"I simply could not bear the lying, the shabbiness of human relations, the continual abuse from people who were clearly lacking in conscience, the shame of standing out in public twelve hours per day like the town loon pushing crazy claims I suspected to be false..."
Posted on Factnet by "Anonymous" (128.59.194.17), June 04, 2004 - 9:40 am:
Perhaps it might be helpful to someone to record how I came to leave the NCLC.[1]
When I left, I thought LaRouche & Co. were 100% right about everything, and that it was I that was the problem 100%. However, I simply could not bear the lying, the shabbiness of human relations, the continual abuse from people who were clearly lacking in conscience, the shame of standing out in public twelve hours per day like the town loon pushing crazy claims I suspected to be false, and so on, that led me to just leave, heavy hearted: I wanted to fight for humanity, but my organism simply came to resist the environment which seemed necessary to do so.
There was simply no rhyme or reason to any of it. But I used to blame this on this or that NEC or NC member for this or that abuse[2]; I used to think, "If only Lyn knew what was going on!" It took years before the light came on that he was the source of all this misery. It took years--because I had such sure faith in his godlike powers of creative mentation[3]--and it took further experience of human beings generally, especially of human beings in power, before I was enabled to understand my LC experience[4] in its proper context, i.e. a cult of personality.
The day of liberation came some four years later when I joyfully loaded three large, black plastic garbage bags full of "literature" and hauled them out to the street. I only wish I had saved the internal memos for publication at this time, because then the newcomer to the LC could get an accurate picture of how s/he is viewed by "management."
If you are a current member, ask yourself:
(1) How does the bad treatment meted out to me daily comport with a "humanist" outlook?[5] Am I not a human being? Even if the deployment/contact meeting went poorly? Or is my humanity contingent upon outcomes, which contradicts the notion of the intrinsic worth of people, the official line of the organization?[6]
(2) Is it possible at all that one human being should be right about everything all the time? When has Lyn EVER admitted being wrong? Does that sound normal? Therefore, is this someone I should be following, someone who implicitly claims to be infallible about everything?
(3) Let me look at my activity: sales. How are sales helping to build a better world? Really.
I hope this helps someone.
More from "Anonymous" (128.59.194.17), June 11, 2004 - 1:16 pm:
What scares me is comparing what I know now (i.e., that LaRouche is 110% fraud, intellectually and otherwise) with what I "knew" then (i.e., that LaRouche is the greatest mind since Leibniz and present-day savior of the world). It scares me because I fear there is no way of communicating reality to those trapped in the cult of LHL.
I had to "hit bottom" with LaRouche before I could even begin to steer clear of the wreckage my life had become; unfortunately, this appears to be the only way out of a cult--just to be honest with yourself about the desperation of your own personal situation and to walk into a counseling center or police station and ask for help getting out. The small stipends otherwise guarantee you will not be able to move away, and the fourteen-hour days + classes take your eyes off the bouncing ball of your pulverized life and ambition.
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Footnotes by D. King:
[1] The National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) is the cadre organization of the LaRouche movement in the United States. It is part of the ICLC (International Caucus of Labor Committees).
[2] The National Executive Committee (NEC) is theoretically the highest body of the NCLC but in practice is composed of members close to LaRouche who endure his daily bullying only to replicate it in their dealings with those below them in what is essentially a pyramidal culture of abuse. The National Committee (NC) is a larger body that meets infrequently and is little more than a rubber stamp; however, an NC member representing a particular city or region has great authority over the lives of the NCLC and LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) cadre in his or her bailiwick. Some NC members are reported to be, like certain NEC members, "little LaRouches"--tinpot tyrants who constantly browbeat their subordinates.
[3] "Creative mentation" is a term referring to a deep, Germanic, almost superhuman mode of thinking that LaRouche supposedly has mastered and can impart to others. It is discussed in LaRouche's Beyond Psychoanalysis (1974) where he suggests that the prerequisite is an ego-stripping process in which the recruit is divested of his or her bourgeois ideological proclivities and of any emotional fixation on his or her parents. The person who practices "creative mentation" is said to be a "Promethean"--a bringer of higher wisdom to the bestialized masses. All this bears a certain vague resemblance to the state of "Clear" in Scientology, although LaRouche's German philosophical terminology, as devised in the 1970s, was designed to appeal to hyper-intellectual graduate students rather than the fantasy-prone personalities drawn to science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard's religion. (A Scientologist would doubtless dispute that LaRouche is at all comparable to a Clear, citing the evidence on this web page that LaRouche is totally dominated by his reactive mind. But the Scientologist and I would both agree: Lyndon and his Prometheans are not likely to become Operating Thetans anytime soon.)
[4] "LC" is short for NCLC (see footnote 1).
[5] LaRouche says his movement is based on a neo-Platonic form of "humanism" and that it's the contemporary incarnation of a pro-economic development (and pro-creative mentation) elite that has been warring against an opposing elite (the evil gang of usurers known as the "oligarchy") since the days of Babylon. Some critics, including myself, say that LaRouche's "humanism" is really a variety of fascism.
[6] This is a reference to the fact that the life of a LaRouchian revolves around a constant struggle to meet daily and weekly quotas re: fundraising, literature sales, new contacts, and new recruits. So intense is the pressure to achieve the quotas (which supposedly represent an indispensable step in the fight to save humanity from destruction at the hands of the evil oligarchy) that a LaRouche street organizer will often view passersby as nothing more than walking dollar signs. Example: A few years ago I approached an LYM literature table near Bloomingdale's on Manhattan's Upper East Side, hoping to purchase a copy of LaRouche's only low-budget publication, The New Federalist. I found a copy of the newspaper hidden under glossy and much more expensive literature, but a young woman working at the table snatched it out of my hands and hid it once again under the higher-priced items. She then started exhorting me to buy something that cost $20 or more. Her voice got louder and louder until she was almost shrieking. I walked away figuring that, since it was late afternoon, she was terrified of not meeting her quota (thus betraying the human race and, incidentally, letting herself in for a brutal psychological session with her team leader), and that if I'd been a senior citizen living off nothing but a Social Security check, she'd have snatched that check right out of my hand.