mel Logan, was a LaRouche follower; the Republican incumbent, Craig Thomas, won in a 76%-23% landslide. In 2001, a "national citizen-candidates' movement" was created, advancing candidates for a number of elective offices across the country.
In 2006, LaRouche Youth Movement activist and Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee member Cody Jones was honored as "Democrat of the Year" for the 43rd Assembly District of California, by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. At the April 2007 California State Democratic Convention, LYM activist Quincy O'Neal was elected vice-chairman of the California State Democratic Black Caucus, and Wynneal Innocentes was elected corresponding secretary of the Filipino Caucus.
In November 2007, Mark Fairchild returned to Illinois to promote legislation authored by LaRouche, called the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act of 2007, that would establish a moratorium on home foreclosure
Foreclosure
Foreclosure is the legal process by which a mortgage lender , or other lien holder, obtains a termination of a mortgage borrower 's equitable right of redemption, either by court order or by operation of law...
s and establish a new federal agency to oversee all federal and state banks. He also promoted LaRouche's plan to build a high-speed railroad to connect Russia and the United States, including a tunnel under the Bering Strait
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...
.
In 2009, the LaRouche movement printed pamphlets showing President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and Hitler laughing together, and posters of Obama wearing a Hitler-style mustache. In Seattle, police have been called twice in response to people threatening to tear the posters apart, or to assault the LaRouche supporters holding them. At one widely reported event, Congressman Barney Frank
Barney Frank
Barney Frank is the U.S. Representative for . A member of the Democratic Party, he is the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States.Born and raised in New Jersey, Frank graduated from Harvard College and...
referred to the posters as "vile, contemptible nonsense."
In March 2010, LaRouche Youth leader Kesha Rogers won the Democratic congressional primary in Houston, Texas' 22nd District. The following day, a spokeswoman for the Texas Democratic Party stated that "La Rouche members are not Democrats. I guarantee her campaign will not receive a single dollar from anyone on our staff."
Alleged violence and harassment
The LaRouche movement members have had a reputation for engaging in violence, harassment, and heckling since the 1970s. While LaRouche repeatedly repudiated violence, followers were reported in the 1970s and 1980s to have been charged with possession of weapons and explosives along with a number of violent crimes, including kidnapping and assault. However there were few, if any, convictions on these charges.The harassing of individuals and organizations is reportedly systematic and strategic. Some of the targets are prominent individuals, while others are common citizens speaking out against the movement. The group itself refers to these methods as "psywar techniques," and defends them as necessary to shake people up; George Johnson
George Johnson (writer)
George Johnson is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics , and writes for a number of publications, including The New York...
has written that, believing the general population to be hopelessly indoctrinated by the mass media, they "fight back with words that stick in one's mind like shards of glass." He quotes movement member Paul Goldstein saying: "We're not very nice, so we're hated. Why be nice? It's a cruel world. We're in a war and the human race is up for grabs."
1960s and Operation Mop-Up
In the 1960s and 1970s, LaRouche were accused of fomenting violence at anti-war rallies with a small band of followers. According to LaRouche's autobiography, it was in 1969 that violent altercations began between his members and New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
groups. He wrote that Mark Rudd
Mark Rudd
Mark William Rudd is a political organizer, mathematics instructor, and anti-war activist, most well known for his involvement with the Weather Underground. Rudd became a member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society in 1963. By 1968, he had emerged as a leader...
's faction began assaulting LaRouche's faction at Columbia University. "Other organized physical attacks against my friends would follow, inside the United States and abroad," he wrote. "Communist Party goon-squad attacks began in Chicago, in summer 1972, and continued sporadically up to the concerted assault launched during March 1973. During 1972, there was also a goon-attack on associates of mine by the SWP
Socialist Workers Party (United States)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far-left political organization in the United States. The group places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba...
."
According to the Village Voice and the Washington Post the National Caucus of Labor Committees
National Caucus of Labor Committees
The National Caucus of Labor Committees is a political cadre organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association"....
(NCLC), an organization founded and controlled by LaRouche, became embroiled in the early 1970s in conflicts with other leftist groups, culminating in "Operation Mop-Up" which consisted of a series of physical attacks on members of rival left wing groups.
During "Operation Mop-Up," LaRouche's New Solidarity reported NCLC confrontations with members of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party. One incident took place April 23, 1973 at a debate featuring Labor Committee mayoral candidate Tony Chaitkin
Anton Chaitkin
Anton "Tony" Chaitkin is an author, historian, conspiracy theorist, and political activist with the LaRouche movement. He serves as History Editor for Executive Intelligence Review....
. The meeting erupted in a brawl, with chairs flying. Six people were treated for injuries at a local hospital. In Buffalo, two NCLC organizers were arrested and charged with 2nd degree felonious assault after an attack that left one person with a broken leg and another with a broken arm. Dennis King writes that LaRouche halted the operation when police arrested several of his followers on assault charges, and after the groups under attack formed joint defense teams.
In the mid-1973 the movement formed a Revolutionary Youth Movement to recruit and politicize members of street gangs in New York City and other eastern cities. In September 1973 ten members of the NCLC were arrested for causing a melee at a Newark City Council meeting that involved 100 demonstrators, reported to be the third incident that week. The NCLC reportedly trained some members in terrorist and guerilla warfare. Topics included weapons handling, explosives and demolition, close order drills, small unit tactics, and military history.
The USLP vs. the FBI
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
memo", which he says showed "that the FBI was considering supporting an assassination attempt against LaRouche by the Communist Party USA." LaRouche wrote in 1998:
The FBI was concerned that the movement might try to take power by force. FBI Director Clarence Kelly testified in 1976 about the LaRouche movement:
The LaRouche movement is reported to have harassed and threatened various federal agents from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, in some cases reportedly directed by the security unit run by Jeffrey and Michelle Steinberg. Two young followers, Abi Steinberg and Andrea Konviser, told of calling FBI agents in the middle of the night to tell them dirty jokes in 1974, and such calls were reported again in 1978.
Association with Roy Frankhouser and Mitch WerBell
In the later 1970s, the U.S. Labor Party came into contact with Roy Frankhouser
Roy Frankhouser
Roy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. , was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a member of the American Nazi Party, a government informant, and a security consultant to Lyndon LaRouche. Frankhouser was reported by federal officials to have been arrested at least 142 times...
, a convicted felon and government informant who had infiltrated a variety of extremist groups. The LaRouche organization believed Frankhouser to be a federal agent who had been assigned to infiltrate right-wing and left-wing groups, and that he had evidence that these groups were actually being manipulated or controlled by the FBI and other agencies. Frankhouser introduced LaRouche to Mitchell WerBell III
Mitchell Werbell III
Mitchell Livingston WerBell III, , was an OSS operative, Soldier of Fortune, Paramilitary trainer, firearms engineer, and arms dealer.- Early life and OSS service :...
, a former Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
operative, paramilitary trainer, and arms dealer. Some members allegedly took a six-day "anti-terrorist" course a training camp operated by WerBell in Powder Springs, Georgia. LaRouche denied in 1979 that the training sessions took place. WerBell introduced LaRouche to covert operations specialist General John K. Singlaub
John K. Singlaub
John Kirk Singlaub is a highly-decorated former OSS officer and a retired Major General in the United States Army, and a founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency . He was a joint founder, with Congressman Larry McDonald, of the Western Goals Foundation, a conservative private...
, who later alleged that members of the movement implied in discussions with him that the military might help "lead the country out of its problems", a view which he rejected. WerBell also introduced LaRouche to Larry Cooper, a Powder Springs, Georgia
Powder Springs, Georgia
Powder Springs is a city in Cobb County, Georgia, United States. The population was 13,940 at the 2010 census.- History :The town of Powder Springs was incorporated as Springville in 1838 in the lands of two Cherokee Indian chiefs, Chief Nose and Chief Ana Kanasta . Gold had been discovered in...
police captain. Cooper, Frankhouser and an associate of Frankhouser named Forrest Lee Fick later made allegations about LaRouche. Cooper said in an NBC broadcast interview in 1984 that LaRouche had proposed the assassination of Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
, Joseph Luns
Joseph Luns
Joseph Marie Antoine Hubert Luns was a Dutch politician and diplomat of the defunct Catholic People's Party now merged into the Christian Democratic Appeal . He was the longest-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs from September 2, 1952 until July 6, 1971...
, and David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller, Sr. is the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. His five siblings were...
. Frankhouser made numerous allegations about LaRouche, including that he said prosecutor William Weld
William Weld
William Floyd Weld is a former governor of the US state of Massachusetts. He served as that state's 68th governor from 1991 to 1997. From 1981 to 1988, he was a federal prosecutor in the United States Justice Department...
