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Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2019) was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). He was a prominent conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate. He began in
far-left Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars conside ...
politics but in the 1970s moved to the
far right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of bein ...
. His movement is sometimes described as or likened to a
cult In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. Thi ...
. Convicted of fraud, he served five years in prison from 1989 to 1994. Born in
Rochester, New Hampshire Rochester is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 32,492 at the 2020 census. In addition to the downtown area, the city contains the villages of East Rochester, Gonic, and North Rochester. Rochester is ...
, LaRouche was drawn to socialist and Marxist movements in his twenties during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. In the 1950s while a Trotskyist he was also a
management consultant Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants ...
in New York City. By the 1960s he became engaged in increasingly smaller and more radical splinter groups. During the 1970s he created the foundation of the LaRouche movement and became more engaged in conspiratorial beliefs and violent and illegal activities. Instead of the radical left, he embraced radical right politics and
antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
. At various times, he alleged that he had been targeted for assassination by Queen Elizabeth II, Zionist mobsters, his own associates (who he said had been drugged and brainwashed by CIA and British spies), and others. The LaRouche movement is estimated as never exceeding a few thousand members, but it had an outsized political influence, raising more than $200 million by one estimate, and running candidates in more than 4,000 elections in the 1980s. It was noted for disguising its candidates as conservative Democrats and harassing opponents. In 1986, it reached its height in electoral success when Larouchite candidates won several Democratic primaries for state offices in Illinois, alarming Democratic Party officials, whose national spokesman called the Larouchites "kook fringe". (The defeated mainstream Democratic candidates ran in the general election as members of the
Illinois Solidarity Party The Illinois 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 then widely admired in Illinois, which has a very large Polish-American population ...
; the Larouchite Democrats all finished a distant third.) Later in the 1980s, criminal investigations led to convictions of several LaRouche movement members, including LaRouche himself. He was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, but served only five years. LaRouche was a perennial candidate for President of the United States. He ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a candidate of third parties established by members of his movement, peaking at around 78,000 votes in the 1984 presidential election. He also tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1996, he got five percent of the total nationwide vote in Democratic primaries. In 2000, he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in some states, but ultimately was refused by those delegates at the convention.


Early life

LaRouche was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the oldest of three children of Jessie Lenore ( Weir) and Lyndon H. LaRouche Sr. His paternal grandfather's family emigrated to the United States from
Rimouski Rimouski ( ) is a city in Quebec, Canada. Rimouski is located in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, at the mouth of the Rimouski River. It has a population of 48,935 (as of 2021). Rimouski is the site of Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), t ...
, Quebec, whereas his maternal grandfather was born in
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
. His father worked for the United Shoe Machinery Corporation in Rochester before the family moved to
Lynn, Massachusetts Lynn is the eighth-largest municipality in Massachusetts and the largest city in Essex County. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of the Boston city line at Suffolk Downs, Lynn is part of Greater Boston's urban inner core. Settled by E ...
. His parents became
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
after his father converted from
Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. They forbade him from fighting with other children, even in self-defense, which he said led to "years of hell" from bullies at school. As a result, he spent much of his time alone, taking long walks through the woods and identifying in his mind with great philosophers. He wrote that, between the ages of twelve and fourteen, he read philosophy extensively, embracing the ideas of
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...
and rejecting those of
Hume Hume most commonly refers to: * David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher Hume may also refer to: People * Hume (surname) * Hume (given name) * James Hume Nisbet (1849–1923), Scottish-born novelist and artist In fiction * Hume, ...
,
Bacon Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork made from various cuts, typically the belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central ingredient (e.g., the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sand ...
,
Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
, Locke, Berkeley,
Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
, and
Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...
. He graduated from Lynn English High School in 1940. In the same year, the Lynn Quakers expelled his father from the group, for reportedly accusing other Quakers of misusing funds, while writing under the pen name Hezekiah Micajah Jones. LaRouche and his mother resigned in sympathy for his father.


University studies, Marxism, marriage

LaRouche attended
Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in Charlotte, North Ca ...
in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and left in 1942. He later wrote that his teachers "lacked the competence to teach me on conditions I was willing to tolerate"., p. 3 As a Quaker, he was a
conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objec ...
(CO) during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
and joined a Civilian Public Service camp. In 1944 he joined the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...
as a non-combatant and served in
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
and
Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
with medical units. He ultimately worked as an ordnance clerk at the end of the war. He described his decision to serve as one of the most important of his life. While in India he developed sympathy for the
Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged from Bengal ...
. LaRouche wrote that many GIs feared they would be asked to support British forces in actions against Indian independence forces and characterized that prospect as "revolting to most of us". LaRouche wrote that he discussed
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
in the CO camp, and while traveling home on the SS ''General Bradley'' in 1946, he met Don Merrill, a fellow soldier, also from Lynn, who converted him to
Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
. Back in the U.S., he resumed his education at Northeastern University but dropped out. He returned to Lynn in 1948 and the next year joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) to recruit at the GE River Works there, adopting the name "Lyn Marcus" for his political work. He arrived in New York City in 1953, where he worked as a
management consultant Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants ...
. In 1954 he married Janice Neuberger, a
psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
and member of the SWP. Their son, Daniel, was born in 1956.


Career


1960s


Teaching and the National Caucus of Labor Committees

By 1961 the LaRouches were living on
Central Park West Eighth Avenue is a major north–south avenue on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, carrying northbound traffic below 59th Street. It is one of the original avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 to run the length of Manhattan, ...
in
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, and LaRouche's activities were mostly focused on his career and not on the SWP. He and his wife separated in 1963, and he moved into a
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
apartment with another SWP member, Carol Schnitzer, also known as Larrabee. In 1964 he began an association with an SWP faction called the Revolutionary Tendency, a faction which was later expelled from the SWP, and came under the influence of British Trotskyist leader Gerry Healy. For six months, LaRouche worked with American Healyite leader
Tim Wohlforth Timothy Andrew Wohlforth (May 15, 1933 – August 23, 2019), was a United States Trotskyist leader. On leaving the Trotskyist movement he became a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented non-fiction. As a student, Wohlforth joined the ...
, who later wrote that LaRouche had a "gargantuan ego", and "a marvelous ability to place any world happening in a larger context, which seemed to give the event additional meaning, but his thinking was schematic, lacking factual detail and depth." Leaving Wohlforth's group, LaRouche briefly joined the rival
Spartacist League The Spartacus League (German: ''Spartakusbund'') was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. It was founded in August 1914 as the "International Group" by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and othe ...
before announcing his intention to build a new Fifth International., undated. In 1967 LaRouche began teaching classes on Marx's
dialectical materialism Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world co ...
at New York City's Free School, and attracted a group of students from
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
and the
City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
, recommending that they read ''
Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in materialist phi ...
'', as well as
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
, Kant, and Leibniz. During the 1968 Columbia University protests, he organized his supporters under the name '' National Caucus of Labor Committees'' (NCLC). The aim of the NCLC was to win control of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) branch—the university's main activist group—and build a political alliance between students, local residents, organized labor, and the Columbia faculty. By 1973 the NCLC had over 600 members in 25 cities—including West Berlin and Stockholm—and produced what LaRouche's biographer, Dennis King, called the most literate of the far-left papers, ''New Solidarity''. The NCLC's internal activities became highly regimented over the next few years. Members gave up their jobs and devoted themselves to the group and its leader, believing it would soon take control of America's trade unions and overthrow the government.


1970s


1971: Intelligence network

Robert J. Alexander writes that LaRouche first established an NCLC "intelligence network" in 1971. Members all over the world would send information to NCLC headquarters, which would distribute the information via briefings and other publications. LaRouche organized the network as a series of news services and magazines, which critics say was done to gain access to government officials under press cover. The publications included '' Executive Intelligence Review'', founded in 1974. Other periodicals under his aegis included ''New Solidarity'', ''Fusion Magazine'', ''21st Century Science and Technology'', and ''Campaigner Magazine''. His news services and publishers included American System Publications, Campaigner Publications, New Solidarity International Press Service, and The New Benjamin Franklin House Publishing Company. LaRouche acknowledged in 1980 that his followers impersonated reporters and others, saying it had to be done for his security. In 1982, '' U.S. News & World Report'' sued New Solidarity International Press Service and Campaigner Publications for damages, alleging that members were impersonating its reporters in phone calls. U.S. sources told ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' in 1985 that the LaRouche organization had assembled a worldwide network of government and military contacts, and that his researchers sometimes supplied information to government officials.
Bobby Ray Inman Bobby Ray Inman (born April 4, 1931) is a retired United States Navy admiral who held several influential positions in the United States Intelligence Community. Early years Inman was born and raised in the community of Rhonesboro, Upshur Coun ...
, the CIA's deputy director in 1981 and 1982, said LaRouche and his wife had visited him, offering information about the West German Green Party. A CIA spokesman said LaRouche met Deputy Director John McMahon in 1983 to discuss one of LaRouche's trips overseas. An aide to Deputy Secretary of State
William Clark William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838) was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. A native of Virginia, he grew up in pre-statehood Kentucky before later settling in what became the state of Miss ...
said when LaRouche's associates discussed technology or economics, they made good sense and seemed to be qualified. Norman Bailey, formerly with the U.S. National Security Council, said in 1984 that LaRouche's staff comprised "one of the best private intelligence services in the world. ... They do know a lot of people around the world. They do get to talk to prime ministers and presidents." Several government officials feared a security leak from the government's ties with the movement. According to critics, the supposed behind-the-scenes processes were more often flights of fancy than inside information. Douglas Foster wrote in '' Mother Jones'' in 1982 that the briefings consisted of disinformation, "hate-filled" material about enemies, phony letters, intimidation, fake newspaper articles, and dirty tricks campaigns. Opponents were accused of being gay or
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...
, or were linked to murders, which the movement called "psywar techniques". From the 1970s through to the first decade of the 21st century, LaRouche founded several groups and companies. In addition to the National Caucus of Labor Committees, there was the Citizens Electoral Council (Australia), the National Democratic Policy Committee, the Fusion Energy Foundation, and the
U.S. Labor Party The U.S. Labor Party (USLP) was a political party formed in 1973 by the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC).
. In 1984 he founded the Schiller Institute in Germany with his second wife, and three political parties there—the '' Europäische Arbeiterpartei'', ''Patrioten für Deutschland'', and '' Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität''—and in 2000 the
Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement The Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement (WLYM or LYM) and the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LaRouche PAC or LPAC) are part of the political organization of controversial American political figure Lyndon LaRouche. The LYM's " war room" is in Le ...
. His printing services included Computron Technologies, Computype, World Composition Services, and PMR Printing Company, Inc, or PMR Associates.


