Oct. 17 Berlin conference foreshadows a major crisis
for the world's premier political cult:
"AN IMPLACABLE DEMAND FOR JUSTICE AGAINST LAROUCHE AND ALL HIS EPIGONOI!"
Factnet posting by "eaglebeak," Oct. 23, 2008, 05:34 AM:
Having Erica Duggan, Hugo Duggan and Molly Kronberg appear together has the potential to distress the LaRouche org intensely.
I remember back in April or May 2007, right after Ken Kronberg's death, when the text of the infamous April 11, 2007, Morning Briefing appeared on Dennis King's website, Molly Kronberg told me that Barbara Boyd was flailing around trying to figure out how it got there. (Molly was able to enlighten her, I believe.)
Barbara said to Molly, "They're trying to make you into another Erica Duggan."
Well, I think "they" succeeded, Babs.
Of course, the "they" Barbara meant was the Dennis King/Chip Berlet "Get LaRouche Task Force" of LaRouche's fevered fantasies.
The "they" who made Molly Kronberg into another Erica Duggan in fact, was the "they" of the Labor Committee--Lyndon LaRouche, Tony Papert, Jeff Steinberg, Nancy Spannaus, Dennis Small, Barbara Boyd, Michele Steinberg, Bruce Director--that "they."
The same "they" that made Erica Duggan into Erica Duggan, if you see what I mean.
Because when the LaRouche leadership seems to have something very intimate to do with the death of a loved one, and then denies it, covers it up, lies about it, and blames the dead person and the dead person's bereaved family for the death--it has the effect of creating an implacable demand for justice against LaRouche and all his epigonoi.
What Erica Duggan wanted and wants from the LaRouche org was an explanation for what happened when her son died in Wiesbaden, Germany, so close to the EIR office/LaRouche European HQ.
Instead she was attacked, vilified, threatened (legally and otherwise). Her son was slandered as a psychiatric case, and LaRouche personally blamed her for her son's death.
In Molly Kronberg's case, she knew exactly what happened, and she had the briefings and other documents to prove it. Plus, of course, she had the advantage of having talked to Ken every day and of knowing what he had come to think of LaRouche, of Barbara and Bruce, of the NEC....
So Molly's not looking to find out what happened, she's looking to punish LaRouche for what he did.
And, because LaRouche always makes disaster into catastrophe for himself, it winds up that the Duggans and Kronbergs have joined hands.
Molly Kronberg also told me--I don't believe this has been publicized anywhere previously--that two days before Ken died (the evening of Monday, April 9, 2007, that would have been), she and Ken were in their kitchen discussing the situation--this was the occasion on which Ken told her that because he had to close PMR and WorldComp, thanks to Lyn's depredations, "we will be vilified like you have never seen"--anyhow, they were in the kitchen, and Ken was expressing concern that if he closed the companies, the Labor Committee would try to snatch back the money he had put in escrow for the IRS (long story, to be told eventually).
He wanted to send it to the IRS--which he did, the day he died.
Molly said "why don't you give a press conference and tell Lyn that if he wants the money, he should ask Henry Kissinger for it?" (A reference to a perfectly idiotic and vile letter Lyn sent in the 1980s to a defrauded lender, Elizabeth Sexton--see Alexandria trial transcripts--telling her if she wanted back her money she should write to Henry Kissinger for it.)
Then--
Molly: "I'll hold a press conference and say it."
Ken: "Ah--Erica Duggan, move over--eh?"
Molly: "You bet your ---."
So I think there's no question that Ken Kronberg knew precisely what Molly would do if he committed suicide.
And now, the LaRouche movement's cynical, hard-hearted, deceitful, bloody-minded handling of the Duggan and Kronberg cases, has brought the Duggans and Kronbergs together.
What Helga Has to Fear
The significance of having the conference in Germany is, of course, that in Germany it is illegal to be publicly anti-Semitic, and in Germany there are very strict laws against cults, sects and the like (look up the German legal posture against Scientology, for example).
So to open an investigation into Jeremiah Duggan's death--and there has never been a proper investigation, not even remotely so--leads to investigating the LaRouche organization's anti-Semitic dicta and organizing, and its brainwashing/mind control internal practices--what Molly Kronberg called at the Berlin conference the "internal reign of terror."
Hence the extreme significance of the remarks at the conference by former members Kronberg, Yves Messer, and Aglaja Beyes-Corleis.
Hence the significance of the observations by Chip Berlet and Dr. Matthew Feldman.
Conclusion: There's no way the LaRouche org is not a dangerous sect under German law, that law being so stringent.
So the German flank is an extraordinarily unpleasant one for Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche and their colleagues.
Doesn't help their cause, either, that it's so easy to demonstrate how the U.S. organization funded the German one all those years--with American members under such pressure to raise $$ for Helga et al that their fundraising practices put them right into Federal and state prison.
Another interesting avenue for someone to pursue is the exodus, in the fall of 2006, of about 50 top-ranking German members--really, almost the entire German leadership, EEC and EC[FN 1]--which happened (coincidentally?) a week after Erica Duggan visited Wiesbaden again, still demanding answers in her son's case.