"does not deserve to live. He should get a bullet between the eyes." A spokesman for the movement "denied LaRouche had ever made such a statement". In 1984, LaRouche said that he had employed WerBell as a security consultant, but that the allegations coming from Werbell's circle were fabrications that originated with operatives of the FBI and other agencies.
Labor unions
In 1974 and 1975, the NCLC targeted the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
(UAW), United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
(UFW), and other trade unionists. They declared open war and dubbed their campaign "Operation Mop Up Woodcock", a reference to their violent anti-communist campaign of 1973 and to UAW president Leonard Woodcock
Leonard Woodcock
Leonard Freel Woodcock was an American labor union leader and diplomat.He was the president of the United Automobile Workers from 1970 to 1977 and the first US ambassador to the People's Republic of China....
. The movement staged demonstrations that turned violent. They issued pamphlets attacking the leadership as corrupt and perverted. The UAW said that members had received dozens of calls a day accusing their relatives of homosexuality, reportedly at the direction of NCLC "security staff". Leaflets called an Ohio local president a "Woodcocksucker". The leadership of the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
was also attacked. During the same period, the LaRouche movement was closely associated with the Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
union which was in a jurisdictional dispute with the UFW.
1980 New Hampshire presidential primary
LaRouche put substantial effort into his first Democratic Primary, held February 1980 in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
. Reporters, campaign workers, and party officials received calls from people impersonating reporters or ADL staff members, inquiring what "bad news" they had heard about LaRouche. LaRouche acknowledged that his campaign workers used impersonation to collect information on political opponents. Governor Hugh Gallen
Hugh Gallen
Hugh J. Gallen was an American automobile dealer and Democratic politician from Littleton, New Hampshire. After serving in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, he won two terms as Governor....
, State Attorney General Thomas Rath and other officials received harassing phone calls. Their names appeared on a photocopied "New Hampshire Target List" acquired by Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, found in a LaRouche campaign worker's hotel room; the list stated, "these are the criminals to burn – we want calls coming in to these fellows day and night". LaRouche spokesman Ted Andromidas said, "We did choose to target those people for political pressure hopefully to prevent them from carrying out the kind of fraud that occurred in Tuesday's election." A New Hampshire journalist, Jon Prestage, had a tense interview with LaRouche and several of his associates, and was threatened if he used the interview in his story. A LaRouche associate denied responsibility for the dead cats.
Leesburg, Virginia
In the mid-1980s LaRouche moved his headquarters from New York City to Leesburg, Virginia
Leesburg, Virginia
Leesburg is a historic town in, and county seat of, Loudoun County, Virginia, United States of America. Leesburg is located west-northwest of Washington, D.C. along the base of the Catoctin Mountain and adjacent to the Potomac River. Its population according the 2010 Census is 42,616...
. The movement invested in real estate, opened offices, started a newspaper, bought a radio station, and opened a bookstore. Hundreds of followers settled in the area. The newspaper, The Loudoun County News, ran advertisements for local merchants without their authorization to give the impression of community support, and claimed harassment when challenged. Residents, including Agnes Harrison and Leesburg Mayor Robert Sevila, reported that armed guards quickly appeared and pointed guns at people who stopped along the road outside LaRouche's estate. Local critics reported receiving threatening phone calls. LaRouche followers handed out leaflets in front of a church which said that five local residents had "allied themselves knowingly with persons and organizations which are part of the international drug lobby."
A Leesburg businessman who told a reporter about rumors of injuries to animals, including a horse who was poisoned and a dog who had been skinned, was sued for $2 million, and when the suit was dismissed by a district judge the LaRouche movement appealed it to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Leesburg Garden Club was singled out for attention. LaRouche called it a "nest of Soviet fellow travellers," whose members were "cacking busybodies in this Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves." Warren J. Hammerman, chairman of the National Democratic Policy Committee, said "Because the drug-running threat is Soviet-backed and the Garden Club is fighting LaRouche on drugs, they are serving as Soviet agents."
Harassment of officials
According to courtroom testimony by FBI agent Richard Egan, Jeffrey and Michelle Steinberg, the heads of LaRouche's security unit, boasted of placing harassing phone calls all through the night to the general counsel of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) when the FEC was investigating LaRouche's political contributions.
During the grand jury hearings followers picketed the courthouse, chanted "Weld is a fag", distributed leaflets accusing Weld of involvement in drug dealing, and "sang a jingle advocating that he be hanged in public".
The Schiller Institute
Schiller Institute
The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
sent a team of ten people, headed by James Bevel
James Bevel
James L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...
, to Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
, to pursue the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations
Franklin child prostitution ring allegations
The Franklin child prostitution ring allegations were a series of high-profile accusations and legal actions between 1988 and 1991 surrounding an alleged child sex ring serving prominent citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, as well as high-level U.S. politicians. The allegations centered around the actions...
in 1990. Among the charges investigated by the grand jury was that the Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman and other men had sex with a 15-year old woman at a party held by the bank's owner. The LaRouche groups insisted there was a coverup. They distributed copies of the Schiller Institute's New Federalist newspaper that contained accusations about leading Omaha citizens, especially Wadman. They went door-to-door in Wadman's neighborhood telling residents that their neighbor was a child molester. When Wadman took a job with the police department in Aurora, Illinois
Aurora, Illinois
Aurora is the second most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the 112th largest city in the United States. A suburb of Chicago, located west of the Loop, its population in 2010 was 197,899. Originally founded within Kane County, Aurora's city limits have expanded greatly over the past...
, LaRouche followers went there to demand that he be fired, and after he left there they followed him to a third city to make accusations.
Harassment of politicians
In the 1970s, Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
was a central figure in the conspiracy theories espoused by LaRouche. An FBI file described the LaRouche movement as "clandestinely oriented group of political schizophrenics who have a paranoid preoccupation with Nelson Rockefeller and the CIA." Rockefeller's nomination for U.S. Vice President was strongly opposed by the LaRouche movement, and its members heckled his appearances. Federal authorities were reported to be concerned that the movement's hatred of Rockefeller would turn violent.
A special target of LaRouche's attention is Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
. LaRouche called Kissinger a "faggot", a "British agent", a "Soviet agent of influence", a "traitor", a "Nazi", and a "murderer", and linked him to the murder of Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....
. His followers heckled and disrupted Kissinger's appearances. The same year a member of LaRouche's Fusion Energy Foundation
Fusion Energy Foundation
Fusion Energy Foundation was a non-profit think tank cofounded by Lyndon LaRouche in 1974 in New York. It promoted the construction of nuclear power plants, research into fusion power and beam weapons and other causes. The FEF was called fusion's greatest private supporter...
, Ellen Kaplan, shouted "Is it true that you sleep with young boys at the Carlyle Hotel?" at Kissinger on an airport terminal while he and his wife, Nancy, were on their way to a heart operation. In response, Nancy Kissinger grabbed the woman by the throat. Kaplan pressed charges and the case went to trial. In 1986 Janice Hart held a press conference to say that Kissinger was part of the international "drug mafia". Asked whether Jews were behind drug trafficking Hart replied, "That's totally nonsense. I don't consider Henry Kissinger a Jew. I consider Henry Kissinger a homosexual."
A LaRouche organization distributed almost-pornographic posters of Illinois politician Jane Byrne
Jane Byrne
Jane Margaret Byrne was the first and to date only female Mayor of Chicago. She served from April 16, 1979 to April 29, 1983. Chicago is the largest city in the United States to have had a female mayor as of 2011.-Early political career:...
, and called other female politicians "prostitutes" and their husbands "pimps", according to Mike Royko
Mike Royko
Michael "Mike" Royko was a newspaper columnist in Chicago, who won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary...
. In 1986, two LaRouche candidates, Janice Hart
Janice Hart
Janice Hart was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Illinois Secretary of State in 1986.Hart, a political unknown and a LaRouche movement activist since the age of 17, unexpectedly won the Democratic Party's nomination. Her opponent, Aurelia Pucinski, came from a politically-prominent...
and Mark Fairchild, won surprise victories in the Democratic primaries for two statewide positions in Illinois, Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor. Campaign appearances by democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III
Adlai Stevenson III
Adlai Ewing Stevenson III is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981.-Education, military service, and early career:...
, who refused to share the ticket with them and shifted instead to the "Solidarity Party" formed for the purpose, were interrupted by a trio of singers that included Fairchild and Chicago Mayoral candidate Sheila Jones. Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan
Neil Hartigan
Neil F. Hartigan is an Illinois Democrat who has served as Illinois Attorney General, the 40th Lieutenant Governor, and a judge of the Illinois Appellate Court. Hartigan also was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1990 but lost the race to Republican Jim Edgar.-Background:Hartigan grew up in...