1973: Political shift; "Operation Mop-Up"

LaRouche wrote in his 1987 autobiography that violent altercations had begun in 1969 between his NCLC members and several
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
groups when
Mark Rudd Mark William Rudd (born June 2, 1947) is an American political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon who got involved with the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Rudd became a member of the Columbia Univer ...
's faction began assaulting LaRouche's faction at Columbia University. Press accounts alleged that between April and September 1973, during what LaRouche called "Operation Mop-Up", NCLC members began physically attacking members of leftist groups that LaRouche classified as "left-protofascists"; an editorial in LaRouche's ''New Solidarity'' said of the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...
that the movement "must dispose of this stinking corpse". Armed with chains, bats, and martial-art nunchuk sticks, NCLC members assaulted Communist Party, SWP, and Progressive Labor Party members and Black Power activists on the streets and during meetings. At least 60 assaults were reported. The operation ended when police arrested several of LaRouche's followers; there were no convictions, and LaRouche maintained they had acted in self-defense. Journalist and LaRouche biographer Dennis King writes that the FBI may have tried to aggravate the strife, using measures such as anonymous mailings, to keep the groups at each other's throats. LaRouche said he met representatives of the Soviet Union at the United Nations in 1974 and 1975 to discuss attacks by the Communist Party USA on the NCLC and to propose a merger, but said he received no assistance from them. One FBI memo, obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...
, proposes assisting the CPUSA in an investigation "for the purpose of ultimately eliminating him aRoucheand the threat of the NCLC" (see image to left). LaRouche's critics such as Dennis King and Antony Lerman allege that in 1973 and with little warning, LaRouche adopted more extreme ideas, a process accompanied by a campaign of violence against his opponents on the left, and the development of conspiracy theories and paranoia about his personal safety., p. 212. According to these accounts, he began to believe he was under threat of assassination from the Soviet Union, the CIA, Libya, drug dealers, and bankers.Mintz, December 18, 1987
.
He also established a "Biological Holocaust Task Force", which, according to LaRouche, analyzed the public health consequences of
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glo ...
(IMF) austerity policies toward impoverished nations in Africa, and predicted that epidemics of
cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium '' Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting an ...
as well as possibly entirely new diseases would strike Africa in the 1980s..


1973: U.S. Labor Party

LaRouche founded the U.S. Labor Party in 1973 as the political arm of the NCLC. At first the party was "preaching Marxist revolution", but by 1977 they shifted from left-wing to
right-wing politics Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, auth ...
. A two-part article in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1979 by Howard Blum and Paul L. Montgomery alleged that LaRouche had turned the party (at that point with 1,000 members in 37 offices in North America, and 26 in Europe and Latin America) into an extreme-right,
antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...
organization, despite the presence of Jewish members. LaRouche denied the newspaper's charges, and said he had filed a $100 million libel suit; his press secretary said the articles were intended to "set up a credible climate for an assassination hit". The ''Times'' alleged that members had taken courses in how to use knives and rifles; that a farm in upstate New York had been used for guerrilla training; and that several members had undergone a six-day anti-terrorist training course run by Mitchell WerBell III, an arms dealer and former member of the
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...
, who said he had ties to the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. Journalists and publications the party regarded as unfriendly were harassed, and it published a list of potential assassins it saw as a threat. LaRouche expected members to devote themselves entirely to the party, and place their savings and possessions at its disposal, as well as take out loans on its behalf. Party officials would decide who each member should live with, and if someone left the movement, the remaining member was expected to live separately from the ex-member. LaRouche would question spouses about their partner's sexual habits, the ''Times'' said, and in one case reportedly ordered a member to stop having sex with his wife, because it was making him "politically impotent".Blum, October 7, 1979
.


1973: "Ego-stripping" and "brainwashing" allegations

LaRouche began writing in 1973 about the use of certain psychological techniques on recruits. In an article called "Beyond Psychoanalysis", he wrote that a worker's persona had to be stripped away to arrive at a state he called "little me", from which it would be possible to "rebuild their personalities around a new socialist identity", according to ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
''. ''The New York Times'' wrote that the first such session—which LaRouche called "ego-stripping"—involved a German member, Konstantin George, in the summer of 1973. LaRouche said that during the session he discovered that a plot to assassinate him had been implanted in George's mind. He recorded sessions with a 26-year-old British member, Chris White, who had moved to England with LaRouche's former partner, Carol Schnitzer. In December 1973 LaRouche asked the couple to return to the U.S. His followers sent tapes of the subsequent sessions with White to ''The New York Times'' as evidence of an assassination plot. According to the ''Times'', " ere are sounds of weeping, and vomiting on the tapes, and Mr. White complains of being deprived of sleep, food and cigarettes. At one point someone says 'raise the voltage', but aRouchesays this was associated with the bright lights used in the questioning rather than an electric shock." The ''Times'' wrote: "Mr. White complains of a terrible pain in his arm, then LaRouche can be heard saying, 'That's not real. That's in the program'." LaRouche told the newspaper White had been "reduced to an eight-cycle infinite loop with look-up table, with homosexual bestiality". He said White had not been harmed and that a physician—a LaRouche movement member—had been present throughout.Montgomery, January 20, 1974
, p. 51, column 5.
White ended up telling LaRouche he had been programmed by the CIA and British intelligence to set up LaRouche for assassination by Cuban exile frogmen.. According to ''The Washington Post'', "brainwashing hysteria" took hold of the movement. One activist said he attended meetings where members were writhing on the floor saying they needed de-programming. In two weeks in January 1974, the group issued 41 separate press releases about brainwashing. One activist, Alice Weitzman, expressed skepticism about the claims.


1974: Contacts with far right groups, intelligence gathering

LaRouche established contacts with Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby and elements of the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
in 1974. Frank Donner and Randall Rothenberg wrote that he made successful overtures to the Liberty Lobby and
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist a ...
's
American Independent Party The American Independent Party (AIP) is a far-right political party in the United States that was established in 1967. The AIP is best known for its nomination of former Democratic Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who carried five states in t ...
, adding that the "racist" policies of LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party endeared it to members of the Ku Klux Klan.
George Michael George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; 25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) was an English singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the most significant cultural icons of the MTV generation and is one of the best-selling music ...
, in ''Willis Carto and the American Far Right'', says that LaRouche shared with the Liberty Lobby's Willis Carto an antipathy towards the
Rockefeller family The Rockefeller family () is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by broth ...
. The Liberty Lobby defended its alliance with LaRouche by saying the U.S. Labor Party had been able to "confuse, disorient, and disunify the Left". Gregory Rose, a former chief of counter-intelligence for LaRouche who became an FBI informant in 1973, said that while the LaRouche movement had extensive links to the Liberty Lobby, there was also copious evidence of a connection to the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. George and Wilcox say neither connection amounted to much—they assert that LaRouche was "definitely not a Soviet agent" and state that while the contact with the Liberty Lobby is often used to imply links' and 'ties' between LaRouche and the extreme right", it was in fact transient and marked by mutual suspicion. The Liberty Lobby soon pronounced itself disillusioned with LaRouche, citing his movement's adherence to "basic socialist positions" and his softness on "the major
Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
groups" as fundamental points of difference. According to George and Wilcox, American
neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack ...
leaders expressed misgivings over the number of Jews and members of other minority groups in his organization, and did not consider LaRouche an ally. George Johnson, in ''Architects of Fear'', similarly states that LaRouche's overtures to far right groups were pragmatic rather than sincere. A 1975 party memo spoke of uniting with these groups only to overthrow the established order, adding that once that goal had been accomplished, "eliminating our right-wing opposition will be comparatively easy". Howard Blum wrote in ''The New York Times'' that, from 1976 onwards, party members sent reports to the FBI and local police regarding members of left-wing organizations. In 1977, he wrote, commercial reports on U.S. anti-apartheid groups were prepared by LaRouche members for the South African government, student dissidents were reported to the Shah of Iran's
Savak SAVAK ( fa, ساواک, abbreviation for ''Sâzemân-e Ettelâ'ât va Amniat-e Kešvar'', ) was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service in Iran during the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty. SAVAK operated from 1957 until prim ...
secret police, and the anti-nuclear movement was investigated on behalf of power companies. Johnson says the intelligence network was made up of "obnoxious devotees commandeering WATS lines and tricking bureaucrats into giving them information". By the late 1970s, members were exchanging almost daily information with
Roy Frankhouser Roy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. (also spelled "Frankhauser"; November 4, 1939 – May 15, 2009) was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan,
, a government informant and infiltrator of both far right and far left groups who was involved with the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
and the
American Nazi Party The American Nazi Party (ANP) is an American far-right and neo-Nazi political party founded by George Lincoln Rockwell and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. The organization was originally named the World Union of Free Enterprise Nation ...
. 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. LaRouche and his associates considered Frankhouser to be a valuable intelligence contact, and took his links to extremist groups to be a cover for his intelligence work. Frankhouser played into these expectations, misrepresenting himself as a conduit for communications to LaRouche from "Mr. Ed", an alleged CIA contact who did not exist in reality. Blum wrote, at around this time, that LaRouche's Computron Technologies Corporation included Mobil Oil and Citibank among its clients, that his World Composition Services had one of the most advanced typesetting complexes in the city and had the
Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
among its clients, and that his PMR Associates produced the party's publications and some high school newspapers.Blum, October 7, 1979
.
Around the same time, according to Blum, LaRouche was telling his membership several times a year that he was being targeted for assassination, including by the
Queen of the United Kingdom The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Bailiw ...
, Zionist mobsters, the
Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is a nonprofit organization that is independent and nonpartisan. CFR is based in New York Ci ...
, the Justice Department, and the
Mossad Mossad ( , ), ; ar, الموساد, al-Mōsād, ; , short for ( he, המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, links=no), meaning 'Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations'. is the national intelligence agency ...
. LaRouche sued the City of New York in 1974, saying the CIA and British spies had tortured and drugged his associates to brainwash his associates into killing him. According to ''
The Patriot-News ''The Patriot-News'' is the largest newspaper serving the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area. In 2005, the newspaper was ranked in the top 100 in daily and Sunday circulation in the United States. It has been owned by Advance Publica ...
'' of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, LaRouche said he had been "threatened by Communists, Zionists, narcotics gangsters, the Rockefellers and international terrorists." LaRouche later said that,


