The anti-LaRouchian sourceblog

Not that active for the moment...

2010-03-23T02:29:00.000-07:00

Please excuse that I am not so active at the moment, and that my blog is not updated. I am busy with something called: LIFE! Something the members in the LaRouchecult should try too. Life is wonderful!

/European

Professors warn: cults like the LaRouche Youth Movement are dangerous!

2009-06-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

Professor warns that cults may target students

Many cults are said to operate under the guise of nonprofits and recruit on campus.
Janna Brancolini

Published: Sunday, November 4, 2007, Daily Trojan ( http://www.dailytrojan.com/news/professor-warns-that-cults-may-target-students-1.204938 )

Updated: Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Clarification: This article cites that the Los Angeles Church of Christ was accused of cult activity in 2000. At the time of the accusations, the church was not a recognized student group at USC. The church became a university-recognized student organization in 2001 and has not been accused of cult activity since.

The list of problems plaguing college campuses is extensive: illegal drugs, alcohol abuse, sexual assault. But according to experts, there's a lesser-known, but equally-present danger: cults.

As part of Parents Weekend, the USC Department of Sociology presented "Sects in the City: Protecting Your Children from Cults" Thursday afternoon, with the aim of educating parents about how to help their children avoid cult recruitment techniques.
"Cults are known to recruit on college campuses," said the presenter, Doni Whitsett, a professor in the School of Social Work and an independent clinician. "Students are invited to a dinner, a retreat, a special lecture, and they may not know who's sponsoring it."

Oftentimes cults will operate under the guise of human rights groups, she said. Her lecture began with an anecdote about a female college student who attended a cult retreat, thinking it was an activist event to end poverty.

Whitsett prefers not to use the term "cult" because she says it's a loaded word fraught with controversy. She said better descriptions are "high-demand" and "destructive" groups. They require exceptionally high levels of dedication and sacrifice from their members, and they manipulate members by not disclosing that the group is a cult.

"The techniques are subtle," Whitsett said. "They use mind control techniques, and one hallmark of them is that you don't know it's happening."

People should be wary of groups that discourage questioning or discussion, convince members to sever ties with the outside world and refuse to let them leave, said Dr. Robert J. Lifton, a renowned psychiatrist who published groundbreaking work about cults in the 1960s.

Whitsett said experts agree that college students are especially vulnerable to destructive groups for a variety of reasons. They are transitioning to adulthood, searching for acceptance and direction, and are open to innovative ideas.
Although cults are prohibited from recruiting on many college campuses, Whitsett said these groups could be present at USC because their actions on campus do not violate university rules.

"They will meet criteria for a booth on campus, but it can be a gateway," she said. "There's no control over what happens off campus."

Although a discussion about cults on college campuses might seem sensationalist to some, groups on and around USC's campus - including the LaRouche movement and the Los Angeles Church of Christ - have been accused of cult activity in the past.

Students and parents said they were drawn to Thursday's lecture out of curiosity. After Whitsett finished lecturing, a discussion followed. Parents said their students spent hours completing AlcoholEdu and asked why a session about cults couldn't be offered as well.

"I liked the [AlcoholEdu] comment - when the freshmen come in they can spend an hour on cults and what to look for," USC parent Debra Sherman.

She added that although she is not concerned her children will join cults, she thinks it would be a good idea to educate incoming students about them.

The lecture not only discussed what students should watch out for, but also signs that parents should be wary of. Signs of cult activity include dramatic changes in grades, quitting school to go on a mission, spouting rhetoric, and a decrease in communication with parents.

Whitsett explained that if parents do notice such behavior, they should stay calm and educate themselves about the group as much as possible. She cautioned parents not to criticize the group or get angry and said that the goal is to stimulate students' doubts by asking questions, not by badgering them.

"Don't be discouraged by resistance," she said. "Kids will remember your questions when they begin to doubt. Question, but don't give advice."

According to a 2006 article in The Boston Globe, the potential cult groups on and around USC are the two most prevalent groups on college campuses nationwide.

The LaRouche Youth movement, which was started by Lyndon LaRouche in 1965, handed out "LaRouche for President" literature last semester on the corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Hoover Street.

LaRouche members have been accused of recruiting people on campuses and influencing them to drop out of school to promote LaRouche's political agenda. Critics say those who try to leave the group are threatened.

In 2003, a British student named Jeremiah Duggan went to Germany for what he thought was a peace protest against the war in Iraq, but was actually what critics called a LaRouche rally with anti-Semitic overtones.

After calling home worried about his safety, Duggan's body was found by the side of the Autobahn. German authorities ruled it a suicide, but independent forensic experts have said he was beaten to death.

Another group on campus, the Los Angeles Church of Christ, has been accused of cult activity. In 2000, a USC student wrote an account of her experience with the church, which is a branch of the International Church of Christ, for a USC Catholic Community newsletter.

She wrote that the church expected her to give 10 percent of her money to the church. She also had to ask permission before making decisions.

The church convinced her that she would go to hell and would abandon God if she left it, she wrote. The article reported that when she left the congregation, its members shunned her and spread rumors that she was pregnant.

In a 2003 Daily Trojan article, Rabbi Susan Laemmle, dean of religious life at USC, said the group meets all guidelines described in the "Ethical Framework for Religious Life at USC," and therefore qualifies for recognition as a student organization.

Some students said they did not consider the advice too invasive of their privacy.
Amanda Rossie, a graduate student studying print journalism who attended Thursday's event, said parents have a right to be involved with their college-age children and the decisions they make.

"I think as a freshman coming in ,,you're still a child, whether or not you like to think so," she said. "If you're taking your parents' money for school, they have a right to know what you're doing there. They have a vested interest."

Eric Holmes, a senior majoring in business administration, said that although he doesn't know of any specific cult activity at USC, he wouldn't be surprised if it exists.

"If [parents] can help their kids make the right decisions, they should," he said.

"Cults aren't what they're made out to be."

USA, 2007: Ex. LYM Akka and jmp87 about LYM.

2009-05-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

Akka: Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 6:15 am:

Hi everyone, I used to be a member of the LYM but dropped out. I've been reading your posts and have recognized a lot of the problems I encountered myself; especially the way the boomers are treated, and off course as, jmp8 points out, the horriffic living conditions. I was only member for about 6 months, but still I've used a lot of time afterwards to process all the new impressions and ideas I was exposed to. Like jmp87 I'm still inspired by some of the core ideas, and also the vigor and virtue og some of the youth members. On the other hand I totally recognize the cultish feats that seem to permeate the org. Contrastng the passionated intellectuals, wanting to make a difference, I saw deeply emotionally disturbed kids´who were more or less clinging on to LHL's fatherly figure, and would cite him all the time without actually thinking critically on their own; 'Lyn says this, Lyn says that' therefore its right. The reason I left was that I, first of all, was unsure of the truthfulness of the theories I was presented to - here especially how history was presented, which I found contained a lot of contradictions.

Secondly I kept asking myself: what are the long term effects of this movement on its members? And when I saw these phone teams, composed of middleaged people, calling all day, 6 days a week, I could vividly imagine how these people once were young and full of good pretensions, like the youths, but now were stuck in this obvious miserable condition - a lot of them just looked like they were worn out. This was not the principle of 'the general welfare', promoted in the campaigners.

Although I've left, I still have some contact with the movement, mainly because im trying to figure it out. How it works - and if I should support it or not. You've all been through it, and it obviously has left som deep scars in your souls. I myself am very affected by the experience and I think about it daily; It really was a turning point in my life, and In many ways I felt very connected to what it means being a human being - as opposed to the extremely superficial reality of popular youth culture today, of which I was a part. This sense og humanity is something I still cherish and is grateful for. The most fundamental discovery I made, was that life is not some relativistic soup, were one opinion was as good as any other - there is such a thing as quality, were one way of thinking supersedes another because it's based on truer axioms than the other; implicitly - that truth exists and is attainable by humans; if they seek it rigoriously and open-minded. For me, this was a wonderful idea that actually gave my existentialistic life, some sort of direction and ground for optimism. This is a grand paradox for me: how can something that brought me insights and true joy, also seem like a freakish cult that is destroying lives? XLC4life mentioned an ex-member, Zubrin I believe, who apparently has specialized in Mars or something. Didn't he get something good out of the org? I mean, is the organisation really bad in all respects, and doesn't it also depend on the individual that joins?

Excuse my english - or at least the grammar - its not my main language!

-----------------

borisbad: Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 9:41 am:

Akka, I can see from your post that you went through quite a transformation and fortunately you managed to retain your sanity being in for less than a year. Clearly, people join an organization like the LYM because they are dissatisfied with what they see around them and would like to see changes. And there is certainly much to be said about the banality of much of popular culture both today and in our day (the boomer generation). But then again popular culture was never equated with higher culture even Lyn likes to pretend that in the old days everybody studied Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, etc.

The thing about Lyn is how he cloaks himself in the authority of others who actually have made great contributions whether in arts, politics, math, etc. Then he construes vast machinations to show how the bad guys (whether called Aristotelians, Synarchists, Babylonian whore supporters, dionysians or what ever) are trying to stop whatever machination Lyn is perpetuating at the moment. The key thing is that you retained a sense of independent thought that made you look a little bit behind the shadows in the cave. When people give into anything uncritically, then they get trapped into cult thought. For example, Lyn likes to praise Plato, but ask if he really wants anyone in the organization examining the apriori assumptions behind his axioms and negate them which is the method behind Plato's dialogues.

I would agree that getting out of the organization doesn't mean you have to just become apolitical or uninvolved in seeking change. I think there are many activities and groups that may espouse ideals at least partially in line of what you are looking for that don't demand the total sacrifice of your identity.

jmp87Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 1:20 pm:

Akka, In regards to being political after the movement it's absolutely possible. More than possible. Right now I'm meeting With Henry Waxman, The representative of Los Angeles County to discuss The possibility of constructing a maglev train from San Diego to Seattle. I also wrote a pamphlet up in Humboldt demanding the impeachment of Cheney and citing the violations on why he must leave. I wrote numerous other pamphlets as well talking about different discussions.

It's been a year since I've left the movement and am now friendly with almost all the members. Whether its a cult or not is a tough question because there are things that they do that are legitimate. 2 of their members got elected to the democratic party recently and many of their ideas are quite sound. For example, I've always known that Al gore is a Genocidal beast ever since I've read what he states in his book, Earth in a Balance that "the populations of human beings must be reduced to 2 billion" Now if it was just a mad man stating that then who cares but this guy is trying to enact policies based on this. The most densely populated areas are in Europe yet Gore doesn't want to kill Europeans. He just wants to kill Africans and Latin Americans. the only movement that I can think of that is really preventing gore from winning this fight are the Larouchies. There is no such thing as overpopulation. That is a fascist policy that was constantly preached by Hitler himself with the "Liebenstraum" policies. Meaning living space for the Aryans. AL Gore wants to kill all the Africans and other ethnicities that aren't caucasian because hes a sick •••••••. It's impossible to explain insanity.

Now, even though they do extraordinary political and philosophical work, does not excuse the way they treat the older members and and also the living conditions. They could easily increase the budget no more than just possibly 500 bucks per office and all the members could eat comfortably. I mean after all, they always over spend on pamphlets anyway and we would always get frustrated when we would have January pamphlets still in the office while its October. Thus we overspend on the pamphlets and don't spend enough on the food.

I would say akka is Go back to school but bring the best of Larouche's Ideas with you. For example, I had a lot of fun talking about Riemaninan Geometry with a math Professor at the college I attend ,Humboldt State University. Both me and the professor had a blast discussing the ideas. I think it was because I was making the discoveries on my own rather than just being fed it.

I live in Los Angeles Right now until Most likely late august. What local where you in. I was in the L.A Local

-------------------------

Akka: posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 4:47 pm:
Hi, Thanks for the advice. I am studying at uni right now, and have been doing it for some time. In the org there is a conscious idea of how university is basically brainwashing. This, though is certainly not true...I mean off course, there are nutty proffessors and ignorant kids and all that, but the great thing is you can study all the stuff you find interesting - at least in universiy I attend. You'll also be getting a degree you can use later, and, like you said jmp, still be political and make a difference for the better.

It is outright silly, in my opinion, not to get an education if you have the chance, even if you sympathize with LYM. You don't know whats gonna happen in the future, and being financially dependent on an organisation is very unwise, as I can understand from this board some of the boomers would probably leave if not they were not dependent financially on the movement, but also the social dependence has a say. Getting an education gives you a firm social network outside the movement AND keeps your family from worrying too much - plus it gives you an ability to se things from more than one perspective. A thing I think Schiller was right on, was when he wrote that one should be a part of society but not a product of it. There is no reason in isolating oneself. Just a little subjective advice.

What you said, Borisbad, is actually what I couldn't swallow; namely, this big hostile overtake of the world by various, and seemingly changing fations. Its not that I don't think conspiracies don't exist, I mean, anyone whose been into politics, knows how agreements and stuff like that gets into place, there is a lot more than meets the eye. But from what I can gather from you guys, meaning the older ex-members, is that LHL has been swithching to and fro all through his career. You say he started out as a trotskyist and was part of this leninist group up until the mid sixties, where he was pushing marxist theories - which at the time probably was popular among the youths - some of you guys joined because of those ideas perhaps. One thing I'd like to know, is whether or not the economic program he was proposing then, is similar to what he thinks now, in terms of more investment in longterm infrastructual prjoects, and a new bretton woods and those kinds o things or was it more like a communistic scheduled economy of sorts?

Another thing I find striking is this idea of antisemitism - which is what freaked my friends and family out. I must admit, I haven't met any racisme what so ever in the movement when I was there, quite the contrary, actually- you know - nobody there talked about race or religions in a judgemental manner - it was the quality of your mind, and spirit which was focused on, which is quite a relief when you come from a materially fixated culture, I might add. It seems to me that there has been a change in that respect, from what you describe with the antisemitism and all that. I couldn't help but notice that you guys were slamming Helga for the 'locust' thing. I don't know anything about the womans background, but I do know that the term 'locust' was actually used by the former SPD finance minister, Müntefering, in his explicit characterisation of the Hedgefunds back in 2005 or so, which he called 'Heuschrecken', meaning 'locusts' in german, and thats when they started using the word in the campaigners; as a reference to Münteferings term.

jmp, I'd rather keep contact on the board for now, and also keep my identity anonymous. No offence ;-)

------------------

JMP87. Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 7:20 pm:

I have to agree with akka that i didn't experience any antisemitism either. I've posted some posts about a week ago talking about the topic.

Testimony about LYM (sourcewatch.org-talk...)

2009-05-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who has joined the Larouche political group based in Oakland. He works for them more than 12 hours a day, 6 days a week; the seventh day is a "reading" day in which he reads a variety of books Larouche thinks are insightful and useful. He has almost stopped visiting us and honestly believes that economic crisis is near and that Lyndon Larouche is the only one who can help our country get through this crisis; this is so important that he cannot take time off to be with us. All Larouche supporters I have met look up to Larouche as an intellectual giant, one who makes many correct predictions about future events. Most of the widely-read people who criticize Larouche, such as Dennis King and Chip Berlet, are themselves derogated by Larouche on his web site (http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2001/010627_you_liars.html, for example). In short, while I have no time to substantiate this claim currently, Larouche's group believes that they are only ones who can save this nation from imminent economic crisis and its current political, artistic, and scientific malaise; Larouche is one of the smartest men in America; he is widely respected abroad (this has some basis in fact); everyone else is occluded from the truth and needs to wake up, and Larouche is right about nearly everything. Lar articles are pseudo-intellectual and require research or extensive knowledge to understand. No time to support it, but I'll just say this at the end: It's a wanna-be cult. Wise up before it's too late and someone you know is gone for forever. Talk to them as much as possible, point out why they're crazy and the group is nuts (they can't be right about everything; they derogate everything as being biased against them; they don't believe that any non-classical (and some classical) music has any worth) before you lose contact and only see that person a few times a year, when you can drag their soulless body away from the clutches of this group. listen up.

New posts about Lyndon LaRouche!

2009-05-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

A new post at my main "Lycurgus" site: Is Lyndon LaRouche omnipotent and omniscent, or just a macho bully? http://american-lycurgus.blogspot.com/2009/05/cult-or-no-cult-part-4-is-lyndon.html

and

Look at my new blog in SWEDISH: EAP, Europeiska Arbetarpartiet och LaRoucherörelsen! http://eap-larouche.blogspot.com/

/T

LaRouche Youth Movement (from www.insidehighered.com)

2009-05-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

The LaRouche Youth Movement

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee132

July 11, 2007

By Scott McLemee

An organization known as the LaRouche Youth Movement has become a fixture on many college campuses over the past few years. Many of its adherents are undergraduates, though members are eventually urged to quit school to work full-time for the organization. "We are in a complete breakdown of the financial system and we know that," one member told a student newspaper in California. "We can use our time in a more appropriate manner than going to school." Recruits have been tireless in distributing tracts that bear such lurid titles as “Children of Satan” (about members of the Bush administration) and “How the 'The Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism' Ruined the U.S.A.” (an allusion to the Cold War-era Congress for Cultural Freedom).

While LYMers do support the perennial American presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, it is somewhat misleading to think of these texts as mere campaign literature – or the movement itself as essentially political. Members are recruited in part around the claim that the movement will give them a real education in classical culture, with a particular emphasis on mastering Plato and Leibnitz.

His adherents regard Lyndon LaRouche as the greatest mind of the past 300 years, at very least. "I'm probably the best economist in the world today," as LaRouche told The Washington Post in 1985. But a list of the areas of expertise behind that claim of eminence is even more astounding.Members of his youth group now publish a scholarly journal, of sorts, called Dynamis, devoted to their studies of his mathematical and scientific doctrines.

LaRouche has also determined the correct pitch for tuning musical instruments. Any other tuning bothers him, besides being incompatible with the structure of the universe. In the best of all possible worlds, people found in possession of “incorrect” tuning forks and pitch-pipes would be fined. His followers in Italy once proposed legislation to that effect. It failed. That campaign seems to be at a standstill, but it once drew close attention in the pages of Opera Fanatic magazine.

In one of his autobiographies, LaRouche explains that his mission is to create what Plato called “golden souls” – fit to rule those of us of a more silver or even bronze hue. His quest to do so began among students on college campuses 40 years ago. Members of the inner core of his organization have long since qualified to join the AARP. LaRouche himself is now 85 years old. And yet it is clear that he remains ready, willing, and able to serve as philosopher-king for the entire planet, given half a chance.

And so a few years back LaRouche's followers began recruiting new support among university students. In 2002, organizers for the movement, one of them carrying a megaphone, rushed into classrooms at Santa Monica College to spread the good word, according to the campus newspaper. By 2003, recruitment was successful enough to receive LaRouche's own enthusiastic approval."Give me 1,000 youth leaders like these," he announced that year, "and I'll take over the country."

That goal may have been a little optimistic. The figure of 1,000 new members has not been mentioned in a while. But the movement’s Web site now lists contact information for 21 cities.

Members of the LaRouche Youth Movement also make themselves visible, if no means welcome, at Democratic Party events. Perhaps “visible” is not really the right word. The LaRouchies are prone to heckle and to sing – often, in fact, at the same time. One central doctrine of the movement is that certain classical compositions (sung at the proper pitch) can transform both singer and listener in a golden-soulful way. Here, for example, is a video of Joseph Lieberman being subjected to LaRouchian bel canto yodeling

LaRouche supporters claim to be a wing of the Democratic Party -- something the party itself strenuously denies. His following has the LaRouche Political Action Committee as its electoral arm. LPAC raised more than $7.4 million in 2006, according to statements filed with the Federal Election Commission. It dispersed a grand total of $1,565 to a Democratic candidate for president.(Guess which one?) A review of expenditures (also available at the FEC site) shows a total of $462,850 going to the LaRouche Youth Movement. Another $6,223 went to Bruce Director, a longtime supporter of LaRouche who teaches the candidate’s mathematical theories to the youth group.

When they are not busy studying geometry or learning to sing properly, youth organizers are expected to meet a daily fund-raising quota. In an open letter to the father of a Youth Movement member, a former long-time supporter of the LaRouche organization described the life of a full-timer organizer as "dreary."

But one might never know that from LaRouche's speeches to the movement, which often end, "Have fun!"

The emergence of the group is all the more surprising, given that LaRouche himself has long since become the walking punchline to a very strange joke. He is known for some of the most baroque conspiracy theories ever put into circulation. Members of the LYM now deny that he ever accused the Queen of England of drug trafficking – though in fact, he did exactly that throughout the 1980s. At the time, he won admirers on the extreme right wing by denouncing Henry Kissinger as an agent of the KGB and calling for AIDS patients to be quarantined. A good roundup of LaRouche's positions and conspiracy theories is available from PublicEye.org, the website of Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank.

The movement lost even more credibility when LaRouche and several of his top associates were convicted of mail fraud in 1988. He even ended up sharing a prison cell with Jim Bakker, the disgraced televangelist. (Now there's a Platonic dialogue one would like to read.)

