THE SINISTER SIDE OF THE LAROUCHE NETWORK AND WHY WE SHOULD CARE by Chip Berlet From fall

THE SINISTER SIDE OF THE LAROUCHE
NETWORK AND WHY WE SHOULD CARE
by Chip Berlet
From fall 1986 issue of Public Eye Magazine

     Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. is a name familiar to most Illinois
voters since last April when two of his followers scored primary
victories garnering the official Democratic Party ballot slots
for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State.

     In repudiating the LaRouche candidates, Adlai Stevenson
removed himself as the Democratic Party's candidate for Governor
saying he could not in good conscience run on the same ticket
with neo-Nazis. Stevenson's startling characterisation of the
LaRouche ideology soon faded amidst the cacophony of typically
shrill Illinois electoral campaign rhetoric.

     With widespread media coverage of the LaRouche network's
legal difficulties and unusual political theories, most Illinois
voters propbably think they already know all they need to know
about Lyndon LaRouche. Yet the picture most people envision when
they hear of the "LaRouchies" is a caricature of a complicated
and troubling phenomena which appears more sinister than comical
when the details are sketched in with information emerging from
court records, interviews with former members, and a careful
reading of LaRouche's theoretical writings.

     They have been called crooks, con artists, a cult, obsessed
with conspiracy theories, a private intelligence army, anti-
Semitic. Some critics consider LaRouche to be America's leading
neo-Fascist.

     They call themselves visonaries, nation-builders, walking in
the footsteps of Lincoln, Hamiltonian Constitutionalists, neo-
Platonic thinkers. Supporters consider LaRouche to be one of the
great minds of the Twentieth Century, and the world's leading
economist.

     The truth may well be a complex blend of both views. Even
his sharpest critics generally agree that LaRouche himself is
highly intelligent and well-read, with an astounding ability to
garnish his conversation with historical references drawn from
memory.

     The LaRouche network's glossy Fusion Magazine covers current
theoretical and practical research on lasers and fusion energy
with details not available in other similar publications,
according to several nuclear physicists quoted in published
reports. Even Reagan Administration officials have praised the
LaRouche intelligence-gathering apparatus, which forms the
backbone of the LaRouche network.

     Running their global intelligence operation takes money, and
former members report intense pressure to meet daily financial
quotas. The resulting over-zealous fundraising efforts are what
caught the attention of a Boston federal grand jury two years
ago. That grand jury recently indicted ten top LaRouche
lieutenants and raided his corporate offices searching for
documents to verify allegations of widespread credit card and
loan fraud.

     Linda Ray, a former member of what she calls the "LaRouche
Cult," says his followers may have been "the guinea pigs for
pioneering the financial fraud in the late 1970's" when members
with credit cards were persuaded to take out personal loans to
finance LaRouche organizations. Former members say these internal
loans were seldom properly repaid.

     According to Ray, she and other "LaRouchies" staffing
LaRouche-controlled companies often did not receive paychecks;
the money instead being used to keep the LaRouche global
telecommunications network humming. "We were told that one of the
top priorities for meeting expenses was maintaining a 24-hour
communications link with the European central office," she
recalls.

     Former members say they were willing to make personal
sacrifices and raise money using questionable methods because
they were convinced they were part of a historic mission to save
the world from an evil global conspiracy -a belief they now
reject as an illusion. Intense peer pressure and guilt are used
to control LaRouche loyalists, say former members, many of whom
call the LaRouche inner circle a "cult."

     This cult aspect began when LaRouche propounded a macabre
"psycho-sexual" theory of politics in the early 1970's after
taking his followers out of the radical left Students for a
Democratic Society.

     This theory was used to justify dozens of incidents in 1973
when LaRouche followers wielding chains and bats physically
attacked and injured political rivals in street battles and
classroom brawls. LaRouche ordered his troops into the streets
saying "I am going to make you organizers --by taking your
bedrooms away from you....To the extent that my physical powers
do not prevent me, I am now confident and capable of ending your
political --and sexual --impotence; the two are interconnected
aspects of the same problem." In early 1974 LaRouche announced to
the press that he had uncovered a CIA plot to brainwash his
followers into assassinating him. LaRouche alone had the skill to
develop the "deprogramming" sessions each member was expected to
undergo.