1975–1976: presidential campaign

In March 1975
Clarence M. Kelley Clarence M. Kelley (October 24, 1911August 5, 1997) was an American law enforcement officer. He served as the Chief of the Kansas City Police Department in Kansas City, Missouri from 1961 to 1973, and as the second Director of the Federal Bureau ...
, director of the FBI, testified before the House Appropriations Committee that LaRouche's NCLC was "a violence-oriented organization of 'revolutionary socialists' with a membership of nearly 1,000 in chapters in some 50 cities". He said that during the previous two years its members had been "involved in fights, beatings, using drugs, kidnappings, brainwashings, and at least one shooting. They are reported to be armed, to have received defensive training such as karate, and to attend cadre schools and training schools to learn military tactics".Rosenfeld, September 24, 1976
. *For Clarence Kelley's statement, se
"Nomination of Hon. Andrew Young as U.S. Representative to U.N."
, Committee on Foreign Relations, January 25, 1977, p. 49.
In 1975, under the name ''Lyn Marcus'', LaRouche published '' Dialectical Economics: An Introduction to Marxist Political Economy'', described by its only reviewer as "the most peculiar and idiosyncratic" introduction to economics he had ever seen. Mixing economics, history, anthropology, sociology and a surprisingly large helping of
business administration Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
, the work argued that most prominent Marxists had misunderstood Marx, and that
bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. ...
economics arose when philosophy took a wrong,
reductionist Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical p ...
turn under
British empiricists In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiric ...
like Locke and
Hume Hume most commonly refers to: * David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher Hume may also refer to: People * Hume (surname) * Hume (given name) * James Hume Nisbet (1849–1923), Scottish-born novelist and artist In fiction * Hume, ...
.McLemee, Scott
The LaRouche Youth Movement
, ''
Inside Higher Ed ''Inside Higher Ed'' is a media company and online publication that provides news, opinion, resources, events and jobs focused on college and university topics. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold Inside Higher Education to Tim ...
'', July 11, 2007
Bronfenbrenner, Martin
"Economics in Dialectical Dialect"
, ''
Journal of Political Economy The ''Journal of Political Economy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. Established by James Laurence Laughlin in 1892, it covers both theoretical and empirical economics. In the past, the ...
'', Vol. 84, No. 1 (Feb. 1976), pp. 123–130
In 1976, LaRouche campaigned for the first time in a presidential election as a U.S. Labor Party candidate, polling 40,043 votes (0.05 percent). It was the first of eight consecutive presidential elections in which he took part between 1976 and 2004. It enabled him to attract $5.9 million in federal
matching funds Matching funds are funds that are set to be paid in proportion to funds available from other sources. Matching fund payments usually arise in situations of charity or public good. The terms cost sharing, in-kind, and matching can be used interc ...
; candidates seeking their party's presidential nomination qualify for matching funds if they raise $5,000 in each of at least 20 states. His platform predicted financial disaster by 1980 accompanied by famine and the virtual extinction of the human race within 15 years, and proposed a debt moratorium; nationalization of banks; government investment in industry especially in the aerospace sector, and an "International Development Bank" to facilitate higher food production. When
Legionnaires' disease Legionnaires' disease is a form of atypical pneumonia caused by any species of '' Legionella'' bacteria, quite often ''Legionella pneumophila''. Signs and symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, high fever, muscle pains, and headaches. Na ...
appeared in the U.S. that year, he said it was a continuation of the swine flu outbreak, and that senators who opposed vaccination were suppressing the link as part of a "genocidal policy". His campaign included a paid half-hour television address, which allowed him to air his views before a national audience, something that became a regular feature of his later campaigns. There were protests about this, and about the involvement of the NCLC in public life generally. Writing in ''The Washington Post'', Stephen Rosenfeld said LaRouche's ideas belonged to the radical right, neo-Nazi fringe, and that his main interests lay in disruption and disinformation; Rosenfeld called the NCLC one of the "chief polluters" of political democracy. Rosenfeld argued that the press should be "chary" of offering them print or air time: "A duplicitous violence-prone group with fascistic proclivities should not be presented to the public, unless there is reason to present it in those terms." LaRouche wrote in 1999 that this comment had "openly declared ... a policy of malicious lying" against him.


1977: Second marriage

LaRouche married again in 1977. His wife, Helga Zepp, was then a leading activist in the West German branch of the movement. She went on to work closely with LaRouche for the rest of her career, standing for election in Germany in 1980 for his ''Europäische Arbeiterpartei'' (European Workers Party), and founding the Schiller Institute in Germany in 1984.


1980s


National Democratic Policy Committee, "October Surprise" theory

From the autumn of 1979, the LaRouche movement conducted most of its U.S. electoral activities as the National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC), a political action committee. The name drew complaints from the Democratic Party's
Democratic National Committee The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the governing body of the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well ...
. Democratic Party leaders refused to recognize LaRouche as a party member, or to seat the few delegates he received in his seven primary campaigns as a Democrat. In its 2019 obituary of LaRouche, ''
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
'' magazine reported that LaRouche's attempts to pose as a Democrat were originally an attempt at a spoiler operation to divide the opponents of
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
. LaRouche's campaign platforms advocated a return to the
Bretton Woods system The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretto ...
, including a gold-based national and world monetary system; fixed exchange rates; and abolishing the
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glo ...
. He supported the replacement of the
central bank A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a centra ...
system, including the U.S.
Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
System, with a
national bank In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings: * a bank owned by the state * an ordinary private bank which operates nationally (as opposed to regionally or locally or even internationally) * in the United States, an ordinary p ...
; a war on drug trafficking and prosecution of banks involved in money laundering; building a tunnel under the Bering Strait; the building of nuclear power plants; and a crash program to build
particle-beam weapon A particle-beam weapon uses a high-energy beam of atomic or subatomic particles to damage the target by disrupting its atomic and/or molecular structure. A particle-beam weapon is a type of directed-energy weapon, which directs energy in a par ...
s and lasers, including support for elements of the
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons ( intercontinental ballist ...
(SDI). He opposed the Soviet Union and supported a military build-up to prepare for imminent war; supported the screening and quarantine of
AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...
patients; and opposed environmentalism, deregulation, outcome-based education, and abortion. In December 1980, LaRouche and his followers started what came to be known as the "
October Surprise In U.S. political jargon, an October surprise is a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November election (particularly one for the U.S. presidency), whether deliberately planned or spontaneously occurring. Because the dat ...
" allegation, namely that in October 1980 Ronald Reagan's campaign staff conspired with the Iranian government during the
Iran hostage crisis On November 4, 1979, 52 United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over ...
to delay the release of 52 American hostages held in Iran, with the aim of helping Reagan win the
1980 United States presidential election The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory ...
against
Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
. The Iranians had agreed to this, according to the theory, in exchange for future weapons sales from the Reagan administration. The first publication of the story was in LaRouche's ''Executive Intelligence Review'' on December 2, 1980, followed by his ''New Solidarity'' on September 2, 1983, alleging that
Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...
, one of LaRouche's regular targets, had met Iran's Ayatollah Beheshti in Paris, according to Iranian sources in Paris. The theory was later echoed by former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr and former Naval intelligence officer and National Security Council member
Gary Sick Gary G. Sick (born April 4, 1935) is an American academic and analyst of Middle East affairs, with special expertise on Iran, who served on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and for a couple weeks under Reagan a ...
.