's home was visited late at night by a group of LaRouche followers who chanted, sang, and used a bullhorn "to exorcise the demons out of Neil Hartigan's soul". Hart and an associate were charged with disorderly conduct when they handed a piece of raw liver to the Roman Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland
Rembert Weakland
Rembert George Weakland was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 to 2002. He is the author of A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop, which explores Church reform issues, his homosexuality, and the child abuse crisis....
of Milwaukee who was addressing a synagogue in Glencoe
Glencoe, Illinois
Glencoe is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2010 census, the village population was 8,723. Glencoe is located on suburban Chicago's North Shore. Glencoe is located within the New Trier High School District. Glencoe is regarded as one of the most affluent suburbs on...
, saying that it represented the "pound of flesh extracted by Hitler" during the Holocaust. Before the primaries a group of LaRouche supporters reportedly stormed the campaign offices of Hart's opponent and demanded that a worker "take an AIDS test".
In 1984 a reporter for a LaRouche publication buttonholed President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
as he was leaving a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
press conference, demanding to know why LaRouche was not receiving Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
protection. As a result, future press conferences in the East Room
East Room
The East Room is the largest room in the White House, the home of the president of the United States. It is used for entertaining, press conferences, ceremonies, and occasionally for a large dinner...
were arranged with the door behind the president so he can leave without passing through the reporters. In 1992, a follower shook hands with President George H.W. Bush at a campaign visit to a shopping center. The follower would not let go, demanding to know, "When are you going to let LaRouche out of jail?" The Secret Service had to intervene.
During the 1988 presidential campaign, LaRouche activists spread a rumor that the Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
, had received professional treatment for two episodes of mental despression. Media sources did not report the rumor initially to avoid validating it. However at a press conference a reporter for a LaRouche publication, Nicholas Benton, asked President Reagan whether Dukakis should release his medical records. Reagan replied "Look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid." Within an hour after the press conference Reagan apologized for the joke. The question received wide publicity, and was later analyzed as an example of how journalists should handle rumors. Republican candidate Vice President George H.W. Bush's aides got involved in sustaining the story, and Dukakis was obliged to deny having had depression. To avoid the negative backlash on his own campaign, Bush made a statement urging Congress to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act, which he signed upon gaining office and which became one of his proudest legacies.
At a 2003 Democratic primary debate repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.Born in Stamford, Connecticut,...
quoted John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, "no one's been elected since 1972 that Lyndon LaRouche and his people have not protested". The first reported incidence of heckling by LaRouche followers was at the Watergate hearings in 1973. Since then, LaRouche followers have interrupted events featuring J. Bowyer Bell
J. Bowyer Bell
J. Bowyer Bell was an American historian, artist and art critic.-Background and early life:Bell was born into an Episcopalian family on 15 November 1931 in New York City. The family later moved to Alabama, from where Bell attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, majoring in...
, Andrew Bernstein
Andrew Bernstein
Andrew Bernstein is a proponent of Ayn Rand's "Objectivism", an author, and a professor of philosophy.Bernstein holds a PhD in philosophy and is the author of The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic, and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire, Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Case for...
, Julian Bond
Julian Bond
Horace Julian Bond , known as Julian Bond, is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
, Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
, Richard R. Burt, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, Wesley K. Clark, Howard Dean
Howard Dean
Howard Brush Dean III is an American politician and physician from Vermont. He served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont and ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Although his U.S...
, John Edwards
John Edwards
Johnny Reid "John" Edwards is an American politician, who served as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina. He was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004, and was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008.He defeated incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in...
, Bob Kerrey
Bob Kerrey
Joseph Robert "Bob" Kerrey was the 35th Governor of Nebraska from 1983 to 1987 and a U.S. Senator from Nebraska . Having served in the Vietnam War, earning the Medal of Honor for his actions, he moved into politics. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992...
, John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
, Lawrence Klein
Lawrence Klein
Lawrence Robert Klein is an American economist. For his work in creating computer models to forecast economic trends in the field of econometrics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1980...
, Richard Lamm
Richard Lamm
Richard Douglas "Dick" Lamm is an American politician, Certified Public Accountant, college professor, and lawyer. He served three terms as 38th Governor of Colorado as a Democrat and ran for the Reform Party's nomination for President of the United States in 1996.He is currently the Co-Director...
, Joseph Lieberman, Sir Robert Mark
Robert Mark
Sir Robert Mark, GBE, QPM was an English police officer who served as Chief Constable of Leicester City Police, and later as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1972 to 1977....
, Paul Martin
Paul Martin
Paul Edgar Philippe Martin, PC , also known as Paul Martin, Jr. is a Canadian politician who was the 21st Prime Minister of Canada, as well as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada....
, Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...
, Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
, Oliver North
Oliver North
Oliver Laurence North is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, political commentator, host of War Stories with Oliver North on Fox News Channel, a military historian, and a New York Times best-selling author....
, Ross Perot
Ross Perot
Henry Ross Perot is a U.S. businessman best known for running for President of the United States in 1992 and 1996. Perot founded Electronic Data Systems in 1962, sold the company to General Motors in 1984, and founded Perot Systems in 1988...
, Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum
Richard John "Rick" Santorum is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference -making him the third-ranking Senate Republican from 2001 until his leave in 2007. Santorum is considered both a social...
, Sergio Sarmiento, Paul A. Volcker, and Leonard Woodcock
Leonard Woodcock
Leonard Freel Woodcock was an American labor union leader and diplomat.He was the president of the United Automobile Workers from 1970 to 1977 and the first US ambassador to the People's Republic of China....
. LaRouche followers have disrupted political debates, college classes, meetings of a United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
development study group and of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
supporters on university campuses, and even a Columbus Day parade in New York City.
Harassment of journalists
Joe Klein
Joe Klein
Joe Klein is a longtime Washington, D.C. and New York journalist and columnist, known for his novel Primary Colors, an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim...
writes that Boston's The Real Paper
The Real Paper
The Real Paper was a Boston alternative weekly newspaper with a circulation of 50,000. It ran from August 2, 1972, to June 18, 1981, often devoting space to counterculture issues of the early 1970s. The offices were located on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.The Cambridge Phoenix...
decided to write an article about the LaRouche movement as a result of the violence in 1973. One reporter who attended a NCLC meeting was thrown against a wall. LaRouche called Klein "a liar and a degenerate", and Klein's family began receiving threatening calls. Journalist Charles Fager says that his article on LaRouche for the paper was spiked because of legal and physical threats.
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
columnist Mike Royko
Mike Royko
Michael "Mike" Royko was a newspaper columnist in Chicago, who won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary...
wrote several times of being harassed by the LaRouche movement, which he had covered since at least 1979. He once traced to the LaRouche movement leaflets which claimed that he had undergone a sex-change operation. (He wrote that it did not bother him as he had evidence to the contrary.) Royko wrote that, after writing about a LaRouche front group called "Citizens for Chicago", his assistant found a note attached to her apartment door that had a bullseye and a threat to kill her cat. LaRouche followers denied the allegation. In 1986, LaRouche followers picketed Royko's newspaper offices calling him a "degenerate drug pusher" and demanding that he take an AIDS test. When LaRouche was imprisoned in 1989, Royko wrote a column to inform LaRouche's fellow inmates about the history of cat killing and suggested that "any cat-lovers among them do whatever they feel is appropriate." LaRouche sought an injunction to prevent the column, which the suit said used "fighting words", from being printed in the paper near his jail but his request was rejected by the Circuit Court.
Dennis King began covering LaRouche in the 1970s, publishing a twelve-part series in a weekly Manhattan newspaper, Our Town, and later writing or cowriting articles about LaRouche in New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, High Times, Columbia Journalism Review
Columbia Journalism Review
The Columbia Journalism Review is an American magazine for professional journalists published bimonthly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961....
, and other periodicals, culminating in a full length biography published in 1989. King describes numerous instances of harassment and threats. Leaflets accusing King, a news paper publisher, and the newspaper's lawyer of being criminals, homosexuals, or drug pushers. One leaflet included King's home address and phone number. He says that in 1980 he received a phone call threatening him with rape and murder, one of an estimated 500 abusive or hang-up calls he received by 1985. In 1984 a LaRouche newspaper, New Solidarity, published an article titled "Will Dennis King Come out of the Closet?", copies of which were distributed in his apartment building. His family also received calls that included threats to murder King. Jeffrey Steinberg denied the movement had harassed King. LaRouche said that King had been "monitored" since 1979, "We have watched this little scoundrel because he is a major security threat to my life."