But most of the students joining his movement now were barely learning to read when LaRouche was paroled in 1994. He has managed to repackage himself as a former “political prisoner.” Actually LaRouche was prosecuted for making a million dollars’ worth of unauthorized charges to credit cards, which would not ordinarily count as a manifestation of high idealism. Be that as it may, LaRouche has displayed a certain knack, over the years, for pitching his message to young people. The new focus on student recruitment is, in fact, a return to the movement's origins.

In the mid-1960s, LaRouche gave rather spellbinding lectures at Columbia, Temple, Swarthmore, and other campuses – never as a professor, but rather as a guest speaker invited by radical students. His career up to that point had certainly been unusual.

Although a member of various small Marxist organizations, LaRouche was also employed as a management consultant to the shoe industry. According to some of his later statements, he was involved in early efforts to apply computer technology to bookkeeping practices.Meanwhile, he published radical tracts under the pseudonym Lyn Marcus. (He describes his early years as a revolutionary, his use of the pen name, and his pioneering role in creating accounting software in The Power of Reason, an autobiography published in 1979.)

It is often said by LaRouche's critics that his pseudonym, Lyn Marcus, was meant as a reference to Lenin and Marx – a colorful detail, though, alas, one not really supported by an evidence. A more parsimonious explanation for “Lyn” is that it is just a contraction of “Lyndon.” As for "Marcus," he claims that his nickname as a young man was Marco Polo.

But my friend James Weinstein -- a radical historian who knew LaRouche briefly during the mid-1960s -- had a different perspective. "A lot of Jews in the radical movement took WASP-seeming party names," he told me. "So here you had this guy who looked and sounded like a Boston Brahmin taking a Jewish name. He was very strange. He would show up at meetings of his own organization to hand out leaflets denouncing it."

He was, in any case, a man of numerous theories. And as protests against the Vietnam war grew, he found a ready audience for them. Lyn Marcus developed a following among radical students at Columbia University in the months just before the campus upheaval there in 1968. Several of his young disciples were part of the student strike committee. His following won occasional passing references in James Simon Kunen’s once-famous book The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary, published the following year.

Kunen describes a meeting at Columbia during which a shaggy-bearded radical orator, obviously is somewhat older than his audience, lectures on the impending global depression. Although he is not identified by name, this was almost certainly LaRouche. The beard is documented in a photograph from the period. He later cut it off – but kept the lecture about impending global depression, which has always been a staple of his ideology.

By the early 1970s, he had a following of nearly 1,000 students on campuses across the country, organized as the National Caucus of Labor Committees. It was the most bookish of far-left groups, and included some very smart people, several of them holding advanced degrees. (Quite a few also had trust funds, at least when they joined.) At least some professors must have taken the movement seriously. Writings by Lyn Marcus and other NCLC members appeared in Institutions, Policies, and Goals: A Reader in American Politics, a college textbook issued by D.C. Heath in 1973.

In 1975, Heath also brought out a curious volume called Dialectical Economics: An Introduction to Marxian Political Economy, which appeared under LaRouche's pseudonym. This was his theoretical magnum opus. It received exactly one notice in an academic publication: a review in The Journal of Political Economy by Martin Bronfenbrenner, a professor of economics at Brown University.

The LaRouche movement has inspired some excellent investigative journalism over the years – in particular the work of Dennis King, who has unearthed many a surprising and unpleasant fact about the candidate. (His book about LaRouche, published by Doubleday in 1989, is now available online.)

But it seems that no reporter has ever noticed Bronfenbrenner's examination of Dialectical Economics -- the one occasion, I believe, when LaRouche's work was discussed by a serious scholar. It is a remarkably interesting item in its own right. As a review-essay, it is sober and judicious, yet suffused with a certain tone of puzzlement, as if Bronfenbrenner had to stop every so often to scratch his head.

“As regards content,” he noted, the book was “perhaps 50 percent dialectical philosophy, with a strong epistemological stress. The remaining 50 percent appears fairly evenly divided between history (including economic history), anthropology-cum-sociology, and economics (including a surprisingly large loading of business administration).....For a 500 page introduction to economics, in sum, the economics is disappointingly thin.”

And yet there was, indeed, some economics in it. The exact kind was worth noting -- for not all of it came from Das Kapital, by any means. Bronfenbrenner discerned that the author “had the advantage of more private-business experience than the great majority of academic economists.” A good deal of that direct knowledge “has been at the exploitive frontier of ‘white-collar crime,’ bordering on fraud both in the inducement and the factum....Marcus’s experience extends to the speculative overcapitalization of capital values, creating ‘fictitious capitals’ which cannot later justify themselves by earning capacity in the normal course of events.”

In short, Dialectical Economics was the work of someone familiar, not just with Marxist theory, but with creative bookkeeping. Bronfenbrenner also wrote that the book left “a distinct impression, redolent of the 1930s, of the one-man-party member with whom the world is out of step.”

That may be one of the more insightful comments ever made by a book reviewer. But at the time, in the mid-1970s, LaRouche's "one-man party" was already a bit larger than that. An account of life in the group appeared in a memoir by two friends, Jeff Durstewitz and Ruth Tuttle, called Younger Than That Now: A Shared Passage from the Sixties (Bantam, 2001). One of the authors, Tuttle, joined the group in the early 1970s.

Members “spent countless hours reading and studying,” she wrote, “getting a better education in Western philosophy and politics than we had gotten [in college]. But that benefit was far outweighed by the brutalized and controlled nature of our day-to-day lives. Even as we were verbally flogged each day to use creative thinking to achieve ‘humanistic relevance’ in the world, the reality was that we and our comrades used most of our time in dehumanizing and mind-deadening activity.”

Not that much has changed in more than three decades, to judge by accounts of life in the LaRouche Youth Movement from people who have left recently. There is something morbidly fascinating about the phenomenon, if also terribly sad. One of LaRouche's longtime followers, the head of his publishing company, recently jumped to his death from a highway overpass after a statement by the leadership praised the dynamic youth organization while suggesting that "Boomer" members might just as well commit suicide.

Charisma is a mysterious thing, and even more so when it has a rather seedy feel -- the claims of universal genius, a la Leibnitz, suffused a quality owing more perhaps to Elmer Gantry. It is hard to imagine what the organization's future may be. Even if LaRouche is Socrates, all men are mortal, and everybody knows how that syllogism works out.

But any member of the LaRouche Youth Movement with moments of doubt can now readily get access (after a few minutes online) to extensive information on the real history of the organization as well as a forum where ex-members compare notes. Have fun!

Vaclav Havel: The Power of the powerless (1978).

2009-05-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

Vaclav Havel
"The Power of the Powerless"
(1978)
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html

(To read my open letter to all those that still are members of the LaRuchecult, where I quote from this text by Havel, read here: http://american-lycurgus.blogspot.com/2009/05/cult-or-no-cult-part-2-to-live-within.html. The text in this linked article explains why I have posted this text here on the LaRouchesources blog!

Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text provided by Bob Moeller, of the University of California, Irvine.

{1}A SPECTER is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called "dissent" This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures. . . .

{2}Our system is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term "dictatorship," regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. . . Even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements that give birth to it, the authenticity of these movements (and I am thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the nineteenth century) gives it undeniable historicity. These origins provided a solid foundation of sorts on which it could build until it became the utterly new social and political reality it is today, which has become so inextricably a part of the structure of the modern world. . . . It commands an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion. It offers a ready answer to any question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in part, and accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. . . .

{3}The profound difference between our system-in terms of the nature of power-and what we traditionally understand by dictatorship, a difference I hope is clear even from this quite superficial comparison, has caused me to search for some term appropriate for our system, purely for the purposes of this essay. If I refer to it henceforth as a "post-totalitarian" system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix "post" that the system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dictatorships, different from totalitarianism as we usually understand it.

. . . .

{4}The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

{5}I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life "in harmony with society," as they say.

{6}Obviously the greengrocer . . . does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?

{7}Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

{8}Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. . . .

{9}The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

{10}Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.

. . . .

{11}Why in fact did our greengrocer have to put his loyalty on display in the shop window? Had he not already displayed it sufficiently in various internal or semipublic ways? At trade union meetings, after all, he had always voted as he should. He had always taken part in various competitions. He voted in elections like a good citizen. He had even signed the "antiCharter." Why, on top of all that, should he have to declare his loyalty publicly? After all, the people who walk past his window will certainly not stop to read that, in the greengrocer's opinion, the workers of the world ought to unite. The fact of the matter is, they don't read the slogan at all, and it can be fairly assumed they don't even see it. If you were to ask a woman who had stopped in front of his shop what she saw in the window, she could certainly tell whether or not they had tomatoes today, but it is highly unlikely that she noticed the slogan at all, let alone what it said.

{12}It seems senseless to require the greengrocer to declare his loyalty publicly. But it makes sense nevertheless. People ignore his slogan, but they do so because such slogans are also found in other shop windows, on lampposts, bulletin boards, in apartment windows, and on buildings; they are everywhere, in fact. They form part of the panorama of everyday life. Of course, while they ignore the details, people are very aware of that panorama as a whole. And what else is the greengrocer's slogan but a small component in that huge backdrop to daily life?

{13}The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don't want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security. . . .

{14}Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth. . . .

{15}The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children's access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

{16}Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. . . .

{17}The original and most important sphere of activity, one that predetermines all the others, is simply an attempt to create and support the independent life of society as an articulated expression of living within the truth. In other words, serving truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately, and organizing this service. This is only natural, after all: if living within the truth is an elementary starting point for every attempt made by people to oppose the alienating pressure of the system, if it is the only meaningful basis of any independent act of political import, and if, ultimately, it is also the most intrinsic existential source of the "dissident" attitude, then it is difficult to imagine that even manifest "dissent" could have any other basis than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to make room for the genuine aims of life.

LYM: A cult of Personality with Lyndon LaRouche in the center

2009-04-28T04:21:00.000-07:00

A young student from larryflynt.com infiltrated some LYM meetings and wrote this in 2006:

http://larryflynt.com/?p=31

Infiltrating a secretive Lyndon LaRouche compound, UCLA student journalist Garin Hovannisian gets a frightening lesson in idolatry and indoctrination.

While heading to class along UCLA’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, a daytime hangout for young prophets and propagandists among others, I run into an old friend for the first time in two years. Back in high school, C.J. was a real character—a no-nonsense, call-it-like-it-is skeptic, jokester and poet. I soon learn that he’s been recruited by the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM). After attending a weekend retreat at what he refers to as a “cadre school,” C.J. promptly dropped out of college, deserting family, friends, personality and every vestige of his past. Now living in a commune, he’s a full-fledged LYM member.

Born in 1922, the enigmatic Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. is a perennial Presidential candidate, prolific author and founder of several political organizations. Critics counter that he’s a trumpeter of outlandish theories, an extremist, a cult leader, a homophobe and an anti-Semite, but with 22 cadre schools in the U.S., LaRouche’s army is growing, his doctrine gaining more clout.

Since 1999 LYM has offered college dropouts a regimen of pseudo-intellectualized socialism, absolutist musical theory, post-calculus mathematics and a view of history as an ongoing clash between the forces of good and evil. LaRouche’s current whereabouts are unknown, but he communicates to his followers via messengers and Internet broadcasts.
So what turns an outgoing guy like C.J. into a politicized pamphleteer and peddler?

Spiritual enlightenment? Is my old pal playing a sinister joke on me?

In search of answers, I sign up for my first meeting. To my horror, I find myself in a secretive group of young revolutionaries seeking college-educated recruits for brainwashing.

LYM’s Southern California headquarters is a decrepit two-story structure in Eagle Rock, a short hop from downtown Los Angeles. C.J., who is waiting for me at the back door, escorts me inside. LaRouche propaganda is everywhere, even in the kitchen and bathroom. The largest area is set aside for volunteers who work the phone lines, talking it up with potential recruits.

In the library I find texts by Plato, Kepler, Gauss, Leibniz and Schiller, but Aristotle is banned. Sir Isaac Newton? According to LYM leaders, he’s a fraud and plagiarist. Only “pro-mankind” intellectuals are permitted. Charter member Cody Jones explains to me that science, economics, politics, culture and music are all measurable by a “mankind yardstick.” Pro-mankind: LaRouche, Plato and Bach. Anti-mankind: Aristotle and Rachmaninoff.

Later, everyone is summoned to the conference room, where an ensemble performs Bach chorales. Phil Rubenstein—a balding, spectacled fellow in his 50s—takes the stage for “the weekly update.” Rubenstein, who claims to be a minister, fires off a homily on the “major political force in the U.S.—the LaRouche Youth Movement!” This becomes a routine reassurance, I soon learn.

There are conspiracy theories (“The economist George Schultz is behind it all!”) and hush-hush secrets (“Tuesday, Lyn [LaRouche] had a private, off-the-record meeting with 12 development sector embassies”). Rubenstein’s camaraderie with the younger members gives him easy access to their malleable minds.

Once the official program concludes at 8 p.m., I stick around to mingle, hoping for casual conversation. My efforts prove futile. LYM followers never watch movies, don’t listen to music (other than the prescribed dose of classical), don’t tell jokes and don’t have hobbies.

Individual egos have been replaced by a collective identity. Every pursuit, aspiration, passion, emotion and thought revolves around “Lyn,” as members reverently call LaRouche—“the founder…the genius among geniuses…the leading prophetic figure of modern history.”

Dreadfully tired, I cannot survive any more of this. I say goodbye to C.J., gather my bags and leave LYM’s little empire.

/UCLA senior Garin Hovannisian, 20, is editor of The Bruin Standard, a campus alternative newspaper. The Los Angeles native is also a freelance writer and blues addict and can be contacted at ghovannisian@BruinStandard.com.

To LYM!

2009-04-24T01:31:00.001-07:00

USA, 2009, ex LYM member writes about friendship inside the cult.

2009-04-22T05:01:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

In Spite of LaRouche and Because of Him, I Will Remember John Morris

http://anotherflop.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-spite-of-larouche-and-because-of-him.html

I received some distressing news last week. It's taken me a while to process it because it's brought back memories of experiences that I stopped thinking about quite some time ago. I debated, for a while, whether I should write anything about it, and if so, whether I should do it publicly. And then, if I did it publicly, I wondered whether it would be a good idea to do it under my name or anonymously. My thoughts have led to this conclusion: The Internet can be a valuable resource for others. I hope that what I have to share can be of some value to someone else.

I've mentioned in the past that I had some involvement with Lyndon LaRouche and his international political organization. That's really a polite way to refer to a man who leads a powerful and destructive cult which operates internationally and has a strong presence here in the United States, particularly on college campuses. From 2000 to 2001, I worked for him on the streets, on college campuses, at post offices and county buildings, in airports, in front of libraries and supermarkets, at busy intersections and on freeway off-ramps, raising money and spreading the word: "The world was headed for certain doom and LaRouche is the only force in the universe who can stop it. Now buy a subscription to our newspaper." I worked 16-hour days and lived on about $30-$40 a week. Sometimes $50 if I was lucky. If this sounds bad, know that I got off easy. I recruited people into this group myself, and many of these folks are still in lockstep behind LaRouche. They were young people just like me: disillusioned, intelligent and creative, just looking for answers and an alternative to the mainstream path which seemed empty and unfulfilling. Worse off than these people, however, are the ones who have spent most of their lives there, people who joined when they were younger than I am now, and are older than my parents are today. I won't name any names. I am not looking to make enemies, or cause any strife.

I am not writing this so that I can talk about LaRouche. There have been plenty of people available to do that over the years, and there will continue to be. The person I really want to speak up about is John Morris, who was one of LaRouche's faithful organizers. LaRouche is alive and well, still preaching his twisted gospel and abusing his membership more than enough to keep them in line and maintain a healthy flow of cash. But John Morris is dead. This is the news I received the other day that has left me so upset on many levels. He died one a night last June at about 10:30pm, along with Gary Genazzio, an organizer I did not know. They were on a highway between Chicago and Detroit. Their car had run out of gas, and they pulled over to the side of the road, apparently to try to refill the tank. A passing dump truck hit them and killed them both.

Maintaining friendships was not easy. The work was often too all-consuming to make room for strong personal friendships. In fact, allegiances to anything other than LaRouche and the rest of the group were strongly discouraged. I remember a couple of months after I joined full-time, I had a conversation about my best friend with one of the local leaders of the organization.

"What do you call him a 'best friend?'" he asked. "What does that even mean?"

"Well, we go back. We've known each other a long time. He understands me probably better than anyone"

"Does he understand what you are doing here? Does he understand LaRouche?"

"A bit," I said. "I'm still working on him." (Indeed, at that time, I was 'working' on all of my friends, many of whom had long stopped speaking to me by the time I finally left LaRouche behind.)

"Well. You do that. But if you can't get anywhere, you have to remember that there are more important things. You can't let him hold you back. You're going to have to leave him behind."

You can't take them with you. That was the message that I got from all sides. My friends. My family. I remember one night I invited my father to an evening briefing, hoping he would see something good in it that I hadn't been able to explain to him in private. Instead, my father was full of objections to the rhetoric, and left that night feeling angry and uncomfortable. A leader (or National Coordinator, as they are called) pulled me aside and asked that I never have him come by again.

The work was difficult. Raising money is exhausting work, but doing it for the long hours that I did is grueling. I rarely got more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. Even more exhausting than this is living with the memory of some of the things I did: Manipulating people into giving up money they clearly wanted to hold on to, "educating" others that anyone who supports Israel is a "Nazi," that jazz music is pure evil, and the entire environmental movement is a fraud were, in retrospect, some of the less humiliating aspects of the work. The most upsetting would probably be the giving up of the self. I willfully and gleefully gave myself up to be scrubbed of personality, taste and ambition, instead seeing myself as a conduit to funnel followers and money towards a man that I'd been convinced was something of a savior. Indeed, the most devoted followers of LaRouche place him on a pedestal somewhere close to God himself. And that fact that LaRouche frequently stated in no uncertain terms that human society (and, indeed, the known universe) could not exist without him indicated that he felt the same way himself.

John Morris wasn't the only LaRouche member to die recently. Jeremiah Duggan is the most well-known example. The story of his death, which has still never been fully understood or explained, was carried on all the major news outlets when it happened. He was a young Jewish man from London, a little bit older than I was when I was in the organization. He had gone to Wiesbaden, Germany to attend a LaRouche conference in March, 2003, much as I had done less than two years earlier. He then attended a "cadre school" at a youth hostel there in town. It may very well have been the same hostel I stayed at when I'd been there. Then he died. He had been alarmed by the things being taught by LaRouche followers at the conference and the cadre school and had become afraid. No one knows for sure what happened, but he had been running along the side of a highway. There's debate over how he died, but the official ruling from German police was that he'd been hit by traffic. They ruled it a suicide, but there are many lingering questions.

Ken Kronberg died in 2007. He had been a tireless worker for LaRouche for 35 years, and ran the publishing outfit responsible for printing many of LaRouche's publications. The company was experiencing incredible financial shortfalls, and it looked like Kronberg was going to end up bearing much of the burden. On a day when LaRouche suggested that the baby boomers in the organization "commit suicide," Ken Kronberg quietly threw himself off of a highway overpass.

I never got a chance to meet Jeremiah, and I knew of Kronberg only by name, but I did know John Morris.

I don't know what he and Gary were driving such a long distance at that hour for. I don't know whether they were coming from a long deployment (standing at a small table selling subscriptions and literature, collecting names and phone numbers to call later), or driving back from an event. But I do know why they ran out of gas. They ran out because there wasn't enough in the tank, and there wasn't enough in the tank because there was never much gas in the tanks of LaRouche cars when I was in the group, when the stuff was well under $2 a gallon. I can only imagine that the problem was only more pronounced last summer when gas was $4 a gallon in many parts of the country. Gas tanks were never filled because cash from deployments was a precious commodity. It was always better to bring cash back to the office than spend it all to fill up a tank. Usually, there was only enough gas in our cars to last a day. At the end of a long day of selling literature on the streets, we'd put a few gallons in, at most. Enough for tomorrow.

The cars were never in very good condition. Though these cars were used every day for driving over long distances (sometimes for 50 miles or more each way) they were rarely maintained. I remember a car or two in Los Angeles that didn't even have a working gas gauge. We always had a can of gas in the trunk of the car. If the driver of the car ran out of gas, he'd have to pull over and re-fill out of the can. I've heard that it was a common problem elsewhere in the country as well. Given that John and Gary were trying to refill their tank on the side of a highway, I think there's they may have had a car in this condition.

The LaRouche organization makes millions of dollars every year.

John had been moved to the mid-west a few years ago, but he was in Los Angeles before that. That was where I met him. Once I joined the group full time, I moved into an apartment with another organizer, paid for by the organization. John shared a place with another organizer only a few blocks away from mine. Working the kind of hours we did (16 hours a day, five or six days a week) made it hard to forge friendships. What interactions I did have with my colleagues were generally centered around the activities of the group. Indeed, focusing on anything other than LaRouche was discouraged and avoided. When I spent time with John, it was often easy to forget that I had changed my entire lifestyle, altered my entire way of being (at the expense of friends, family and personal tastes) for a cause dominated by one single personality.