1983: Move from New York to Loudoun County

''The Washington Post'' wrote that LaRouche and his wife moved in August 1983 from New York to a 13-room Georgian mansion on a 250-acre section of the Woodburn Estate, near Leesburg, Loudoun County,
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...
. The property was owned at the time by a company registered in Switzerland. Companies associated with LaRouche continued to buy property in the area, including part of Leesburg's industrial park, purchased by LaRouche's Lafayette/Leesburg Ltd. Partnership to develop a printing plant and office complex. Neighbors said they saw LaRouche guards in camouflage clothes carrying semi-automatic weapons, and the ''Post'' wrote that the house had sandbag-buttressed guard posts nearby, along with metal spikes in the driveway and concrete barriers on the road. One of his aides said LaRouche was safer in Loudoun County: "The terrorist organizations which have targeted Mr. LaRouche do not have bases of operations in Virginia." LaRouche said his new home meant a shorter commute to Washington. A former associate said the move also meant his members would be more isolated from friends and family than they had been in New York.Mintz, January 13, 1985
.
According to the ''Post'' in 2004, local people who opposed him for any reason were accused in LaRouche publications of being communists, homosexuals, drug pushers, and terrorists. He reportedly accused the Leesburg Garden Club of being a nest of Soviet sympathizers, and a local lawyer who opposed LaRouche on a zoning matter went into hiding after threatening phone calls and a death threat. In leaflets supporting his application of concealed weapons permits for his bodyguards in Leesburg, Virginia, he wrote: Regarding LaRouche's paramilitary security force, armed with semi-automatic weapons, a spokesperson said that they were necessary, because LaRouche was the subject of "assassination conspiracies".


1984: Schiller Institute, television spots, contact with Reagan administration

Helga Zepp-LaRouche founded the Schiller Institute in Germany in 1984. In the same year, LaRouche was able to raise enough money to purchase 14 television spots, at a cost of $330,000 each, in which he called
Walter Mondale Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (January 5, 1928 – April 19, 2021) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. A U.S. senator from Minnesota ...
—the Democratic Party's presidential candidate—a Soviet agent of influence, triggering over 1,000 telephone complaints. On April 19, 1986, NBC's ''
Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves ...
'' aired a sketch satirizing the ads, portraying the Queen of the United Kingdom and Henry Kissinger as drug dealers. LaRouche received 78,773 votes in the 1984 presidential election. In 1984, media reports stated that LaRouche and his aides had met Reagan administration officials, including Norman Bailey, senior director of international economic affairs for the National Security Council (NSC), and Richard Morris, special assistant to William P. Clark, Jr. There were also reported contacts with the
Drug Enforcement Administration The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domestic en ...
, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the CIA. The LaRouche campaign said the reporting was full of errors. In 1984 two Pentagon officials spoke at a LaRouche rally in Virginia; a Defense Department spokesman said the Pentagon viewed LaRouche's group as a "conservative group ... very supportive of the administration." White House spokesman
Larry Speakes Larry Melvin Speakes (September 13, 1939 – January 10, 2014) was an American journalist and spokesperson who acted as White House Press Secretary under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987. He assumed the role after Press Secretary Jame ...
said the Administration was "glad to talk to" any American citizen who might have information. According to Bailey, the contacts were broken off when they became public.. Three years later, LaRouche blamed his criminal indictment on the NSC, saying he had been in conflict with
Oliver North Oliver Laurence North (born October 7, 1943) is an American political commentator, television host, military historian, author, and retired United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. A veteran of the Vietnam War, North was a National Secu ...
over LaRouche's opposition to the Nicaraguan
Contras The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to 1990 in opposition to the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua, which came to power in 1979 foll ...
. According to a LaRouche publication, a court-ordered search of North's files produced a May 1986 telex from Iran–Contra defendant General Richard Secord, discussing the gathering of information to be used against LaRouche. King states that LaRouche's ''Executive Intelligence Review'' was the first to report on important details of the Iran–Contra affair, predicting that a major scandal was about to break months before mainstream media picked up on the story.


Strategic Defense Initiative

The LaRouche campaign supported Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons ( intercontinental ballist ...
(SDI). Dennis King wrote that LaRouche had been speculating about space-based weaponry as early as 1975. He set up the Fusion Energy Foundation, which held conferences and tried to cultivate scientists, with some success. In 1979, FEF representatives attended a Moscow conference on
laser fusion Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy process that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with thermonuclear fuel. In modern machines, the targets are small spherical pellets about the size of ...
. LaRouche began to promote the use of lasers and related technologies for both military and civilian purposes, calling for a "revolution in
machine tool A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. Al ...
s."Benedictine, Kirll, and Diunov, Michael
"The Last Rosicrucian"
Terra-America, April 16, 2012
According to King, LaRouche's associates had for some years been in contact with members of the Reagan administration about LaRouche's space-based weapons ideas. LaRouche proposed the development of defensive beam technologies as a policy that was in the interest of both the United States and the Soviet Union, as the alternative to an arms race in offensive weapons, and as a generator of spin-off economic benefits. Between February 1982 and February 1983, with the approval of the National Security Council, LaRouche met with Soviet embassy representative Evgeny Shershnev to discuss the proposal. During this period, Soviet economists also began to study LaRouche's economic forecasting model. However, following Reagan's public announcement of the SDI in March 1983, Soviet representatives broke off all contact with LaRouche and his representatives. Physicist
Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...
, a proponent of SDI and X-ray lasers, told reporters in 1984 that he had been courted by LaRouche, but had kept his distance. LaRouche began calling his plan the "LaRouche-Teller proposal," though they had never met. Teller said LaRouche was "a poorly informed man with fantastic conceptions.". LaRouche later attributed the
collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
to its refusal to follow his advice to accept Reagan's offer to share the technology. Former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under Preside ...
reported in his 2011 memoir that at a 2001 dinner in Russia with leading officials, he was told by General Yuri Baluyevsky, then the second highest-ranking officer in the Russian military, that LaRouche was the brains behind SDI. Rumsfeld stated that he believed LaRouche had had no influence whatsoever on the program, and surmised that Baluyevsky must have obtained the information off the Internet. In 2012 the former head of the Russian bureau of Interpol, General Vladimir Ovchinsky, also described LaRouche as the man who proposed the SDI.


1984: NBC lawsuit

In January 1984,
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
aired a news segment about LaRouche, and in March a "First Camera" report produced by Pat Lynch. The reports described LaRouche as "the leader of a violence-prone, anti-Semitic cult that smeared its opponents and sued its critics", as Lynch wrote in 1985 in the ''
Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
''., p. 42. *For information about Pat Lynch, se
"Pat Lynch"
''The Huffington Post'', Retrieved February 14, 2011.
In interviews, former members of the movement gave details about their fundraising practices, and alleged that LaRouche had spoken about assassinating U.S. President
Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
. The reports said an investigation by the
Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory t ...
would lead to an indictment, and quoted Irwin Suall, the
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
's fact-finding director, who called LaRouche a "small-time
Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
". After the broadcast, LaRouche members picketed NBC's office carrying signs saying "Lynch Pat Lynch," and the NBC switchboard said it received a death threat against her. Another NBC researcher said someone placed fliers around her parents' neighborhood saying she was running a call-girl ring from her parents' home. Lynch said LaRouche members began to impersonate her and her researchers in telephone calls, and called her "Fat Lynch" in their publications. LaRouche filed a defamation suit against NBC and the ADL, arguing that the programs were the result of a deliberate campaign of defamation against him. The judge ruled that NBC need not reveal its sources, and LaRouche lost the case. NBC won a countersuit, the jury awarding the network $3 million in damages, later reduced to $258,459, for misuse of libel law, in what was called one of the more celebrated countersuits by a libel defendant. LaRouche failed to pay the damages, pleading poverty, which the judge described as "completely lacking in credibility." LaRouche said he had been unaware since 1973 who paid the rent on the estate, or for his food, lodging, clothing, transportation, bodyguards, and lawyers. The judge fined him for failing to answer. After the judge signed an order to allow discovery of LaRouche's personal finances, a cashier's check was delivered to the court to end the case. When LaRouche appealed, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, rejecting his arguments, set forth a three-pronged test, later called the "LaRouche test," to decide when anonymous sources must be named in libel cases.


1985–1986: PANIC, LaRouche's AIDS initiative

LaRouche interpreted the AIDS pandemic as fulfillment of his 1973 prediction that an epidemic would strike humanity in the 1980s. According to Christopher Toumey, his subsequent campaign followed a familiar LaRouche pattern: challenging the scientific competence of government experts, and arguing that LaRouche had special scientific insights, and his own scientific associates were more competent than government scientists. LaRouche's view of AIDS agreed with orthodox medicine in that HIV caused AIDS, but differed from it in arguing that HIV spread like the cold virus or malaria, by way of casual contact and insect bites—which, if true, would make HIV-positive people extremely dangerous. He advocated testing anyone working in schools, restaurants, or healthcare, and quarantining those who tested positive. Some of LaRouche's views on AIDS were developed by John Seale, a British venereological physician who proposed that AIDS was created in a Soviet laboratory. Seale's highly speculative writings were published in three prestigious medical journals, lending these ideas some appearance of being hard science. LaRouche and his associates devised a "Biological Strategic Defense Initiative" that would cost $100 billion per annum, which they said would have to be directed by LaRouche. Toumey writes that those opposing the program, such as the
World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level o ...
and
Centers for Disease Control The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgi ...
, were accused of "viciously lying to the world," and of following an agenda of genocide and euthanasia. In 1986 LaRouche proposed that AIDS be added to California's List of Communicable Diseases. Sponsored by his "Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee" (PANIC), Proposition 64—or the "LaRouche initiative"—qualified for the California ballot in 1986, with the required signature gatherers mostly paid for by LaRouche's Campaigner Publications. Seale, presented as an AIDS expert by PANIC, supported the LaRouche initiative, but disagreed with several of LaRouche's views, including that HIV could be spread by insects, and described the group's political beliefs and conspiracy theories as "rather odd". According to David Kirp, professor of public policy at the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
, the proposal would have required that 300,000 people in the area with HIV or AIDS be reported to public health authorities; might have removed over 100,000 of them from their jobs in schools, restaurants and agriculture; and would have forced 47,000 children to stay away from school.Kirp, David L
"LaRouche Turns To AIDS Politics"
, ''The New York Times'', September 11, 1986.
The proposal was opposed by leading scientists and local health officials as based on inaccurate scientific information and, as the public health schools put it, running "counter to all public health principles." It was defeated, reintroduced two years later, and defeated again, with two million votes in favor the first time, and 1.7 million the second. AIDS became a leading plank in LaRouche's platform during his 1988 presidential campaign.