     According to Ray and other former members, LaRouche was in
fact testing his control over the flock. A "chain of
psychological terror" said two members in a resignation letter
which called the sessions an attempt to crush the will of "all
individuals who have expressed political and intellectual
opposition to the tendencies" surfacing inside the LaRouche
organization. Ray says hundreds of persons left the LaRouche
organization during this period. For Ray and others who remained,
however, LaRouche's increasingly macabre and bigoted theories
were accepted without question to avoid being subjected to "de-
programming" sessions. By 1976, LaRouche had drifted to the
extremist-right of the political spectrum where his bigoted
conspiracy theories linking international bankers, leading Jews,
KGB agents, and secret societes found fertile ground. Ray thinks
that more recent LaRouche converts are not even aware of the
group's real history nor the inner circle which controls the
financial operations. LaRouche's parlaying of personal and
political conspiracy theories into a multi-million dollar
financial empire is unique, but paranoid political movments occur
cyclically in American history. In his, "The Paranoid Style in
American Politics," professor Richard Hofstadter argues that in
times of economic, social or political crisis, small conspiracy-
minded groups suddenly gain a mass following. The anti-Catholic
hysteria of the 1800's, the anti-immmigrant movement which lead
to the Palmer Raids in the 1920's, the Red Scare of the 1950's -
all are examples of this thesis, wrote Hofstadter.

     While Hofstadter wrote his book before the LaRouche
phenomena, the comparison seems appropriate to another historian,
author George Seldes, who thinks LaRouche has followed another
seldom travelled but recognizable historic path, the road from
socialism through national socialism to Facism. Seldes has
authored some ten books concerning authoritarianism and thinks
LaRouche's theories and style represent classic "Moussolini-style
fascist" ideology. Seldes analysis carries some weight since he
wrote a biography of Mussolini in 1935 titled "Sawdust Caesar."

     In a sense LaRouche is a "Silicon Caesar" since he has risen
to power through a sophisticated computerized telecommunications
network which gathers political and economic intelligence and
then packages it for dissemination through newsletters,
magazines, special reports and consulting services. Former Reagan
advisor and National Security Council senior analyst, Dr. Norman
Bailey, told NBC reporter Pat Lynch the LaRouche network was "one
of the best private intelligence services in the world."

     Not everyone shares that view. When Henry Kissinger was told
of how LaRouche operatives met with high Reagan Administration
officials in the early 1980's, told the New Republic "If this is
true, it would be outrageous, stupid, and nearly unforgivable."
Dennis King, co-author of the New Republic article which examined
LaRouche's influence in scientific and intelligence circles, says
during the first Reagan term LaRouche aides managed to gain
"access to an alarming array of influential persons in
government, law enforcement, scientific research and private
industry."

     John Rees, whose Information Digest newsletter reports on
political extremes on the left and right says he "believes the
New Republic story that LaRouche staffers had access to a lot of
people." But he points out "If you have all the electronic
resources and information-gathering staff that LaRouche posesses
you are bound to come up with occasional gems, that's what most
people were interested in, not the LaRouche philosophy." Both
King and Rees feel the Reagan Administration is now consciously
distancing itself from contacts with the LaRouche network.

     Russ Bellant, a long-time LaRouche watcher from Detroit
argues that when LaRouche turned to the right and tried to link
themselves to more respectable groups, the LaRouche network was
tolerated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies which
sometimes were interested in the "information being churned up by
LaRouche's intelligence-gathering apparatus. Political alliances
with some right-wing groups on the basis of LaRouche's scurrilous
disruption campaigns."

     When LaRouche's influence began to get out of hand, and he
began to gain high visibility by disrupting more mainstream
political groups, "it became impossible to keep ignoring or
excusing his questionable fundraising practices," says Bellant.
Bellant however, says that for ten years some Republican and
conservative forces have quietly worked with LaRouche operatives
to target political foes, especially liberal Democrats.

     LaRouche-related financial operations have run afoul of the
law before, but by adopting an agressive legal strategy his
groups have been able to fend off successful prosecution for
years until cases were dropped or settled by exhausted plaintiffs
and prosecutors. One Illinois case involving LaRouche-backed
mayoral candidate Sheila Jones and LaRouche's Illinois Anti-Drug
Coaliton has dragged on for over five years.

     Bellant notes with irony that indicted LaRouche aide Jeffrey
Steinberg used to meet with Reagan Administration officials at
the Old Executive Office Building in the White House compound.
Steinberg's fall from grace is so complete that government
prosecutors have successfully argued that Steinberg be held
without bail.