In 1984, Patricia Lynch was a co-produceer of an NBC news piece and a TV documentary on LaRouche. She was then impersonated by LaRouche followers who interfered with her reporting. LaRouche sued Lynch and NBC for libel, and NBC countersued. During the trial followers picketed the NBC's offices with signs that said "Lynch Pat Lynch", and the NBC switchboard received a death threat. A LaRouche spokesman said they had no knowledge of the death threat. In later years LaRouche accused NBC or its reporters of various charges. At a press conference in 1986 he refused to take questions from the NBC reporter, saying "How could I talk to a drug pusher like you." In addition to charge of drug dealing, LaRouche publications also accused NBC of plotting his assassination.
The state editor of the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania
State College, Pennsylvania
State College is the largest borough in Centre County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Centre County. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034, and roughly double...
reported that a LaRouche TV crew led by Stanley Ezrol talked their way into his house in 1985 implying they were with NBC, then accused him of harassing LaRouche and interrogated him about why he had written what they alleged were negative stories about LaRouche. At the end of the interview" Ezrol asked "Have you ever feared for your personal safety?", which the editor found to be "chilling". Another LaRouche group, including Janice Hart
Janice Hart
Janice Hart was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Illinois Secretary of State in 1986.Hart, a political unknown and a LaRouche movement activist since the age of 17, unexpectedly won the Democratic Party's nomination. Her opponent, Aurelia Pucinski, came from a politically-prominent...
, forced their way into the office of The Des Moines Registers editor in 1987, then harangued him over his papers's coverage of LaRouche and demanded that certain editorials be retracted because the paper's "economic policies stink".
Public altercations
In the mid-80s, the Secretary of State of California, March Fong Eu
March Fong Eu
March Kong Fong Eu is an American politician of the Democratic Party.Fong earned a Bachelor of Science in dentistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1943 and a Master of Arts from Mills College. She earned a Ed.D...
, received numerous complaints from the public about harassment by people gathering signatures to qualify the "LaRouche AIDS Initiative
California Proposition 64 (1986)
Proposition 64 was a proposition in the state of California on the November 4, 1986 ballot. It was an initiative statute that would have restored Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome to the list of communicable diseases...
" for the state ballot. She warned initiative sponsors that permission to circulate the petitions could be revoked unless the "offensive activities" stopped. An altercation in 1987 between a LaRouche activist and an AIDS worker resulted in battery charges filed against the latter, who was outraged by the content of some of the material on display; she was found not guilty.
In California in 2009, several grocery chains sought restraining orders, damages and injunctions against LaRouche PAC activists displaying materials related to Obama's health care plan in front of their stores, citing customer complaints. In Edmonds, Washington
Edmonds, Washington
Edmonds is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. Edmonds has a view of Puget Sound and both the Olympic Mountains and Cascade Range. The third most populous city in Snohomish County after Everett and Marysville, the population was 39,709 according to the 2010 census...
, a 70-year old man from Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
grew irate at the comparisons of Obama and Hitler. He grabbed fliers and tussled with LaRouche supporters, resulting in assault charges against him.
Canada
The North American Labour PartyNorth American Labour Party
The North American Labour Party was a Canadian political party that nominated candidates in federal elections in the 1970s. However, because it was not a registered political party under the rules of Elections Canada, its candidates were considered to be independents.The NALP was the Canadian...
(NALP) nominated candidates in federal elections in the 1970s. Its candidates only had 297 votes nationwide in 1979. LaRouche himself offered a draft constitution for the commonwealth of Canada in 1981. The NALP later became the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada
Party for the Commonwealth of Canada
The Party for the Commonwealth of Canada was a Canadian political party formed by Canadians who supported the ideology of U.S. politician Lyndon LaRouche in the 1984, 1988 and 1993 elections....
and that ran candidates in the 1984, 1988 and 1993 elections. Those were more successful, gaining as many as 7,502 votes in 1993, but no seats. The Parti pour la république du Canada (Québec)
Parti pour la république du Canada (Québec)
The Parti pour la république du Canada was the Quebec branch of the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada, a Canadian political party formed by supporters of U.S. politician Lyndon LaRouche...
nominated candidates for provincial elections in the 1980s under various party titles. The LaRouche affiliate now operates as the Committee for the Republic of Canada.
Latin America
BrazilBrazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
's Party for Rebuilding of National Order (PRONA) is described as a "LaRouche friend" and one of its members has been quoted in the Executive Intelligence Review as saying "We associate ourselves with the wave of ideas which flow from Mr. LaRouche's prodigious mind". PRONA gained six seats in the Chamber of Deputies in 2002. However there is no independent evidence that the PRONA or its leaders recognize LaRouche as an influence on their policies, and it has been described as being part of the right-wing Catholic integralist political tradition.
The Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) has been described as an offshoot of LaRouche's Labor Party in Mexico. During peace talks to resolve the Chiapas conflict
Chiapas conflict
The Chiapas conflict generally refers to the Zapatista uprising and its aftermath, but has to be understood in relation to the history of marginalization of indigenous peoples and subsistence farmers in the state of Chiapas, Mexico....
, the Mexican Labor Party and the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) attacked the peace process and one of the leading negotiators, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who it accused of formenting the violence and of being controlled by foreigners. Posters caricaturing Ruiz as a rattlesnake appeared across the country.
The movement strongly opposes perceived manifestations of neo-colonialism, including the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
, the Falklands/Malvinas War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
, etc., and are advocates of the Monroe Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
.
Australia
Citizens Electoral Council
The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia is a minor nationalist political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007...
(CEC) in the mid-1990s. The CEC publishes an irregular newspaper, The New Citizen. Craig Isherwood and his spouse Noelene Isherwood are the leaders of the party. The CEC has opposed politician Michael Danby
Michael Danby
Michael David Danby is an Australian politician and has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives since October 1998, representing the Division of Melbourne Ports, Victoria...
and the 2004 Australian anti-terrorism legislation
Australian anti-terrorism legislation, 2004
Three anti-terrorism bills were enacted in the Australian Parliament in 2004 by a Coalition government with the Labor opposition's support. These were the Anti-terrorism bill, 2004, the Anti-terrorism bill , 2004 and the Anti-terrorism bill , 2004.-Anti-terrorism bill, 2004:The Attorney-General,...
. For the 2004 federal election, it nominated people for ninety-five seats, collected millions of dollars in contributions, and earned 34,177 votes.
The CEC is particularly concerned with Hamiltonian
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
economics and development ideas for Australia. It has been critical of Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
's ownership of an Australian zinc mine and believes that she exerts control over Australian politics through the use of prerogative power. It has been in an antagonistic relationship with the B'nai B'rith
B'nai B'rith
B'nai B'rith International |Covenant]]" is the oldest continually operating Jewish service organization in the world. It was initially founded as the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith in New York City, on , 1843, by Henry Jones and 11 others....
's Anti-Defamation Commission, which has been critical of the CEC for perceived anti-semitism. It has asserted that the Liberal Party
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
is a descendant of the New Guard
New Guard
The New Guard was a fascist movement in Australia formed in 1931. It was opposed to communism and democracy, called for class collaboration to replace class conflict, and engaged in street fighting against opponents and in plans for a coup d'etat against the Australian government...
and other purported fascists such as Sir Wilfrid Kent Hughes
Wilfrid Kent Hughes
Sir Wilfrid Selwyn Kent Hughes KBE, MVO, MC was an Australian soldier, Olympian and Olympic Games organiser, author and federal and state government minister.Kent Hughes was born in Melbourne to an upper middle-class family...
and Sir Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....
. The CEC also claims to be fighting for "real" Labor policies (from the 1930-40s republican leanings of the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
).
Europe
The LaRouche Movement has a major center in Germany. The Bürgerrechtsbewegung SolidaritätBürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität
Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität , or the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, is a German political party founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of U.S. political activist Lyndon LaRouche....
(BüSo) (Civil Rights Movement Solidarity) political party is headed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is a German political activist, wife of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and founder of the LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute and the German Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party .She has run for political office several times in Germany, representing small...
, LaRouche's wife. It has nominated candidates for elective office and publishes the Neue Solidarität newspaper. Zepp-LaRouche is also the head of the German-based Schiller Institute
Schiller Institute
The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
. In 1986 Zepp-LaRouche formed the "Patriots for Germany" party, and reportedly ran a full slate of 100 candidates. The party received 0.2 percent of the 4 million votes. In Germany, the leader of the Green Party, Petra Kelly
Petra Kelly
Petra Karin Kelly was a German politician and activist. She was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence worldwide.- Early life :...
, reported receiving harassing phone calls that she attributed to BüSo supporters. Her speeches were picketed and disrupted by LaRouche followers for years.
Jeremiah Duggan
Jeremiah Duggan
Jeremiah Duggan was a British student at the Sorbonne who died on 27 March 2003 in Wiesbaden, Germany, while attending a youth cadre school organized by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche....