1986: Electoral success in Illinois; press conference allegations

In March 1986, Mark Fairchild and
Janice Hart Janice Hart (born 1955) 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 op ...
—LaRouche National Democratic Policy Committee candidates—won the Democratic primary for statewide offices in
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...
, gaining national attention for LaRouche. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate,
Adlai Stevenson III Adlai Ewing Stevenson III (October 10, 1930 – September 6, 2021) was an American attorney and politician of the Democratic Party who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981. A member of the prominent Stevenson fami ...
, withdrew his nomination rather than run on the same slate as LaRouche members, and told reporters the party was "exploring every legal remedy to purge these bizarre and dangerous extremists from the Democratic ticket." A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee said it would have to do a better job of communicating to the electorate that LaRouche's National Democratic Policy Committee was unrelated to the Democratic Party."Win by LaRouche candidate shocks national Democrats"
, Associated Press, March 20, 1986.
''The New York Times'' wrote that Democratic Party officials were trying to identify LaRouche candidates in order to alert voters, and asked the LaRouche organization to release a full list of its candidates. A month later, LaRouche held a press conference to accuse the Soviet government, British government, drug dealers, international bankers, and journalists of being involved in multiple conspiracies. Flanked by bodyguards, he said: "If Abe Lincoln were alive, he'd probably be standing up here with me today," and that there was no criticism of him that did not originate "with the drug lobby or the Soviet operation ..." He said he had been in danger from Soviet assassins for over 13 years, and had to live in safe houses. He refused to answer a question from an NBC reporter, saying "How can I talk with a drug pusher like you?" He called the leadership of the United States "idiotic" and "berserk," and its foreign policy "criminal or insane." He warned of the imminent collapse of the banking system and accused banks of laundering drug money. Asked about the movement's finances, he said "I don't know. ... I'm not responsible, I'm not involved in that."


1986–1988: Raids and criminal convictions

In October 1986, hundreds of state and federal officers raided LaRouche offices in Virginia and Massachusetts. A federal grand jury indicted LaRouche and twelve of his associates on credit card fraud and obstruction of justice. The charges stated that they had attempted to defraud people of millions of dollars, including several elderly people, by borrowing money they did not intend to repay. LaRouche disputed the charges, alleging that they were politically motivated.
," Associated Press, January 27, 1989. *Mintz, John

, ''The Washington Post'', July 3, 1987. *Also see Mintz, John. [https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/73846043.html?dids=73846043:73846043&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep+20%2C+1987&author=John+Mintz&pub=The+Washington+Post+%28pre-1997+Fulltext%29&desc=Inside+the+Weird+World+of+Lyndon+LaRouche&pqatl=google "Inside the Weird World of Lyndon LaRouche"] , ''The Washington Post'', September 20, 1987. *.
When LaRouche's "heavily fortified" estate was surrounded, he at first warned law-enforcement officials not to arrest him, saying that any attempt to do so would be an attempt to kill him. A spokesman would not rule out the use of violence against officials in response. While surrounded, LaRouche sent a telegram to President Ronald Reagan saying that an attempt to arrest him "would be an attempt to kill me. I will not submit passively to such an arrest, ... I will defend myself." In 1987, a number of LaRouche entities, including the Fusion Energy Foundation, were taken over through an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding. The government's use of a sealed order in this proceeding was regarded as a rare legal maneuver. On December 16, 1988, LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy to commit
mail fraud Mail fraud and wire fraud are terms used in the United States to describe the use of a physical or electronic mail system to defraud another, and are federal crimes there. Jurisdiction is claimed by the federal government if the illegal activity ...
involving more than $30 million in defaulted loans; eleven counts of actual mail fraud involving $294,000 in defaulted loans; and a single count of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, but was released on parole after serving five years on January 26, 1994. Thirteen associates were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one month to 77 years for mail fraud and conspiracy. The trial judge called LaRouche's claim of a political
vendetta Vendetta may refer to: * Feud or vendetta, a long-running argument or fight Film * ''Vendetta'' (1919 film), a film featuring Harry Liedtke * ''Vendetta'' (1950 film), an American drama produced by Howard Hughes * ''Vendetta'' (1986 film), an ...
"arrant nonsense", and said "the idea that this organization is a sufficient threat to anything that would warrant the government bringing a prosecution to silence them just defies human experience." Defense lawyers filed unsuccessful appeals that challenged the conduct of the grand jury, the contempt fines, the execution of the search warrants, and various trial procedures. At least ten appeals were heard by the United States Court of Appeals, and three were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Former
Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Ramsey Clark William Ramsey Clark (December 18, 1927 – April 9, 2021) was an American lawyer, activist, and federal government official. A progressive, New Frontier liberal, he occupied senior positions in the United States Department of Justice under Pres ...
joined the defense team for two appeals, writing that the case involved "a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge." In his 1988 autobiography, LaRouche says the raid on his operation was the work of Raisa Gorbachev. In an interview that same year, he said that the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
opposed him, because he had invented the
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons ( intercontinental ballist ...
. "The Soviet government hated me for it. Gorbachev also hated my guts and called for my assassination and imprisonment and so forth." He asserted that he had survived these threats, because he had been protected by unnamed U.S. government officials. "Even when they don't like me, they consider me a national asset, and they don't like to have their national assets killed." LaRouche received 25,562 votes in the 1988 presidential election.


1989: Musical interests and Verdi tuning initiative

LaRouche had an interest in classical music up to the period of
Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
. A motto of LaRouche's European Workers' Party is "Think like
Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...
"; movement offices typically include a piano and posters of German composers, and members are known for their choral singing at protest events and for using satirical lyrics tailored to their targets. LaRouche abhorred popular music; he said in 1980, "Rock was not an accidental thing. This was done by people who set out in a deliberate way to subvert the United States. It was done by British intelligence," and wrote that
the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
were "a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications." LaRouche movement members have protested at performances of
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's operas, denouncing Wagner as an anti-Semite who found favor with the Nazis, and called a conductor "satanic", because he played contemporary music. In 1989 LaRouche advocated that classical orchestras should use a concert pitch based on A above middle C (A4) tuned to 432 Hz, which the Schiller Institute called the "Verdi pitch", a pitch that
Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the ...
had suggested as optimal, though he also composed and conducted in other pitches such as the French official ''diapason normal'' of 435 Hz, including his ''Requiem'' in 1874. The Schiller Institute initiative attracted support from more than 300 opera stars, including
Joan Sutherland Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano known for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s. She possesse ...
,
Plácido Domingo José Plácido Domingo Embil (born 21 January 1941) is a Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French ...
, and
Luciano Pavarotti Luciano Pavarotti (, , ; 12 October 19356 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor who during the late part of his career crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most acclaimed tenors of all time. He made numero ...
, who according to ''Opera Fanatic'' may or may not have been aware of LaRouche's politics. A spokesman for Domingo said Domingo had simply signed a questionnaire, had not been aware of its origins, and would not agree with LaRouche's politics.
Renata Tebaldi Renata Tebaldi ( , ; 1 February 1922 – 19 December 2004) was an Italian lirico-spinto soprano popular in the post- war period, and especially prominent as one of the stars of La Scala, San Carlo and, especially, the Metropolitan Opera. ...
and Piero Cappuccilli, who were running for the European Parliament on LaRouche's "Patriots for Italy" platform, attended Schiller Institute conferences as featured speakers. The discussions led to debates in the Italian parliament about reinstating "Verdi" legislation. LaRouche gave an interview to
National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
on the initiative from prison. The initiative was opposed by the editor of ''Opera Fanatic'', Stefan Zucker, who objected to the establishment of a "pitch police," and argued that LaRouche was using the issue to gain credibility.