     "The visibility that came to LaRouche after the Illinois
primary lent credibility to the investigations into his financial
operations by bringing forward scores of persons who claimed to
have been defrauded by LaRouche operations over the years."

     Bellant's articles on LaRouche have appeared in liberal
Michigan weeklies and progressive magazines, while Rees tills the
right side of the political garden. Both agree LaRouche's
ideology is now neither Marxist nor conservative. Rees, who for
years has written for conservative and anti-communist
publications (including magazines associated with the John Birch
Society) thinks it is unfair to ever have called LaRouche a
conservative simply because he has tried to woo that political
block.

     "He is emphatically not a conservative," says Rees, "he is a
totalitarian extremist with a cult of personality to rival Joseph
Stalin's." Ress conceeds that LaRouche's politics are distorted
and strange, "he is difficult to categorize -in a sense LaRouche
is a remedial Fascist. At least Mussolini could make the trains
run on time. I doubt LaRouche is capable of doing that." Rees
thinks that "when LaRouche was rejected by the totalitarian left,
he simply tried the other side of the totalitarian spectrum."
According to Rees, ties between the LaRouche network and several
racist and anti-Semitic groups are well-established. "Former
LaRouche organizers report confirm cooperation with other groups
in the Aryan Nations Network," adds Bellant who agrees that the
LaRouche is a "neo-Nazi cult."

     Richard Lobenthal, Midwest Regional Director for the Anti-
Defamation League of B'nai B'rith observes that one indicted
LaRouche security advisor, Roy Frankhouser "has been identified
as present with other white supremecists at meetings held at the
farm of Pastor Bob Miles in Michigan." Leaders of the notoriously
racist Aryan Nations have attended the same meetings.
"Frankhouser's background and connections are myriad, he is
obviously a LaRouchite, he is a professed racist and anti-Semite
and was a close associate of neo-Nazi leader George Lincoln
Rockwell," says Lobenthal. Another ADL spokesperson, Irwin Suall,
was once sued by LaRouche for calling him a "small time Hitler."
The jury ruled against LaRouche.

     So if LaRouche is just a paranoid bigot - a small-time
Hitler - is there really anything to worry about? Are we paying
too much attention to him and his band of bandits? A surprisingly
broad range of LaRouche's critics say no, and think he should be
taken a bit more seriously for a variety of reasons.

     Lobenthal of ADL warns that the LaRouche organization
"Obviously should not be dismissed lightly, they are more than
just kooks. They are anti-Semitic extremists. His aspirations are
to gain legitimacy and power through, amongst other ways, the
electoral process. To snicker about LaRouche is to snicker about
any bigot or extemist who would ascend to political office and
then subvert that office for their own purposes," he says.

     In California a LaRouche-backed referendum establishing
restrictive public health policies regarding Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) demonstrates how the small LaRouche
group there had a devasting effect when it found a fearful
audience for its simplistic scapegoating theories.

     Mark L. Madsen, a public health specialist with the
California Medical Association says the LaRouche initiative is
based on "absolute hysteria and calculated decpetion," but
whether or not the measure is passed "it has set back public
health education efforts at least five years. The LaRouche people
have almost wiped out all that we have done so far in educating
the public about AIDS."

     The LaRouche intitiative has "created an immeasurable
medical problem far beyond AIDS victims," says Madsen. In
California the number of regular blood donors is down 30%, and
one health expert blames this statistic directly on fear by
donors of repercussions from being identified as carrying the
AIDS virus. "This fear, whipped up substantially by the
hysterical LaRouche theories about AIDS, has already led to
critical shortages of blood in the state of California," says
Madsen.

     Leonard Zeskind helped build a coalition of Black,
Christian, Jewish, farm advocacy and civil rights groups to
confront the spread of hate-mongering theories in the rural farm
belt. He calls the LaRouche ideology "Crank Fascism". "The
LaRouche organizers are not as active in the farm belt as they
once were, but they and other groups which promote scapegoating
conspiratorial theories have lead some farmers down a dead-end
path which offers no short-term help for individual financially-
distressed farm families and no long-term solutions to the
ongoing crisis in rural America.

