Just Who the heck is Lyndon Larouche?

November 29, 2006 5:46 PM

Seriously, what's the deal with Lyndon Larouche? I've never paid any attention to the guy, then last night, my wife gets handed a whole bundle of very slickly-produced lit from one of his flunkies. I gather that he's some sort of fringe-wing nut job, but I really have no history. Casting about on Google is one idea, but asking here was another. Who has good links to level-headed reality-based bios on this fellow?
posted by Devils Rancher to law & government (21 comments total)

I suppose you've seen the Wiki, then.
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:14 PM on November 29, 2006

nutjob, big time - ignore him

he really does not seem to have a consistent philosophy so much as a desire to be a know kook
posted by caddis at 6:20 PM on November 29, 2006

I've dug through the wikipedia entry a bit this afternoon, but was looking for additional sources, just out of curiosity. Wikipedia can be hard to read & digest sometimes, & isn't inherently free of bias. What about his followers? I've seen some references that make them sound like culties or groupies. Why do they follow him year after year after year? What does the democratic establishment think of him? Questions within questions.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:23 PM on November 29, 2006

The Wiki is about as unbiased as you get. Most of it is his own stuff.

Anyways, I first heard of the guy when I found some literature aroudn campus, like a copy of his newspaper "The New Federalist" and some of his "academic" journals.

Pretty much he use to be a socialist, but eventually switched over to the "American System" in "the tradition of Franklin, Lincoln, and Roosevelt." He's pretty much a Roosevelt era Democrat. Most of his plans for economic recovery involve stuff like building an international mag-lev train and colonizing the Moon and Mars. He also believes that the British are out to get us.

He's run for President a few times as a Democrat, but it's kinda hard to run for President when you're a convicted felon. He also claims to be "the greatest economist alive." He also thinks that if we all listen to Schiller and watch Shakespeare's plays, the world will magically become better.

The wiki does a good job at explaining stuff in details with less bias then I present. If you're really interested in what he says, here's his official site. The site looks a lot better when I last checked it out. Even though he is bat shit insane, he is a rather interesting fellow, nonetheless.
posted by champthom at 6:27 PM on November 29, 2006

Wikipedia can be hard to read & digest sometimes, & isn't inherently free of bias.

Indeed, especially with the bias part. Unfortunately, with a gentleman like LaRouche, it's like Scientology or Heaven's Gate or any cult-like group: you'll either find stuff that's strongly biased for or strongly biased against. It's unfortunate there isn't too much middle ground here.

What about his followers? I've seen some references that make them sound like culties or groupies. Why do they follow him year after year after year?

Don't get me wrong, that's a resonable question but that's also like asking "Why do Scientologists still follow Scientology year after year?" I guess LaRouche offers something to the people who follow him that other people can't get elsewhere. It's that felling of being part of a group. Someone with a psychology background here could probably go into more detail.
posted by champthom at 6:35 PM on November 29, 2006

heh. very cultlike dude. In college, a couple friends of mine lost a friend who was looking for direction to his crazy-ass political campaign; if you are naive and liberal, his predigested ideas can be enticing.

This is thirdhand stuff, and really biased, as if came from puzzled friends, but the dude that left college to go campaign later told them crazy stuff, like sleeping barracks style on the road while canvassing, heaven's gate-ish lifestyle. Sounds like he is less a political figure and more a guy running a medium size cult of college dropouts.
posted by wuzandfuzz at 7:22 PM on November 29, 2006

King, Dennis. Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. New York: Doubleday, 1989. 415 pages.
LaRouche started as a sectarian leftist and self-styled intellectual in the late 1960s. By 1973 cadres from his National Caucus of Labor Committees launched "Operation Mop Up" and began beating up rival leftist groups. Within several years the NCLC stepped over that thin line between sectarian leftism and the right wing, and was cooperating with the KKK, Liberty Lobby, and law enforcement officials. In the early Reagan years, LaRouche's anti-Sovietism found expression through his lobbying on behalf of Star Wars and his access to U.S. intelligence and other officials. His publications such as Executive Intelligence Review are taken seriously by journalists and investigators because of their demonstrated access to occasional inside information. At the same time, LaRouche's people are understandably regarded with a certain amount of healthy suspicion.

LaRouchian political theory is a mixture of Kant, anti-Semitism, and paranoic tirades against everything from British empiricism to Oliver North. It is something of a mystery how LaRouche funds his organization, which is also active in Germany. He was convicted in 1988 of conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion (charges that grew out of his organization's sleazy fund-raising practices), and is serving a 15-year sentence. One suspects, however, that this clue provides a partial answer at best.
posted by hortense at 7:30 PM on November 29, 2006

Thanks, all. My nut-bag theory has been borne out by (internet-based) fact. Further reading shall ensue.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:35 PM on November 29, 2006

[Wikipedia] isn't inherently free of bias

Are you suggesting AskMe is? Anyway, I can't imagine you'd do better here than you would by reading the collection of Further Reading links at the bottom of Larouche's Wikipedia entry. Start with the 2004 WaPo article, which is a detailed, horrifying inside look at LaRouche's organization bookended by the ugly death of a young member.

That's a good general rule for Wikipedia info, by the way: start by working through the reference links at the bottom of the entry.
posted by mediareport at 7:41 PM on November 29, 2006

Wikipedia] isn't inherently free of bias

Are you suggesting AskMe is?

Do I look stupid? No, I was mainly looking for something more than Wikipedia, and the question had never been asked here, so I thought (to myself, of course) "hey, I could google this, or I could add it to this nifty knowledge-base that these people have here." And hopefully, gain a little insight from some knowledgeable posters. All the "further reading" links that I looked at on the wiki seemed pretty heavy on the editorial content, but now that I've picked up on the general vibe of this guy, I can see why.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:56 PM on November 29, 2006

I've seen some references that make them sound like culties or groupies.

