I was walking towards the HUB, the University of Washington's student union building, for a spot of lunch today, when I spied a gaggle of LaRouchians peddling their intellectual smut from a card table by the side of the path. Since one of them was cute, I accidentally made eye contact. Never make eye contact. They will swoop down upon you like vultures upon a fresh and steaming carcass. Or George Bush on a bottle of Southern Comfort, laced with cocaine, Iraqi oil, and the blood of the exploited working class. I tried to play my standard 'Get Out of LaRouche Free Card', and claimed to be a Communist; normally a LaRouchian will recoil from Communism like Michael Howard from a clove of garlic. (I should get a little hammer and sickle pin, and brandish it like a crucifix at them next time.) This time, I'm not exactly sure why, it didn't work. He was made of sterner stuff. Perhaps it was the strength of character and intestinal fortitude lent to him by his goatee. At any rate, I got an earful of Genuine LaRouche ThoughtTM before I made my escape...
It's pretty funny stuff.
Now, from my last brush with these silly sorts, I knew Lyndon LaRouche had some kind of weird obsession with mathematics; he likes to name-drop people like Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann and Johannes Kepler, claiming, in typical schizoid nutjob fashion, that he and he alone truly understood the discoveries of these intellectual titans, and that modern mathematicians and physicists wilfully distorted and castrated their work. He seems to dislike Newton quite a bit, and attaches a quasi-mystical significance to the complex numbers. You can find a lot of such silliness in Riemann for Anti-Dummies, which, though not by The Man himself, was recommended enthusiastically by one of his vapid and brainwashed minions. It is, as they say, all complete pants. It is also quite long. So is this article, in which LaRouche has a go at maths in his own words. This, too, is rather long and boring. But it involves some LaRouche trademarks, like a rabid insistence that only he properly understands these things, and that most other figures in the field (in this case, maths) were malicious hoaxsters and frauds, and that it's all tied to some kind of conspiracy involving Napoleon Bonaparte somewhere along the line. Also, he thinks empiricists and free-trade types are pro-Satanic. He's big on Satan.
When LaRouche claims institutionalised maths is an oppressive monolith that squashes original thought outside its rigidly-defined channels, you can read it as code for 'I'm going to accuse anyone who points out flaws in my laughable logic and the huge gaps in my understanding of being a dogmatic malicious tool of a Vast Conspiracy.'
Satan, Napoleon, Riemann...You might be asking yourself at this stage if there's anyone or anything LaRouche hasn't worked into his schizoid conspiracy theories. No. No there is not. In this little gem, which is blessedly short, LaRouche claims the neocons are the intellectual children of an occult Freemasonic conspiracy founded by the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. They apparently run the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
And, as I learned from my surreal little conversation today, there is room enough to spare for the Queen in all of this. Apparently, the LaRouchian told me, the Queen of England is at the head of a cabal or conspiracy of British bankers and financial interests, linked to that very same occult Freemasonic Martinist cult, who have been using capitalism for centuries to manipulate economies across the world and subvert our natural, American, LaRouchian, Founding-Fathers-mandated economic system, which he attempted to describe, without actually making any sense or saying anything substantive. The Queen wields vast and terrible power, particularly over Canada. (And all without the Canadians realising. How fiendish.) The way to fight the Queen and her creeping evil is to revitalise America by constructing a huge network of maglev trains, travelling at 600 miles an hour.
No, really.
Here you can find Rosicrucians, Robert Fludd, gnostics, and Cathars, linked to usury and some kind of artistic repression. LaRouche has had a long and chatty career; he's managed to work everything in somewhere. It's almost impressive, in its way, his ability to name-drop. I'm sure the Knights Templars and the Gay Mafia will pop up sooner or later.
He's creepy, yet simultaneously funny. Loonies are like that. Just keep your hands and feet away from his mouth.
LEGAL NOTICE: I am not accusing LaRouche or his supporters of being diagnosably insane, before anyone gets any bright ideas about lawsuits. I am just accusing them of being stupid and silly.
Posted by aloysius at November 10, 2003 06:09 PM | TrackBack |You sure went to a great deal of time and effort in order to discuss your feelings about a guy (LaRouche) whom you claim to be a crack pot.
There seems to be a contradiction here.
No, there really isn't.
A. It is funny to expose crackpots and laugh at them.
B. There are lots of people out there who don't yet know that LaRouche is a crackpot. If they aren't told, they might end up doing something stupid like giving him money, or voting for him, or joining his brainwashed cult of magazine-peddlers. My saying 'LaRouche is a crackpot' alone wouldn't be likely to convince anyone; specific examples of his crackpottery, however, might.
C. This post had very little to do with my feelings and a lot to do with LaRouche's documented, palpably silly statements.
Even if the entire posting were about my bitter dislike for the man personally, devoid of any objective content, there still wouldn't be a contradiction. Crackpots can be annoying as well as cracked, and the annoying are worth verbally abusing.
And there wasn't really much time and effort involved. Google's a wonderful thing.
