GIVING A LUCID ACCOUNT OF A BIZARRE PHILOSOPHY

The Monitor, newsletter of the Center for Democratic Renewal, May 1989

By LEONARD ZESKIN

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Dennis King has written a straightforward and comprehensive account of Lyndon LaRouche and his political organizations that must be read by every Monitor reader. Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism demonstrates a broad grasp of diverse material and contains genuinely original insight.

In the last few years a spate of books has been published about the Klan and neo-Nazis. Many of them read as if the author called up a press clipping service, read all the newspaper articles, made a few telephone calls and then wrote a book. Not King.

A New York City-based journalist, King spent over 10 years investigating LaRouche. In the early 1980s, he published the report "Nazis Without Swastikas." All 400-plus pages of Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism reflect the thousands of hours of first hand interviews with LaRouche defectors and careful scrutiny of hundreds of privately acquired documents and public records.

King succeeds in doing the seeming impossible: he makes LaRouche make sense. The bizarre philosophizing and paranoid conspiracy theories that filled the pages of New Solidarity, EIR Review and other LaRouche publications are decoded bit by bit. King clearly explains the major components of LaRouche's fascist ideology.

King explains LaRouche's grand theories of economic and political collapse and the totally mobilized economy as well as the intricacies of his dealings with intelligence agencies.

The book details the amazing sequence of events that led Lyndon LaRouche from the small circles of Marxist sectarianism into a working relationship with Nazis and Klansmen (and the Reagan White House).

Of particular interest to Monitor readers will be the chapter on LaRouche's dirty tricks operations. LaRouche's security operatives routinely call unsuspecting activists posing as journalists, clergy or friends in order to gather intelligence on progressive movements for social change. In 1981 LaRouchites posed as civil rights activists and attended the National Anti-Klan Network's conference at Howard University. They developed a list of attendees that eventually wound up in the hands of Pennsylvania Klan leader Roy Frankhouser.

Throughout the book King searches for the larger significance of the LaRouche phenomenon. He compares the LaRouche organizations to the "traditional hate groups," the Klan and the neo-Nazis. He wonders why democratic-minded forces didn’t devote larger resources to fighting LaRouche fascism. King even partially explains the long-time immunity from prosecution that LaRouche enjoyed.

In the end that delusion of untouchability sent LaRouche and several of his top aides to jail. The entanglement of the LaRouche organizations with government intelligence agencies did not protect them from simple charges of fundraising fraud.

The reader doesn’t have to agree with all of King's formulations to agree with his conclusion: "America is too violent and diverse...to avoid forever a major internal challenge from some sort of totalitarian demagoguery. When that test comes, the story of Lyndon LaRouche may provide the key to an effective and timely response."

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