By "larouchetruth" (from the FACT Net discussion board, August 10, 2007)
[EDITOR'S NOTE: "Larouchetruth," whoever he or she may be, has clearly produced a polemical gem that deconstructs LaRouche's nonsense in an almost forensic manner while also assailing the ICLC chairman with savage wit. Although intended narrowly as a wake-up call for long-time LaRouchians (the "Boomers") and recently recruited LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) cadre, this essay deserves a wider audience as well. Those who have not been following the FactNet debates on LaRouche are encouraged to browse through the shorter accounts of the Kronberg suicide on this web page before reading the essay below, which presumes a certain background knowledge on the reader's part.--DK]
CALLING ALL LC/LYM MEMBERS TO THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: LAROUCHE V. LAROUCHE (or is it LaRouche v. LaRouche v. LaRouche v. LaRouche?). I invite you, and everyone else, to ringside seats as LaRouche refutes himself, changes his line, and contradicts himself, all in the space of weeks, starting the day of poor Ken Kronberg’s tragedy. But first a word of introduction.
There is a price of admission, albeit a small one, to this fight, for those who still think Lyn walks on water,. Without paying this price, this fight will not be fun for you, will hold no interest, might even induce mental illness (or worsen any such already present). The price is this: you must concede that Lyn is mortal, and therefore that he is not perfect, has made mistakes, and will make more of them, and that you agree to be open-minded enough to grant that if Lyn is shown, in his own words, to be blatantly contradicting himself over a span of a few days or weeks, that this will give you pause and open at least a crack, if not a deeper fissure, in your kneejerk belief that whatever he says, in all situations, has to be true.
And you really must pay this price, on pain of admitting that the LC/LYM is a cult, and you are a willing member of it. Because your whole mantra is to seek the truth, find universal principles, think for yourself, be creative. If you confess to believing that Lyn is incapable of error, you elevate him to a higher pedestal than the pre-1875 popes, you affirm that, like the modern popes, he is incapable of error, infallible—and in all matters, not just matters of theology. Do you really believe that is true? Do you really want to be telling that to the world, and to potential recruits? If you do, you will be gate-crashing the big fight, and while I can’t throw you out, you will be missing out on the fun.
Now, to the big fight:
In one corner we have LaRoucheApril11, as transcribed by Tony Papert, the infamous briefing attack on "the print shop," aka Ken Kronberg. (See https://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/kronberg3.htm.)
In a second corner, we have LaRoucheApril18, Lyn’s first-known written reaction/response to the Kronberg matter, in a probably narrowly circulated memo. (See https://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/kronberg6.htm.)
In a third corner, we have LaRoucheApril 20, in a second, perhaps slightly more public, memo on l’affaire Kronberg. (See https://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/kronberg5.htm.)
In the fourth corner, we have LaRoucheAug3, the memo reported previously on the previous Larouche thread, which I can’t find anywhere else on the web.... [I have added this post at https://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/kronberg10.htm where it is dated July 31, which may or may not be correct.--DK]
The issue concerns Lyn trying to keep his stories straight on the PMR situation before, and after, Kronberg’s suicide. The line was straightforward on April 11 (in the context of a screed against Baby Boomers, summarizing what appears to have been a multi-hour rant by LaRouche to an audience of LYMers): BBers were guilty of a "moral breakdown in leadership," and "the print shop [aka Kronberg] was the worst."
In typical LaRouche fashion, there are lots of missing parts without which this is not an intelligible argument. In 1994, when Lyn came out of jail, "he presented his solution to the sales force....People went screaming out of the room." What it was that LaRouche proposed to them is not stated, nor implied, and one has to wonder a) what it was, and b) how Lyn could be so impotent that he couldn’t get the sales force to do it. But most importantly for today’s fight, Lyn clearly said that Ken argued, against Lyn, that "the economy won’t go under," and that "there will always be money there for people smart enough to grab it," meaning, that [LaRouche-dominated] commercial enterprises, of which PMR/WorldComp was the only one in the U.S., could always make a profit. Ken, as the only person in the "print shop" who was on the NC and could have represented any policy issues to Lyn, was clearly targeted. (Parenthetically, it is beyond dispute and known to numerous members, that this was in any case far from the first attack on Kronberg—it was rather the last straw for him.) To doubt that Lyn’s message was that Kronberg was to blame for his leading role in sabotaging Lyn’s strategy—whatever that was—of overcoming financial problems, is to be really self-delusional. So much for LaRoucheApril 18.