Posted by: aloysius on December 28, 2003 10:28 AMThe Larouche "Movement"
"Don't let her leave!" The group leader had thoroughly worked her over, hammering her with guilt about her previous actions, accusing her of being delusional, telling her to confess, until she was no longer recognizable as a woman, but only as a blubbering mess of tearful convulsions. The tearful woman got up to flee the room.
"Don't let her leave! Keep her in here!" No one stopped her, so the leader ran after her and wrestled her down into a chair.
"SIT DOWN. Now Marsha," the leader said in a calm voice, "You know you've got to stop doing this..." She went on calmlyand quietly for some time, and then everyone else left the room. I sat across the room and watched her sob hysterically with her face in her hands, and not for the first time wondered what the LaRouche organization was all about.
Throughout the summer I witnessed similar scenes over and over again in different forms; in personal meetings with the leadership, in small group meetings, Sunday "Field Meetings," at "retreats," and one-on-one conversations. There was a clear pattern being used in each case; the sowing of guilt (real or imagined), fear, confusion, and the use of "sore spots" (personal shames or shortcomings) to browbeat someone into an extremely worked up emotional state. Once the person has been whipped up she is then questioned until she contradicts herself on some minute point. This contradiction is then used as a stick to beat her with until there is a complete emotional breakdown, then they admit their faults (confess), after which the leadership then redefines the "mission" for them. I recognized it as manipulation. I recently took interest in a book by William Sargant, "The Battle for the Mind," and he had another name for it: Brainwashing.
In the section on political indoctrination, there is a description of how Communist China brainwashed workers into being a "conduit from the Party to the people," and oddly enough I found the program used fits almost precisely what I've undertaken in the Lyndon LaRouche organization. It begins for many with indoctrination “retreats,” where students go out to cabins for a “weekend of intellectual discussion,” where new recruits are worked on from the minute they walk in, to join the organization. For a weekend they are bombarded with classes that challenge their identity, culture, past training, and are given an apocalyptic view of the near future. Very frequently, “freak-outs” occur; crying, violent outbursts, or complete inhibition—-which is exactly the necessary response, for the weakened mind state makes an individual ripe to be implanted with ideas. Those who then begin working with LaRouche will immediately see very little sleep, physical exhaustion (LaRouchies work seven days, 90-100 hours a week), a large number of classes (in the beginning indoctrination), strong encouragement to break ties with family and friends, mental fatigue, fellow organizers reporting to the leadership any deviations in thought, a groupthink atmosphere, vicious attacks from the leadership, group confessions, and "struggle meetings." They will receive around $80.00 per week, and be housed somewhere by the organization. The organization makes sure organizers have little or no free time, to make sure there is not a pause to examine their enslaved condition. If they ever do, as one defector from California stated, ”By the time I realized what had happened, I had dropped out of school, had no money, the organization owned my lease, and I had told all my family and friends they were fascists.” I've now done a great deal of study into the physiology of brainwashing and the Communist's tactics, and each report I read confirms my suspicions, and so many confusing incidents over the summer have been replayed in books that are almost fifty years old!
LaRouche began his political career as a member of the CPUSA (Communist Party USA), and recruited many of his first followers from the Maoist PLP. As recently as 1976, during a series of lectures called, "What Every Communist Knows," LaRouche described his movement as part of the "world's Marxist labor movement" working to "bring into being a new Communist international". After reading “Mein Kampf” by Adolph Hitler, I saw so many striking similarities in LaRouche ideology I have little doubt that he is the fascist that Dennis King claimed in his book, "Lyndon LaRouche: The New American Fascism." LaRouche purports to be the only true progenitor of the “American Intellectual Tradition,” and in between thinly veiled anti-Semitic rhetoric, and wild conspiracy theories, claims to be the new Franklin Roosevelt.
For thirty years, LaRouche has been a parasitical entity, soliciting millions of dollars per year, marching young wives of members to abortion clinics, and doing irreparable psychological damage to hundreds of his organizers. One former organizer used to show up and stand in front of the office talking to him. The ones who stay are completely unable to think for themselves, and are so paranoid that anyone they meet who opposes LaRouche is an “agent” or a fascist. Anyone who has been there for more than a few years generally feels completely unable to live in the ”outside world,” and the organization has instilled a sense of superiority in them that living among the “population” would be wasting their lives anyway. They have committed themselves to making LaRouche president, never mind the Supreme Court ruling that stated he was disqualified from candidacy because he is a convicted felon (fraud, tax evasion), and candidates must be registered to vote.
Using Communist brainwashing, fascist ideology, and American propaganda, LaRouche has built a multi-million dollar network and, I believe, today poses one of the greatest threats to the American way of life, not to mention the number of bright, young students the organization has pulled out of college to sell newspapers in the street, feeding their egos with the thought that they are “saving civilization.”
Posted by: scott on April 19, 2004 08:37 PMi find the best way to interact with larouchians is to be crazier than they are. in berkeley, a number of people simply inform them "i don't like cheese." i do this myself, and i must say, it annoys the hell out of them. i once had one follow me three blocks demanding to know what larouche had to do with so many people disliking cheese.
Posted by: metal mike on June 10, 2004 09:33 PM