     "For those farmers who may have bought into these bigoted
snake-oil theories, the effect has been harmful." Zeskind points
out the LaRouche group "has also been very disruptive in the
Black community where they exploit legitimate issues such as drug
pushing and widespread unemployment. Those of us who have to deal
with the victims of the LaRouche philosophy don't find it very
humorous at all."

     Prexy Nesbitt, a consultant to the American Committee on
Africa who has lead campaigns calling for Divestment in South
Africa, agrees the LaRouche organization should be taken more
seriously. "His people have deliberately made themselves an
obstacle to our organizing and disrupted our activities," says
Nesbitt. "The LaRouche people spied on anti-apartheid activists
and South African exiles in Europe and then provided information
to South African government," charges Nesbitt. "This is a very
dangerous and potentially deadly game," he says. "Critics of the
South African Government have disappeared or been killed, their
offices have been blown up," reports Nesbitt.

     In 1981 the respected British magazine New Scientist ran an
article titled "American fanatics put scientists' lives at risk."
According to the article, LaRouche's Executive Intelligence
Review had circulated a report naming a number of scientist
working in the Middle East as being involved in an insurgent
conspiracy against established governments. "In certain Middle
East countries with hypersensitive governments," warned the
magazine, "these allegations, however indirect, can easily lead
to arrests, prison sentences and even executions."

     Retired General Daniel O. Graham says LaRouche followers
have significantly hampered his work. Graham, Director of Project
High Frontier which predates President Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative plan for anti-missle defense, says the LaRouche groups
have "caused a lot of problems by adopting our issue in an effort
to seize credit for the idea. They also mounted a furious attack
on me personally," says Graham. "Even today I get mail asking if
I'm in league with LaRouche," he says wearily.

     "LaRouche does not just represent some nut to simply
backhand away...he's very clever, you have to go to great lengths
to get around those people." Graham adds: "Look, these people are
purely interested in power, LaRouche doesn't care in these issues
one bit, its just a way to raise money and consolidate his
political base."

     Jonathan Levine, the Chicago-based Midwest Regional Director
of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) agrees that exploitation
of issues is a key factor with the LaRouche ideology. "Extremists
have traditionally tried to piggyback on substantive issues to
gain legitimacy for themselves. Never mind that the way the
LaRouche candidates frame issues does not warrant serious
discussion in a political campaign, but they may appeal to
frustrated, apathetic voters nevertheless. In Illinois there is
still significant economic dislocation, this only heightens the
level of alienation some voters experience," says Levine. An AJC-
sponsored statistical analysis of the Illinois primary results
revealed low voter turnout was more responsible than any other
single factor in the LaRouche candidate's victory.

     Bruce B. Decker, a lifelong Republican who has served on the
staff of President Gerald Ford and on a health advisory panel
appointed by California Governor George Deukmejian thinks the
response to LaRouche's bigoted theories should cut across
traditional party politics and electoral constituencies. He lists
the forces who have joined a California 'Stop LaRouche'
coalition. "We have united Republicans and Democrats,
progressives and conservatives, religious leaders representing
Protestants, Catholics, Jews and other beliefs, ethnic groups
including Blacks, Latinos and Asians, professionals associations
and labor unions," says Decker. "Isn't that a lesson we've
learned from history?" asks Decker "That we all have an
obligation to stand up together and forcefully oppose the
victimization and scapegoating spread by these types of
demogogues?"

     After the Illinois primary Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(D-NY) blasted his own party for originally pursuing a policy of
ignoring the "infiltration by the neo-Nazi elements of Lyndon H.
LaRouche..." and worried that too often, especially in the media,
"the LaRouchites" are "dismissed as kooks."

     "In an age of ideology, in an age of totalitarianism, it
will not suffice for a political party to be indifferent to and
igorant about such a movement," said Moynihan. Lobenthal of ADL
echoes that sentiment. "Any American citizen that has even a
scintilla of committment to Democracy needs to be alert to their
threat and outraged by their presence."

     Most LaRouche critics figure his days as a political leader
are numbered, but most also feel he can still do a lot of damage
by further spreading his prejudiced views. Russ Bellant sums it
up when he says LaRouche is "just a symbol of a larger problem of
authoritarianism which can be very appealing in times of crisis.
The LaRouche phenomena indicates that we need to better educate
Americans about the theories and tactics of demogogues."

     If we intend to defend democracy, LaRouche critics say, we
had best learn to recognize its enemies, and not be afraid to
stand up and call them by name.
-----------------------------------------------------------------