It's not an easy schedule to adjust to. The atmosphere in a high-pressure, money-driven cult is one of constant demand. If you aren't focused on raising money, or otherwise furthering the cause, then you are being reprimanded for not doing so more effectively. (These reprimands continue even when you are working hard and doing the very best you can). I remember one night in particular not long after I had joined the group full-time. I went over to John's house for dinner on a Sunday night, our one day off. Upon arrival, I suspected that like everyone else in the group, John would want to spend our free time talking about LaRouche, or Friedrich Schiller, or "psycho-sexual impotence" (a blanket term for whatever was keeping us from raising more money), or how we could work towards meeting our quotas every day. Instead, John wanted to talk about beer. He took me upstairs and into his bedroom where, in his closet, he had jugs of beer fermenting. He then explained the practice of home-brewing. I was just 18 years old, and had never considered that a man could make his own beer. That night, over a simple dinner of salad and pasta dish with chicken and pesto, we enjoyed the finest beer I had ever had up to that point. A few years later, it was John I was thinking of when I decided to start brewing my own beer at my house in Humboldt County.

John expanded my ideas about food as well as drink. We both shared a love of Mexican food, and a particular appreciation for the La Estrella taco stands in the Los Angeles area. One evening, I was on my way out to grab a couple of tacos (a huge luxury) before spending the night fund-raising. "Get me a tongue taco, will you?" he said. I laughed, thinking he was joking. I'd been eating taco truck fare for years, but had never considered sampling the less common meats: cabeza, lengua and tripas. "Oh, I'm serious," he said. "You've never had tongue? You call yourself a taco fan and you've never had tongue?! There is nothing--Nothing--that beats some nice lengua sliced really lean." Well, that was enough for me to try it, and a mere half an hour later I had become a fan of the tongue taco. Even today, I rarely pass up a chance to have an authentic lengua taco (though such opportunities seem to be rather rare here in Manhattan), and I've no one other than John to thank for this.

John also had a strong sense of humor, and no matter the circumstances, he always managed to make me laugh. Even after being yelled at for not meeting quota, being reminded of our general lack of worth, or bring subjected to a conference call in which specifically-named people were held up as examples of how not to be, John was always ready to put on a smile and share his good humor. He made the work easy, lightening not simply his own burden but also those of others.

(You can't take them with you.)

As I said before, having "friends" in the organization wasn't practical. I say that, most of all, because once you leave the group you are cut off from it. No one speaks to you. A friend one day, and then next day you are nobody to them. There were people I knew who were my age and shared my interests. We were all swimming in the same shit: the same abusive hours, the manipulation, the near-desperate poverty. We banded together. It was unusual to spend time alone even in the rare hours away from the office. I met good people while I was in there. Now, more than 7 years later, I look back on the experience and think more of the good people I lived and worked with than I do of the leaders of the group, and LaRouche himself, those who wielded power over us. There's a small core of people who made such an impression on me that I've thought of them every day. Funny, intelligent, bright people. Folks I would be friends with right now if they weren't in the cult, if their impressions of the outside world weren't being manipulated, if they weren't expected to NOT SPEAK to anyone who has left the group. I've always considered John Morris to be part of that group.

I've always said to myself that if one of those people who was close to me were to call me out of the blue and ask for help to get out, I'd do everything in my power to make it happen. And I admit that there's a fantasy I indulge in from time to time, one in which my old friends are free of the cult, have reclaimed their lives and are living happily. We are all in touch and helping each other through the recovery which never really ends. We enjoy one-another's company, and share humor and insight without the profound pressure and guilt.

But now, John Morris is dead. He can't be a part of that mental picture anymore. Learning of his death reminded me that this isn't a fantasy. There are some things that will never be fixed. It reminded me that I was one of the lucky ones. I could have easily stayed. I could have run out of gas between Detroit and Chicago instead of John and Gary. I could have been Jeremiah Duggan and, disoriented and afraid, run into traffic and gotten killed. Had I stayed longer, I could have even been Ken Kronberg, and thrown myself off of an overpass because I lacked the will and the strength to break free. Someone else could just as easily be writing these things about me right now. In essence, I survived that car wreck, that highway, that overpass, even though I wasn't even there.

I survived

You can't take them with you. This is true of your family and friends when you go into a cult, and just as true of your colleagues when you leave.

Even though I will never see John Morris again, I will still continue to think of him, and mourn the loss. He was more than a quota, more than a list of contacts, more than a LaRouche organizer. He was a human being with taste, humor and dignity. And, most of all, for a year between 2000 and 2001, John Morris was my friend.

USA: LYM, Ray Hengst tells his story.

2009-04-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

A Letter on the the Lyndon Larouche Political Group

http://youcsd.com/archives/000086.php

NOV, 2004

Ray Hengst sent us a well written letter he thinks the student body should read.

Thanks, Ray. The majority of his warning can be seen after the jump, linked below.

I am writing to the campus community about the Lyndon Larouche political group, which has recently been tabling on Library Walk. Larouche uses a combination of philosophy, history, and polemics to argue for the existence of a worldwide conspiracy. I have had much experience in dealing with the Larouche group and would like to warn everyone: It is two-thirds cult and one-third political organization.
I first went to a meeting of Larouche supporters two years ago, in northern California. Some friends and I were interested in the controversy surrounding the group and the political claims it made. The meeting essentially consisted of a three-hour-long diatribe against everything from empiricism to subjectivism to political and historical figures. The audience frequently punctuated the speaker's statements with loud calls of agreement or disgust, matching the speaker's emotions. One recurring theme of the speech was that economic catastrophe was nearby, and it was the special responsibility of Larouche supporters to prevent this disaster.
During a 10-minute break in the meeting, the Larouche supporters tried to engage us in conversation. I found that everything I said fell flat: they weren't actually listening to me. They were so sure that they were right that nothing I said could have changed their opinion. Yet I was surrounded by them, and I thought at the time that perhaps my facts or opinions were just completely wrong: everyone around me was so quick to point out my errors, and so sure of their logic.

The complex, absolutist ideology espoused by Larouche is perhaps designed to avoid being summarized. Larouche believes that a worldwide conspiracy led by bankers is attempting to control world events. For example, the Madrid bombings were the work of this network, and the entire 60s youth movement was orchestrated by a satanist. Important historical figures are catalogued as being either humanists, and thus implicitly pro-Larouche, or empiricists, and thus satanic.

Larouche attempts to tie together history, science, religion and politics
in an intricate web, thus creating an entire world view in which his followers become trapped. By combining polemical denunciations and hundreds of references to literary, scientific, and political figures, Larouche convinces his followers that he "may be the smartest man in America," to use his own words.

The Larouche group constantly instills a fear of some imminent economic disaster in its members and reminds them that only the Larouche movement can "save the world." New members are made to realize the moral certitude of their work, and consequently spend more and more time doing Larouche-related activities.

Right now, one of my best friends works for the Larouche group fourteen hours a day, six days a week. He dropped out of college, lives with other Larouche supporters, and rarely communicates with the outside world, except for trying to convince people to join the Larouche organization. For him, an economic disaster is just around the corner, and time is so precious that he no longer can have the luxury of regularly being with friends or family for considerable lengths of time—it would be morally wrong for him to spend time on personal concerns.

I urge everyone who reads this to be aware of the power that cult-like, emotionally-based organizations can wield. Before my friend joined, I would have never guessed that someone as level-headed, intelligent, and savvy as he is could possibly join a group which essentially squelches independent thought.

I want to warn everyone: This could happen to anyone. If you're worried about a group that your friend is getting more and more involved in, then do something about it. Research the organization thoroughly, talk to your friend, figure out what tactics the group uses, and if you're still worried then keep researching and trying to reach out to your friend. The Larouche supporters can be fanatical, but other groups are ten times worse.

USA: "LaRouche exposed!" The student "Tom" tells his story.

2009-04-16T22:30:00.001-07:00

LaRouche Exposed
November 15, 2001, By Matthew Robinson, Editor in Chief, Pcc-courier.

Each semester, hundreds of students pass by a table set up in front of the D building in the quad, where supporters of Lyndon LaRouche try to interest students in their political agenda. For those who stop and agree to go to an off- campus meeting, they often find themselves entangled in a worldwide cult.

Philip Mullendore, chief of campus police, reported that they get complaints on regular basis from students about La Rouche recruits harassing them in the quad. Others complain of repeated phone calls, urging them to attend a meeting. Many students who attend those meetings end up dropping out of school and devoting their lives to LaRouche.

"We have documented several incidents of aggressive tactics by this group and we monitor them very closely," said Mullendore.

The mother of an 18-year-old student who was lured into the cult complained to campus police that the LaRouche group had taken over her son's life.

The LaRouche organization, which has thousands of members worldwide, are constantly recruiting young people to spread the groups philosophy and to raise money for the cause.

The group targets maladjusted, unhappy and confused young people who feel they don't belong. The organizers become their "friends" and give them a cause. They also give them meetings to attend so they feel a part of a group.

One PCC student, who recently broke the group's hold on his life, told the Courier in an exclusive interview about his experiences in the LaRouche organization from his recruitment on campus to his recent escape. The student, who will be referred to as Tom in the story, did not want his real name used. He said it's hard enough trying to "reclaim your life and friends" without everyone knowing you are a former cult member.

"I was going to PCC, and I was at the end of my second semester. In September of last year, I came across the LaRouche table in the quad. "Take a minute come over here." said an organizer as I passed his table. At first they say things that get you really excited about what they are talking about. They look for people like me who are pissed off and want to do something. They want people who are opinionated and who are looking for a place to fit in," said Tom, the 18-year-old who spent a year in the organization.

When I approached the table in quad, the woman I met said she had been recruiting for seven years. She started out by saying

"School is a bunch of bullshit and you should join the movement fulltime." While not all recruits say things like that, it is encouraged in order to make a connection with the young people.

"The thing that grabbed me was that she said, "School is a bunch of bullshit." He said I thought it was real interesting that there was a group of people at PCC at a political table telling students that school is bullshit," Tom said when he stopped to talk politics, he was looking for something other than the mainstream political thinkers. They got me to sign up for their paper, and I gave them some money. Then they said to come to a meeting, and I took a bunch of literature home." From what he read, he said it appeared that this group might just have the answers to all the worlds problems. "Then the phone calls started coming," he said.

"That's what they do. They call you every night, sometimes two times a night. If the people they are trying to recruit are being difficult, they harass them even more."

Tom said, it was not hard to get him to a meeting. He went and immediately started arguing with everything the members were saying. "Little did I know, that the more I argued the more they were brainwashing me," Tom said. He said the meetings seemed harmless. They were broken up into two parts. The first part was a political update, and the second part was a class where new recruits might hear about a health issue or be given a history lesson on the revolutionary war. However at the end of the class, they tie it all in to the current situation, and then to LaRouche politics."

One of the reasons there is so much recruitment now, is that the last time the organization recruited heavily was between 1967 through 1974, so most of the core members of the organization are in their 50s ."They need to recruit the next generation," said Tom.

Once you start listening, you'll hear over and over that LaRouche is the solution to every problem in the world. They'll ask, "Do you want children in Africa to starve?" Of course you don't, so they convince you that you have to come to a meeting. They repeatedly tell you if you don't come to the meeting, you must want the world to starve. So you go to the meeting," he said.

One of the hallmarks of the LaRouche organization is to turn you against your family, Tom said. They tell you that "family values are really immoral, they are only in place to keep you from getting political. They say that the baby-boomers are evil and are corrupted by the British neo-liberal banking establishment, but it's not their fault.

"The more you are around these people, the more they turn you against your parents and your friends. "They want you to try and recruit your friends. "What they tell you if your friends resist is they are" blocked," and you should just leave them behind. They are not worth it. They ask what's more important, your friends or the world?" Soon you see yourself as someone who can actually change the world and you really do see your friends and family as obstacles.

Tom moved out of his parent's house and moved to Glendale. The organization paid his rent, phone bill, and all his utilities. He also got $50 a week for food.

Once you alienate your family and let the group support you, you've got nowhere else to go, Tom said.

By this time Tom was really involved. It was his turn to bring in others.

"Another big thing I know happens on the PCC campus, is to get a student off the campus and to a meeting. Then the next day they have them working at a LaRouche table. It helps reinforce the beliefs, and gets the new recruit to more meetings." These meetings are the most important things in the world to the group. They say there is nothing better you can do with your time because that is where they manipulate you and teach you to manipulate others, he said.

Some of the people, who were recruited on campus, are now at the book table. The idea is that once you are in a position where you have to convince someone that LaRouche is the answer, in the process you convince yourself more and more." Tom said, they teach people to twist things in such a way that it makes them feel stupid for asking the question.

"I resisted working on campus for a long time. I did not want to go work a book table, but they finally got me out there. Soon as they got me out there, I was in!"

"My recruitment took about four months. "Although some people dropped out of school right away and joined in a matter of weeks."

Many students who become part of the organization never break away. "It is next to impossible to get out once they have you, Tom said. "They actually brainwash you."

"I cannot pinpoint when I was brainwashed, it just happened overtime. When you are there, you love it. It's like being high. You get an intellectual euphoria, because you feel in a position of ultimate power. You can prove anyone wrong on anything because you are equipped with these amazing manipulation techniques. You feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders and that you alone are saving it.

Everyday they reinforce what you are doing by always telling you that you are the best and you're doing a great job. You get the respect of people many times older than you. It's a high that blinds you to reality. What they do is feed your ego so much, you can't see anything else. It's comfortable; it's like a womb."

The organization has attracted the attention of the FBI, CIA and other government agencies. Because of the claims that members are brainwashed and forced to work for the group, the LaRouche organization is closely monitored.

"It is frightening the network they have as far as intelligence contacts. Contacts within governments, contacts within different news sources. Even people who oppose LaRouche say he has one of the best private intelligence agencies around, said Tom

He emphasized that LaRouche is not particularly dangerous on a worldwide level, "but on a personal level, such as manipulating your thoughts and your psyche, he is lethal,"

The student explained that "on any given week coming to PCC we could get three or four students to a meeting, and maybe one every two weeks would come and work a table with us."

"We have 20 youth organizers, and three or four came from PCC. That's a pretty big percentage considering they organize on 20-30 college campuses."

He said any student who goes to the table, shows any kind of interest, and gives them a phone number is guaranteed to get a lot of phone calls."

PCC is one of the prime locations to recruit along with Cal State Northridge and LACC.

Tom explained what finally got him to realize he was in a cult.

One day right after Sept.11, "I had a confrontation with a WWII veteran, and that conversation just about killed me. I put up a sign that said, "War doesn't make peace." He came up to me and said, "If you were a veteran, you would not put that sign up. Then he started to talk to me, and I just realized that I am fucking brainwashed and totally in a cult." It was at that point he started to think about how he was now thinking about the world. Leaders of the group told them not to watch TV news, particularly CNN. They said the WTC attacks "were just the governments way of taking the people's mind off the economy."

"On the following Sunday I did exactly what the organization told me what not to do. I watched CNN."

I realized then that I was not looking at this the right way at all. The organization was trying to take the deaths of 6000 people to boost LaRouche higher up on his pedestal and get more money."

"That night I called my parents and told them I wanted them to show up at my apartment with a moving van.

" I had to be gone before they knew I was going He said the big challenge in leaving is getting back your identity and coming in contact with all the friends you haven't called in months because you were told they were fascists." Tom is also receiving psychotherapy from a cult exit counselor.

"LaRouche is a big time cult, and it's really upsetting that a cult is legally able to recruit on a college campus as a non-profit political organization."

Tom warns everyone, not to try to challenge the group to prove they are wrong or that they are in a cult. Recruiters welcome these challenges and can turn these people around faster than anyone."

If you want to understand LaRouche, or how any cult works, read George Orwell's 1984. It's terrifying how much that book is LaRouche. Of course, the organization discourages members from reading the book."

"If you want to find out about LaRouche, do not talk to the people inside the organization. The ones you need to talk to are the people who have experienced LaRouche and have dealt with his organization before. People who have studied the organization for an extended period of time are the ones who can give current information. For example, if you want to find out about a movie, you don't ask the people who made the movie what they think about it.

Tom says his mission now is to educate students about the evils of the LaRouche group and the dangers of approaching a table. "I'm trying to redeem myself for recruiting students and ripping off little old ladies while I was with LaRouche," said Tom. Some older people donate their entire Social Security check to the cause hoping to make a difference in the world. "If I can get the word out and stop people from heading over to the tables then I've done my job. If I can save one student, then I've succeeded in my atonement."

http://www.pcc-courieronline.com/news/111501/larouche.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20020802060351/http://www.pcc-courieronline.com/news/111501/larouche.html

Germany: The German parliament debates: Is the LYM a cult?

2009-04-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/055/1605548.pdf

USA. Cult of Lyndon LaRouche: Confessions of a failed genius!

2009-04-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

Cult of Lyn LaRouche: Confessions of a Failed Genius

By Garin Hovannisian | October 1, 2006 |

http://thebruinstandard.com/?p=25

C.J. was a changed man. His curly, blonde hair snaked into an anarchic afro. His face was unshaven. His shirt, faded and bleached, was half-tucked into oversized jeans. I hadn’t seen C.J. in two years. Back in high school, he was a real character-a no-nonsense, call-it-like-it-is skeptic, cynic, libertine, jokester, joke, poet, soccer star, recluse, opinion-maker-an alpha to the alphas, yet entirely content in his own thoughts, a bully to (and of) no one. His dream, he used to say, was to live in isolation on a twenty-acre plot of Midwestern forestry-just him and his gun, untouched by man or government. I expected never to see him again. But in April 2005, on the student thoroughfare of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)-a menagerie of hyperactive campus propagandists-the familiar creature was hard to miss

A few months before at his city college, C.J. had been approached by a few young activists who pressed him to attend one of their weekend retreats-a “cadre school,” they called it. Grudgingly, C.J. decided to go. When he returned, he abandoned his school, his home, his friends, his personality, his humor, and every vestige of his past. He moved into a veritable commune as a convert to the mission, army, and cult of Lyndon LaRouche. Defender. Janitor. Distributor. Point-man. Middleman. Yes man. C.J. was doing it all.

On Bruin Walk, looking into my eyes for the first time since high school, he was already recruiting. He handed me a pamphlet. “You know about LaRouche?” he asked, soaring through the awkwardness without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment. I nodded, but I could not pay attention to his words. My mind was fumbling with questions. What had turned the old recluse into a pamphleteer and peddler? Was it a spiritual enlightenment that he was eager to find? Was C.J. playing a sinister practical joke that he, if anyone, could pull off? Or was he…brainwashed? In search of answers, I enlisted in the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM).

On Wednesday, April 27, I attended my first meeting. The Los Angeles headquarters of LYM are contained in a small, decrepit two-story house in Eagle Rock, California. Its rooms are packed with LaRouche literature, videos, posters, campaign material, and junk food. The largest is the telephone room, where volunteers work the lines with potential recruits. It comes eerily close to a telemarketing station, a boiler room filled with sleazy hacks selling faux-politique-a pseudo-intellectualized statism-with the requisite inflection and lure. Except it’s not old people being gypped (though LaRouche sat in jail for five years for fraud and extortion). It’s meaning-thirsty college kids.

I maneuvered into the library and examined the collection, in my habit of judging a man by his books. Plato. Kepler. Gauss. Leibniz. Bach. Anderson. Poe. Schiller. And of course, LaRouche. A few Germans I hadn’t heard of, sure, but this was basically it. Excepting LaRouche webcasts, lectures from his representatives, and LaRouche’s own books and articles, this is LYM’s intellectual kingdom. Aristotle is banned. The Western Canon has vanished, without fingerprints. And don’t bother with Sir Isaac Newton, a fraud, plagiarist, and conniver. Only “pro-mankind” intellectuals make it into the library. LaRouche soberly asserts in an article, “Galileo, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, the notorious Adam Smith, and the famous Rene Descartes, were, like Bertrand Russell and his devotees, systematically insane, in the strictest formal use of the term insane.” Evil. Insane. Anti-mankind.

I did not get this “mankind” thing. One of the original LYM members named Bo explained that science, economics, politics, culture, and music are all measurable by a “mankind” yardstick. Pro-mankind: Plato, LaRouche, and Bach. Anti-mankind: Aristotle, Cheney, and Rachmaninoff. “But how can I listen to a piece of music and be able to tell if it’s pro-mankind or not?” I asked naively. Bo, who is more comfortable in belief than in argument, slowly replied: “It just comes with the knowledge. Once you understand the politics and the economics and stuff, it’ll all fall into place.”

Sensing my curiosity, Bo invited me to a LYM cadre school the following weekend. That’s where C.J. had been converted. That’s where I would learn why.

If I return a robot, I told a close friend, you have the right to have me committed. With that, I set off with my SUV to the outskirts of mountainous Santa Barbara, California. Off the central roadway, one mile past Paradise Road, and another mile off-road forging rivers and zigzagging through the woods-the Oregon Trail experience-I realized that there might not be a chance to turn back.

My grisly imagination having refined horrific anecdotes of brainwashing and murder into half-expectations, I pulled into the campground and moved my bags to the guys’ cabin. C.J. showed me to the main cabin, where nearly fifty young recruiters (like C.J.) and new recruits (ostensibly like me) had already assembled.