Somehow, the shadow of Jeremiah Duggan's death is cast over the entire split in the German organization in 2006. (Interestingly, in a spring 2006 EC meeting available on CD, in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out fight between Lyn and the European leadership, Lyn declared: "There will be casualties." When I heard that, I immediately thought of Jeremiah Duggan. What an incredibly sinister moment, to hear Lyn say that.)
I think one could see the desertion of Lyn and Helga by the leadership of the German organization as being, not a political disagreement (don't think it was), but a resounding indictment of all that Lyn and Helga are and stand for, a repudiation of them as definitive as Ken Kronberg's suicide.[FN 2]
In any case, the Members of Parliament from Germany and Britain, the cult experts, the lawyers, the German municipal leaders, the Germans who played such a key role in going after Scientology in Germany--to have all these people gather at the conference in Berlin, with the Duggans and Molly Kronberg and with statements being read from the families of members still in the cult in Germany, France and Britain--to have this international focus on the doings of Lyn and Helga--
It's going to be a hard row to hoe for the LaRouche organization.
Bruce Director will be busy with his European efforts, no doubt.[FN 3] But it gets harder and harder to contain it all through threats and imprecations.
The LaRouche people are certainly violence-prone, as the late Paul Montgomery wrote: that well-known combination of violence-prone thugs and bullies who are also cowards.[FN 4]
Personally, I think Babs would be well-advised to rein in her crazy LYMers, and make sure no violence erupts.[FN 5]
They already have enough legal troubles, now and to come.
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Factnet posting by "eaglebeak," Oct. 23, 2008, 06:26 AM:
A Lapse of Logic
One more thing on the LaRouche "handling" of the death of Jeremiah Duggan: In all its declarations, written and oral, against an opening (or "reopening," a misnomer) of an investigation into Jeremiah's death, the LaRouche movement has committed the stupidest, most elementary lapse of logic.
Here are characters writing or yelling from the United States in the matter of a German case in which they have no evident standing, insisting that there be no investigation because the death has already been thoroughly investigated.
Question: Don't they realize that by reacting this way, they are admitting they do have an interest in, or standing in, the case? That is to say, involvement?
Question: If it has already been thoroughly investigated, so what if there's another investigation? What do they care?
Question: If they have no involvement in the death of Jeremiah Duggan, why would they possibly care how many investigations there were into it?
Question: Isn't it obvious to them that, by the very act of opposing an investigation (or a "new" investigation), they are declaring that they do have a connection, they do have something to lose, they do have something to fear?
You'd think LaRouche's Legal Department might notice all this, but then, you don't know the Legal Department.
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Footnotes by D. King:
[1] The EEC (European Executive Committee) is in theory the highest decision making body of LaRouche's European organization. The EC (European Committee) is a larger body that meets less frequently; its members have considerable authority in the local (city or regional) organizations. The two entities are equivalent to the National Executive Committee (NEC) and National Committee (NC) of the U.S. LaRouche organization.
[2] I can't agree that the resignations of the leadership of the German LaRouche organization represent a repudiation of LaRouche as definitive as Ken Kronberg's. The former German LaRouchians, such as Uwe Friesecke and Ortrum Cramer, know what really happened to Jeremiah Duggan, but they have refused to talk to the Duggan family. Furthermore they have refused to publicly repudiate the German organization's politics, which have always had a more overt pro-Nazi flair and a more intense Jew-hatred than that of the U.S. organization. I will believe these German hatemongers have really begun to repudiate their past when they step forward and publicly explain why Jeremiah's passport was not on his body at the alleged time and place of his death, how the passport came into Ms. Cramer's possession, and why it had Jeremiah's blood on it--blood which could only have been deposited on it prior to the appearance of his body on the motorway. And if, in fact, Jeremiah was beaten to death (or died fleeing from a beating), would Ms. Cramer, Mr. Friesecke or any of their colleagues be willing to name Jeremiah's assailants and testify in court so the Duggan family can finally win justice?
[3] Bruce Director is the head of the LaRouche organization's legal department, although not a lawyer. His "European efforts" have focussed on attempting to block the parents of Jeremiah Duggan, a university student from the U.K. who died while attending a 2003 LaRouche training program in Germany, from obtaining a full police investigation of their son's death. Among other things, Mr. Director has written letters to British officials in which he attempts to discredit the Duggans, arguing that the German police officials were right to declare Jeremiah a suicide and that any pressure by the U.K. government on the German government to reopen the case would be counterproductive.
[4] Paul L. Montgomery, a former New York Times reporter who died in October 2008, was the author of a memorable and much-cited front page article about the early LaRouche movement's violence and fanaticism ("How a Radical-Left Group Moved Toward Savagery," Jan. 20, 1974). Montgomery also wrote, with Howard Blum, a two-part 1979 series for the Times on LaRouche's attempts to win a following on the far right.
[5] Barbara Boyd ("Babs") is the treasurer of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) and as such is in charge of the funding of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM). She takes care of the housing, medical care, counseling (!) and field deployments of the LYM members. She is also number two in LaRouche's legal department, and the cook at the LaRouche household on Sundays.