Parenthetically, as is well-known, LaRouche had no response to Ken’s death. Nancy Spannaus penned the creditable encomium posted on the website. It was only under pressure that he finally wrote Ken’s wife, Molly, the letter that was then posted on the website—amazingly, given what a dreadful, spiteful, awful letter it was, which LaRouche and the leadership apparently don’t even "get." But it turns out that, like Stalin after the start of Operation Barbarossa--when Stalin was absent from the public eye for two weeks not because he was in shock, but because it took him that long to figure out how to spin the debacle to deflect blame from himself--Lyn’s absence from the field in terms of honoring Kronberg’s contribution, did not mean Lyn wasn’t working on the problem. An internal memo has been revealed from April 18, the day before the funeral, and before his letter to Molly, which is very interesting.
So, in LaRoucheApril18, suddenly Lyn knows what absolutely nobody else thought they knew then, or thinks they know now with any certainty, namely, exactly why Ken committed suicide. LaRouche states that "Evidence presently placed at my disposal has now shown me the actually determining personal factor in the suicide." This little gem must be read in its entirety (it’s very short, less than a single page, please read it now) to be believed. Lyn knows, but won’t tell. But the evidence, "not so much [revealing] the cause of Ken’s suicide," but certain "aggravating factors" traceable to the ‘90s when "Ken was under the misdirection of Fernando Quijano and Uwe Friesecke," is there, only needing certain final additional research, before it can be revealed.
Bingo. I mean, that really nails it. Ken committed suicide in 2007, 8-13 years after he was allegedly being misdirected by Quijano, long gone as of 2007, and Friesecke, under attack for years and finally gone this spring. How’s that for causality? Now, we all (I should say, many of us) knew Ken. He wasn’t easily dominated, he was supremely well-educated and intellectually secure. How anything from Quijano and Friesecke years earlier could have had anything to do with his suicide this year is a mystery we will have to wait for Lyn’s promised partial revelation of what this influence was...though don’t hold your breath, I strongly doubt it will ever appear. But this, some weird spin where Lyn can claim definitive knowledge of what allegedly drove him to suicide, is Lyn’s first response to the suicide.
Oh, and he says that Nancy’s piece "truthfully in respect to what it includes...should be the only official reference to Ken’s passing made publicly by our association at this time." And Lyn has the effrontery to talk of agape? LYMers, Kronberg was a member of Lyn’s association for over 35 years, most of that time as a leading member, whom Lyn knew extremely well. He didn’t quit, at least other than as his suicide can be so interpreted. But since Lyn doesn’t choose to publicly understand it that way, how are we to understand Lyn’s failure to write a public item expressing his sorrow, and his gratitude to Ken for his devoted service to Lyn’s cause. His letter to Molly doesn’t count. He was talked into writing it, and publishing it was not his idea.
LYMers, you think LaRouche cares about you, thinks you are the future of humanity? Like we thought he thought of us 30 years ago? Like Kronberg thought Lyn cared about him? If he treats a devoted, loyal leader like Ken Kronberg as not even deserving a personal, public statement of sorrow and condolence, how can anyone believe that what Lyn means by agape is practiced by him?
This point is not germaine to the LHL v LHL fight we are covering today, but just had to be made.
To return to ringside, in the third corner we have the LaRouche of two days later than the above memo, LaRoucheApril20. This one, a little longer but still pretty brief, should also be read in its entirety. Several times, if the full effect is to be experienced. Elementary logic is nowhere to be seen, as this not only contradicts the April 11 briefing message, but contradicts itself at several points—and the illogicality grows on one only on second and third reading.