, a Jewish student from the UK attending a conference organized by the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Youth Movement in 2003, died in Wiesbaden, Germany, after he ran down a busy road and was hit by several cars. The German police said it appeared to be suicide. A British court ruled out suicide and decided that Duggan had died while "in a state of terror." Duggan's mother believes he died in connection with an attempt to recruit him; a spokesman for the German public prosecution service said the mother simply cannot accept that her son committed suicide. The High Court in London ordered a second inquest in May 2010, which was opened and adjourned.
Solidarité et Progrès, headed by Jacques Cheminade
Jacques Cheminade
Jacques Cheminade, born August 20, 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a French political activist. He is associated with the LaRouche movement, an international network of groups led by the American political activist, Lyndon LaRouche. He was a candidate for the French presidential election, 1995...
, is the LaRouche party in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Its newspaper is Nouvelle Solidarité. The French LaRouche Youth Movement is headed by Elodie Viennot. Viennot supported the candidacy of Daniel Buchmann for the position of mayor of Berlin.
Swedish Social Democratic Youth League
The Swedish Social Democratic Youth League is a branch of the Swedish social democratic party Socialdemokraterna and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation...
(SSU), and was assigned to investigate (some would say infiltrate
Entryism
Entryism is a political tactic by which an organisation or state encourages its members or agents to infiltrate another organisation in an attempt to gain recruits, or take over entirely...
) the EAP and the left-posturing ELC. During this time, he was recruited to EAP and had his membership in SSU revoked. Following the Olof Palme assassination
Olof Palme assassination
The assassination of Olof Palme , the Prime Minister of Sweden, took place on 28 February 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, at 23:21 hours Central European Time . Palme was fatally wounded by gunshots while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen...
on February 28, 1986, the Swedish branch of the EAP came under scrutiny as literature published by the party was found in the apartment of the initial suspect, Victor Gunnarsson
Victor Gunnarsson
Victor Gunnarsson was a former Swedish right-wing extremist, who was a suspect in the 1986 Olof Palme assassination. He was later in turn murdered in 1993 in North Carolina by former police officer Lamont C...
. Also, the attacks against Olof Palme
Olof Palme
Sven Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician. A long-time protegé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 to his assassination, and was a two-term Prime Minister of Sweden, heading a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet...
run by the LaRouche movement since the beginning of the 1970s made the party a target for investigation. Within weeks of the assassination, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television in the U.S. broadcast a story alleging that LaRouche was somehow responsible. Later, the suspect was released.
In Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, four candidates for parliament on the LaRouche platform (Tom Gillesberg, Feride Istogu Gillesberg, Hans Schultz and Janus Kramer Møller) won 197 votes in the 2007 election (at least 32,000 votes are needed for a local mandate). The Danish LaRouche Movement (Schiller Instituttet) have recently published their first newspaper, distributing 50,000 around Copenhagen and Aarhus
Aarhus
Aarhus or Århus is the second-largest city in Denmark. The principal port of Denmark, Aarhus is on the east side of the peninsula of Jutland in the geographical center of Denmark...
.
The Movimento Solidarietà - Associazione di LaRouche in Italia (MSA) is an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
political party headed by Paolo Raimondi that supports the LaRouche platform.
Ortrun Cramer of the Schiller Institute became a delegate of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n International Progress Organization
International Progress Organization
The International Progress Organization is a Vienna-based think tank dealing with world affairs. As an international non-governmental organization it enjoys consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and is associated with the United Nations Department of...
in the 1990s, but there is no sign of ongoing relationship.
Polish newspapers have reported that Andrzej Lepper
Andrzej Lepper
Andrzej Zbigniew Lepper was a Polish politician who was the leader of Samoobrona RP political party....
, who leads the populist Samoobrona party, was trained at the Schiller Institute and has received funding from LaRouche, though both Lepper and LaRouche deny the connection.
In February 2008, the LaRouche movement throughout Europe began a campaign to prevent the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon
Treaty of Lisbon
The Treaty of Lisbon of 1668 was a peace treaty between Portugal and Spain, concluded at Lisbon on 13 February 1668, through the mediation of England, in which Spain recognized the sovereignty of Portugal's new ruling dynasty, the House of Braganza....
, which according to the U.S.-based LaRouche Political Action Committee "empowers a supranational financial elite to take over the right of taxation and war making, and even restore the death penalty, abolished in most nations of Western Europe." LaRouche press releases suggest that the treaty has an underlying fascist agenda, based on the ideas of Sir Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
.
Asia, Middle East, and Africa
The PhilippinesPhilippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
LaRouche Society calls for fixed exchange rate
Exchange rate
In finance, an exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency...
s, US/Philippine withdrawal from Iraq, denunciation of former US Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
, and withdrawal of U.S. military advisor
Military advisor
Military advisors, or combat advisors, are soldiers sent to foreign nations to aid that nation with its military training, organization, and other various military tasks. These soldiers are often sent to aid a nation without the potential casualties and political ramifications of actually...
s from Mindanao
Mindanao
Mindanao is the second largest and easternmost island in the Philippines. It is also the name of one of the three island groups in the country, which consists of the island of Mindanao and smaller surrounding islands. The other two are Luzon and the Visayas. The island of Mindanao is called The...
. In 2008 it also issued calls for the freezing of foreign debt payments, the operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, and the immediate implementation of a national food production program. It has an office in Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
, operates a radio show and says on its website, "Lyndon LaRouche is our civilization's last chance at world peace and development. May God help us." On the matter of internal politics, LaRouche operative Mike Billington
Michael Billington (activist)
Michael O. Billington is an activist in the LaRouche Movement, Asia editor for the Executive Intelligence Review, and author of Reflections of an American Political Prisoner: the Repression and Promise of the LaRouche Movement....
wrote in 2004, "The Philippines Catholic Church, too, is divided at the top over the crisis. The Church under Jaime Cardinal Sin
Jaime Cardinal Sin
Jaime Lachica Sin , was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila known for his instrumental role in the People Power Revolution, which toppled the regime of Ferdinand Marcos and installed Corazon Aquino as president of the Philippines...
, who is now retired, had given its full support to the 'people's power' charade for the overthrow of Marcos
Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. was a Filipino leader and an authoritarian President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives and a member of the Philippine Senate...
and Estrada
Joseph Estrada
Joseph "Erap" Ejercito Estrada was the 13th President of the Philippines, serving from 1998 until 2001. Estrada was the first person in the Post-EDSA era to be elected both to the presidency and vice-presidency.Estrada gained popularity as a film actor, playing the lead role in over 100 films in...
, but other voices are heard today." Later that year, he wrote that
The U.S.-orchestrated coup which overthrew the government of Philippines' President Ferdinand MarcosFerdinand MarcosFerdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. was a Filipino leader and an authoritarian President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives and a member of the Philippine Senate...
in 1986 was a classic case study of what John PerkinsJohn PerkinsJohn Perkins is an economist and author. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador from 1968–1970 and this experience launched him in the world of economics and writing...
describes in his recent book, Confessions of an Economic Hit ManConfessions of an Economic Hit ManConfessions of an Economic Hit Man is a book written by John Perkins and published in 2004. It provides Perkins' account of his career with consulting firm Chas. T. Main in Boston. Before employment with the firm, he interviewed for a job with the National Security Agency...
, as the post-World War II preferred method of imposing colonial control under another name. In the Philippines case, George Shultz performed the roles of both the economic hit man, destroying and taking full control of the Philippine economy, and the coup-master, deposing the Philippine President in favor of an IMFInternational Monetary FundThe International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
puppet—while calling the operation 'people power.'
According to Billington, representatives of LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review
Executive Intelligence Review
Executive Intelligence Review is a weekly newsmagazine founded in 1974 by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. Based in Leesburg, Virginia, it maintains offices in a number of countries, according to its masthead, including Wiesbaden, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Melbourne, and Mexico City...
and Schiller Institute
Schiller Institute
The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
had met with Marcos in 1985, at which time LaRouche was warning that Marcos would be the target of a coup, inspired by George Shultz and neoconservatives in the Reagan administration, because of Marcos' opposition to the policies of the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
. In 1986, LaRouche asserted that Marcos was ousted because he hadn't listened to LaRouche's advice: "he was opposed to me and he fell as a result."
The LaRouche movement is reported to have had close ties to the Ba'ath Party of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
.
The LaRouche movement, and the Schiller Institute in particular, were reported in 1997 to have campaigned aggressively in support of the National Islamic Front
National Islamic Front
The National Islamic Front is the Islamist political organization founded and led by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi that has influenced the Sudanese government since 1979, and dominated it since 1989...
government in Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
. They organized trips to Sudan for state legislators, which according to the Christian Science Monitor was part of a campaign directed at African Americans.