1990s


Imprisonment, release on parole, attempts at exoneration, visits to Russia

LaRouche began his jail sentence in 1989, serving it at the
Federal Medical Center The Federal Bureau of Prisons classifies prisons into seven categories: * United States penitentiaries * Federal correctional institutions * Private correctional institutions * Federal prison camps * Administrative facilities * Federal correctio ...
in
Rochester, Minnesota Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on rolling bluffs on the Zumbro River's south fork in Southeast Minnesota, the city is the home and birthplace of the renowned Mayo Clinic. Ac ...
. From there he ran for Congress in 1990, seeking to represent the 10th District of Virginia, but he received less than one percent of the vote. He ran for president again in 1992 with
James Bevel James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was a minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct ...
as his running mate, a civil rights activist who had represented the LaRouche movement in its pursuit of the
Franklin child prostitution ring allegations The Franklin child prostitution ring allegations began in June 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska and attracted significant public and political interest until late 1990, when separate state and federal grand juries concluded that the allegations were unfou ...
. It was only the second-ever campaign for president from prison. He received 26,334 votes, standing again as the "Economic Recovery" party. For a time he shared a cell with televangelist
Jim Bakker James Orsen Bakker (; born January 2, 1940) is an American televangelist and convicted fraudster. Between 1974 and 1987, Bakker hosted the television program '' The PTL Club'' and its cable television platform, the PTL Satellite Network, with ...
. Bakker later wrote of his astonishment at LaRouche's detailed knowledge of the Bible. According to Bakker, LaRouche received a daily intelligence report by mail, and at times had information about news events days before they happened. Bakker also wrote that LaRouche believed their cell was bugged. In Bakker's view, "to say LaRouche was a little paranoid would be like saying that the ''
Titanic RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, Unite ...
'' had a little leak." Viktor Kuzin, a member of the Moscow City Council and a founder of the Democratic Union in Russia, travelled to Minnesota in 1993 to meet LaRouche in prison, and afterwards participated in international campaigns to exonerate LaRouche. An advertisement calling for exoneration was published in several U.S. newspapers, signed by Kuzin, Civil Rights attorney J. L. Chestnut, former Ugandan President Godfrey Binaisa, and others. Chestnut was interviewed in the '' Tuscaloosa News'' saying that when he met LaRouche, "I told him that he might as well be black and in Alabama." The exoneration campaigns garnered the support of a number of State Representatives and State Senators in the U.S., as well as a former justice of the Washington State Supreme Court. LaRouche was released on parole in January 1994, and returned to Loudoun County. ''The Washington Post'' wrote that he would be supervised by parole and probation officers until January 2004. Also in 1994, his followers joined members of the
Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
to blame the
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
for what they alleged were crimes and conspiracies against African Americans, reportedly one of several such meetings since 1992. Former U.S. Attorney General
Ramsey Clark William Ramsey Clark (December 18, 1927 – April 9, 2021) was an American lawyer, activist, and federal government official. A progressive, New Frontier liberal, he occupied senior positions in the United States Department of Justice under Pres ...
wrote a letter in 1995 to then-Attorney General
Janet Reno Janet Wood Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) was an American lawyer who served as the 78th United States attorney general. She held the position from 1993 to 2001, making her the second-longest serving attorney general, behind only Wi ...
in which he said that the case against LaRouche involved "a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge". He asserted that, "The government, ex parte, sought and received an order effectively closing the doors of these publishing businesses, all of which were involved in First Amendment activities, effectively preventing the further repayment of their debts." He called the convictions "a tragic miscarriage of justice which at this time can only be corrected by an objective review and courageous action by the Department of Justice". The LaRouche movement organized two panels to review the cases: the Curtis Clark Commission, and the Mann-Chestnut hearings. Beginning in 1994, LaRouche made numerous visits to Russia, participating in conferences of the
Vernadsky State Geological Museum The Vernadsky State Geological Museum is the geological museum in Moscow. Mineralogical collection was founded in 1755 and is now an earth sciences and educational centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. History Mikhail Lomonosov had studied mi ...
of the
Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
(RAS), the RAS Institute of the Far East, and other places. He addressed seminars at the RAS Institute of Economics, the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies. He spoke at hearings in the
State Duma The State Duma (russian: Госуда́рственная ду́ма, r=Gosudárstvennaja dúma), commonly abbreviated in Russian as Gosduma ( rus, Госду́ма), is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, while the upper hous ...
of the Russian Federation on measures to ensure the development of the Russian economy at the point of destabilization of the world financial system. Two of his books were translated into Russian.A Word About LaRouche — On the 90th birthday of the famous American non-conformist
, editorial in ''Zavtra'' ("Tomorrow,") September 5, 2012 -translation into English availabl
here
, accessed September 21, 2012
On September 18, 1996, a full-page advertisement appeared in the ''New Federalist'', a LaRouche publication, as well as ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' and ''
Roll Call ''Roll Call'' is a newspaper and website published in Washington, D.C., United States, when the United States Congress is in session, reporting news of legislative and political maneuverings on Capitol Hill, as well as political coverage of ...
''. Entitled "Officials Call for LaRouche's Exoneration", its signatories included
Arturo Frondizi Arturo Frondizi Ércoli (October 28, 1908 – April 18, 1995) was an Argentine lawyer, journalist, teacher and politician, who was elected President of Argentina and ruled between May 1, 1958 and March 29, 1962, when he was overthrown by a ...
, former
President of Argentina The president of Argentina ( es, Presidente de Argentina), officially known as the president of the Argentine Nation ( es, Presidente de la Nación Argentina), is both head of state and head of government of Argentina. Under the national cons ...
; figures from the 1960s American
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
such as
Amelia Boynton Robinson Amelia Isadora Platts Boynton Robinson (August 18, 1911 – August 26, 2015) was an American activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama, and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. In 1984, ...
(a leader of the Larouche-affiliated Schiller Institute),
James Bevel James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was a minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct ...
(a Larouche movement participant) and
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "th ...
; former
Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over t ...
Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
and Democratic presidential candidate
Eugene McCarthy Eugene Joseph McCarthy (March 29, 1916December 10, 2005) was an American politician, writer, and academic from Minnesota. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971. ...
; Mervyn Dymally, who chaired the
Congressional Black Caucus The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is a caucus made up of most African-American members of the United States Congress. Representative Karen Bass from California chaired the caucus from 2019 to 2021; she was succeeded by Representative Joyce B ...
; and artists such as classical vocalist William Warfield and violinist
Norbert Brainin Norbert Brainin, OBE (12 March 1923 in Vienna – 10 April 2005 in London) was the first violinist of the Amadeus Quartet, one of the world's most highly regarded string quartets. Because of Brainin's Jewish origin, he was driven out of Vie ...
, former 1st Violin of the
Amadeus Quartet The Amadeus Quartet was a string quartet founded in 1947 and disbanded in 1987, having retained its founding members throughout its history. Noted for its smooth, sophisticated style, its seamless ensemble playing, and its sensitive interpretat ...
. In 1996, LaRouche was invited to speak at a convention organized by the Nation of Islam's
Louis Farrakhan Louis Farrakhan (; born Louis Eugene Walcott, May 11, 1933) is an American religious leader, Black supremacy, black supremacist, Racism, anti-white and Antisemitism, antisemitic Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist, and former singer who hea ...
and Ben Chavis, then of the National African American Leadership Summit. As soon as he began speaking, he was booed off the stage. In the 1996 Democratic Party presidential primaries, he received enough votes in Louisiana and Virginia to get one delegate from each state, but before the primaries began, the Democratic National Committee chair, Donald Fowler, ruled that LaRouche was not a "bona fide Democrat" because of his "expressed political beliefs ... which are explicitly racist and anti-Semitic," and because of his "past activities, including exploitation of and defrauding contributors and voters." Fowler instructed state parties to disregard votes for LaRouche. LaRouche opposed attempts to impeach President
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
, charging it was a plot by the British Intelligence to destabilize the U.S. Government. In 1996 he called for the impeachment of Pennsylvania governor
Tom Ridge Thomas Joseph Ridge (born August 26, 1945) is an American politician and author who served as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security from 2001 to 2003, and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. ...
. Efforts to clear LaRouche's name continued, including in Australia, where the Parliament acknowledged receipt of 1,606 petition signatures in 1998. In 1999 China's press agency, the
Xinhua News Agency Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
, reported that LaRouche had criticized the Cox Report, a congressional investigation that accused the Chinese of stealing U.S. nuclear weapons secrets, calling it a "scientifically illiterate hoax." On October 13, 1999, during a press conference to announce his plans to run for president, he predicted the collapse of the world's financial system, stating, "There's nothing like it in this century. ... it is systematic, and therefore, inevitable." He said the U.S. and other nations had built the "biggest financial bubble in all history," which was close to bankruptcy.


2000s


2000–2003: Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement, September 11 Attacks, presidential run

LaRouche founded the Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement (WLYM) in 2000, saying in 2004 that it had hundreds of members in the U.S. and a lesser number overseas. During the Democratic primaries in June 2000, he received 53,280 votes, or 22 percent of the total, in
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...
. Despite finishing above the 15% threshold needed to obtain delegates, LaRouche was denied any delegates and was barred from attending the 2000 Democratic National Convention In 2002 LaRouche's ''Executive Intelligence Review'' argued that the
September 11, 2001, attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
had been an "inside job" and "attempted coup d'etat", and that Iran was the first country to question it. The article received wide coverage in Iran, and was cited by senior Iranian government officials, including
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ( fa, اکبر هاشمی رفسنجانی, Akbar Hāshemī Rafsanjānī, born Akbar Hashemi Bahramani, 25 August 1934 – 8 January 2017) was an Iranian politician, writer, and one of the founding fathers of the Islami ...
and
Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani ( fa, حسن روحانی, Standard Persian pronunciation: ; born Hassan Fereydoun ( fa, حسن فریدون, links=no); 12 November 1948) is an Iranian politician who served as the seventh president of Iran from 2013 to 2021. ...
. Mahmoud Alinejad wrote that, in a subsequent telephone interview with the ''Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran'', LaRouche said the attacks had been organized by rogue elements inside the U.S., aiming to use the incident to promote a war against Islam, and that Israel was a dictatorial regime prepared to commit Nazi-style crimes against the
Palestinians Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
. In 2003 LaRouche was living in a "heavily guarded" rented house in Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia. LaRouche again entered the primary elections for the Democratic Party's nomination in 2004, setting a record for the number of consecutive presidential campaigns; Democratic Party officials did not allow him to participate in candidate forum debates. He did not run in 2008. As during the preceding decade, LaRouche and his followers denied that human civilization had harmed the environment through DDT,
chlorofluorocarbon Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are fully or partly halogenated hydrocarbons that contain carbon (C), hydrogen (H), chlorine (Cl), and fluorine (F), produced as volatile derivatives of methane, ethane, and p ...
s, or
carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is t ...
. According to
Chip Berlet John Foster "Chip" Berlet (; born November 22, 1949) is an American investigative journalist, research analyst, photojournalist, scholar, and activist specializing in the study of extreme right-wing movements in the United States. He also stu ...
, "Pro-LaRouche publications have been at the forefront of denying the reality of
global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...
".