First of all, it is now specified that Quijano and Friesecke (does anyone know if it is even remotely likely that these two were working together on anything—without knowing the particulars, but just their personalities, I would find this highly unexpected) wrecked PMR from 1990-1999. In fact, PMR’s demise was "a virtually inevitable calamity" since possibly as early as 1994. Then, in the same paragraph, having outlived this forecast by six years, an ill-advised investment in 2001 "meant the end of PMR's ability to continue to exist for long," even though PMR actually lasted for six more years. LYMers, is this making sense to you? Do you think what LHL has written here does not constitute an incoherent mishmash of charges that don’t make sense as a whole? If so, you make a mockery of saying that you base yourselves on a belief in the importance of fundamental scientific principles (which Lyn talks incessantly about), since science above all requires a modicum of reasoning ability and clear understanding of cause and effect—these rantings by Lyn do not partake of rationality, and crumble at the merest examination as the cranky charges of someone who isn’t used to people actually thinking about what he says—or he would have been called on such absurd, non sequitur-ial statements long ago.
But it gets better. After blaming Quijano and Friesecke for mismanagement, Lyn then credits "the minds of many of our associates" for being "corrupted" by the belief that "there will be lots of money being passed around for those clever enough to tap into the flow." Now, this is the mindset of "many of our associates," where earlier, on April 11, this was the mindset of Ken, aka "the print shop." But with Ken’s suicide, oops, "I guess we’d better change our public tune." But not that much, really, as Lyn continues, that this ideology, and "its effects on policy-shaping in the printing operations as in the organization itself," contrived to put PMR into a "ruined situation" in 2000.
OK, fast forward to 2007. But how can we? How did PMR get here at all? If PMR was ruined in 2000, at the onset of the Bush recession, and had just moved to major new quarters it couldn’t afford, how did it survive at all until 2007? LYMers, you need to pay close attention here. You are watching a verbal magician. Or perhaps a verbal three-card monte expert. Now you see it, now you don’t. If you are not watching carefully, Lyn appears to be making sense. But if you actually try to find the thread of a coherent argument, that lives in chronological reality, you will begin to see the sleight-of-hand at work here. Let’s retrace our steps:
• By 1994, it was clear that PMR was doomed. This was before the 1994-1999 period when the mentality of making money was predominant.
• From 1990-1999, Quijano and Friesecke mismanaged business affairs creating special problems for PMR (not clear if these were the same problems caused by wrong ideology on the ease of making money).
• In the same period, some members thought that money could be made easily, which ideology was crucial in ruining PMR.
• In 2000, PMR was in a ruined state.
So, was it Quijano-Friesecke mismanagement, or Boomer money-making ideology, that doomed PMR by 2000? Or was it the bad decision to expand operations just when the market was tanking in 2001? Now, granted, all three could have been involved. But LaRouche doesn’t care to state an intelligible argument. It is enough to throw up a bunch of "stuff" in the knowledge that his acolytes never apply a single brain cell to the task of asking themselves if what he is saying actually makes sense. LYMers, as presented, it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.
And then the crowning anomaly: PMR stayed afloat for another seven years after having been ruined, taken on (anticipating the Aug. 3 memo) huge new debt service and greatly raising its costs of production, and faced a destroyed market environment. How exactly was this possible, unless the stated facts about PMR circa 2000 were not as Lyn stated. (What, are we to believe that Ken was actually a business genius to keep this hopeless derelict afloat? Which is it, Lyn?) Lyn is so used to just saying stuff like this, that doesn’t hang together, and relying on an uncritical audience to get away with it.
But this memo has more to say. Suddenly, we are informed that despite being doomed from as early as 1994, and being in a ruined state in 2000, having expanded just as the market collapsed in 2001, and having miraculously stayed in business for the succeeding six years, there was now a potential solution in sight. This can’t be fairly paraphrased, so I reproduce the quote in full. Lyn writes:
The only last-minute hope for saving PMR came from the new conceptions agreed to between me and Ken Kronberg et al. during recent months This solution depended chiefly on matching PMR's and associated potential with the expansion of the market for LPAC operations.