Periodicals and news agencies
The LaRouche organization has an extensive network of print and online publications for research and advocacy purposes.Executive Intelligence Review
The LaRouche movement maintains its own press service, Executive Intelligence Review. In 1985 it was referred to by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security CouncilUnited States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world."
According to its masthead, EIR maintains international bureaus in Bogotá
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
, in addition to various cities in the U.S. EIR staffers have provided testimony to various congressional committees, and an archive of EIR is maintained by the British Library of Political and Economic Science.
In 1996, EIR published the list of MI-6 agents provided by former MI-6 officer Richard Tomlinson
Richard Tomlinson
Richard Tomlinson is a New Zealand-born British former MI6 officer who was imprisoned during 1997 for violating the Official Secrets Act 1989 by giving the synopsis of a proposed book detailing his career in the Secret Intelligence Service to an Australian publisher...
.
One element of EIR was the Biological Holocaust Task Force, formed in 1973 to study and anticipate the effects of IMF Conditionalities
Conditionality
Conditionality is a concept in international development, political economy and international relations and describes the use of conditions attached to a loan, debt relief, bilateral aid or membership of international organizations, typically by the international financial institutions, regional...
on the populations of the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, particularly in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. It was headed by Dr. John Grauerholz.
The president of EIR News Service is Linda de Hoyos.
Broadcast
In 1986, the LaRouche movement took control over WTRIWTRI
WTRI is a radio station licensed to Brunswick, Maryland, serving Southern Frederick County, Maryland and Northern Loudoun County, Virginia. WTRI is owned and operated by Tricasters Communications, LLC.-History:...
, a low-powered AM radio station that covered western Maryland, northern Virginia, and parts of West Virginia. It was sold in 1991.
In 1991, the LaRouche movement began producing The LaRouche Connection, a Public-access television
Public-access television
Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...
cable TV program. Within ten months it was being carried in six states. Dana Scanlon, the producer, said that "We've done shows on the JFK assassination, the 'October Surprise' and shows on economic and cultural affairs". Scanlon won an award for producing more than 30 segments.
Internet
In January 2001, LaRouche began holding regular webcastWebcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...
s every 1–2 months. These were public meetings, broadcast in video, where LaRouche gave a speech, followed by 1–2 hours of Q and A over the internet. In his January 3, 2001 webcast, shortly before the inauguration of George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, LaRouche warned that the incoming Bush administration would attempt to govern by crisis management
Crisis management
Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. The study of crisis management originated with the large scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980's.Shrivastava, P....
, "...in other words, just like the Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
in Germany."
Other
- The New Federalist, (U.S.), weekly newspaper
- New Solidarity International Press Service (NSIPS)
- NSIPS Speakers Bureau
- Nouvelle Solidarité, French news agency
- Neue Solidarität, published by Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität in German
- Fidelio, a "Journal of Poetry, Science, and Statecraft", published quarterly by Schiller Institute
- 21st Century Science and Technology is a quarterly magazine covering scientific topics.
- ΔΥΝΑΜΙΣ (Dynamis), the "Journal of the LaRouche Riemann method of physical economics"
Books and pamphlets
- LaRouche, Lyndon, The Power of Reason (1980) (autobiography)
- LaRouche, Lyndon, There Are No Limits to Growth (1983)
- LaRouche, Lyndon, So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics, (1984)
- LaRouche, Lyndon, The Power of Reason 1988. (1988)
- LaRouche, Lyndon, The Science of Christian Economy (1991)
Defunct periodicals
- New Solidarity
- Fusion
- International Journal of Fusion Energy
- The Loudon County News
- Investigative Leads
- War on Drugs
- The Young Scientist
- Campaigner Magazine
- American Labor Beacon
- Middle East Insider
Cultural, economic, and scientific initiatives
- New Bretton Woods. Advocates the abandonment of floating exchange rateFloating exchange rateA floating exchange rate or fluctuating exchange rate is a type of exchange rate regime wherein a currency's value is allowed to fluctuate according to the foreign exchange market. A currency that uses a floating exchange rate is known as a floating currency....
s and the return to Bretton WoodsBretton Woods systemThe Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid 20th century...
-style fixed rates, with gold, or an equivalent, used as under the gold-reserve system. This is not to be confused with the gold standardGold standardThe gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...
, which LaRouche does not support. - American System. Espouses a new "American System" of federalized infrastructureInfrastructureInfrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
projects and national bankNational bankIn banking, the term national bank carries several meanings:* especially in developing countries, a bank owned by the state* an ordinary private bank which operates nationally...
s and regulation. Named for the historical American SystemAmerican System (economic plan)The American System, originally called "The American Way", was a mercantilist economic plan that played a prominent role in American policy during the first half of the 19th century...
of Henry ClayHenry ClayHenry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
, but owing more to the ideas of the expansive American SchoolAmerican School (economics)The American School, also known as "National System", represents three different yet related constructs in politics, policy and philosophy. It was the American policy for the 1860s to the 1940s, waxing and waning in actual degrees and details of implementation...
. - Eurasian Land BridgeEurasian Land BridgeThe Eurasian Land Bridge, sometimes called the New Silk Road, is a term used to describe the rail transport route for moving freight and passengers overland from Pacific seaports in Siberia and China to seaports in Europe...
. Lectures and writes on behalf of a "Eurasian land-bridge", a massive high-speed maglevMaglev trainMaglev , is a system of transportation that uses magnetic levitation to suspend, guide and propel vehicles from magnets rather than using mechanical methods, such as friction-reliant wheels, axles and bearings...
railway project to span continents and re-invigorate industry and commerce. - Verdi tuning. Argues in favor of the "Verdi tuning" in classical musicClassical musicClassical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, in which A=432 Hz, as opposed to the common practice today of tuning to A=440 Hz. - MarsMarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
colonizationSpace colonizationSpace colonization is the concept of permanent human habitation outside of Earth. Although hypothetical at the present time, there are many proposals and speculations about the first space colony...
. Recommends colonization of the planet MarsColonization of MarsThe colonization of Mars by humans is the focus of speculation and serious study because the surface conditions and availability of water on Mars make it arguably the most hospitable planet in the solar system other than Earth...
, on similar basis as many others in the field, that human survivability depends on territorial diversification. - AIDSAIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
epidemic. Demands identification and isolation of HIVHIVHuman immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
carriers, in light of the virus's swift adaptability, which he argues could mutate into a lethal, possibly airborne pandemicPandemicA pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
, and proposes use of directed energy beams for cure. - Strategic Defense InitiativeStrategic Defense InitiativeThe Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
. Supported directed beam weapons for use against ICBMs, and claims credit as the first to propose this to Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
. LaRouche does not support rocket-based defensive systems such as anti-ballistic missileAnti-ballistic missileAn anti-ballistic missile is a missile designed to counter ballistic missiles .A ballistic missile is used to deliver nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional warheads in a ballistic flight trajectory. The term "anti-ballistic missile" describes any antimissile system designed to counter...
s.
Lawsuits
In 1979, the Anti-Defamation LeagueAnti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
(ADL) was sued by the U.S. Labor Party
U.S. Labor Party
The U.S. Labor Party was a political party formed in 1973 by the National Caucus of Labor Committees . It served as a vehicle for Lyndon LaRouche to run for President of the United States in 1976, but it also sponsored many candidates for local offices and Congressional and Senate seats between...
, the National Caucus of Labor Committees
National Caucus of Labor Committees
The National Caucus of Labor Committees is a political cadre organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association"....
, and several individuals including Konstandinos Kalimtgis, Jeffrey Steinberg, and David Goldman
David Goldman
David Goldman is the name of:*David Goldman , founder of The Sage Group*David E. Goldman , scientist*David P. Goldman, writer and economist, and columnist under the pen name Spengler...
, who claimed libel, slander, invasion of privacy, and assault on account of the ADL's accusations of anti-Semitism. A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that it was "fair comment
Fair comment
Fair comment is a legal term for a common law defense in defamation cases .-United States:In the United States, the traditional privilege of "fair comment" is seen as a protection for robust, even outrageous published or spoken opinions about public officials and public figures...
" to describe them as anti-Semites
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
.
United States v. Kokinda was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990. The case concerned the First Amendment rights of LaRouche movement members on Post Office property. The Deputy Solicitor General arguing the government's case was future Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts. The Court confirmed the convictions of Marsha Kokinda and Kevin Pearl, volunteers for the National Democratic Policy Committee, finding that the Postal Service's regulation of solicitors was reasonable.
Characterizations
According to a biography produced by the LaRouche-affiliated Schiller InstituteSchiller Institute
The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
, the movement is based on a commitment to "a just new world economic order," specifically "the urgency of affording what have been sometimes termed 'Third World nations,' their full rights to perfect national sovereignty, and to access to the improvement of their educational systems and economies through employment of the most advanced science and technology."