2003–2012: Overseas press coverage, financial crisis

Iqbal Qazwini wrote in the Arabic-language daily '' Asharq Al-Awsat'' in 2003 that LaRouche was one of the first to predict the fall of the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the gover ...
in 1988 and
German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
. He said LaRouche had urged the West to pursue a policy of economic cooperation similar to the
Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...
for the advancement of the economy of the socialist countries. According to Qazwini, recent years have seen a proliferation of LaRouche's ideas in China and South Asia. Qazwini referred to him as the spiritual father of the revival of the new
Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and rel ...
or Eurasian Landbridge, which aims to link the continents through a network of ground transportation. In 2005, the ''
People's Daily The ''People's Daily'' () is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The newspaper provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the CCP. In addition to its main Chinese-language ...
'' of China covered LaRouche's economic forecasts and published an eight-part interview with him; the interviewer wrote that LaRouche was "quite famous in mainland China today". In 2007, LaRouche began a national lobbying campaign to restore the Glass-Steagall Act, saying that it would be possible to save the U.S. banking system by reorganizing it under bankruptcy protection. Also during 2007 he proposed a "Homeowners and Bank Protection Act". This called for the establishment of a federal agency that would "place federal- and state-chartered banks under protection, freeze all existing home mortgages for a period of time, adjust mortgage values to fair prices, restructure existing mortgages at appropriate interest rates, and write off speculative debt obligations of mortgage-backed securities". The bill envisioned a foreclosure moratorium, allowing homeowners to make the equivalent of rental payments for an interim period, and an end to bank bail-outs, forcing banks to reorganize under bankruptcy laws. In Spring 2007 he was an honorary foreign guest at a ceremony in honor of the 80th birthday of Stanislav Menshikov at the Russian Academy of Sciences.


2009: U.S. health care reform

During the discussion of U.S. health care reform in 2009, LaRouche advocated a
single-payer health care Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer"). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from ...
bill and took exception to what he described as President
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
's proposal that "independent boards of doctors and health care experts houldmake the life-and-death decisions of what care to provide, and what not, based on cost-effectiveness criteria." LaRouche said the proposed boards would amount to the same thing as the
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...
' Action T4 euthanasia program. A press release from his political action committee asserted: "Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouchePAC are the source of the campaign to expose the Obama ‘health care’ policy as modeled on that of Hitler in 1939." Images at tables of volunteers compared Obama to
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...
, and at least one had a picture of Obama with a Hitler-style mustache. In Seattle, police were called twice in response to people threatening to attack the volunteers. During one widely reported public meeting, Congressman
Barney Frank Barnett Frank (born March 31, 1940) is a former American politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013. A Democrat, Frank served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committ ...
referred to the images as "vile, contemptible nonsense."


Ideology and beliefs

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main c ...
political philosophers
Catherine Zuckert Catherine H. Zuckert (born 1942) is an American political philosopher and Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Ca ...
and
Michael Zuckert Michael P. Zuckert (born July 24, 1942) is an American political philosopher and Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Zuckert earned a bachelor's degree in Cornell University in 1964, and completed his m ...
write about LaRouche that " must be nearly unique in American politics that a presidential candidate ... makes the interpretation of
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
a major issue in his campaign." According to George Johnson, LaRouche saw history as a battle between
Platonists Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...
, who believe in absolute truth, and Aristotelians, who rely on
empirical Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
data. Johnson characterizes LaRouche's views as follows: the Platonists include figures such as
Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...
,
Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...
,
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
,
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...
, and
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...
. LaRouche believed that many of the world's ills result from the dominance of Aristotelianism as embraced by the empirical philosophers (such as
Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
, Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume Hume most commonly refers to: * David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher Hume may also refer to: People * Hume (surname) * Hume (given name) * James Hume Nisbet (1849–1923), Scottish-born novelist and artist In fiction * Hume, ...
), leading to a culture that favors the empirical over the
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
, embraces
moral relativism Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
, and seeks to keep the general population uninformed. Industry, technology, and classical music should be used to enlighten the world, LaRouche argued, whereas the Aristotelians use
psychotherapy Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...
, drugs,
rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States a ...
, jazz, environmentalism, and quantum theory to bring about a new Dark Age in which the world will be ruled by the oligarchs. Left and right are false distinctions for LaRouche; what matters is the Platonic versus Aristotelian outlook, a position that has led him to form relationships with groups as disparate as farmers, nuclear engineers, Black Muslims, Teamsters, and
anti-abortion Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life or abolitionist movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in respo ...
advocates. In ''Architects of Fear'' (1983), Johnson compares LaRouche's view to an Illuminati conspiracy theory; Johnson writes that after he wrote about LaRouche in ''
The Minneapolis Star The ''Star Tribune'' is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. It originated as the ''Minneapolis Tribune'' in 1867 and the competing ''Minneapolis Daily Star'' in 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s, Minneapolis's competing newspapers were consoli ...
'', LaRouche's followers denounced him as part of a conspiracy of elitists that began in ancient Egypt. However, according to LaRouche, Aristotelians are not necessarily in communication or coordination with one another: "From their standpoint,
hey Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title ...
are proceeding by instinct," LaRouche said. "If you're asking how their policy is developed—if there is an inside group sitting down and making plans—no, it doesn't work that way ... History doesn't function quite that consciously." In 2011, Stephen E. Adkins' ''Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism In Modern American History'' described LaRouche as "the leading neo-fascist politician in the United States".


Controversy

LaRouche is described as having " fascistic tendencies", taking positions on the
far right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of bein ...
(despite his self-identification with the
left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album '' Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * ...
and some left-wing policies), and creating
disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the ...
.


Designation as a conspiracy theorist

LaRouche was commonly regarded as a conspiracy theorist: for example, in his Fox News obituary. An article in the
Southern Poverty Law Center The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white ...
website names him as "a fringe ideologue and conspiracy theorist whom Chip Berlet, senior analyst at
Political Research Associates Political Research Associates (PRA), formerly Midwest Research, Chicago (1981–87) is a non-profit research group located in Somerville, Massachusetts. Mission PRA studies the U.S. political right wing, as well as white supremacists, and pa ...
and an expert on the radical right calls "the man who brought us fascism wrapped in an American flag". An NPR obituary is titled ''Conspiracy Theorist And Frequent Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche Dies At 96''. ''The Washington Post'' obituary reports he was "often described as an extremist crank and fringe figure" and that he "built a worldwide following based on conspiracy theories, economic doom, anti-Semitism, homophobia and racism".