Already in the opening address, the world conspiracy blueprints of Lyndon LaRouche were unveiled. “The Family, or The Foundation, is an organization of politicos that pick world statesmen,” said a pretty woman in her early 20s. “It is a real organization that is really involved in US policy-making.” This is pure LaRouche-talk. The urgency of LYM’s mission is justified by these underground, hereditary, secret-hand-shake societies that debase what LaRouche terms very loosely “the American System.” It’s a web of evil people, most prominently George Schultz, who “single-handedly chose Bush as president, Arnold as governor, and Condi Rice as protégé.” A later speaker would declare that the Tavistock Institute, a British psychotherapy clinic, “controls and manipulates major media through brainwashing. This isn’t even debatable. It’s been proven.” These are the puppeteers of the modern world.

But forget the world for now, because the establishments have schemed for decades to destroy LaRouche himself, having found their one-and-only formidable opponent. In the eyes of his followers, Lyn is an international superstar-the orthodoxy’s most vivid nightmare and the truth’s final promise of fruition. Indeed, the LaRouche history, as any of his followers will proudly tell you, is replete with CIA-brainwashed assassins, KGB snipers, and world bank hit squads all targeting their leader.

At night, I jumped among the “social groups,” hunting desperately for (I frustrate my ego in saying) a casual conversation. But among the several dozen followers, none exists. They never see movies. Beyond a narrow slice of classical music, they don’t listen. They don’t tell jokes and they are irritated when they hear one. They don’t have hobbies. C.J. told me not to bother scavenging for sex. Every pursuit, aspiration, passion, emotion, thought, longing, and joy revolves necessarily around the central personality, “the founder,” “the genius among geniuses,” the “leading prophetic figure of modern history”-Lyn. This is not some sort of poetic exaggeration. It’s their way of life. You eavesdrop on a conversation between any of these people at any time of day, and it’s always about the same stuff: constructive geometry, socialistic economic policy, inherently good classical music, Plato, Kepler, Gauss, LaRouche, LaRouche, LaRouche!

They seem to be normal teenagers and they span the racial, sexual, socioeconomic spectra. But they connect in a common anticipation of historic catastrophe and they survive on the lone faith of the corrective and redemptive genius of their movement. And that’s the cult, if you’ve been searching for it and if you want to call it that. There’s no Kool-Aid, no weird alphabet, no cryptic Bible Code. It’s a cult, literally, of personality: the intellectual, world-changing genius.

Yet despite suspicions to the contrary, no believer is as confident in his own genius (which is, at best, a potentiality) as he is in the collective genius of his movement. Behind C.J.’s rugged certainties rests a spirit that is crippled and an ego that requires constant attention-not because it feels it deserves it, but because it cannot survive without it. Indeed, C.J.’s family background, which is stained by psychological and ultimately physical abandonment, not only discourages self-esteem, but really forbids it. It is peculiar, then, that it was precisely at the pinnacle of C.J.’s family crisis and disillusionment-in the dark age of his self-esteem-that he joined a movement that called him a genius.

To modern researchers of self-esteem and mass movements, however, the fact is not peculiar at all. Eric Hoffer has written, “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.” In the holiness of his cause, C.J. is more sure-and this, again, I write with no poetics-than he is in his own goodness. His confidence in his own genius (and, hence, the desertion of the fear that he is not) depends, first and only, on the acceptance of the movement.

Hence, no movies, jokes, creative talent, personality-the true believers have no character whatsoever. It is impossible, save upon their mastery of the clichés of the cause, to differentiate them. There is no identity or knowledge, in any real sense, detached from the group. The concepts of “knowaspheres” and “musical dissonance” that supposedly divide good music from bad are totally lost on C.J.. But not for a moment does he doubt their reality. He will blame his own intellectual immaturity every time, even if it conflicts with the reality he sees.

One is all. And, of course, all is one in Lyndon LaRouche, polymath extraordinaire.

LaRouche, who calls himself “the leading economist of [the 20^th] century,” proposes an accentuated statism, and it’s accepted as high novelty. The prophet in the wilderness yells apocalypse, and his followers panic. The detective in Lyn finds networks of secrecy, and C.J. is on a personal mission to sabotage them. The genius mathematician rejects Newton’s calculus and his students immediately discard modern math. The music theorist writes, “The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division (Tavistock) specifications, and promoted in Britain by agencies which are controlled by British intelligence,” and the movement learns to recite it.

By the cadre school’s second day, nauseous from the adoration (which at least matches the average church-goer’s piety), drained of will power, and dreadfully tired, I stood on the brink of insanity. Echoes of the same themes and people bounced in my brain. Knowasphere. Leibniz. Plato. Beethoven. Constructive geometry. Schumann. Gauss. Lyn. LaRouche. Lyn. I guess this was that moment in which so many had beheld their epiphany. This was when, tired but finally enlightened, I was supposed to fall on my knees and dedicate my life to the whims and wishes of a man. But for me, it was more torture than epiphany. I simply could not survive through the weekend. I said goodbye to C.J., gathered my bags, and got into the car. A mile through thick forests, several miles past Paradise Road, and now far, far away from this fantastic place of ideas and heroes and dreams, brewing in a cabin by a stream. It was as if it was all fiction. I was absolutely in a daze. And not for a couple of weeks did I actually escape the awful aftershocks, the lingering hangover of the LaRouche Youth Movement.

I experienced its heart totality in the last LYM meeting I ever attended, a few months after the cadre school. I sneaked into the conference room in Eagle Rock, and LaRouche was on the projection screen. The background was black. The voice was monotone. And for more than an hour, LaRouche was talking about hedge funds and mergers-and the really boring, economic lessons we might squeeze from the “General Motors debacle.” And here were twenty young people sitting in a small room listening with special attention, scribbling in their notepads, and nodding their heads again and again at the every thought, the every word, the every counterfeit insight of their leader-Lyndon LaRouche.

Since then, a mutual friend of C.J. and mine has asked C.J. if he would ever consider leaving the group for a few hours to have lunch with us. He has never been able to say yes. He’s too deep in his new reality. He is there with Lincoln, Plato, Jean d’Arc, LaRouche-the handful of genius individuals who have changed the world. He is there with three hundred young intellectuals who, if we are to believe them, will stage the decisive revolution of our millennium.

The movement is easy to satirize, discredit, and render insane. But the quiet existentialist in all of us finds herself faintly envious. For in all their delusions, LaRouche’s followers have on earth a cosmic certainty and security that we might only wish to achieve in paradise. It is a paradise, alas, that almost inevitably crashes. When it does for C.J., one psychological breakdown after another, he might be a free man again-but never, I fear, the endearing oddball of our youths.

Australia: "Families fight back", an article about how youngsters were recruited to the Australian branch of the LaRouche-cult in the 90s.

2009-04-13T03:31:00.000-07:00

Families fight back

http://www.rickross.com/reference/larouche/larouche12.html

The Age/January 30, 1996
By Martin Daly

Defectors tell of "psycho sessions" and relentless demand for cash inside the Citizens Electoral Council. A political group accused of dirty tricks and the brainwashing of recruits faces increasing hostility. Martin Daly reports.

A Melbourne woman has appealed to the American consulate to prevent her 16-year-old son from being taken to the United States for training with an extremist right-wing political cult, run by a convicted criminal, Lyndon LaRouche.

Ms. Narelle Stratford, of Rosanna, contacted the consulate after Mr. LaRouche's Australian branch, the Coburg-based Citizens Electoral Council, refused her plea not to take her son overseas.

Critics have accused the LaRouche movement of brainwashing followers in Australia, persuading donors to contribute money on the basis that the financial world is about to end, and running "dirty tricks" campaigns against its enemies, notably leading Australian Jews.

The CEC was formed in 1988 in Kingaroy, Queensland, in response to the rural crisis when many farmers were in danger of losing their farms. It became a successful grass-roots political organization with about 100 branches around the country, mostly in rural areas, but within a few years it was taken over by American LaRouchians and their Australian followers.

Since then, the CEC has been criticized for allegedly abusing its position as a political party and for discarding members and donors once they have contributed funds to the organization.

The CEC denies the allegations and blames former members for spreading "lies" in an attempt to destroy the CEC and Lyndon LaRouche in Australia.

But Ms. Stratford, one of a number of Australians to split from the CEC, said she was alarmed by the allegations. She also feared her son would be put through a LaRouchian "Cadre School" in the US, which she described as a brainwashing session to bind followers to the organization.

Ms. Stratford said the US consulate in Melbourne told her it could not stop her son, who has a visa, from going to the US. The CEC said Ms Stratford's son, a CEC employee, was capable of making the decision for himself and that he wanted to go to the US.

"I know of no other employer that would pull this sort of stunt without asking the parent first," Ms Stratford said.

"And if the parents said they did not want that to happen, it would not happen."

Former CEC members said the organization, often under the direction of a LaRouchian, Mr. Allen Douglas, from Leesburg, Virginia, held frequent cult-like "psycho sessions," during which members were abused and told they must accept their crimes - including masturbation, sodomy and homosexuality - if they were to be cured.

Motherhood and the influence of women over offspring was often derided. Women were frequently referred to as "witches."

One founding CEC member, Mr. John Koheler, of Kingaroy - who resigned after the LaRouchians "hijacked" the organization - said the CEC responded to his opposition to the Americans by telling him he was "blocked" and "paranoid."

"I told Al Douglas that he was a fascist bastard and then they said I was doubly paranoid," Mr. Koheler said.

Mrs. Rhonda Rotaru, of Colac, wife of Mr. Alex Rotaru, who said he was an "intelligence" officer for the CEC, also went through a "psycho session" because she refused to move to Melbourne with her husband. Mrs. Rotaru said she was criticized for breastfeeding her son at two years of age. "I always thought breastfeeding was just a natural part of womanhood," she said. "They said it was bad for a young child to be so dependent on its mother and that I would ruin his life. They made me feel as if I was the worst person in the world."

Mrs. Rotaru said the CEC tried to break her marriage. Her husband said he was called an "animal" during a "psycho session" and was asked if would leave his wife and children to live nearer the CEC in Melbourne.

"They inquired into my relationship with my mother," he said. "That was pretty much standard procedure. It was an interrogation. The whole aim was to create a new person, making your past totally irrelevant and giving you a new personality. "No matter what you said, it was your mother's fault. It was pretty hideous stuff. Many people broke down and cried."

Mr. Rotaru said the CEC gave him the cold shoulder because he refused to give them part of his $100,000 superannuation payout from Telstra. Then, he said, they asked him to mortgage his Melbourne house to finance a trip to Australia by a senior LaRouchian, Mr. James Bevel, a former confidant of the late Martin Luther King. His wife refused to allow it.

A former Queensland sheep farmer, Ms. Julie Warner, accused the CEC of contributing to the breakup of her marriage, which led to the loss of her three sons in a separation case. She said she was virtually forced to remain in the US, fund-raising on the telephone for the organization, while the LaRouchians worked on her to wipe out her "mother complex" mindset.

"They would tell you there was something wrong with your mind, if you are not pulling huge dollars in," said Ms. Warner, who blamed CEC "brainwashing" for bringing her close to suicide.

Ms. Warner said she worked in the ``boiler room" - a fund- raising room with a bank of telephones - in Melbourne where she persuaded donors she knew to give the CEC about $60,000.

"I believed that we were out there to help people who had got into trouble in primary industry and here they were taking all their money and leaving them," Ms. Warner said.

She said the CEC encouraged her to leave her family: "They wanted to know how much money I would be getting from the property if the marriage broke up."

A farmer, Mr. Joe Vella, of Kingaroy, Queensland, said he sold almost $1 million in assets to clear debts and give his wife, a CEC member, her share of the family farm. He feared she may have given a lot of the money to the CEC.

Mr. Vella came into contact with the CEC after attending a meeting in Kingaroy. "We are in financial trouble. They made us think they were going to save us and get the interest rates dropped...," he said.

He said the CEC's Mr. Michael Sharp, alias Michael Stark, stayed at the Vella home for seven nights. "All we ever did was give him money. It was about three years ago. He used to say, 'We can't pay this bill.' We probably gave him $2,000 in cash. Never got a receipt." He recalled the CEC instructing people not to watch television "because the cartels would get us."

"They are a horrible bunch of people," added Mr. Vella, who flew to Melbourne three times to try and persuade his wife to return. "When I first flew to Melbourne, I could only talk to her sitting on the fence outside (the CEC office).

"Later she agreed to talk to him in a bar, but only in the company of another CEC member. "What really hurt me was that (the CEC member) said 'you and your children have a sickness of the mind which you have inherited from your father.' I got up and punched a brick wall and then went outside and sat in the gutter for a while."

Mr. Victor Barwick, one of three sons of Queensland farming couple Doreen and Billy Barwick to join the CEC, said he went through "psycho-sessions" in Melbourne and in the US. He said Al Douglas told him he was having a "psycho-sexual relationship with my mother. I was only 17 at the time", Mr. Barwick said.

Mr. Barwick said that on a trip to the US, Mr. LaRouche told him there "was a dark age coming, that learning would be done away with and that most people would be slaves." Mr. Barwick was paid $200 a week by the CEC for fundraising up to 12 hours a day, six days a week.

One of the primary aims of the CEC is to raise money. It has raised $900,000 for each of the past two years and is one of the largest political fundraisers in the country, although the CEC has been deregistered as a political party.

The relentless demand for cash from donors comes from "Upgrade Teams" that travel Australia to persuade donors to increase contributions. Fundraisers are often trained by American LaRouchians who travel here on tourist or business visas.

Mr. Victor Barwick said teams in the "boiler room" sell subscriptions to La Rouche and CEC publications for up to $600 a year.

"I think they rip people off," Mr. Koehler said. "It (the CEC) is immoral and corrupt...they frequently do not use the funds for the purpose they are raised for. It should not go into some kind of a slush fund. Obviously it does...a considerable amount does. The public needs to know that this operation is not in the interests of this country and they should not support it."

Donors have told The Age they were encouraged to go into debt without telling their spouses so they could give money to the CEC. One woman said her husband had given the CEC about $80,000. "They (the CEC) do use members like puppets. I am trying to get my husband out of it," she said.

Ms. Kerrie Watterson, from Cranbrook, north of Albany, Western Australia, said she was persuaded by a CEC member to get a Bankcard so she could quickly donate money to the CEC if they needed it for an emergency.

"Against my better judgment, I got a Bankcard," said Mrs. Watterson, who was then persuaded to use her maximum credit line to donate to the CEC. "Overall, they did me for about $1,600."

USA: "Scott" tells his story (part 3).

2009-04-13T00:15:00.000-07:00

"So the mama's boy who's never done anything in his life is going to come here and say 'Alex made some homosexual kid cry and I want my mommy'...are you homosexual, Frank? Is that it? Is that why you haven't been able to raise any money out there?"

By "Scott"

(Posted on Factnet, May 07, 2004 - 10:59 am)

Someone asked me a question in a letter, I thought people might like to hear my response:

Do not focus on the "politics" of his [LaRouche's] organization. For all intents and purposes the political side of the organization is just a sham--it really is more of a religion than a political movement anyway--the mantra really is give me your life and I'll give you salvation.

Your students will be having the same methods of coercion used on them at the table on your campus at their lunch breaks, that is used on members in closed rooms. LaRouchies will be out there preaching: "The end is near, join the Leader and be like him, and that will save the world." And they will tell them to drop out of college to join, they will literally be brought into group meetings where every person in the room is pressuring them to drop out. You know when they have classes? Usually what happens is maybe one or two people will be from a local campus, usually someone they met that day. That person will walk into a room of twenty or so people, not really knowing that almost everyone there is already a member. As soon as someone comes to more than one or two meetings, they are psychologically profiled by the Regional leader...and then the leader will talk to everyone about that person.

Example: "Frank has mommy issues, everybody needs to tell him he needs to stop sucking off his mother's milk." So then as Frank hangs around more and he is brought in for conferences and meetings, everyone is nice to him, but they in their own way will make comments about Frank being a mama's boy. This may be true, or it may be that Frank just has a very close relationship with his mom, he's 18, and still just a kid. So this campaign makes Frank begin to question himself, it undermines his confidence in his beliefs and values, while all around him there are people constantly restating the normal line of LaRouche politics: nothing is what it seems, the world is ending, join me...yada yada. And there may be ten of these directives given by the Regional leader. All designed to make the person, basically, have a nervous breakdown in a controlled environment. They will attack his hobbies, his friends, his values, his family and his personality traits in these secret "campaigns," and Fred will think that people he has hardly talked to think he's a mama's boy (or whatever they're attacking that week)--his insecurity will soar.

Then what happens, if that person decides to drop out [of school] and join full-time, is that the real work on their mind begins. The same type of thing goes on, but then added in is a host of other tactics--the working for 12-14 hours a day will soften him up quite a bit, and the leader will keep a very close eye on him in the very early stages. After a few days of work the leader might lean in and say, "Hey you guys should all do something tonight, take Frank over to so-and-so's house and read poetry. Frank will be up until 3 am, get up a few hours later and go back to arguing at a card table shrine for LaRouche with everyone who walks by, all this time reinforcing what he has "learned" by taking the position for 12 hours a day. Frank will be plied with LaRouche books to read from every side. Then something will come up that Frank has a problem with. He's organizing at a table one day and his partner, someone who's been around for years, breaks someone down in the street who begins crying. Fred thinks it was cruel, so he goes to talk to the leader. Now, all this time the leader has played "good cop."

"Umm, Steve?" says Frank [to the Regional leader], "I saw Alex make someone cry at the college today, he was yelling at this kid about how he can't understand LaRouche because he's a homosexual, and when the kid said no, Alex just kept poking him with it until the kid broke down and started crying."

From out of nowhere the bad cop shows up.

"So do you need to go suck off your mother's tit some more? Is that what this is about, Frank? Alex has been off his momma's tit for ten years now and he's mastered Riemann's geometry, have you?"

"Uhhh...no."

"So the mama's boy who's never done anything in his life is going to come here and say 'Alex made some homosexual kid cry and I want my mommy'...are you homosexual, Frank? Is that it? Is that why you haven't been able to raise any money out there? You're too busy thinking about Mommy's tits and Daddy's dick to be a potent organizer?"

And this may go on for half an hour. Mind you that Frank has just moved into an apartment with four other LaRouchies, he has just dropped out of school, and probably alienated most of his friends, and his parents, who all argued against him joining the LaRouche Youth Cult. The leader will use every bit of personal information he has gathered about Frank in order for him to have a real breakdown. Frank, who now has nowhere to go, but has made a few "friends" in the LYC, finally gives in. He sees that Alex was right for breaking down that kid, because that kid is evil, and Frank realizes that he is too. Frank realizes that he hasn't worked hard enough for humanity to criticize Alex, and so he confesses to Steve.

"I'm sorry, Steve. You're right, I've been dependent on my mom forever, and she was turning me into some crazy brainwashed consumer. I mean geez, she was sending me to college to learn about computers, and like LaRouche says, that's not even real. I guess she's just like every other boomer."

After he does so he feels a little better and stops crying, and his pulse slows down.

Steve says, "Well good. What I think you need to do is read Lyn's book The Reason Why Everyone in the World Is Insane but Me, and you should get Alex to help you on some geometry. Are you still into painting?"

"Yes, Sir, I like to paint at night sometimes still, it eases my mind."

"You should focus on something else...try reading Lyn's book They're All Out to Get Me, I Swear. Okay, well, good talking to you."

And Frank walks out feeling a little closer to Steve, and Steve has shown Frank that he is able to instill terror in him at any moment. This makes Frank unconsciously more pliant; he won't raise another question like that for a month. But he will raise a question. And now Frank hasn't had a good night's sleep in five weeks, and he is becoming slightly malnourished as his pay has dropped from $300 a week to $100 a week because of a "mass leaflet mobilization" (and Lyn is going to travel to Europe for a while, and he needs the nice table at the restaurant). The pay will continue to decrease.

Frank tells Steve he has to ask him about something again. Steve tells him to come to his office at 5. At 5, Frank walks in, and a Security Squad member is in the office also, the SS member stands in front of the door, and this time the yelling is more severe, and the psychological profile, having been honed, allows the leader to play Frank like a piano. Frank is a blubbering mess in twenty minutes. Frank's brain which has initiated fight or flight, tells him to get up and walk out. He tries to do so, and the SS member begins working on him (verbally) while blocking the door. The two of them work on him until he sits back down and takes his medicine.

This pattern will continue, in perpetuity, until someone helps Frank out.

We need to go help Frank out.

USA: "Charltonroom", "Jimmyo" and others writes about youthorganizing and LYM.

2009-04-09T17:39:00.000-07:00

POST FROM THE FACTNET!

Jimmyo
Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 3:33 am:

Heya All.

Newbie here. Ex-member of the LYM, and having had read a whole bunch of the LaRouche threads here, decided to sign up and participate.

When I joined, it was because of what the LYM purported to be about. A bunch of things, a bunch of ideas that were (and are) neat. And while I left a fair while ago, no ill feelings (either way, believe it or not,) and only started to reconsider a bunch of things after coming across you guys, I'll share some of my relevant experiences.