This is fairly opaque, you must admit. Since PMR was a printing company, and since it presumably wasn’t working to capacity, the "expansion of the market" for LPAC operations (so "operations" are now being sold in a market?) must, translated into English, be intended to mean that LPAC was supposed to so greatly increase its income generation that it could afford to print huge amounts of literature that would bail out PMR.
Leaving aside the unreality of such a "new conception"—that LPAC had the remotest possibility of raising, what, well over a million dollars, in a few months, or that LPAC could possibly make use of a million dollars worth of literature—which unreality suggests no such "new conception" in fact existed, but be that as it may—what follows takes the cake. It requires an extended quote, to take in the full enormity of blameshifting this sudden invention of a last-minute possible "fix" for PMR enables Lyn to engage in:
With the failure to support that LPAC program by parts of our assoc'n, the lack of support from among our veterans, removed the last hope of success for our collaboration with Ken Kronberg on this basis, and, thus, created a hopeless situation for an already, otherwise doomed, PMR.The failure among far too many among our BBs, to find an adequate response to the challenge within themselves, did not actually kill Ken; there were other causes. However, your failure to muster to the challenge which I and others posed to you, could have been helpful to those among us trying to help him overcome his pessimism. You owe it to his memory now, to honor the lesson which you should have learned while he still lived.
I get sick every time I reread this. So, there was a solution to PMR that would, presumably, have meant that Kronberg wouldn’t have committed suicide, but the Baby Boomers sabotaged it by refusing to support this LPAC program, whatever that actually was. So, the BBers "did not actually kill Ken," but clearly contributed. Lyn’s bugaboo of the moment--the old-timers in the LC itself--were to blame for Ken’s death!!! Truly stunning. And the only way BBers can atone for this crime is doing now what they refused to do then? Whatever that was?
And what was it, precisely, that the BBers didn’t do? As usual, "he don’t say."
And, of course, we have the new added supposed information, nowhere previously mentioned, that Ken was stuck in "pessimism," which Lyn, and unnamed others, were trying to help him overcome. Exactly what was Lyn doing to help Ken overcome his pessimism? Let me guess. I’ll bet being cited on April 11 for being the "worst" offender in destroying the present fundraising performance was item number one on Lyn’s list of therapeutic interventions.
LYMers, and other LCers, have you eyes to read, minds to comprehend, and souls to feel? LaRoucheApril20 asserts that Lyn was trying to help Ken overcome his (alleged) pessimism. Do you attack someone who is pessimistic, which sounds like a euphemism for depression (clinical depression, not economic depression), by saying what Lyn told the April 10 LYM meeting about Ken’s responsibility for wrecking the prospects for saving humanity from extinction, and then having it reported in the daily briefing? A briefing in which, don’t forget, he also posed that BBers who can’t get with the program might as well commit suicide?
These two assertions, the one from April 10-11, and the one about trying to help Ken overcome his pessimism, simply cannot live in the same universe. If Lyn had been trying to help Ken, he simply wouldn’t have attacked him at all, in any context, much less have it reported publicly afterward. Since the April 10-11 attack is consistent with many previous attacks of a similar vein, there is no question: Lyn is simply lying in LaRoucheApril20. Probably lying about everything, not just this, but this for certain.
I will leave LaRoucheApril20 for now, due to the length of this extended post, but the final four paragraphs would merit additional commentary in their own post.
Which brings us to the final corner, LaRoucheAugust3 (I don’t know if this was exactly Aug. 3, but it was apparently around that time). Eaglebeak has fully commented on this, proving, in summary, that most of it is lies to begin with. The biggest single point to repeat is that even if LPAC and other political committees had to pay market prices to PMR (for FEC legal reasons, not mentioned by LaRouche)—if that is even true, these payments were only a small part of the work that PMR did for Lyn’s entities: the vast bulk was printing/mailing EIR, The New Federalist, Fidelio, 21st Century Science and Technology, various pamphlets and books, and leaflets. It was these that were not paid at all, or well below the cost of production, that ensured that PMR eventually had to fold.