Allegations of antisemitism

LaRouche and his ideas have been called
antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...
since at least the mid-1970s by dozens of individuals and organizations in countries across Europe and North America. LaRouche and his followers have said that LaRouche has Jewish supporters and denied the accusations. Beginning in the mid-1970s, allegations began to appear saying that LaRouche had
fascist Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the ...
and antisemitic tendencies. In 1977, LaRouche married his second wife,
Helga Zepp-LaRouche Helga Zepp-LaRouche (born 25 August 1948) is a German political activist. She is the widow of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and the founder of the LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute and the German ''Bürgerrechtsbewegung Soli ...
, a German 27 years younger than himself. Her 1984 book, ''The Hitler Book'', argues that "We need a movement that can finally free Germany from the control of the
Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, ...
and
Yalta Yalta (: Я́лта) is a resort city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea. It serves as the administrative center of Yalta Municipality, one of the regions within Crimea. Yalta, along with the rest of Cri ...
treaties, thanks to which we have staggered from one catastrophe to another for an entire century." Helga founded the Schiller Institute, which has been described as promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories by the ''
Berliner Zeitung The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (, ''Berlin Newspaper'') is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since reunification. It is published by Berliner ...
'' and
Political Research Associates Political Research Associates (PRA), formerly Midwest Research, Chicago (1981–87) is a non-profit research group located in Somerville, Massachusetts. Mission PRA studies the U.S. political right wing, as well as white supremacists, and pa ...
, a non-profit research group which studies right wing, white supremacist, and militia groups.Samuels, Tim. "Jeremiah Duggan's death and Lyndon LaRouche," ''Newsnight'', February 12, 2004. LaRouche claimed that he was
anti-Zionist Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palesti ...
, not antisemitic.. When the
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
(ADL) accused LaRouche of antisemitism in 1979, he filed a $26-million libel suit; however, the case failed when Justice Michael Dontzin of the
New York Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...
ruled that it was
fair comment Fair comment is a legal term for a common law defense in defamation cases ( libel or slander). It is referred to as honest comment in some countries. United States In the United States, the traditional privilege of "fair comment" is seen as ...
and that the facts "reasonably give rise" to that description. LaRouche started a campaign against the ADL and set up a group called "The Provisional Committee to Clean Up B'nai Brith." LaRouche said in 1986 that descriptions of him as a neo-fascist or anti-Semite stemmed from "the drug lobby or the Soviet operation—which is sometimes the same thing," and in 2006 wrote that "religious and racial hatred, such as antisemitism, or hatred against Islam, or, hatred of Christians, is, on record of known history, the most evil expression of criminality to be seen on the planet today." Antony Lerman wrote in 1988 that LaRouche used "the British" as a code word for "Jews," a theory also propounded by Dennis King, author of ''Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism'' (1989). George Johnson argued that King's presentation failed to take into account that several members of LaRouche's inner circle were Jewish.
Daniel Pipes Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American historian, writer, and commentator. He is the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its ''Middle East Quarterly'' journal. His writing focuses on American foreign policy and the ...
wrote in 1997 that LaRouche's references to the British really were to the British, though he agreed that an alleged British-Jewish alliance lay at the heart of LaRouche's conspiracism. As of 2016, the
Jewish Virtual Library Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
states that "The international organization run by Lyndon LaRouche is a major source of such masked antisemitic theories globally. In the U.S. the LaRouchites spread these conspiracy theories in an alliance with aides to Minister
Louis Farrakhan Louis Farrakhan (; born Louis Eugene Walcott, May 11, 1933) is an American religious leader, Black supremacy, black supremacist, Racism, anti-white and Antisemitism, antisemitic Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist, and former singer who hea ...
of the
Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
. A series of LaRouchite pamphlets calls the neoconservative movement the 'Children of Satan', which links Jewish neo-conservatives to the historic rhetoric of the
blood libel Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mur ...
."


Allegations of racism

Manning Marable of
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
wrote in 1998 that LaRouche tried in the mid-1980s to build bridges to the black community. Marable argued that most of the community was not fooled, and quoted the
A. Philip Randolph Institute The A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) is an organization for African-American trade unionists. APRI advocates social, labor, and economic change at the state and federal level, using legal and legislative means. History In response to the 1963 ...
, an organization for African-American trade unionists, declaring that "LaRouche appeals to fear, hatred and ignorance. He seeks to exploit and exacerbate the anxieties and frustrations of Americans by offering an array of scapegoats and enemies: Jews, Zionists, international bankers, blacks, labor unions—much the way Hitler did in Germany.". During LaRouche's slander suit against NBC in 1984,
Roy Innis Roy Emile Alfredo Innis (June 6, 1934 – January 8, 2017) was an American activist and politician. He was National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) from 1968 until his death. One of his sons, Niger Roy Innis, serves as Nationa ...
, leader of the
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...
, took the stand for LaRouche as a character witness, stating under oath that LaRouche's views on racism were "consistent with his own." Asked whether he had seen any indication of racism in LaRouche's associates, he replied that he had not.


Disputed record as economist and forecaster

LaRouche material frequently acclaims him as the world's greatest economist and the world's most successful forecaster. For example, his book title ''The Economics of the Noösphere: Why Lyndon LaRouche Is the World's Most Successful Economic Forecaster of the Past Four Decades''. However, a website of disgruntled ex-movement leaders lists incorrect predictions of sudden world economic collapse, war or depression in the years 1956, 1961–1970, 1972, 1975–1992, and 1994–2011. Apart from the numerous failed predictions are claimed some successful predictions or proposals: the eventual reunification of Germany, the Star Wars initiative, the New Silk Road (claimed as a precursor to the Chinese
One Belt One Road initiative The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), formerly known as One Belt One Road ( zh, link=no, 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 15 ...
.)


Movement

Estimates of the size of LaRouche's movement have varied over the years; most say there is a core membership of 500 to 2,000. The estimated 600 members in 1978 paid monthly dues of $24. Johnson wrote in 1983 that both the Fusion Energy Foundation and the National Democratic Policy Committee had attracted some 20,000 members, as well as 300,000 magazine subscribers. According to Christopher Toumey, LaRouche's
charismatic authority Charismatic authority is a concept of leadership developed by the German sociologist Max Weber. It involves a type of organization or a type of leadership in which authority derives from the charisma of the leader. This stands in contrast to two o ...
within the movement was grounded on members' belief that he possessed a unique level of insight and expertise. He identified an emotionally charged issue, conducted in-depth research into it, and then proposed a simplistic solution, which usually involved restructuring of the economy or national security apparatus. He and the membership portrayed anyone opposing him as immoral and part of the conspiracy.


Description as a cult

The LaRouche movement, has been described as a cult or cult-like by critics and anti-cult organizations."One of America’s contributions to the 20th-century’s rich legacy of dangerous political cult leaders" A 1987 article by John Mintz in ''The Washington Post'' reported that members of the LaRouche movement lived hand-to-mouth in crowded apartments, with their basic needs paid for by the movement. They worked raising money or selling newspapers for LaRouche, doing research for him, or singing in a group choir, spending almost every waking hour together.Mintz, September 20, 1987
.
The group is known for its caustic attacks on opponents and former members. It has justified what it refers to as "psywar techniques" as necessary to shake people up; Johnson in 1983 quoted a LaRouche associate: "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".. Charles Tate, a former long-term LaRouche associate, told ''The Washington Post'' in 1987 that members see themselves as not subject to the ordinary laws of society: "They feel that the continued existence of the human race is totally dependent on what they do in the organization, that nobody would be here without LaRouche. They feel justified in a peculiar way doing anything whatsoever."


Death

LaRouche's death was announced on the website of one of his organizations. He died on February 12, 2019, at age 96. Neither the place nor cause of his death was specified.


Publications


''The Third Stage of Imperialism''
(as Lyn Marcus). New York: West Village Committee for Independent Political Action (1967)
archive
* ''Mass Action'', with Tony Papert. Ann Arbor, Michigan: SDS Regional Labor Committee (1968). * ''The Philosophy of Socialist Education''. New York: National Caucus of Labor Committees (1969). * ''Centrism as a Social Phenomenon: How Not to Build a Revolutionary Party'' (as Lyn Marcus), with Uwe Henke von Parpart. New York: National Caucus of SDS Labor Committees (1970). * ''Education, Science and Politics''. New York: National Caucus of Labor Committees (1972).
''The Question of Stalinism Today''.
New York: Campaigner Publications (1975). ''The Campaigner'', vol. 8, no. 9 (Nov. 1975)
Full issue.

''How the International Development Bank Will Work''.
New York: Campaigner Publications (1975). * ''A Presidential Campaign White Paper on Agricultural Production''. New York: New Solidarity International Press Service (1975). * ''The Rothschilds, from Pitt to Rockefeller'' (1976). .
''Dialectical Economics An Introduction to Marxist Political Economy''.
New York: Heath (1975).
archive''The Case of Walter Lippmann: A Presidential Strategy''.
New York: Campaigner Publications (1977).
archive''How to Defeat Liberalism and William F. Buckley: 1980 Campaign Policy''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1979).
archive''The Power of Reason: A Kind of Autobiography''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1979).
archive''Will the Soviets Rule During the 1980s?''
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1979).
archived''Basic Economics for Conservative Democrats''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1980). .
''What Every Conservative Should Know About Communism''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1980).
archive''Why Revival of "SALT" Won't Stop War''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1980).
archive

''The Ugly Truth About Milton Friedman''
with David P. Goldman. New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1980).
archive''Operation Juárez: Mexico/Ibero-America Policy Study''.
New York: Executive Intelligence Review (1982).
''There Are No Limits to Growth''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1983). .
''So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics? A Text on Elementary Mathematical Economics''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1984).
archive''Imperialism: The Final Stage of Bolshevism''.
New York: New Benjamin Franklin House (1984).
archive
* ''The Power of Reason, 1988: An Autobiography''. Washington, D.C.: '' Executive Intelligence Review'' (1987). . * ''In Defense of Common Sense''. Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute (1989). . * ''The Science of Christian Economy''. Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute (1991). .
''Cold Fusion: A Challenge to U.S. Science Policy''
with Paul Gallager. Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute (1992). . * ''Now, Are You Ready to Learn About Economics?'' Washington, D.C.: EIR News Service (2000). . * ''The Economics of the Nöosphere''. Washington, D.C.: EIR News Service (2001). .


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ;Missing sources * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Larouche, Lyndon 1922 births 2019 deaths American anti-war activists American conscientious objectors American conspiracy theorists United States Army personnel of World War II American people convicted of fraud American people convicted of tax crimes American people of French-Canadian descent American people of Scottish descent Criminals from New Hampshire Former Marxists Former Quakers Energy economists LaRouche movement Members of the Civilian Public Service Members of the Socialist Workers Party (United States) Military personnel from New Hampshire New Hampshire politicians convicted of crimes Northeastern University alumni People from Rochester, New Hampshire Politicians from Lynn, Massachusetts U.S. Labor Party politicians Virginia Democrats Candidates in the 1976 United States presidential election Candidates in the 1980 United States presidential election Candidates in the 1984 United States presidential election Candidates in the 1988 United States presidential election Candidates in the 1992 United States presidential election Candidates in the 1996 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election Candidates in the 2004 United States presidential election 20th-century American politicians 21st-century American politicians United States Army soldiers Cult leaders