It took a while for me to be convinced of LHLs 'genius'. In anything I read (the Children of Satan pamphlets were coming out at the time I joined) he would obviously ramble. Waffle, that's the word. The punctuation I didn't mind, but I'm pretty bad myself. Eventually I must have become convinced. Speeches, I never was. Other LYMers would rave about how LHL was the worlds greatest speakers. Um, huh? I'm sure as hell not the only one to fall asleep during a 'historic' webcast. And it was great having the work with Beltran, too. His workshops would include plenty of really basic stuff, about inflections and the like. The same people would eargly listen to Beltran, and fail to notice that none of these basics of orating were followed by the 'great speaker' Lyn.

The group readings were fun. 15-25 people (the number as dictated by LHL himself) sitting around the room read Lyns latest (or Plato, Schiller, or others sometimes, but Lyn primarily) out loud. Remember that most (all?) or the LYM are high-school or uni drop outs. Plenty of people among whom literacy not a strong point. I used to think that the reason so few people could read LHL out so it'd make sense was because few could understand the idea-content. A years break it took me, to realise that it didn't make sense because it couldn't.

Another thing I remember is how much better an article written by someone other than a LaRouche was. I always found the other 21st Century, or Fidelio articles much more useful. You could read them and come away with a bit of understanding on something, whoever small. But reading Lyn, it'd be coming away with confusion, and then after long enough coming away with confusion, and thinking that it was knowledge.

charltonroom

Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007 - 1:46 am:

'07 is the new target year for the Big One: the financial apocalypse and systemic breakdown that will lead to the genocidal outcome so avidly desired by the planet oligarchic class.

Having the yutes surely validates Lyn's megalomania too. He's ensnared a brood of yutes, of varying background. Defining the features of this particular cultic apparatus, is my agenda.

Eaglebeak

Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007 - 11:25 am:

My particular agenda is to get the Ken Kronberg story out; I think this will lead to exposure that could be a huge problem for LaRouche.

On the youth, there are a couple of considerations that indicate how LaRouche has perfected his technique.

When I and my age cohort joined, we were either college grads or in college or perhaps in grad school. We held jobs. In other words, we were independent, or could form an independent thought, and had to test those thoughts and our performance at work and/or in school.

We supported ourselves. We were able to buy clothes and food and books, and pay rent.

We were THE SAME AGE then, when we were doing all these "grown-up" things, that the yutes are today.

Now, this eroded over time, particularly in regions, where people's rent and medical bills, etc., began to be paid for them, so that they were infantilized and rendered dependent. When I was a member, however, we called this becoming lumpenized--that is, some part of us still recognized that it was a Bad Thing to live 6 to an apartment, eat all our meals together, live off what we made at field deployments, etc., share our cars (and have them destroyed in the field).

Today, what we used to criticize as lumpenization is held up as the ultimate politico-monastic existence.

That is the crux of the operation: Keeping the LYMers in communalist dorms, feeding them from communalist pots, paying all their bills for them, imprisons them psychologically and financially. They are absorbed into The Family.

The vestiges of independence that we older people retained is one reason LaRouche hates the Baby Boomers and their immediate successors so much. For those older members, no matter what LaRouche does, he can't impress them the way he can impress the LYM.

Also note that a couple of years LaRouche stopped the process of National Conferences in the U.S.--conferences attended by the old members as well as the young. Now in their place they hold LYM retreats, off in the mountains someplace in isolation.

There are NO conferences for older members--where someone might get up and say what he or she thought. And now the old members are taught by the LYM--very rarely is the LYM taught by old members. There are just a handful of old members "cleared" to teach--Jeff Steinberg, Harley Schlanger, Phil Rubenstein, Bruce Director, Michelle Steinberg, come to mind.

Charltonroom

Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007 - 2:21 pm:

Yes, the boomers in the organization are now in effect part of the Enemy class. There are 3 generational classes in Lyn's system, namely the "youth", including up to around age 30; the Tweeners, of dubious virtue; and the dreaded Boomers, who exemplify the most vile character features of any human grouping ever. It got to the point where exposure between the 3 classes was moving in the direction of being rationed. Never mind that the youth stipends such as they are, are paid by phone-team tortured slogging. Lyn alternates his description of boomers, from pitiable wretches to be saved, to fully wretched cowards and vile Agents even; older members who've dedicated their lives to Lyn, are said to be laboring to undermine him. "You are all treating Lyn like ••••!" I remember being told, as we worked and reworked the spreadsheets and card boxes.

Charltonroom

Posted on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 3:09 pm:

I don't think it's a "mindset". It's basically a CULT. Maybe one with theoretical elements that are more dense than normal cults: we DID read Plato's dialogues in group sessions; we DID work through various math/geometry pedagogicals; there WAS a sort of high tech-futurism aspect to the organization; and so forth. Lyn's texts and writings had a certain sort of rhetorical density which can be captivating to the philosophically/psychologically innocent. But it's cult-ic at the very least, because it centers on a charismatic leader who engages in unscrupulous political and financial practices.

Cults have certain constant structural features, such as:

1. Initiates/devotees, drawn from the sector of the population that comprises those in transitional states; those with insecure sexual identities; those in conditions of "anomie" or philosophical/existential uncertainty. Without initiates/devotees, there is no "organization"
2. An ideology that sustains the group, justifies its existence, rationalizes its activities. Typical are millenarian/revolutionary or end-of-the-world doctrines. Messianic delusions and exclusivity ("We are the worlod's leadership force" I used to say), as well as demonizing/dehumanizing opponents, or proffering up certain classes or types as the Enemy, are also typical.
3. Finally, a central, charismatic figure, often of messianic character or pretensions.

Sound familiar?

Charltonroom

Posted on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 7:13 pm:

My opinion is that the content in Lyn's cultic apparatus is both different and important. I don't think the Moonies or Krsna's try to gain pull in the Democratic Party. The veneer of science and philosophy, of futuristic economics, of a new monetary system to empower a world of sovereign nation-states; the lure of being World Historical: all these things lend a certain contemporary revolutionary panache to the organization. Young people join up to fight for the future; not knowing Lyn's true wild, spotty history, they see him as a plausible leader in that. Who else is proposing a new monetary system and any sort of programmatic approach? I will admit that for quite a long time, Lyn was for me "the central figure in contemporary history," as I used to put it. It all came together; I felt sure Lyn was the great humanist of the age, matured over time certainly, but persecuted by the regnant oligarchy for his revolutionary views and actions, such as his counseling Lopez Portillo to repudiate Mexico's debt. (The story I was told on this by the way was that this nearly succeeded, but for the caving of Argentina's president from the repudiation-bloc.)

There are some common features with other cults, namely the preying on sexual insecurities ("You're psychosexually impotent!"), the demonizations, the groupthink. What sets Lyn apart for me is the Brobdingnagian, titanically vast bloating of his ego and his fascinating chameleonic quality over the decades, plus, again, this frisson of philosophy, science, and economics. That you won't find amongst the Krsna's or Moonies.

The key is not scattershot, piecemeal potshots and remembrances, though these are essential and instructive. The key is comprehending how LYN'S cult works/has worked; what is ITS method (basically the LaRouche/Schacht Method, see below).

Basically we hope some of this dialogue may get perceived by some thinking of joining or some thinking of getting out, that it may give them some perspective to resist the peer pressure and fearmongered intimidation. Next: the Lure of the Cult.

XLCR4LIFE

Posted on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 7:17 pm:

I have here a quote from LHL given in an address in the barn at Ibykus farm on Monday Dec 21, 1987 before everyone in Leesburg. Read this a few times and you will see that he combines so much of his delusions with a future plan for the cult.

LAROUCHE Dec. 20, 1987: "Creativity is one of my obsessions. If you don't have creative insight, you can't see how we can win; if you can see how we can win, then we will win.

Only we can save the world; only we can do the job, because nobody else even knows what the job is. Would you like to be the savior of humanity? ... Yes, I was chosen. You were chosen. Not with fanfare, not with the blaring trumpets of archangel Gabriel. It doesn't happen that way. It happens as you walk down the street thinking about the problems of the world and realize only you can do the job ... You are chosen. Like John Scialdone's lawyer said to the jury: 'You poor schmucks'!

... Look around you. Who will support us? Who will rally to us? The ones who will rally to us are the emotionally crippled, the grey-faced, the neurologically impaired who, in rallying to us will do the only worthy thing to give meaning to their lives. Thus they will be able to say, 'I wasn't important but I contributed to victory

***********************************************

What happens in the LC/LYM is that by keeping your life filled with anxiety and fear around the clock, you never really read what you are selling or hear what you are hearing. To this day I can reread some of the lunacy we published about Jews and kick myself for suppressing that FIRST gut feeling that something was not right.

We are going to be coming up to the 20th anniversary of that speech Lyn gave where he tells you what the plan is. For the past two years the LC Boomers and I have been reading the exact same briefings where Lyn outlines how he will get rid of the old and expensive and replace it with younger and cheaper yutes.

Lyn uses the word "Win" in a context where only he will define it instead of any real paramters of success can be measured.

What I start to think of is how the LC and Lyn spent so much time portraying the difference between Plato and Aristotle as a simple parlor trick he does by saying that the Aristotelian wants to see a chair while the Platonist is superior because he used causation to imagine the chair before it existed. I swear we had endless classs about this which because of portraying Aristotle as evil and Plato as good, it established the next level of where empirical knowledge is bad. This LC education has only one outcome which is to make you no longer ask for physical proof of something but by merely imagining it you can define it's existance in any way you wish.

This allows Lyn to tell naive yutes that the USA has been in an economic collapse for 40 years while ignoring the simple empirical fact that the total USA population has 100 million more people since he first started yapping about this.

Lyn can repeat an endless cacophony of real estate collapse when the only people who lost money in Northen Virgina real estate from 1980 to 2000 was Lyn himself!

Another parlor trick Lyn and the cult uses is the word "Phase shift". You read the briefings and you find that used a lot to convince you that working around the clock for Lyn and giving all of your money has caused something to happen which you directly caused. The mumbo jumbo you will get is that this person "echoed" Larouche and a "Phase shift" has occured which has changed "The Dynamic" of the "political situation".

XLCR4LIFE

Posted on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 7:44 pm:

Two years ago when some Lym yutes were sending me briefign exerpts they asked about why the big deal in denouncing LC boomers. I would get emails where I thought it was being punked by yutes. From several sources I was told that older Boomer LCers were involved in cooking group meals for LYM and in a few instances were breaking down in the office and sobbing "Why am I here. What has happened to my life?". This made sense since so many LYM who left have siad that part of the daily routine is to see and hear the local NC berate the older members at every opportunity.

Now in the briefings you can't help but notice how the quoats for locals are still in effect and wonder how much can the LYM be sent to sing on street corners before they have to pull in some bucks. I guessed that it would be a gradual turn of events with phone work for LPAC being done with LC boomers showing how it is done.

In the early 1970s when Lyn revved up the LC with Mop Op and the Chris White scam and assasination attempt fantasies, he said the LC, "This aint no debating society anymore". S the bills pile up you wonder how long can you afford to send card table shrines to college campuses intead of actual deployments for money.

The asnwer is when you have enough people to replace the boomers and need to start bringing in the cash. This was somehwat complicated by the fact that there was no lit to sell or subs to sell as most of the work was just giving it away. Howver, for the past few months I have noticed that the income of squads has been reported while the college deployments have been downplayed. The writers of the briefings have even written things like "Deploying is fun" and "we took over the town by raising 90 bucks and getting 20 contacts"

You might as well put up a sign at the LYM clubhouse saying "Work will make you free" as the latest escalation in the cult is called a "reading day". In one funny email I was sent a LYM member wondered how after busting your butt 6 days a week for 18 hours the briefing would quote some LYM member in esctasy over getting up at 6 AM for an authorised reading day to have even your free time controlled by the cult.

The card table shrine is Lyn's future for you guys and girls. Only a select amount of people will get the coveted "War Room" desk jockey jobs while the rest of you will be slowly put out to the streets to raise money. There will be some time for singing anf theatrics, but saving humanity comes with a price tag.

Here we have a blog about a return to intersection deployments. When you yutes start to wear signs and approach cars keep in mind that we did this a lot in the past. ALso keep in mind that you will probably not be in the LYM when the first cases of skin cancer from the sun and cancer from the exhaust fumes deposits carcinogens into your young, fresh, supple bodies.

Up next, the intersection squads come back.

(...) [Blog entries about LaRouches intersection squads!]

Charltonroom

Posted on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 7:56 pm:

The LaRouche/Schacht Method and the Lure of the Cult

xlcr4life has well-opined the basic Method. Lyn's true mission is not the furtherance of the work of Jesus Christ ("Jesus Christ & Civilization, 2000) or the attainment of a new monetary system, or a global maglev network. If examined honestly as a historical phenomenon in must be concluded that his goal is, in essence, self-aggrandizement.

He exudes a sort of philosophic halo or creedal penumbra, comprised of the doctrinal content enunciated this season. I.e., the political positionings are legion. Virtually every day, something new, some new end-of-the-system imminent crisis, some new Demon. The content of the noetic halo has radically shifted over time. Some of his proposals and notions are definitely not vacuous nor devoid of content; they are intriguing. The problem is that when one looks at his history you find radical transformation of commitment, such that you have to realize he's untrustworthy, especially when you factor in the scammings,the horrid treatment of his associates, the anti-Israelism.

Those Lyn draws in may be quite bright by some measures. There are some true revolutionary zealots, but mostly they are weak-willed devotees, of insecure identity, who I would guess believe like I did that they have found, in effect, the Messiah.

It's generally a big decision to join. Once In, the inertia of belonging is strong. The group imposes forms of behavior and thought control, such as seeking to limit family encounters; implying that failure to recruit or raise funds is equivalent to sexual impotence; plus spinning world events around the words and deeds of the Messiah. The net effect is rather powerful emotional enforcement in the Creed. I had conflicts about leaving. I had put in years of my life, after all.

Lyn will blow up your sense of importance for a while but the key is getting those funds in so he and the NC's can travel first class and the voice and drama lessons of the LYM can be supported. Therefore the Boomers and Tweeners in the org, those over the acceptable-age threshold, must be whipped continuously to produce the income needed to ensure proper functioning. The Boomers despite their exhaustion have really not much other place to go and so they continue to eat the ever-thinning gruel that Lyn and the organization are on the edge of a breakout.

This is the basic structure and method. As the older members are cast off and the LYM move into prominence, they will be forced to try and come up with fundraising schemes. Hopefully they will be legal, 'though I know that several of the LYM are not above scamming; there are a number who have reneged on student loan obligations.

I don't think the model is viable for much longer.

XLCR4LIFE

Posted on Friday, June 01, 2007 - 10:23 pm:

"there are a number who have reneged on student loan obligations"

This is something which I have been hearing bits and pieces of for years. When I was in we had people who were pretty proud of having skipped out on their loans. Who needed to worry about Loan repays if the whle world economy was going to collapse and the dollar was worthless?

I can see an NC taking some yute into a room and asking if they can borrow some money on student loans to fund some "project" with a promise of paying it back. Once the check is signed over the friendly face changes and you will then be whisked into a room where someone like a Leni will look at you like you are crazy for asking for money to make this month's payment.

"Don't you know that a nuclear bomb can drop on us at any moment?"

What also happens is that you are trapped now as you are now in debt to the cult who have more reasons not to repay you then you have reasons to pay the note.

"What? You are worried about your credit report? There will be no credit when the crash hits"

"The political situation demands that all money be deployed to print the latest world historical brief by Lyn so cause a phase shift in the Democratic Party"

(No wonder Lyn writes a new brief at the beginning and the middle of the month when most payments are due)

The cult has another trick which is to make the yute's parents support Lyn. Here is how it works. You can promise a yute anything cause they really have no idea what it costs to live as this is the first time they are on their own. Lyn also has spent quite a few memos on why money is not worth anything and you need to be concerned about the physical economy. Well, everyone else's except yours. Next, once you need something like a coat or cell phone you are encouraged to contact your parents to get some money. Your parents figure that if they give you cash it will go to Lyn, instead pay your car insurance or phone bill. These are pretty cold blooded NCs you are dealing with. They had people evicted for not paying rent to send Lyn money and had members call up their parents to get cash for non existant medical bills. We usually got sick around the time the first presidential committee was set up and needed matching fund money.

No matter what the story, you are at the mercy of the cult for your news, reading material, media material, food, clothes, what time to get up, what time to go to sleep, who you will live with and when your day off will be and what you will do that day. You also can be sent to another region and can also expect some slimy old man to question your sexual secrets and life in a late night Beyond Psyche session. If you do not hit quota expect the world to end and then return to the office to see someone who is 30 years older than you but looks 50 years older be yelled at daily by the NC.

This has been a 35 year or so farce yutes. Are your qualifications to be with Lyn based on his 1987 WANT AD for today?

"Look around you. Who will support us? Who will rally to us? The ones who will rally to us are the emotionally crippled, the grey-faced, the neurologically impaired who, in rallying to us will do the only worthy thing to give meaning to their lives. Thus they will be able to say, 'I wasn't important but I contributed to victory "

How LYM and LYMettes will be screwed by the cult

2009-04-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

#855

06-26-2008, 08:42 AM

xlcr4life

Paid Member

Join Date: Jan 1970

Posts: 353

How LYM and LYMettes will be screwed by the cult

Quote:

Originally Posted by eaglebeak

Meanwhile, let me share with you something absolutely atrocious that appeared in last Sunday's briefing--six days after Gary and John died on the highway:
From the Morning Briefing, Sunday, June 22, 2008

Under the lead "Windy Hill Dialogues Saturday, June 21, 2008"
In the sixth paragraph, toward the end, Lyn says that without XYZ, "Civilization can not be saved. I admit, it's in tattered condition, but we still want to say that. It's like an old car, it's the only one you got; you got to repair it [laughter]. You guys know that! Sometimes you drive a car that already died! [laughter]"

Got it? Six days after two longtime members are killed because their car died? "You guys know that!" Laughter!

There is no stone of depravity that Lyn has not turned; there is no perversion, no evil, in which he does not, vicariously at least, participate.

A long time ago, during the financial raping of our supporters and abuses done against our members, I saw the depravity first hand and had to leave. For non members who do not have first hand experience in a cult, it is among the most sinister things one can experience where all of the real world laws, customs, norms and morality are stripped away from the cult members. The completely insane views are now a reality which dictates how you conduct your affairs and business along with personal relations.

Everything which happens in the tightly controlled Bizarro world of the cult is designed to ensure that members do not have any values or personal conditions of their life which is worth a dime while Lyn and the supposed aims of the cult are the priority. This means that you need to accept driving and being a passenger in a LaroucheMobile risking your life so that the money saved can pay for the armored Mercedes Benz in Europe for Lyn and Helga.

The quote by Lyn which Eaglebeak has supplied is not new. There are a few meetings where Lyn has said the the same thing to the LYM and LYMettes with the same laughter. Over the course of being in the cult, what you are willing to take in a lowering of YOUR life will be measured against the end of the world nightly briefings you will be receiving. This has always been the case and you are supposed to feel guilty if you require somethng like dental care or like to drive with a tank of gas and a registered vehicle.
No matter what the cult grosses each week, it will never be enough. There are more tricks in Lyn's head and his underlings than arguments which can be made by a member. I once received an email from a LA member who made the mistake of asking Leni R about being owed something and the response was that a Nuclear Bomb could be dropped out on us at any minute, how could you ask for this now? Female LYM members had to beg for a few bucks to purchase personal toiletries according to one exLym's email.

Gary Genazzio and John Morris never had a chance. Genazzio was 66 years old and in this crazy environment most of his life. People like Genazzio and Morris who stuck around for decades and decades just go with whatever happens.

Who knows if they started off in Chicago? Let us take a look at some mapping and see for ourselves.
Let us assume that Gary Genazzio and John Morris started off from this address.

Midwest Circulation Corporation
4343 N Clarendon Ave

Chicago, IL 60613-2698

(773) 404-4848

and were on their way to to the Detroit office. The phone number of 248-232-6981 is based out of Pontiac Michigan. If we use MSN mapping we can find the route and get an estimate of the mileage., time and a map.

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=...~0~0&encType=1

MSN maps tells us that the distance is about 300 miles and will take around 5 hours depending on when they leave and how many stops they make. With most cars averaging 20 miles a gallon, they could have filled up in Chicago and made it to Pontiac

If you use MSN maps and start from Chicago and end at Albion

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=...~0~S&encType=1

you have a distance of roughly 200 miles and a 3 hour or so drive. If they filled up in Chicago, they should have made it past Albion unless their car had horrendous mileage.

Now this is where investigators will have a hard time since this is a cult. Genazzio and Morris could have deployed a full day in Chicago and then left at the end to get to Detroit. They also could have been deploying near the death site at local colleges or DMVs as well. For those who are not familiar with how the cult works, we have what are called "Flying Squads" who are sent out of town to set up a card table shrine in locations far from the base office. The idea is to make some money and get a lot of contacts (names and phone numbers) so that the boiler room can call them for more money.