The LaRouche movement has attracted devoted followers and developed some specific and elaborate policy initiatives, but has also been referred to variously as Marxist, fascist, anti-Semitic, a political cult
Political cult
Political cult is a term used to describe some groups that are generally considered to be on the political fringe. Although the majority of groups to which the term "cult" is sometimes applied are religious in nature, some are non-religious and focus either on secular self-improvement or on...
, a personality cult, and a criminal enterprise. In 1984, LaRouche's research staff was described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the United States National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world". The Heritage Foundation
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
calls it "one of the strangest political groups in American history", and The Washington Monthly
The Washington Monthly
The Washington Monthly is a bimonthly nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C.The magazine's founder is Charles Peters, who started the magazine in 1969 and continues to write the "Tilting at Windmills" column in each issue. Paul Glastris, former...
calls it a "vast and bizarre vanity press".
The LaRouche movement is seen as a fringe political cult
Political cult
Political cult is a term used to describe some groups that are generally considered to be on the political fringe. Although the majority of groups to which the term "cult" is sometimes applied are religious in nature, some are non-religious and focus either on secular self-improvement or on...
.
Journalist and John Birch Society
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing....
activist John Rees
John Rees (journalist)
John Rees is a British right wing journalist resident in the United States of America. Based out of Baltimore, Maryland, he was active during the 1970s and 1980s. He ran a network of private informants on college campuses in the United States, that Political Research Associates referred to as often...
wrote in his Information Digest that the movement has "taken on the characteristics more of a political cult than a political party", and that LaRouche is given "blind obedience" by his followers. He has also called the movement a "cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
". In rebuttal, LaRouche called the accusations of being a cult figure "garbage", and denied having control over any of the groups affiliated with him.
According to longtime critics Chip Berlet
Chip Berlet
John Foster "Chip" Berlet is an American investigative journalist, and photojournalist activist specializing in the study of right-wing movements in the United States, particularly the religious right, white supremacists, homophobic groups, and paramilitary organizations...
and Matthew N. Lyons:
In the summer of 2009, LaRouche followers came under criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler. Media figures as politically widespread as Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart criticized the comparison.
Current organizations
- Executive Intelligence Review Press Service, (U.S.) a hub of the LaRouche movement
- National Caucus of Labor CommitteesNational Caucus of Labor CommitteesThe National Caucus of Labor Committees is a political cadre organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association"....
, (U.S.) - Worldwide LaRouche Youth MovementWorldwide LaRouche Youth MovementThe Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement and the LaRouche Political Action Committee are part of the political organization of controversial American political figure Lyndon LaRouche...
, (international) - LaRouche Political Action Committee, (U.S.)
- Schiller InstituteSchiller InstituteThe Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
, (international, based in Germany and U.S.) - Bürgerrechtsbewegung SolidaritätBürgerrechtsbewegung SolidaritätBürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität , or the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, is a German political party founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of U.S. political activist Lyndon LaRouche....
(Germany) - International Caucus of Labor Committees, (international, especially Canada, Australia, and others)
- Citizens Electoral CouncilCitizens Electoral CouncilThe Citizens Electoral Council of Australia is a minor nationalist political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007...
, (Australia) - Philippine LaRouche Society
- European Workers PartyEuropean Workers PartyThe European Workers' Party is a very small political party in Sweden without parliamentary representation. The party is the Swedish section of the LaRouche Movement.-History:...
, (Sweden) - Comités Laborales de Nuevo León (Mexico)
U.S. businesses
- PMR Printing, Virginia
- World Composition Services, Inc. (a.k.a. WorldComp) (Ken Kronberg, former president)
- New Benjamin Franklin House Publishing Company, Inc., Leesburg, VirginiaLeesburg, VirginiaLeesburg is a historic town in, and county seat of, Loudoun County, Virginia, United States of America. Leesburg is located west-northwest of Washington, D.C. along the base of the Catoctin Mountain and adjacent to the Potomac River. Its population according the 2010 Census is 42,616...
- American System Publications Inc., Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
(Maureen Calney, president) - Eastern States Distributors Incorporated, Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
(Starr Valenti, president) - South East Literature, (South East Political Literature Sales & Distribution, Inc.) Halethorpe, MarylandHalethorpe, MarylandHalethorpe is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. It is near the University of Maryland, Baltimore County...
- Southwest Literature Distribution, Houston, TexasHouston, TexasHouston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
(Daniel Leach, president) - Midwest Circulation Corp., Chicago, Illinois
- Hamilton System Distributors, Inc., Ridgefield Park, New JerseyRidgefield Park, New JerseyRidgefield Park is a village in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. The population was 12,729 at the 2010 United States Census. Of 566 municipalities statewide, Ridgefield Park is only one of three with a village type of government in New Jersey, along with Loch Arbour and Ridgewood.The...
Defunct organizations
|
North American Labour Party The North American Labour Party was a Canadian political party that nominated candidates in federal elections in the 1970s. However, because it was not a registered political party under the rules of Elections Canada, its candidates were considered to be independents.The NALP was the Canadian... (Canada) Parti pour la république du Canada (Québec) The Parti pour la république du Canada was the Quebec branch of the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada, a Canadian political party formed by supporters of U.S. politician Lyndon LaRouche... Party for the Commonwealth of Canada The Party for the Commonwealth of Canada was a Canadian political party formed by Canadians who supported the ideology of U.S. politician Lyndon LaRouche in the 1984, 1988 and 1993 elections.... California Proposition 64 (1986) Proposition 64 was a proposition in the state of California on the November 4, 1986 ballot. It was an initiative statute that would have restored Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome to the list of communicable diseases... U.S. Labor Party The U.S. Labor Party was a political party formed in 1973 by the National Caucus of Labor Committees . It served as a vehicle for Lyndon LaRouche to run for President of the United States in 1976, but it also sponsored many candidates for local offices and Congressional and Senate seats between... |
Members
Members of the LaRouche movement are variously known as "LaRouchies", "LaRouchians", "LaRouchites", or "LaRouchers". The LaRouche Political Action Committee website refers to "members" and "volunteers".According to the Washington Post, LaRouche has told his followers that they are "golden souls", a term from The Republic of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. In his 1979 autobiography he contrasted the "golden souls" to "the poor donkeys, the poor sheep, whose consciousness is dominated by the infantile world-outlook of individual sensuous life". According to Dennis King, LaRouche believed that cadres "must be intellectually of a superior breed—a philosophical elite as well as a political vanguard". In 1986, LaRouche said during an interview, "What I represent is a growing movement. The movement is becoming stronger all the time..."
During the criminal trials of the late 1980s, LaRouche called upon his followers to be martyrs, saying that their "honorable deeds shall be legendary in the tales told to future generations". Senior members refused plea agreements that involved guilty pleas as those would have been black marks on the movement.
Former members report that life within the LaRouche movement is highly regulated. A former member of the security staff wrote in 1979 that members could be expelled for masturbating or using marijuana. Members who failed to achieve their fundraising quotas or otherwise showed signs as disloyal behavior were subjected to "ego stripping" sessions. Members, even spouses, were encouraged to inform on each other, according to an ex-member. Although LaRouche was officially opposed to abortion, a former member testified that women were encouraged to have abortions because "you can't have children during a revolution." Another source said some group leaders coerced members into having abortions. John Judis
John Judis
John B. Judis is an American journalist. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a senior editor at The New Republic and a contributing editor to The American Prospect....
, writing in The National Review, stated that LaRouche followers worked 16-hour days for little wages.
Former members have reported receiving harassing calls or indirect death threats. They say they have been called traitors. New Solidarity ran obituaries for three living former members. Internal memos have reportedly contained a variety of dismissive terms for ex-followers. One former member said that becoming a follower of LaRouche is "like entering the Bizarro World of the Superman comic books" which makes sense so long as one remains inside the movement.
In 1992, the father of Lewis du Pont Smith, an adult member of the Du Pont family
Du Pont family
The Du Pont family is an American family descended from Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours . The son of a Paris watchmaker and a member of a Burgundian noble family, he and his sons, Victor Marie du Pont and Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, emigrated to the United States in 1800 and used the resources of...
who had joined the LaRouche movement, was indicted along with four associates for planning to have his son and daughter-in-law abducted and "deprogrammed
Deprogramming
Deprogramming refers to actions that attempt to force a person to abandon allegiance to a religious, political, economic, or social group. Methods and practices may involve kidnapping and coercion...
". The incident resulted in serious legal repercussions but no criminal convictions for those indicted, including private investigator Galen Kelly
Galen Kelly
Galen Kelly is a private investigator and deprogrammer.In 1988, Kelly investigated the "kidnapping" of Tawana Brawley and dug up evidence that she had been at parties within the four days of her disappearance...