Here, LaRouche is in his eye-gouging mode. I say LaRouche, because it has his ring, but it could have been a flunky on his orders, which wouldn’t change anything. But I vote for LaRouche. Anyway, for openers, we have his tired stock in trade: tell lies about who is doing something, create a strawman, and attack the strawman, hoping to divert attention from the real issue. I don’t know from nothin’ about whether the AFF has any connection to FACTnet, and don’t much care. Dennis King doesn’t post there, to my knowledge. John Train, oh, come on, what a tired whipping boy. LYMers, do you even know who he is? The bogeyman? Do you believe in bogeymen?
What I do know, and any medium- to long-term ex-members know, is that every ex-member posting here is basing themselves on what they experienced and knew from their time in the LC, plus whatever they may have heard since. To glibly say that King "and others" never knew Ken and have no idea about the financial relationship between LC entities and PMR, could well be true, and is totally irrelevant. We DID know Ken, some of us pretty well. And we also knew—everybody knew, pretty much from Day One for PMR and WorldComp—that the LC was NEVER able to pay PMR even for costs of production of LC literature.
This is the crux of the matter, period. And Lyn knows it, and only in this memo does he finally acknowledge what this is all about. The operative admission comes in the first paragraph, where Lyn says that "King and others...claim that the movement 'looted' PMR to ruin." Well, those "others" include many people posting here, and we know it from personal knowledge while we were in, and second-hand knowledge from those still in who have passed that information to some of us, confirming that nothing changed after each of us left.
LYMers, you can be forgiven for not knowing this undeniable fact. How could you? Boomer members reading this, YOU do know it. How can you say you base yourself on truth, and then let Lyn get away with this lie? How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?
Because, to wrap up this first LHL v LHL contest, here is the nub. PMR was doomed by the organization’s refusal to pay even cost of production to PMR for most publications it printed. To cover up this reality, LaRouche has had to shift the blame—starting well before Ken’s death—to others, including Ken himself, the BBers who sabotaged Lyn’s "new conceptions" on how to raise money, Uwe Friesecke, Fernando Quijano, ex-members, etc. It was clear that with PMR clearly about to shut its doors, making it impossible to continue printing much literature at all, including even EIR, the main money-maker for the LC since the mid-80s, something had to be done, and presto, a "solution" was found: the web.
I don’t know how many people know, but in the same April 11 briefing, or possibly a couple of days earlier, [there] was an extensive discussion of shifting all EIR subs to web subscriptions, hailing this as a major advance. It detailed how all possible EIR subs were to be converted to web subs, and that no new print copy subs were to be sold, so they can phase out hard copy EIR as quickly as possible.
So, with PMR going under, and the ability of LC to have much printed material, even for the card table shrines, about to disappear, a scapegoat was needed, and Ken, and PMR, was it. Hence, the clear message of the April 11 briefing. While no one will ever know Ken’s exact motivation, or motivations, it is likely true that at the very least, Ken knew that his suicide was the last thing that Lyn expected, and would function after his death as the Cranes of Ibykus functioned in the Schiller poem. Everything Lyn has written since (that we know of) has been his desperate attempt to deflect from himself his role in driving Ken to suicide as part of his ham-handed effort to cover his own behind for the demise of the ability of his movement to print anything again.
The Cranes of Ibykus are airborne, and Lyn is scrambling to keep ahead of the blowback from his own misdeeds that sent them aloft. Another literary reference is apt here: "Oh, the tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." LaRouche’s web is getting more and more tangled with every new memo on the subject. Surely, especially those who have only invested a few months to a few years to his cause, can still manage to see this web for what it is. For if Lyn is capable of blatantly lying on this matter, then where else is he lying, or at least, not telling the truth? There is a cost for claiming to be Infallible. One proven case of fallibility, or even worse, outright lying, leads the whole edifice—can I call it the "lattice"?—to crumble, hopefully freeing those able to escape the falling rubble.
End of Round 1 of LHL v LHL. Stay tuned for later rounds on this same channel.