The LC is a sick cult in how this is sometimes done. A two man squad like Genazzio and Morris would be sent out with a trunk filled to the brim with a card table, folding chairs, signs and stolen milk cartons of printed materials. This weight often played havoc with the cars since it would foster uneven wear on tires, misaligned headlights since the back of the car was weighed down and worse fuel mileage.

I can tell you from years of experience in the LC that the safety of an organiser is of the least concern. It was common for LC cars to be considered cult property and passed around from squad to squad with no one worrying about fuel, oil, radiators, tires etc. until something broke down. The routine maintaince I and others do to rotate tires and keep everything running at tip top shape is nothing compared to a daily end of the world briefing by Lyn where all of the money is sent out of the local office. Since members live a vagabound lifestyle, you often had cars which had expired registration and no insurance. Parking tickets were not yourt problem until the cars got towed away and members routinely had to drive with a suspended licences when they would not show up for hearings, not pay fines or just move to a different state and forget about the old problems. Besides a trunk full of lit it is common to see 6 to 8 members stuffed into a car to get a ride home at night or into the office in the morning. If you do this every day and night, whatever car you got when a fresh faced yute joined the cult was soon turned to scrap,

The owners manual of a car is considered a fiction book in the cult LYM and LYMettes.

There is all sorts of speculation on what happened to Gray Genazzio and John Morris. It is all within the possibilities of the cult that Genazzio and Morris were carrying gas with them if they had a larouchemobile without a functional fuel guage. They could have been coming from a local college deployment and did not raise enough cash. They could have been doing contact meetings after deploying. They both could have been exhausted after doing a full day's deployment in Chicago and then having to drive to Detroit. They could have been sent out with no cash in the morning and told to make the cash to get to Detroit. They could have had a rental car and wanted to bring it back empty. All of these scenarios are LC worthy. The question remains as to how you pass several gas stations and end up running out of fuel on a dark section of I 94 between two exits with fuel stations late at night.

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=...cl=1&encType=1

For the LYM and LYMettes, try to understand that you have very little legal protection in a cult instead of a real employer, unless you start filing complaints.. What the cult can do to you is outrageous as the LC can skip out on just about any labor law on the books by classifying you as volunteers instead of employees. You have no protection from being exploited in the hours you put in, the non mimimum wage you slave for, the abuse of your physical bodies due to inhalation of chemicals all day at intersections, no maximum work day, no control over your tools such as the LaroucheMobiles, no choice over the slightest of the mundane . Forget about retirement as Gary Gennazio was 66 and working under the same conditions as a new 20 year old drop out. Your freedom to go take care of yourself is a joke, I get emails all of the time about how an ex member just saw someone they knew who is at a card table shrine with half of their teeth missing. You can spend all of your adult working years in the cult and not build up a dime in savings or even pay into the SSI system to bost your checks.

I am flabbergasted when I think of when I first joined in the 1970s and once asked about how we were going to handle retirement and old age if we have nothing set up for this. I was laughed at, ridiculed and told that I was an idiot for thinking about this since unless Lyn is in the White House, everything will be worthless and lost. We urged our supporteres to take out second mortgages at 19% and told them that when the banks collapse later in the year, they would not have to worry about it. We told new recruits to skip out on their student loans since there could be a few billion dead under the Rockefellers.

Here we are, 30+ years later, and a 66 year old man is still working a card table shrine. Cults do not pay into disability funds or workman's comp. You have many older members now who were shortchanged in their earnings and have lower SSI benefits. The decades have passed and we have people who are older than Genazzio and have no where to go or outdated work skills.

You may be having something going on in your body which will become a serious issue later. I can not even begin to tell you about the sicknening stories of members who when they were younger were attacked for seeking medical treatment by a jackass NC who said ot was all in their head. Who knows how many members over the years had their lifespan shortened by a cult combination of LaroucheNoCare and a neverending high stress environment?

Any parent whose child is in the cult and was harmed, you have legal recourses as cults are being chipped away every year for their sytsemic abuses. Members who are in can file the paper work with their state labor boards and the IRS for any abuses. You really have no idea of just how much will be taken from you untill you leave or ask why Gary Genazzio and John Morris died. If you stick around and keep this delusion going, you may get an obituary by the cult in the "hero's" section, a few poems read by someone and a send off to your grave to be quickly forgotten .

There are cases you may never hear of like M* who was packed up and shipped home to his elderly parents so it becomes their problem. How do you tell if his illness was caught early enough? How do you know that when he first complained of a symtom like a headache or vision or night sweats or any other simple problem that it was dismissed as not being important enough by a superior? How do you know that the member themselve hid the problems since it was going to interfere with some LC function like Lyn's security?

You do not know and that is the point LYM and Lymettes. In the Bizarro world, your senses are dulled and diminished. Your point of reference for what is normal and not normal is being lost. You can laugh abaut Lyn laughing about broken down cars and death a few days after two LCer with nearly a half century of service just got taken off of a gourney in the autopsy room in Calhoun County Michigan to ship what is left of them back to their families.

You laugh with Lyn while Lyn laughs at you.

These were sick people when I first met them, but I was too stupid to want to face the facts. They were sicker when I left and just get sicker and sicker each year. Votaire was right, the cult based on ever increasing absurdity produces ever increasing atrocitites . The LYM and LYMettes are no longer recruits, just future victims.

xlcr4life@hotmail.com

Last edited by xlcr4life; 06-26-2008 at 09:39 AM.

FRANCE: Ex. LYM-member Nicholas from France writes about his time in the organization

2009-04-09T07:39:00.001-07:00

My testimony on the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement in France.

http://lyndonlarouche.org/nicholas.htm

Introduction:

After several months inside Solidarity Progres a movement presided over by Jacques Cheminade I left this movement in 2003. Today I feel very strongly that I want to warn people of all the dangers attached to their activities in France and in the world.

Here is the testimony:

You meet them outside the underground exit, near University when going to work or just wondering in the centre of the town.

They introduce themselves as a political movement Solidarity and Progres. One often stops, just out of interest for all the questions relative to our world or just out of curiosity.

Summary:

The US are in the hands of a small group of “satanic individuals” who want to create a worldwide empire: They invented “rock n roll” that make it common practice to go in for for drugs and sex. The media is in their hands as well as the political men, the academics, even their alternative movements are under their control. In short we have been told lies about the World Trade in order to impose on us a feudal world where everything is planned in order to prevent us to think for ourselves.

All this seems believable to young people. You remember 1984? But what should we do? There, they give us “THE SOLUTION”, the only one: a new economic system, (a new Bretton Woods) this involves a road to be built from Europe to China ( the Eurasian terrestrial bridge) But it is not so simple when faced with omnipresent “Synarchy” an obscure international group the aim of which is would be to prevent the creation of Republics in this world. The only way out is “to join up and fight with LaRouche” an American opponent, 80 years old, who has sacrificed the whole of his life in order to find out THE TRUTH, a real Socrates of modern times. To prove how important LaRouche is, we are told that he has been made a prisoner in the States for five years on order of Henry Kissinger and George Bush.

After this sort of talk there is no respite “Do you want to change this world?” One thinks a little. Effectively everything does not go as well as that, economic crises, underdevelopment…can one make oneself useful? After making us discover the Truth in this world after telling us how exceptional Martin Luther King, Gandhi and De Gaulle are, they will tell us that we too can get into “the resistance” that the world needs new GREAT MEN.

All this seems a little confusing for us, but for “the militants” no doubt : “LAROUCHE CAN SAVE THE WORLD THANKS TO US” Now they are going to estimate our morality and our seriousness. If we accept that the world is not going well, we must do something for them, the only ones who want to change things. This “something” goes through our purse “money is the nerve of war.” They ask us for 100-250 euros. But they have different systems for every person, the essential one is to subscribe to their paper “Nouvelle Solidarite” in order to learn about their information “on the real world.” And of course to give them our telephone number. Discussions between the members are often about this: what should we do so that people subscribe straight away, how can we reach us so that they give more money?

The main activity of the LaRouche organization is the recruitment, especially of young people. The older ones deal with the financing.

The days are organized very strictly: Compulsory meetings at 8.30 and 18.30 each day setting up tables in the street to politically recruit people, then telephoning the people who have been met at the tables in the street.

The final goal of all the meetings of members with young people is to recruit them to work for the organization full time. From then on: either you are “moral person” and you join the group full time, or if you are not such a “moral person” then you can make up for it by giving a lot of money.

Often the movement of the young people are to politically “organize” (recruit) near to universities: In France these include: Nanterr, la Sorbonne or the University of Saint Denis in Paris, the Campus of Villejean in Rennes; and those of Grenobles and Lyons. (They were also at Assemblée Nationnale’s metro station near the British Institute, part of London University in Paris when Jeremiah Duggan met them)

In order to evoke interest in the LaRouche cadre, the member explains to you how “grand” his movement is, “present in 30 countries in the world, and what a good person LaRouche is. The members and Lyndon LaRouche himself often say that this man “is a genius” The aim is that you realise that everything that happens in the world has something to do with Lyndon LaRouche. The member himself is absolutely convinced of that. The members of this group are quite astonishing at first sight, they seem to know a lot of things (even if they are incapable of explaining them all) They are idealistic and want to build a NEW RENAISSANCE. They have an answer for everything.

Their method of recruiting starts by making you disgusted in the Society in which you live. They need to destroy your old basic thoughts in order to replace them by theirs. They depict “an apocalyptic picture of the world. As far as they are concerned, we are entering a NEW DARK AGE which is due essentially to the cultural decadence of the “baby boomers” ( the parents of the young students are aimed at)

In this way, the member makes you feel guilty and responsible, pushing you to act so you do not despise yourself. You must question everything again: your education, what the media tells you… “you must change so that the world changes.” Therefore little by little they become your only thought. The only thing where you feel some hope.

That way you come to modify your change – your musical taste. “Satanic rock” must disappear from your disc collection to be replaced by Jean Sebastien Bach. Your political and religious landmarks change. Everything changes : your clothes, your physical aspect, beard and hair if they do not correspond to those of the group. You accept that because you are told that the future of the world depends on it: “You must at all costs avoid a third world war” they keep repeating over and over.

The members think that LaRouche and therefore they too on the rebound are in the centre of the world. They also are paranoiac. The fact that the Press in general denounces this movement is seen as proof of the corruption of the media and politics by “the financial oligarchy.”

Lyndon LaRouche uses this situation as a proof of its importance.

Financial oligarchy is a current term in LaRouche’s vocabulary.

As far as he is concerned, History is summarized in a fight between on one side the financial forces which want to enslave\control Man and on the other side current which he calls “Republican” and of which he would be the only representative.

He sees himself as the Socrates of Modern Times, the saviour of Humanity. Thus, he wants to make young people supposedly capable of thinking for themselves. But for their methods they only create people capable and apt to repeat the doctrine without necessarily understanding it. A typical example is the LaRouchist concept of “simultaneity of eternity” a very vague idea that even Cheminade acknowledges not to fully understand. But its consequence on its members is a greater intellectual submission to Lyndon LaRouche, there “Universal Genius.”

The recruiting is based on methods of Psychology:

This is proved by his writing about the methods recommended in the book called “Beyond Psychoanalysis.” In that text Lyndon defines how to “organize” as the way to destroy all that makes up the “persona bourgeois” of the individual. Thus having got rid of his past, the individual submits to the movement, the parent of his new identity.

This is why Lyndon LaRouche has members who do not trust anything except the possibility for Lyndon LaRouche to change the world.

In France Jacques Cheminade has instigated a process which amounts to the corruption of the identity of the members. As a surrogate of Lyndon LaRouche holds full authority over the French organization. He controls the member’s schemes either directly or indirectly with his “henchmen.” His aim is to know everything about the members in order to play on their weaknesses. This technique is used by many sects.

Often Cheminade summons a member one by one to his office to make them talk and above all to make certain himself that the members submit absolutely. Sometimes he gets a third person to participate in the interview in order to draw up a special report on the person. During those meetings most of the time they question the psychological and even the sexual problems of the member. It has happened that Cheminade has sometimes called in a member in order to ask him if he was homosexual. This is seen as an immoral “deviance” even a psychological illness.

All this processes brings forth mistrust between members. One no longer knows whom to trust, knowing that everything you will say will be known and will be used, in one way or another to “destabilize” you.

It is habitual in the Lyndon LaRouche movement to control the private life of the members. In the 80’s, the leadership forced members to have abortions. Later, when some of them decided to have children they went underwent multi-pressures, and still to-day several years later the leaders still reproach them with this choice, preventing them from taking part in decision making. To be a good member, you must not have a child, the movement must be your only pre-occupation. The member must be available all the time to the leaders.

The most flagrant case of this “conveability” touches those who are in charge of Cheminade’s “security.”

Feeling himself important, he always has somebody with him. This task is ensured by three persons one after the other. One person goes and fetches him in the morning at his flat, follows him all day long and often waits until 9 or 10 p.m. to bring him back. Those people are also responsible to get his papers, his meals, to do his errands….They are real slaves for which Cheminade has the greatest contempt.

Cheminade despises everybody except Lyndon LaRouche. It happens often that he will humiliate the members in public, even his wife. He often makes fun of the foreign members, above all the Americans. Sometimes he may make disobliging remarks against Helga Zepp LaRouche, his higher authority. This may appear normal, even quite sane in certain conditions, but this attitude is forbidden for the members who must show allegiance towards their seniors in rank and even more so towards the LaRouche couple, their true saviours.

The members are asked to question themselves if they dare to disagree with LaRouche. “As a human being one can make a mistake…but not Lyndon LaRouche”

*****

From the very beginning, they warn you “ you will loose all your friends!” as you learn quite quickly the rhetoric never to be wrong and you are convinced that the noblest thing in the world is to be a member of the Lyndon LaRouche movement.

Therefore the discussions with the people who do not totally agree with you blow up quite easily.

In any case, we do not have much time to devote to our old friends. In the evenings it is forbidden to meet – too much alcohol and drugs. It is better for us to spend our time reading the books written by the movement. It is dangerous to wander away from the path laid down already by the leaders.

There is list of fundamental books to read- Plato’s dialogues, Rabelais, Leibnitz, Schiller, Martin Luther King and De Gaulle, amongst the most important ones. The kind of books we have rarely time to read.

For the most important thing is to understand LaRouche’s thought. LaRouche would have made the famous discovery LaRouche-Riemand which allows us to know if the country’s economy is on the right track or not. It is this discovery that made him say that we are in a period of economic collapse.

Maybe, the problem being that no man knows what it is in the discovery that has allowed LaRouche to make these economic predictions. Thus we linger over the texts of LaRouche in order to try and understand, but nothing happens and one does not discover any more. Two topics are always present in LaRouche texts. He often speaks of History, making it fit his own views, the second topic is about human psychology, it is often presented as the difference between man and animal.

If you read too many things external to the movement, you become the object of remarks often expressed in an ironic way.

If you go out too much, somebody comes to talk to you and discuss with you this. Its not a good thing to see your parents too often. For the true LaRouchists Christmas must not be celebrated. War is perhaps happening tomorrow.

Cheminade thinks that for a “good mental hygiene” it is necessary that the members must not have too many contacts with his parents; one or two telephone calls a month is ample.

The goal is to be alone with the movement, The people from the movement must be the only associates of the member, but not real friends. ( Cheminade thinks there are no friends in politics)

The only subjects of concern must be only be related to the movement itself, which is seen as the only one situated in the real world. So, when the member returns to his family he gets bored. This world has become foreign to him. Nobody outside the organization can really understand him.

There are two different worlds, but for them the real world is the one they talk about in all their briefings. The people who are around them in their district, in their country are nothing but puppets. People who do not yet know the Truth that they hold, only partly. LaRouche himself, knows much more than all the others together.

***

Lyndon LaRouche launched this movement for young people in Los Angeles about five years ago. Three of his closest collaborators had the assignment to recruit young people around the campuses of the town. It was a radical change of strategy: For twenty years their first concern had been money, the recruiting was done in a sporadic way. A young French girl Elodie Viennot, was recruited there during her architectural studies. The leaders of the movement of the young in Los Angeles, Harvey Schlanger and Lenie Rubinstein represent for these young people a kind of parents, of confidence. They solve all their problems. The young people of the Los Angeles are taken care of from A-Z by the three persons with whom they are in constant communication. Even when these youngsters travel abroad the American leaders ask them to remain in close contact.

From Breakfast to bedtime, the members are together. There are three meetings a day so that the youngsters remain under pressure.

The young members are completely “infantilised” by the organization and are incapable of taking any decisions without consulting their superiors

Back in France Elodie’s mission was to reproduce everything that had been done in Los Angeles. She stayed about one year in Paris. She is the only French member, apart from Cheminade, to have a direct and permanent contact with Helga Zepp LaRouche, Lyndon LaRouche’s wife, and the European Manager of the organization.

Feeling the danger of these young member who had just been made responsible of the movement of the young LaRouchist in France by Helg Zepp LaRouche, Cheminade managed to isolate her. He sent her to Rennes in order to open a new office there, prohibiting certain members to go there.

In private Cheminade despises Elodie as he despises all his collaborators, but in public, Rennes was the spearhead of this movement in France Elodie having become the new Joan of Arc who was to liberate France.

The young members of Rennes were exhausted by the constant rhythm of life. They worked continually from 8.30 till 10 p.m. everyday without any real rest. They often fell ill. As they only sold a few newspapers per day they lived miserably. In February or March 2003 a Parisian member had to send them 100 Euros so that they could buy food. The rent of the apartment where they lived first three of them, then five of them, was paid out of the social benefit payments of a member from Rennes.

The members from Rennes lived in a real material precariousness but also a moral one.

Elodie slept only 4-5 hours per night. The clearest part of her day was divided between reading the Briefing ( 32-50 pages in English sent by internet every morning by the centres Leesburg, Virginia USA and Wiesbaden in Germany) and communicating by telephone with the USA. She did not talk to anybody except about the Briefing of what LaRouche wanted:

She had very little human rapport with the people present.

Elodie does not trust her own judgement, Cheminade has manipulated her very easily. All the decisions she took were in fact Cheminades. That way Cheminade took control of the young. For several members, it was clear that Cheminade acted only for his personal interest, using the LaRouche campaign for the American Presidential election of 2004 as a way to recruit young people who might be useful later on for his own Presidential campaign.

Any opposition was banished. If one tried to question a decision from the leaders or the managers, one was treated as “anti-authority” A serious insult which involves systematically “an isolation” and a lot of pressure.

Unconditional allegiance to Cheminade and Lyndon LaRouche is obligatory.

***

Morning briefing sent out by LYN reproduces extracts from articles from the worldwide Press. It allows us to be informed of the declarations of the Minister of State as well as their interpretation, either directly by Lyndon LaRouche or by anonymous sources. As well as all the economic figures. This gives us the impression to understand the world better than anyone else. All the texts of Lyndon LaRouche are diffused to the members this way. It is a means of direct communication between LaRouche and the members, At the end of the Briefing are the reports of the operation where the young people report back what they are doing and where they intervene….

The members motivation is pumped up twice a year through international conferences (two in the USA and two in Europe) For the young people they are more of them. One about every two months, the school for militants (cadres) are reserved for them. It is a privileged time when you can discuss with members from other offices. These meetings raise your spirit and give you enthusiasm. The fact that we know that all over the world there are people like us who are doing the same thing, who are fighting for the same cause is very stimulating. One feels less lonely. Moreover those meetings are an effective way of recruiting new members “

“In fact the spectacle of a great number of individuals sincerely committed is much more convincing for the new person than any doctrine or structure.” (Quote from Steven Hassan in "Protect yourself against sects").

The feeling that we understand this world and its leaders gives us a feeling of power. One feels part of an elite. When this feeling of being so powerful and this is coupled with the feeling of being in contempt of Society it might become dangerous.

The members indeed, have no longer any limits – their judgement is more just than the one of any individual you met in the street.

It has already to me to see a member trying very hard with a girl, forcing her to subscribe though he knew very well that she was not at all interested. To comfort himself he told us afterwards that it was necessary to give her a chance that “everybody could change when reading the paper” This kind of behaviour is common practice in the movement.

***

The main lesson I have learnt from twentieth century events is that the end never justifies the means: if one wants to work Humanity one must respect every individual dignity.

This is the cause of my breaking away from the movement.

For me this organization has no political goal, they recruit people using mental manipulation techniques which are typical in sects.

Their indoctrination brings about in members a contempt of Society and of everything that is outside of the organization.

They even scorn those who help them financially or give them some of their time. Thus the member becomes a “prisoner “ of the movement. He refuses to think outside the movement because he is constantly told a world war may start

tomorrow!

Members are urged to make a psychological profile ( list their strength and weaknesses) in order to be able to manipulate people better. These manipulations, this psychological pressure, these public humiliations urged me to leave this organization.

I have witnessed a real “Stalinesque trial” organized by Cheminade. This kind of situation was like a law case, however strange, is a typical occurrence in the LaRouche. organization. ( See Don Veitsch testimony “Beyond Commonsense. Psycho-politics in Australia”)

Being too free and having no confidence in Cheminade, the young people in Paris have become the target. Their leader had to be crushed or eliminated.

