Review of Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism

From the Whole Earth Review (Fall 1989)

By JAY KINNEY

As an inveterate connoisseur of conspiracy theories I have to confess that I’ve had something of a soft spot for Lyndon LaRouche over the years. The man’s political cosmology was just so damn baroque that one could spend months or even years trying to piece it all together, by which time it would, of course, have entirely changed. Meanwhile, his more infamous allegations such as pegging the Queen of England as a global druglord or Henry Kissinger as the root of all evil led most observers to dismiss the man as crazy.

Not so, contends Dennis King in this exhaustive expose of LaRouche and his followers. According to King, LaRouche cultivated the kook image as a means of deflecting more serious scrutiny, all the while developing a cult of political intelligence operatives maniacally dedicated to helping him achieve political power. King chronicles LaRouche’s rightward journey from his origins in U.S. Trotskyism onward to poaching followers from SDS, then to founding the National Caucus of Labor Committees and the U.S. Labor Party, his assorted cavorting with KKKers and Teamsters, and his final posture as a “conservative Democrat” campaigning against drugs and AIDS victims.

King offers copious evidence in support of his theory that LaRouche and Co. represent the closest we’ve come to a true domestic fascism in recent decades. By his detailed exegesis of key LaRouche policy papers, King makes a better case for this drastic evaluation than I had expected. LaRouche and his top leadership are now in prison in the wake of charges related to obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and credit card fraud. Yet it is unlikely that they are gone for good from U.S. politics. This book is the definitive guide to what we might have in store should their quest for power get back on course.

RETURN TO MAIN PAGE