They're more intellectually sophisticated than the average religion, more religious than the average political party, more reailty-based than the typical cult. Their way of understanding the world is at once convoluted and simplistic. I get the impression that they've seized a few simple ideas, some of them profoundly true, some misleading, but all widely acceptable to the average man in the street, and they've used these to build a vast system of thought with which to explain everything in the world. I've argued with their representatives a few times. On the whole they seem intelligent, well-informed, thoughtful, educated, and somewhat crazy. They are slightly more cult-like than most political organizations, and they have a tendency to quickly accept as true any possibility that fits in with their expectations, particularly if it involves a possible conspiracy theory. I'm pretty good at verbal debate, but the LaRouche followers I spoke with out-classed me most of the time. This from the wikipedia article sums up my experience with them:

LaRouche possessed 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. It was contradictory. His explanations were a bit too pat, and his mind worked so quickly that I always suspected his bravado covered over superficiality. He had an answer for everything. Sessions with him reminded me of a parlor game: present a problem, no matter how petty, and without so much as blinking his eye, LaRouche would dream up the solution.
posted by sfenders at 8:41 PM on November 29, 2006

it's official, that Washington Post article gives me chills. I always knew these people were crazy, I wasn't aware of all the brainwashing stuff or, you know, mysterious deaths of young members. Well, these guys now go on the list of organizations that seem funny before you realize how terrifying they are, right there with Scientologists.
posted by Subcommandante Cheese at 9:22 PM on November 29, 2006

Do I look stupid?

No, but your "hey, I could google this, or I could add it to this nifty knowledge-base that these people have here" does fly pretty directly in the face of the AskMe posting guidelines, which ask all of us to "Please try using Google to answer your question" before posting.
posted by mediareport at 9:47 PM on November 29, 2006

He's the one who wanted to put into concentration camps quarantine people with HIV twenty-odd years ago.
posted by brujita at 2:09 AM on November 30, 2006

No, but your "hey, I could google this, or I could add it to this nifty knowledge-base that these people have here" does fly pretty directly in the face of the AskMe posting guidelines, which ask all of us to "Please try using Google to answer your question" before posting.

Okay, I was specifically looking for people on this site who could offer me some context and knowledge of what google had to offer, figuring that actual human interaction, even if biased, might be more insightful than a search engine's rating criteria. I posit that I was successful in that endeavor. If I was wasting precious server storage space, I apologize.
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:19 AM on November 30, 2006

Way back when I had a subscription to "The Populist" newspaper, which "reported" on the various happenings of the UN take over of the world, Illuminati actions, the impending Jewish/Zionist takeover of humanity, etc. The whole thing was completely self sustaining. Any thoughts that led to breaking out of the conspiracy theory had an answer that only fed back into the theory. "Maybe the UN isn't really trying to take over" = "That's what they want you to think, see?!?"... that sort of thing. Anyway, eventually I found out The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, on which much of this stuff is based, was a product of the Russian Okhrana (read: pre-KGB KGB) based off some French anti-monarchy materials from the 1700s. The story from there sounds like a conspiracy theory in it's own right: Hitler was apparently operating under one of the child theories from the Protocols, Egyptian TV turned the bloody thing into a TV show and helped brainwash thousands more into the fake conspiracy, and so on.

LaRouche's stuff reminded me of that world, so I Googled:

"Lyndon LaRouche" illuminati

From the first hit (http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/):

"Though often dismissed as a bizarre political cult, the LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology. [...] They developed an idiosyncratic, coded variation on the Illuminati Freemason and Jewish banker conspiracy theories. Their views, though exotic, were internally consistent and rooted in right-wing populist traditions."

Yeah. I thought it seemed familiar. So anyway, that ought to get you started into looking behind the ideology. Sorry I can't be more specific to LaRouche but I figured context would be helpful. Anyway, if you're up for it, read the Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. I could swear the book was written to deprogram folks who fall into these conspiracy theories, and does so with a degree of humor, wacky sense of scale, and wisdom that only has Douglas Adams [R.I.P.] in the same league. /FNORD
posted by jwells at 6:05 AM on November 30, 2006

Just don't give them your credit card number - a friend agreed to "loan" LaRouche's campaign $500 when he was running for president back in the late 80's and never saw his money again. Yeah, stupid......
posted by Pressed Rat at 7:56 AM on November 30, 2006

He's been around forever and has kept in the public eye during each presidential election. People don't manage that unless they have lots of money backing them. Every time I've seen him run for president he's been an independent, not democrat. The democrats don't want anything to do with him.
posted by JJ86 at 8:32 AM on November 30, 2006

He believes that the Queen of England heads the international trade in illegal drugs.

When a clock strikes 13, it calls into question not just that instance but everything else as well.
posted by KRS at 8:44 AM on November 30, 2006

The LaRouche cult tried to recruit me in Baltimore in 1980, but they weren't radical enough for me. Also I distrust fringe politicos in suits; even the Socialist Action guy wore jeans with his ironed oxford shirt.
posted by davy at 8:46 AM on November 30, 2006

I think it's a good question, because most people don't know who he is, or care. And yet, in certain regions of the country (DC, I'm looking at you!) people unaffilated with his followers pay him way more attention than he deserves, IMO -- simply because they've heard about him on the media, or seen his literature, which empowers these folks with a model for 'wacky fringe political movement' they then use to reject any and all notions considered unconventional, by the mainstream status quo.
posted by Rash at 8:52 AM on November 30, 2006