. The father also successfully had his son declared "incompetent" to manage his financial affairs in order to block him from possibly turning over his inheritance to the LaRouche organization.
Kenneth Kronberg
Kenneth Kronberg
Kenneth Lewis Kronberg was an American businessman and long-time member of the LaRouche movement, an organization founded by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.He was president of PMR Printing Co...
, who had been a leading member of the movement, committed suicide in 2007, reportedly because of financial issues concerning the movement. His widow, Marielle (Molly) Kronberg, had also been a longtime member. She gave an interview to Chip Berlet
Chip Berlet
John Foster "Chip" Berlet is an American investigative journalist, and photojournalist activist specializing in the study of right-wing movements in the United States, particularly the religious right, white supremacists, homophobic groups, and paramilitary organizations...
in 2007 in which she made critical comments about the LaRouche movement. She was quoted as saying, "I'm worried that the organization may be in danger of becoming a killing machine." In 2004 and 2005, Kronberg made contributions of $1,501 to the Republican National Committee
Republican National Committee
The Republican National Committee is an American political committee that provides national leadership for the Republican Party of the United States. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. It is...
and the election campaign of George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, despite the LaRouche movement's opposition to the Bush administration. According to journalist Avi Klein, LaRouche felt that this "foreshadowed her treachery to the movement." Kronberg had been a member of the movement's governing National Committee since 1982 and was convicted of fraud during the LaRouche criminal trials.
Associates and managers
- Helga Zepp-LaRoucheHelga Zepp-LaRoucheHelga Zepp-LaRouche is a German political activist, wife of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and founder of the LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute and the German Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party .She has run for political office several times in Germany, representing small...
, wife, head of Schiller InstituteSchiller InstituteThe Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
and Bürgerrechtsbewegung SolidaritätBürgerrechtsbewegung SolidaritätBürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität , or the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, is a German political party founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of U.S. political activist Lyndon LaRouche.... - Amelia Boynton RobinsonAmelia Boynton RobinsonAmelia Platts Boynton Robinson was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama. A key figure in the 1965 march that became known as Bloody Sunday, she later became vice-president of the Schiller Institute affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche. She was awarded the Martin Luther King,...
, SI vice chairwoman - Michael BillingtonMichael Billington (activist)Michael O. Billington is an activist in the LaRouche Movement, Asia editor for the Executive Intelligence Review, and author of Reflections of an American Political Prisoner: the Repression and Promise of the LaRouche Movement....
, fundraiser (convicted of mail fraud) - William Wertz, chief fundraiser (convicted of mail fraud)
- Edward W. Spannaus, legal adviser (convicted of mail fraud)
- Dennis Small, fundraiser (convicted of mail fraud)
- Paul Greenberg, fundraiser (convicted of mail fraud)
- Joyce Rubinstein, fundraiser (convicted of mail fraud)
- Paul Gallagher,
- Anita Gallagher, born Anita Gretz, [1947- ]
- Laurence Hecht
- Donald Phau
- Robert Primack (deceased)
- Ulf Sandmark, leader of European Workers PartyEuropean Workers PartyThe European Workers' Party is a very small political party in Sweden without parliamentary representation. The party is the Swedish section of the LaRouche Movement.-History:...
, the Swedish section of the LaRouche Movement. - Debra Freeman, national spokeswoman for the East Coast, chairwoman of the LaRouche campaign (1988)
- Kenneth KronbergKenneth KronbergKenneth Lewis Kronberg was an American businessman and long-time member of the LaRouche movement, an organization founded by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.He was president of PMR Printing Co...
, editor and cofounder of Fidelio (deceased; suicide).
Political candidates
- Mel Logan - Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate in WyomingWyomingWyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...
in 2000. - Janice HartJanice HartJanice Hart was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Illinois Secretary of State in 1986.Hart, a political unknown and a LaRouche movement activist since the age of 17, unexpectedly won the Democratic Party's nomination. Her opponent, Aurelia Pucinski, came from a politically-prominent...
- ran for IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
Secretary of StateSecretary of StateSecretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....
in 1986, won Democratic PartyDemocratic Party (United States)The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
nomination - Mark J. Fairchild - ran for Illinois lieutenant governorLieutenant Governor of IllinoisThe Lieutenant Governor of Illinois is the second highest executive of the State of Illinois. In Illinois, the lieutenant governor and governor run on a joint ticket, and are directly elected by popular vote. Candidates for lieutenant governor run separately in the primary from candidates for...
in 1986, won Democratic Party nomination - James BevelJames BevelJames L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...
- Vice presidentialVice President of the United StatesThe Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
running mateRunning mateA running mate is a person running together with another person on a joint ticket during an election. The term is most often used in reference to the person in the subordinate position but can also properly be used when referring to both candidates, such as "Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen were...
1992 - Craig Isherwood - head of Australian CECCitizens Electoral CouncilThe Citizens Electoral Council of Australia is a minor nationalist political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007...
- Jacques CheminadeJacques CheminadeJacques Cheminade, born August 20, 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a French political activist. He is associated with the LaRouche movement, an international network of groups led by the American political activist, Lyndon LaRouche. He was a candidate for the French presidential election, 1995...
- French politician - Nancy Spannaus - ran for U.S. SenateUnited States SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in VirginiaVirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, 2002 - Eliott Greenspan - ran for Governor of New JerseyGovernor of New JerseyThe Office of the Governor of New Jersey is the executive branch for the U.S. state of New Jersey. The office of Governor is an elected position, for which elected officials serve four year terms. While individual politicians may serve as many terms as they can be elected to, Governors cannot be...
in 2001 - Ron Bettag - ran for mayorMayorIn many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
of Chicago, Illinois (announced his candidacy with press release datelined "Germany". Most local issue: "Washington D.C. General Hospital now under KKK-Katie Graham siege") - William Ferguson - ran for U.S. Congress in MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
in 2001
Researchers, writers, spokespersons
- Jeffrey Steinberg, Director of Counterintelligence, EIR
- Allen Salisbury, author of The Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and the American System - Anton Chaitkin, co-author of The Unauthorized Biography of George BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
- Jonathan Tennenbaum
- Harley Schlanger, U.S. West Coast Spokesman
- Marsha Freeman, writer
- Richard Freeman, senior economics staff, EIR
- John Hoefle, banking columnist, EIR
- Marcia Merry-Baker
- Tony Papert
- Kathy Wolfe, economist, EIR (former member)
Former associates
- Nicholas F. BentonNicholas F. BentonNicholas F. Benton is the founder, owner, and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper circulated in Falls Church, Virginia, and in parts of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and Washington D.C....
, aide to LaRouche, Washington D.C. bureau chief, and White House Correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review. - Ortrum Cramer, a member of the management of the Schiller Institute
- Robert DreyfussRobert DreyfussRobert Dreyfuss is a freelance investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The American Prospect, and other progressive publications. His work also appears on line at TomPaine.com....
, co-author of Hostage to Khomeini - F. William EngdahlF. William EngdahlFrederick William Engdahl is an American German freelance journalist, historian and economic researcher.- Biography :Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl, Sr., and Ruth Aalund...
, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order - Roy FrankhouserRoy FrankhouserRoy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. , was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a member of the American Nazi Party, a government informant, and a security consultant to Lyndon LaRouche. Frankhouser was reported by federal officials to have been arrested at least 142 times...
, security consultant (deceased) - David P. Goldman, a.k.a. Spengler, co-author of The Ugly Truth About Milton Friedman and Dope, Inc.: Britain's Opium War against the U.S.
- Laurent MurawiecLaurent MurawiecLaurent Murawiec was a French neoconservative figure, member of the Hudson Institute and of the Committee on the Present Danger, and formerly defence analyst at the RAND corporation. Murawiec was an associate of Lyndon LaRouche from 1973–1986, and wrote for Larouche's Executive Intelligence Review...
, former contributor and editor of Executive Information Review (deceased) - Alejandro Peña EsclusaAlejandro Peña EsclusaAlejandro Peña Esclusa is a Venezuelan politician, leader of the Venezuelan NGO Fuerza Solidaria and president of the pan-Latin-American NGO UnoAmérica...
, Venezuelan politician - Webster Tarpley, co-author of The Unauthorized Biography of George BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
, former president of the Schiller Institute in the U.S.
External links
- Organizations
- LaRouche Political Action Committee
- Executive Intelligence Review: LaRouche Publications
- Schiller Institute
- Twenty First Century Science and Technology LaRouche-affiliated Science organization
- The LaRouche Youth Movement
- Criticism of the LaRouche Movement
- "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascist Demagogue," Political Research Associates collection of articles critical of LaRouche
- The Larouch Network an "institutional analysis" from the Heritage FoundationHeritage FoundationThe Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...