"xylm," Factnet posting, Sept. 1, 2005, 02:22 PM:
I’m really curious to learn and receive some feedback on everybody’s awakening towards the lunacy of this movement. I couldn’t imagine a full-time member convincing himself or being convinced in one sitting, since they are also programmed to repel everything and anything that opposes them. I find it intriguing yet sad to deal with the psychology of [those] who [have] had their way of thinking revised and their vocabulary redefined. Additionally, it's shameful penetrating a dialogue with a LaRouchie to the point where they fall into a meaningful but absurd corner of refutation – for instance, claiming that the Internet is an anti-humanist device that compounds the humanitarian problem of today or [denying that] LaRouche’s quote that Judaism is a byproduct of Christianity and a hoax is anything but anti-Semitic. Their inability to register the absurdity is shocking! Trying to imprint any realization is like drawing in the beach sand: it’ll imprint for awhile, but only until the tide comes in and washes it away again. I’m not trying to be so skeptical…maybe someone can correct me.
"lyndylalush," Factnet posting, Sept. 1, 2005, 05:54 PM:
xylm, yours is a good and thoughtful question.
In a nutshell:
I became involved with and persisted in the LaRouche movement because (1) I believed the solution to human suffering lay in the work of Karl Marx, (2) I believed in the promotion of generalized scientific and technological progress, and (3) I believed in the promotion of a renaissance founded on classical principles in all areas of thought. I also (4) came from a dysfunctional family background and (5) found a surrogate family in the NCLC. I never bought into most of the conspiracy stuff, but went along with it because of the commitments (1)-(3). But from almost the start I had a high resistance to the cult-coercion tactics to which I was subjected, and just left eventually because I couldn't tolerate any longer the brutally animal "human" relations that obtained in that organization. This was all the more painful as I still believed in the "ideas" of Lyn, and in Lyn himself: I felt, "if only Lyn knew" what was going on – but of course I "knew" that the lower downs would just brand me as an agent of some sort, whatever the enemy du jour was, so I left and was libeled afterwards as all sorts of (contradictory) things, things that made no sense to anyone of even moderate intelligence. Then, as I learned more, I increasingly realized how full of s*** Lyn was both as a man and as a thinker. What finally tied it was when I began to learn a great deal of standard capitalist economics which – however flawed I agree it is axiomatically – makes a great deal of common sense, in that one can follow the flow of ideas, whereas everything in LaRouche is mere assertion.
As to the anti-Semitism: I never saw it at the time because (1) most of the people I knew in the organization were Jewish and (2) I knew about bigotry generally and just figured some don't like Jews, others don't like Germans, or blacks, or Aleutian Islanders. But I knew nothing at the time of anti-Semitism per se apart from what everyone is supposed to know occurred in Germany, 1933-1945 and earlier. The one and only time I confronted the real thing was in some of the Ohio locals, and in the person of Mike Billington's brother (whose first name I've forgotten): they were all blatantly crude, classical anti-Semites. I used to stare at them and say, you don't mean this, do you? I thought it was all a big joke. But they seemed serious. My impression at the time was that they wanted to impose this kind of overt racism on the organization as a whole, that their locals were going to do it, or some such. I never otherwise encountered anything like that except for the infamous Volkswagen joke, which likewise puzzled me. But again, everyone told ethnic jokes, even if I regarded that one as in poor taste. Now however that I am more familiar with anti-Semitic literature thanks to Dennis King and others, I can easily see the patterns, how LaRouche is/was playing in code to the Willis Carto types – and worse.
So getting out was a process. When I was a true believer, I half believed the attacks on the organization – except for the anti-Semitic stuff which I really believed [was] a Big Lie against the organization. But I was so brainwashed into believing that Lyn was humanity's only hope for survival that out of a misguided love for said humanity I persisted.
I guess what one has to understand is that if a group of people (1) perceive dire dangers to humanity (2) which they "love" and wish to "save" and (3) they believe that X is the "only" (final?) solution then (4) ANYTHING done in the name of X is justifiable, including murder, lies and harassment.
Now I can only pray for my sometime abusers, and for their victims, including Jeremiah Duggan.