For ten days another member and myself had alternative attacks and pressure to subjugate us. Cheminade organized a one to one meeting. During this meeting he confessed: “You have never accepted me Jacques Cheminade” Flattery, laughing, then breaking out in wild rage he let out his real view and that was the problem all stemmed in his opinion from the young woman who managed the youth movement in Paris.

As he was not succeeding the other youngsters were summoned one by one. The aim was to divide them in spirit and this worked beautifully.

One Friday afternoon we attended a meeting set up like a law suit where everything had to be thought out before hand. Cheminade started thus – “ I asked you to meet here, because something serious is happening in Paris. You think you know what it is but this is false. I want you to listen to me to the end without interrupting me, as a classical music composition.”

But later on he goes on “I want to make changes and I will use shock tactics if necessary. A change must come in the behaviour in some members. It is a question of life or death.” This gives you a good idea of his one hour monologue.

Afterwards, the members marched one by one to spit out their venom on the one singled out member in question. This person did not have any possibility to defend herself. Even the members who shared our opinions about Cheminade did not react. They had already undergone that kind of treatment and had given up.

From that day, we didn’t go back to the office except a month later to meet Helga Zepp LaRouche. She received us with her feet on the desk and said to us – “We are perhaps only two days away from a nuclear world war I do not believe what you are saying Cheminade has all my trust.”

We asked her to question other people and we answered that the people we alluded to were frustrated, jealous, depressive, and even some of them mad. As for our intention to go to the States, there was no question of it. Lyndon LaRouche’s wife did not want to add “another burden” to her husband’s Presidential campaign. What she asked us was to go straight away to Germany to stop that supposed world war.

You must know that it is not the first time that this kind of situation happens, and every time the couple renews its trust in Cheminade, the members accept by nodding their heads, having an infallible trust in Lyn and Helga.

Several people have tried to keep me and this other member in the group urging us to leave for Germany. A lot of them know that the French leaders are immoral but they do not do anything, even admit the hypothesis that it is the same for the LaRouche couple. An Italian lady member told us that she trusts her own opinion, but in a case of disagreement with LaRouche’s it is he that would win. So the members of this organization are the victims who do not realise who is Lyndon LaRouche.

USA: Ex. LYM member "Maia" tells her story on the Factnet.

2009-04-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

FactNet postings by "Maia," an ex-member of the LaRouche Youth Movement, March 2005

"Maia," Thurs., March 10, 2005, 02:18 AM

As far as why I got out, first off I was really lucky, my significant other who wasn't in the org managed to pull me out and helped start putting some sense back into me even while I was still involved, getting me to the point where I could start looking around and seeing the horror spectacle that I was involved [in], getting control of my faculties again.

One of the things was that It gets a little tiring making a fool out of yourself every day standing on [a] street corner asking for money like a homeless person spanging (spare changing). Another thing was, watching Lyn on video, listening to him talk...everyone kept saying he was intelligent but he just kept repeating the same things over and over again. When someone would ask him a question he would break into a 20, 30, sometimes 40 minute explanation that not only made little sense, but always fit neatly into this "these guys are evil and want to destroy humanity" routine. A basic student of sociology and/or human studies can tell you, human beings, the majority, and yes there are evil psychopaths in the world, but the majority are not out to destroy the world, they are simply doing what they think is best and, well, human nature is really freaking complex--it can't be nicely packaged into good and evil slots. All he kept saying was, Dude X is evil, Dudette Y is a spawn of Satan, meh....

While I was in, I saw two things happening almost two different orgs, for one The top down structure of the organization coming from Lyn, I assume, as I had no way of knowing much of what went on in the chain of command, but nevertheless was textbook cult, even though at the time I was only realizing it subconsciously. From the ground up though, and I almost think of it as a force, particulary the new members you could say were pushing the org towards reality, towards real ideas and real productivity. Needless to say, that doesn't last long, the new recruits get swallowed up and merge with the homogenized groupthink--that or they are kicked out or pushed aside.

The lack of identity among the boomers in particular was scary. Someone like Ted who would literally stalk me to make sure I wasn't doing anything non-LaRouchie, oh and yes, Liz, big Mexican girl, really really big, if anyone here has been in or was in the L.A office. Fucking psycho. If anyone was having a normal conversation (even about LaRouchie stuff) she would come in and scream at them to get on the phones. It was her and a number of people like her that made [me] do a double take on the whole thing.

You can't say that you're against government austerity measures and bitch about Argentina raping their people when you make your own people live on the exact same bread products day in and day out. Work them to the bone, then when you get sick, they tell you that you are blocked, when you complain you haven't got your 20 dollars stipend in over a month and they make you feel awful for even thinking about it.

It's really hard to pin down one thing, it just came down to, I guess...the complete lack of concern for the mental and physical health of the youth. As I think about it, it makes me cry for the people I met that are still in it. People that I felt really kindred with, some I never got to know, but wanted to....the ones I met that were still holding on to their own identities and weren't quite being swallowed up so quickly....

So anyway, that's my rant for tonight.

Peace and butterflies.

"maia," Fri., March 18, 2005, 04:26 AM

So I've been at a training all this week (a real conference) and before that the last function I had attended was an ICLC conference. I can say there is a dramatic difference between a cult conference and a real conference. It was the first thing that occurred to me, so many things It would be hard to put into words.... it's rather scary though how the organization is able to convince you otherwise of things you knew before you joined.

They actually had me believing, or starting to, that the LYM was the only org in the world that was actually DOING anything and all the other non-profits were a bunch of impotent Satan worshipers with an Oedipus complex....

I would really like to get some sort of livejournal community going. Maybe I'll just go ahead and create one and post an invite on here. I find there isn't much out there, even as far as forums. I'm not much with what they did in the 70's [and] 80's, but I would like to find out the truth to some things. Being in the LYM raised a helluva lot of questions, about self, about the world, about the organization.

First off, how the hell can an orginization built on such a premise as it is, reach a point where the youth are recruited, burned up and used as fundraisers in an obvious freak show, that doesn't do anything to accomplish the goals it's supposed to? Was the org ever serious about it's goals? Was LaRouche ever sane? Why the hell does Robert Beltran [the film actor ("Star Trek Voyager," "Eating Raoul," etc.), now an ardent LaRouche supporter--DK] work with the org????? I personally got acting lessons from him, talk about having a hard time believing you're in a cult when a Hollywood actor gives you lessons every week. I feel so sad for the kids in the org, some of them are fucking geniuses, not very many, but some really got brains behind them and my God to throw it away on some madman's fundraising scheme, to talk of the dignity and honour and beauty of the human being, and then stand out on the street corner like a freak eight hours a day getting laughed at, accomplishing nothing but pissing a few people off.

Some of the things I learned in the midst of the tragedy that is the LYM will stay with me for life. I would like to continue some of the passionate study of Shakespeare, of all the great poets... It's hard saying what exactly made me leave, there were so many factors, but I would have to say it had to do a lot with the very thing they would have me study about: the dignity of a human being, the power of the heart to open the mind....there were so many contradictions in it all. Even reading back through this [message thread], Tom (I knew him personally too which even makes it more depressing) mentioned Schiller talking about the mind being opened through the heart, yet practically in the next sentence ranted on about how the emotions needed to be eradicated. ["Tom" is a person who was defending LaRouche on FactNet.--DK} It's so weird, Schiller talks about how reason is no good without compassion and love, yet supressing the feeling state, as they call it, is [the] number one priority. Oh, and don't even get me started how the org can say that and then praise Shelley to no end, when he contradicts everything the org stands for....He would rolling over in his grave.....grrrr. Okay, that was my rant....signing off.

As quuoted at: http://lyndonlarouche.org/maia.htm

USA: Discussion on Factnet initiated by ex. member "Donebeenaround"

2009-04-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Donebeenaround
Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 3:17 pm:

I’ve read all the posts thus far; I too spent a few years in the organization and have very mixed feelings about it. First, for anyone to say that Lyn is a non-entity or has negligible political/philosophical effect amounts to pure innocence of fact, or to plain denial. Ideas can resonate. The LYM have been briefing and prodding Kucinich for years now. They obviously moved him to take action/bleat his rant. One might politely ask: how many world parliamentary bodies have YOU addressed; how many world figures have endorsed YOUR candidacies? Lyn’s effect is there, small perhaps but persistent. I got in after becoming inspired to assay a World Historical identity, yeah I know, but really, Lyn amd the org were cranking out a lot of intriguing theory in the 90’s especially, that’s what really brought me in: e.g. reviving Schiller’s Universal History angle and his “species consciousness;” Lyn’s insistence on physical economy/science-driver economy/infrastructure development; the push to comprehend a monster genius like Gauss, and how he determined asteroid orbits; man as capax dei and imago viva dei; the papers on God and metaphor, Substance of Morality, Jesus Christ and Civilization, America’s Manifest Destiny, and such. Sort of an ecumenical theism it seemed, at least on the surface, but with also a lot of depth. It looked like Lyn had modulated up from the early silly stuff, towards a JQ Adams type of American System theorist and figure. Anyway I found the theory intriguing in a provisional way at least and joined up, I had theoretic issues but I put them on hold—at least somebody was trying to do something to address the historical question generally.

I wised up to my future as a pack mule for the LYM, saw other unpleasant aspects, and phased out. But I’ve often thought that for all his faults Lyn is sort of a Least Imperfect Vehicle: clearly there are sillinesses and tawdrinesses, but at least he TRIED, to enunciate and work towards SOME sort of programmatic theory of a future directionality for the human race, with the New Bretton Woods initiative, which has some definite international resonance; his vision of 5,000 next-generation fission plants for the world, fusion-torch technology, &c.

There does seem to be a growing discussion, even amongst some mainstream commentators, of a looming financial meltdown; and the US is in any case headed towards fiscal train wreck as the Boomers age, though Lyn doesn’t use this formulation to describe “the crisis”—which admittedly is perpetual in Lyn’s rhetoric, but then again, how ARE we going to move forward out of the mess the world is in? Where are we going; how are we to develop the sort of power needed to e.g, protect the planet from asteroids. The cynically disillusioned herein may say nay thanks, but are you offering up anything, at all, beyond tactical kindnesses? Maybe tactical kindnesses are the most we can do; maybe there is no solution; but people have a right to spend their life’s coin as they wish. History isn’t stagnant and I give Lyn the right to proffer up ideas and programs, and I give people the right to associate as they wish, to have a say and try to change history by action, even if I find silly or disagree vehemently with much of it.

Indeed I find it troubling politically: the anti-Israel animus, on display of late especially in the venomous screeds of Dean Andromidas, and in the insinuations Lyn has publicized to the Muslim world that Israel was behind 9-11; the utter ignorance of the fact that the Koran itself is the source of much Islamic radicalism; the bizarre charge that Galileo and Newton were reactionary puppets of the Venetians; the fatuous Bush=Hitler/ “Chief Justice Roberts is a Nazi!” rants, &c.

Donebeenaround

Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 3:18 pm:

I.e., Lyn is quite a mixed bag. It’s terribly sad what happened to Ken. Fidelio was a beautiful magazine in every sense; it seemed proof to me that there was something bigger going on with Lyn than mail fraud. Maybe if Lyn had been less of an egomaniac; maybe had the NC’s flown coach instead of first-class; maybe had Lyn and Helga lived more frugally; maybe then the members, and the German leadership, could have had some more comforts and securities; but if you choose to orbit a sun, you may get burned. I couldn’t take the heat, but those who have given their lives for the glorious cause of a New Renaissance, for a new monetary system, for a vision of a future—and for its enunciator—well, they have given their lives for it... And I will say this also: ‘though I certainly didn’t initiate it I helped to get the LYM thing started. Before I got out I was personally involved in organizing some of the cadre schools. The idea that LaRouche’s people beat poor Jeremiah to death appears to me so utterly ludicrous as to lend credence to a “Get LaRouche” hypothesis. The cadre schools focus on Lyn’s obscure musical aesthetics, on analyzing the catenary curve and various arithmetic/geometric means, and on “becoming world historical.” A blame-Israel-first component seems fundamental to Lyn’s system, but the idea of beating up potential recruits, would be a laughable allegation if it weren’t so weighty in implication. Unless there are/were some really, really bad goons on the Euro staff, which would be a huge surprise to me, I say the explanation lies elsewhere. Why does Dennis King call Helga Lyn’s “dog-wife”? Anyone can say Lyn is the merest shyster, charlatan, and con-artist, but isn’t the reality more complex? He may indeed be or have been a con artist, but I think he’s also on to some important dimensions of history in some provisional, adumbrative way. Thus my ambivalence.

Borisbad

Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 - 5:05 pm:

Donebeenaround makes several interesting points, and as I'm sure he would agree, if he read the posts, there were many ideas that originally drew most of us here on the list and that would seem to have some validity, if only they weren't expressed in his consistent World Will End if We don't implement this or that!!! rhetoric. Most members would always say, well, we could get people behind the issue of Fusion, or debt relief in the third world, etc., but Lyn would always have to insist on dragging in some other issue that would cause the person who might be sympathetic on one issue or another away. In other words you have to subscribe to the purity of all his views however ridiculous or illiterate they may be.

The so=called leaders I'm not sure about. The ones in Russia seem to be downright reactionary nationalist restorationists and he seems to have no problem with the authoritarian policies of Putin. In fact, Lyn has no problem with any authoritarian leader per se. Witness his support for the genocidal Sudan gov't, his support for Noriega, Peron, the Saudi gov't, etc. Democracy is not a strongpoint for Lyn, and no matter how valid some of his views may seem they reflect the worst aspects of Plato's philosopher king ideal. To this day, I still support the idea of fusion research, although again Lyn treated it as a catchall, and I have no idea whether the fusion torch will be around in less than another 50 years.

SANCHO

Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 - 10:42 pm:

I too was ambivalent for many years after leaving - until I began to reflect on the quality of social life in the LC. Let's assume that everything Lyn says about public and cultural matters is true. Anyone who was an actual Labor Committee member for any length of time must acknowledge that the way he or she was treated was entirely incongruent with the fine ideals everyone thought they were fighting for. In addition, every such member, past or present, knows that lying was a regular, daily practice. For example, everyone has had the experience of being told that we needed money for a particular mobilization, e.g. "getting Lyn on TV." Then we would go out and raise money in the name of one of the front groups, lying that we were fighting to promote nuclear energy or to work in the tradition of FDR when in fact the funds were going into an LC slush fund. So, at the level of one's own experience, one must be forgiven for actually concluding that we were not as virtuous as we thought ourselves, believing, as we did, that the ends justify the means. This however is not an expression of humanism, but represents a culture of criminality. At the second level, of course, is the fact (e.g., see my remarks above on his statements about Einstein) that Lyn lies in his purportedly intellectual work (when he makes any sense at all.) But that realization comes later, as I have found. For now, just interrogate your own actual experience working the phones twelve hours a day, or attending a card-table shrine seven days a week, or sidling slavishly up to people in authority: the ambivalence will begin to vanish.

One further point: often supporters will claim, well, at least Lyn is doing "something." Look around you: many people are doing "something" in this world to make it a better place. They just do it in a much less megalomaniacal way than Lyn and his acolytes. I would further aver: hawking magazines or playing around with recreational mathematics does not change the world. Becoming a good teacher or a doctor does.

Stay in school, kids.

Boomerang

Posted on Saturday, May 12, 2007 - 2:52 pm:

good polemic, Donebeenaround. You summarize the delusions which attracted many of us to the "academy" LHL was allegedly offering; but your list has no content, the purported "academy" but was more a hall of smoke and mirrors as anyone who starts studying something in earnest discovers. Let me ask you: did you study science in college? beyond college? What was the quality of your 'cadres'? because from what we've seen on Youtube and other places, they look like kids who are barely literate.

XLCR4LIFE

Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2007 - 1:48 am:

Dbaround, your posts to me at least show why Lyn is more of a calcualating manipulator in a cult of persoanlity than ever. What bothers me is how people who have good hearts and wish to do good have been recruited under their morals and were run around by Lyn's morals. You did what you did at the time thought was a legitmate purpose. You and everyone else who joined had ideals and had basic building blocks of virtue which existed before the LC and exist after the LC. What is often the case is that many former memebrs have done things of incredible magnitude despite what was done to them and despite losing years under Lyn's cult of personality.

What happens is that as you enter the world of Lyn you forgoe a connection to everything which is available to you and become more insular as time goes on. This then becomes a transformation where nothing you talk or think about is said without a Larouche prefix attached to it.

This no accident and I will use my experience to show you how it evolved.

My first contact with the LC was in the 1970s while in High School. I was a teenager who was not sure of a lot of things but was sure that a lot of things needed to change. What I am hearing from the LC is a call for fusion power and economic growth and conern with starvation in developing countries. I was interested in this and found that the people I spoke to were a little odd, but were not dope heads and liked classical music. To me, this was an ideal local club to work with and I soon found out that they were an international organisation. Wow! I now had what I thought was an opportunity to change the world and do it in way that would be done soon. The LC lit back then was titled "Strategy for Socialism" and the paper called "New Solidarity" seemed like a crazy tabloid that followed the Rockefellers instead of Elvis and Bigfoot each week. In my mind, I was going to college and figured that I could just work with the Nuclear p ower stuff as we had a front group called the Fusion Energy Foundation. In the local rundown office were more shabbily dressed people and I joked that I wanted to make sure this was not a cult and looked for pictures of Larouche who was then calling himself "Lyn Marcus" on the walls.

On the walls were maps of the area and things like plant gate shift changes and another room called "The War room". For a teenager like me, this seemed serious. I saw what I wanted to see and read what I wanted to read. The papers and magazines had crazy stories about CIA/MI5brainwashing members like Chris White. Wild stories about forced relocation of workers for slave labor and how Rockefeller was ruling the world. I shoudl have ran away as fast as I could, but, I wanted a reason why the world was the way it is and the LC gave me every reason and would and could explain anything in the world with their methodology.

Ok, it seems nuts, but at the time, it seemed like the only thing which wanted to take on everything. So I figured since no one else had so many targets , than maybe this is the way to get things done. Little did I know how things work in changing people. When I thought of cult I thought of the traditional Moon or Krishna cult. Decades after i left the LC I began to read up on cults and found that the whole LC and Larouche was basically follwoing a standard cult blue print with a political twist.

In the LC and in Larouche World you have to have basic principals to formulate your thinking. You need to have not just a problem, but massive and neverending problems of apoclyptic proportions. problems so big that they are not just problems, but things which will end humanity. The endless catastrophe you as a member face is to change you, not for you to change it. You may think that you are , but in a cult of personality, only a messianic figure, a special person who is above all of the members like a Moon or Larouche or any other figure knows what to do and needs you to do it.

You also need to empty your heart of compassion and fill it up with hate. Pure hate of everything which is not supporting you in your endless end of the world battle to save humanity. Now, it is not enough to support nuclear power. You now demand it. you now say that unless it is developed, humanity will die. Now the people who oppose nuclear power are not people who are concerned with engineering concerns, taxpayer concerns, security concerns but part of the conspiracy to kill off the human race of excess people. Lyn will provide you with an encyclopedia of names and orgs and foundations who are part of this. Now you are at the point where if someone talks about being concerned about fresh air and water and reducing toxic waste, they are an enemy of the human race and your enemy.

I can go to almost any subject the LC and Lyn writes about and it will end up that way. Even with this, people in the FEF had some respect as they had degrees and did no talk like maniacs. they had a life where they could interview people, write articles and produce a magazine that did not look half bad.

For Lyn, it was real bad. It was bad because in a cult of personality, Lyn is the focus, nothing else. So in the early 1980s, Lyn issued a memo which made clear that unless your activity involved him, it was not allowed. The way it was worded was very clever in that it demanded that persuing the Larouche presidency was the only thing and every front group and publication had to support that.

You liked the Fidelio magazine. Ever wonder why it was not mailed out and promoted? Ken Kronberg created that and tried to make it something which was not crazy. There are reports of endless tirades by Lyn against Ken for trying to do that. The blood vessels would pop in Lyn's head as he denounced Ken as a boomer over and over and then ended it with a demand for endless printing with out a single thought of how to pay for this. Oh, let me correct that. .There was a single thought , it was called have someone else run up a debt for supplies and have the members do it for nothing.

Don't be scared of this political scam artist. I saw him cower like a baby on the Morton Downey show when he was confronted with his own words about Jews and others. He babbled "shut up, shut up" . The people there were not naive college kids who were intimidated by a 6 foot 5 father figure to members who often had father issues.

When I came to the National office I figured out somethiungs and was told a lot by people who were leaving. In every case, a member who had a one on one meeting with Lyn dropped out the next day or so as they realised Lyn was bonkers. The cult master has no clothes folks. His reading is basically done by looking at the cover, jackets a chapter and then , now this is important, a summary by the staff. In NYC we had a dozens of people who knew a lot of things and did research. A guy named Peter Rush did a prioject where he took as many papers done by members and indexed them in a library of sorts. What caem of that was an embarassment of sorts. it seemed that if you looked at any of Lyn's writings you figure out the formula. You take a subject of current politcal value like Ted Kennedy. You then link him to what ever is the main fundraising issue such as a KGB/Russian takeover of the world. you now take one of those research papers and find the key thesis and link it to that. So the end is a centerfold article where about two paragraphs mention Kennedy, more pragraphs mention some historical situation adn then you fill it up with the standard 5000 years of conspiracy, throw in Aristotle and then some new tid bit the poor LCer found and declare it a magnum opus that needs to be put out in a pamphlet or book for the masses. Read enough of this and you too can write this stuff for the LC. The poor LCer who did the long hours of work in the library does not even get a footnote and ends up cooing for Lyn's wink instead of yelling that his or her hard work was stolen by this charlatan. The standard MO for us is that the phone organiser would make some issue sound reasonable so he would not be hung up. Once you snet them some of our lit, forget it. We would try hard to NOT have Lyn do meetings with our contacts because of how they would end up with Lyn demanding that they bankroll him or some crazy statement about the Queen of England or such.

In most cases when the phone calls were no longer being returned, Lyn would write about how so and so was harrassed by Henry Kissinger or the KGB to not work with him.

For myself I can tell you that I read about fusion power years before I met the LC. I read about plasma torches years before I met the LC and did a science project in the 5th grade about this. You can look up the GE corporation and see a division they have in joint projects with other companies. I read about maglevs years before the LC made it somethng to impress you with. What is important is that the issues or the technology exist without a cult and get produced without a cult. When I was in I wanted to be part of an org which wanted to support somethiung called the McKormick bill for Fusion funding in congress. Years later we were told that to get fusion power we need to have 20 airports manned with card table shrines each day with aquota of 300 dollars per table .

Star Trek existed way before Lyn's cult and has fostered more dreamers and creators than a gazillion Fusion and 21st Century magazines. We used to have a little science hand out called "Young Scientist". When we tried to make it a non Lyn publication and get class rooms to use it. Unless Lyn was in it, forget it. Heaven help an LC couple who wanted to rasie their kids as young scientists. Lyn demanded that if your kids survived the abortion pressure, than he wants those kids manning card table shrines for HIM.

Lyn wants YOU to raise money for HIM to promote mars. Former member Bob Zubrin runs an organisation called "The Mars Society" which does real work. His books are best sellers and not given a quota of cheap newsprint copies to be given away. Zubrin has and is seen almost monthly in every science journal there is, on TV news shows, TV specials and has been invited to the White House to be awarded for his work. He holds several patents on rocket science.

Lyn waits for Henry Kissinger to come out of a men's room at a White House Press club dinner to have his photo taken with him while mesmerising him with his delusions. Kissinger probably thought the Foe gras was contaminated and made him ill.

There is nothing new being told to the LYM or your self that we have not heard Lyn do before. The speeches you heard when you joined are the saem ones we heard except with a new cast of characters. The phrases are the same.

Us Jimmy Carter worse than Hitler

You Al Gore Worse than Hitler.

Us Impeach Carter

You Impeach Cheney

Us Give money to stop KGB

You Give money to stop Synarchists

US Methadone pushed by Nuremburg Criminals

You Video games pushed by Nuremburg Criminal.

Us The world economy is going to crash.

You The world economy is going to crash.

US We are in a depression.

You We are in a depression of the physical economy.

Us Rockefeller runs the world

You British and the Jews run the world.

Most of us were in when the LC made the transformation from Rocky to the British and the Jews running the world. Most of us left.

Us 3 Mile Island was a hoax to eliminate people.

You Global warming is a hoax to eliminate people.

Us Chris White brainwashing done by Rock to stop the ICLC from taking power. Hoax by Lyn.

You Duggan death, hoax done by Cheney to stop LYM from taking power.

Us David Rockefeller and his family run the world and all that is evil.

You Cheney and his wife run the world and all that is is evil.

Us Leesburg Real Estate collapse will bankrupt the banks when people can not pay the notes.

You Lyn does not pay the notes on LC real estate to the banks and our people collapse.

Us Supporting Solar power is stupid and won't work.

You Supporting solar power is evil and will kill off humanity

Let me give you a little clue of how crazy the LC/LYM is . One of our members in the LA region left in the 1990s. The only thing I think he knew to work with when he left was roofing. He started his own business in LA and began to grow as a roofing contractor. Later, he developed a roof system which used new solar panels for power generation. His company is now the leading developer of solar panel roofs and has been recognised in many articles and in the Wall Street Journal. Business which use his system .The buildings which he installed this can now sell power back to the grid which feeds the Glendale LYM office for LYM jabronis to HATE solar power.

Lyn has a new spin now since we have shown his broken record briefings to the yutes. Today the line is that he tells yutes that he is not predicting a crash but is trying to prevent it.! There is nothing new to say hear. All of us were pretty young when we joined and wised up later. Most people restarted their lives and have done incredible things. In the LC you are told over and over that no one is doing anything. You are alone, trying to save the planet from enemies who do not know they are enemies.

Debt has always been an issue in the developing world. Enroll in any third world study class in college in the 1960s and it was a big part of the curriculum. Lyn is the only one who declared a debt moratorium . he did it aganist the members and and supporters by borrowing money and not paying it back.

Lyn declared a debt moratorium on PMR and see what happened there. Bono of U2 has been more successfull in promoting debt relief and he only wants you to buy their records, shirts and conccert tickets instead of joining a Bono cult.

I posted my "moral resume" here last year. As a free person I go to meet with my congressmen, elected officials like the mayor and others, the previous governor and present governor of my state and discuss issues like child care, energy and health policy. This is not some big deal if you call up , make an appointment and discuss this with them in either their office or open meetings. no one is cutting off my mike and rolling their eyes when I speak. I do not litter their offices with cult crazed fanzines and instead contribute to promoting bills and providing input on how it may effect families in their district.

Yes, things are better in many places where I choose to help, not hate.

If you want to see what 35 years of the LC and worshipping Lyn will get you, take a look at this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzFh3ci1ysY

After the intro you will see the LA office NC named Phil Rubinstein give a briefing to a few people in a shabby office just like the one I entered 3 decades ago with mismatched chairs and a stink in it. This particular NC is notorious for doing anything Lyn demanded when it comes to sacrificing members to feed a Club Ibykus party. The temper on his part is probably justifiable to a degree. I think he dropped out of John Hopkins at age 17 to join the LC. He was brilliant enough to be considered for a Rabbincal education, but not smart enough to recognise that he was selling copies of the Dope Inc book with The Protocals of The Elders of Zion as a chapter. He saw all of his Jewish friends leave in disgust when Lyn and Security were circulating the infamous "Jew Jokes" in the LC. He accepted Lyn as his saviour when Lyn began issuing his Holocaust Gospels in New Solidarity in the late 1970s.

Each briefing you hear on the LYM web site starts off with how we are building a movement. After 35 years he has seen almost everyone he knows drop out or die and still fears facing the fact that all his posturing, chair throwing don't mean a thing. He can read in the briefing a few days ago where Lyn says LA is a problem. . Based on the track record of Lyn, the boomer pogrom is heading West.

USA: Erin_b writes about the LYM.

2009-04-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

ERIN_B
Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 4:36 pm:

okiemute,

When, for how long, and where were you in the cult? I was in from May or June to October 2003. I have bipolar disorder, and I was kicked out because I didn't agree with them about, among other things, how I should manage my own health (they didn't think I needed to manage it at all).
I'm trying not to think about it too much lately, and I only check this board once in a while, and I try not to post too much, but I think this is an important issue. They actually believed that my illness didn't exist, that they could cure it by insisting that it didn't exist. The LYM believes it can just remove a person from their environment, make up whatever story they want about them, and the real person ceases to exist. Why not? They can make the real person seem to stop existing when they get them to stay a lot of the time.
But, hey. I'm lucky. At least I'm alive.

http://www.justiceforjeremiah.com

Really lucky.

There was also a 19-year old guy whose parents were posting here a while ago because they were really concerned because he was involved with the org and they thought he may have asperger syndrome.

The nature of the organization is manic-depressive and schizophrenic and alcoholic. The most offensive thing in the world to them is someone with a pre-existing mental condition who is in treatment. Anyone who has ever been in any kind of counseling is more threatening than any of the groups they're always vilifying in print and in their class meetings. The cult would not function without denial. Anyone who strives to be happy and healthy is truly its worst enemy.

USA: Ex. LYM members XYLM and ERIN_B and others discuss on the Factnet.

2009-04-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

ERIN_B

Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2006 - 6:31 am:

Question for ex-members.

How did you get hooked?

I was in a transitional time in my life and didn't know a lot of people. I was opposed to the war in Iraq and was eager to hang out with this political campaign that professed to feel the same way I did about the war.
They were nice for about a day, then they started making more and more demands.
With my personality, I guess there was a little bit of an adrenaline rush when I found out they might be dangerous. I liked arguing with them. I didn't know how to leave when I found out I was trapped.
I never really knew what kind of trouble I was in until I was out of the cult for a while and got some distance from it.
They told me not to read anything about LaRouche that wasn't published by the org. They told me not to read anything that wasn't put out by the org, as it was "bullsh-t". I tried to ignore this. It seemed so simplistic and I always hated people telling me what to do like I couldn't make these decisions for myself. Logic was outnumbered. I didn't know that many people locally. The closest people to me were long distance.
I visited my family that year, a little earlier than the usual holiday season. I talked to some of my family members about it. One of them, I told about LaRouche's book, "Money is an Idiot", and how he and the senior members are always telling the youth that money can't talk to you. They said they thought it was interesting that he felt the need to tell people that money couldn't talk to you. It was funny, all the stupid things I'd noticed that it didn't occur to me that that was odd. It was such a wild, wierd world, that something like that could easily be insignificant.
This was around the time I was kicked out. I really had to talk about it. I don't think my family fully understood how confused I was. I said. "People say he's anti-Semitic." We looked it up on google. A whole bunch of quotes came up by LaRouche that were clearly Anti-Semetic. I'd done it before by myself, but the cult says that's no good because everyone is lying. It still took me a while after that to realize that everyone else isn't lying; the cult is.

SANCHO

Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2006 - 11:22 am:

This cult traps well-meaning (usually young) people who already believe (usually) in the value of the life of the mind and who have a strong sense of justice coupled with a desire to right wrongs. The cult of LaRouche is one-stop shopping for such people: it supplies definitive answers to all life's questions (appealing to the young and/or naive who mistakenly think such a thing possible) and supplies a means at the same time of improving the world. Of course no one group let alone an individual human being has many - let alone all - answers to the big questions. But as you, I was in a transitional period and did not know what my next step was to be when these people entered the picture. I then found it much more convenient to "change the world" rather than to engage in the far more challenging task of changing myself.

XLCR4LIFE

Posted on Sunday, February 12, 2006 - 11:43 am:

For Erin and others who read this.

You are absolutely correct in describing the initial experience as an adrenaline rush. When you are in your late teens, there are many paths to take. People who have open hearts and wish to solve some of the more pressing problems can be easily attracted to a group like Larouche's. At the time I started to read their publications, I skimmed the crazy stuff and concentrated on what I believed in. It was refreshing to see an org which wanted scientific progress as the basis to solve mankind's problems. It was great to see an emphasis on classical arts, literature and history. The counterpoint to the other extremes of society were welcomed by me.

When the problems of the world are reduced to simplicity and the solutions are reduced to simplicity, it does intoxicate you with the idea that you are part of a solution.

The lunacy will usually be noticed by people who are skeptical, or cynical or just plain experienced with life. Those of us who are not so jaded will somehow look the other way when the evidence starts rolling in about Lyn's lunacy, the anti semitism, the crazy life and how every criteria for a cult is being met.

If you examine the history of the cult by reading this forum you will see how history has been repeated by Lyn over and over for another wave of recruits.

XYLM

Posted on Friday, February 17, 2006 - 5:38 pm:

Ever since ive been acquainted with the LYM (handful of years), they have been fiercely proclaiming a housing market collapse. In contrast, the housing market fiercely ascended during the interim.

I remember, month by month, the predicted collapses which had never occurred. Today, at the housing market’s maturity and amidst all the positive speculators, there are some economists predicting a dip, and rightfully so, but none are leaping into full scale economic shutdown predictions as Larouche did! –and today’s streak of housing growth is probably the reason their proclamations have faded away.

And as much as we can argue the aforementioned, the end result will always remain: there was no collapse.

But something detrimental did occur, the minds of the new recruits stayed around from month to month on predictions that have only led them into a brainwashed state of mind; thrown vulnerably into a surrounding of the most refined cult indoctrinating techniques.

Whether Enron, Housing Market, or the Iraq War; the Larouche campaign is only riding the waves of media hysteria. With their picks, they throw the most extreme, fear inducing twists and correlate them to past writings to fit Larouche history and “prophecy”.

And with all this said, they have transcended their focus from the housing collapse to Alito’s Schmitterian policies.

XYLM

Posted on Friday, May 05, 2006 - 3:45 pm:

In a nutshell, Larouche consistently takes credit for battling, shaking up, and even causing significant blows to the financial oligarchs who have “taken over this world through wars and oppression.” It’s hard for me to believe that these extremely powerful oligarchs who “have directed the deaths and mental depletions of millions”, have not taken one action to place threats or cause any serious fear among the Larouchies. Not 1 Larouchie has died as a result of being “the biggest challenge” against the most powerful and vicious people in the world, the oligarchs. And mind you, these Larouchies are based in broken down buildings and drive broken down cars with bald tires, which means that they have a better chance finding death from the consequences of their own surroundings and poverty –and if you read up, that’s indeed how all of their deaths have occurred!

USA: yamabkad, ex. LYM-member on the life in the LaRouche Youthmovement.

2009-04-09T06:57:00.000-07:00

FACTNET POSTINGS, DEC. 13 - DEC. 14, 2007

yamabkad, Thursday, December 13 - 5:20 pm and 5:22 pm (merged):

As quoted at: http://lyndonlarouche.org/larouche-youth.htm

I figure I should introduce myself, seeing as I have been lurking on this board for a month or two reading what I should have read years ago, and not posting. I'm a former part-time "organizer" and full-time mental slave (who sang the songs, too) to this ideosyncracy (the youth version). My total time spent worshipping at the card-table shrine adds up to no more than three or four weeks. My stay at the monasteries of the square and cube doesn't add up to more than that either. Despite those facts, the damage to my life has been rather extensive.

I am happy to say that I am LaRouche free for more than a year, but it took great pain to lodge the old geezer out of my mind. I'm still finding his garbage in my mental attic, garage, closets and other select nooks, when thinking about pretty much anything. This site has helped me deal with a lot of the more irrational behavioral reactions that I used to have (self-)programmed in. Even as I say this, I choose to remain anonymous (on the board) so as to minimize any frustration.

I dropped out of a good university, made a mess out of my family relationships and mind, lost the respect of my friends, spent almost three years hating myself for not living up to a standard that our oh-so-affectionately-referred-to "Lyn(DONE!)" never lived up to, developing and complicating all sorts of psychological issues in the process. Even after I left the organization, I still hated myself and could not establish a normal basis for life despite my family's earnest attempt to help. It basically took the shock of homelessness and a couple of years of patiently waiting out the inevitable collapse which never occurs, for me to quit regarding Lyn as the great genius which he was supposed to be.

It was intellectual/moral laziness and the gambler's dream of "the big score" of "genius" that ultimately made me drop out of school. I'm back in school now and it's a lot harder to do even easy things now that my whole brain is pockmarked from confrontation with [LYM] "ideas." Even so, I am luckier than many, for I've been blessed with a patient family.

Seeing as I identified with the [LYM] for such a lengthy period of time despite the wide availability of reliable information which should have discouraged me, the question may be posed as to why anyone with access to the internet would fall for this sh-t.

The philosophical indecipherability and in-house mysticism of The Science of Christian Economy, the good and bad books, the mind-games, the fetishization of speculative arguments over mathematical constructions and nonsensical questions answered by repeating some Lyn-mantra as the highest standard of truth, the sleep deprivation and "ruthless" enemy-building, constant patching of the faulty ideological software with reams of ad hoc papers, are all important grounds for analysis. I noticed in myself, however, and I'm sure that this applies to other members, more troubling trends worth noticing.

To be perfectly honest when I was introduced to the movement I wasn't exposed to much of the weirdness and naively thought it was just some amazing gem which everyone else had missed out upon. The next day I went out and organized with them. A guy on the street told me to read up on them as a cult on the internet, and I did. I read some newspaper articles and held them in suspicion. Two weeks down the line I was completely hooked. I loved the way you could just Know Truth, and all the other capital words, them being the Forms of The Universe, simply by suscribing to EIR and engaging in "dialogues."

Then I read Dennis King and almost had a heart attack.

Even so, the initial attraction never faded away. I decided to go to no more meetings, but I started suffering regular panic attacks about the world collapsing, and the constant phone calls weren't helping either. I had the choice of clinging to the secrets of the inner elites as my guide to life or sticking the long hard road of an actual education. I chose the former. This leads to my long-delayed point.

Those of us who joined largely knew the facts about LaRouche. I was a fascist. I may have blocked the facts out of my consciousness and "forgotten" a lot of things, but the net effect was the same. I chose to misrepresent reality so as to cling to an addictive illusion. Potential relative population density (PRPD), the LaRouche-Riemann economic model, and all that other bullshit became sacred science.

Since everything could be deduced from Lyn's spacious and completely undefined economic model flawlessly, and then contradicted when necessary for the day's spare change, I think our self-conscious mentation amounted to little more than cowardice and lies. The best a LaRouchie fascist can do to remain consistent is to be what he hates, a scholastic speculator and badly trained at that, defending the axioms of Lyn's pseudoscience, the new Ptolemaic order. [Jonathan] Tennenbaum seemed adept at that...I actually feel funny posting that here, as I wouldn't be surprised if, when convenient, it will be claimed that he is colluding with some network of John Train Salon/MySpace-Wikipedia linked spooks bent on raping Helga [Zepp-LaRouche].

I reap what I have sown, and I am still paying my price. I hope I can one day redeem myself in the eyes of that humanity I misrepresented so badly. And if not that, at least my family.

*****************************

yamabkad, Friday, December 14, 2007 - 10:01 am and 10:52 am (merged):

I am going back to school full-time now; I also worked various minimum wage jobs after leaving. Working with real people, some of whom are living paycheck-to-paycheck, helped bring me back to reality. It brought me into direct contact with the realm of phenomena that we more appropriately discuss when talking about economic problems in human terms, i.e., in individual terms.

It was no longer some world-soul or nebulous noosphere who is suffering, but your co-worker and neighbor, someone you can't avoid getting personal with at the lunch-break. Not that LaRouchies don't live outright miserably. All the [LYM] apartments I saw/slept in looked like tenements, packed like slave ships by youths from various corners of the U.S. and world.

At any rate, starting from that sort of feeling about the average folks I got to know, now I at least have SOME sensual connection to people's actual experiences which is my own and has not been tampered with. I oppose this feeling to the feeling of looking at the pawns which are to be organized on the board, or the utter loneliness of being the ghost who has been forced to walk the earth for eternity, because of his knowledge of the secrets known to the inner elites. So, I'm making progress.

It's somewhat impossible to feel anything about a completely abstract entity. As a LaRouchie, I had more feeling, on average, about the letter L than the people I was supposedly saving, especially when they weren't "engaging in the dialogue."

The sh-t you have to witness in the name of Beethoven and Gauss and lately even God on those "conference" buses is appalling. People get wolf-packed and yelled at and shunned and all that just for not being willing to drop their views about the state of the economy.

When humanity gets this abstract, some third state of matter above the biotic, which escapes all sort of understanding due to the fact that it's "currently insane," the results are drastic. I always consoled myself with the fact that there was a metric (PRPD) which we could measure and craft economic policy. But this sort of consolation is somewhat like a man saying that he knows that distance can be measured on a map, but can't for the life of him measure distance on a map.

To be honest this is not even a good analogy since there [in the LaRouche movement] the map was never properly formed to begin with, so any "measurement" on it would be worse than useless. An excerpt (below) from the resignation letters by Alice Roth, provides the opportunity for the observation that even at the top circles of the movement back in the days when people could actually talk about mathematical modeling, epistemology, ontology, etc. on a principled level, people never got to the point of actually using the magical PRPD "yardstick" as a measure of the tendencies in negative entropy or whatever PRPD was actually supposed to measure.

Because our so-called Riemannian model ignored the credit system, it was utterly useless for any kind of work involving short-run developments--i.e., the "quarterly" forecast. Yet it was demanded that we constantly produce such projections at a moment's notice for EIR. The best the staff could do would be to first figure out what seemed to be going on politically in the business community and among policy circles and then attempt to generate computer graphs that matched our already-arrived-at assessment. I found this degrading and intellectually dishonest. We were representing ourselves as one more "delphic oracle" among other competing "delphic oracles." But the tools we were using were even less sophisticated than the Keynesian-Friedmanite rubbish we claimed to be replacing. The only thing that saved the project was that our political intuition occasionally was more on target than that of the competition.

And OUR political intuition generally WASN'T, but I figured that maybe in the LONG run the predictions would be correct...

Comparing the boomer intellectuals with the LYM ones I guess entails at least a mention of Sky Shields. As far as I know he's still in and is as avid as ever. He was trying to organize some sort of LYM modeling crew last year to start producing those famed "animations" according to "Riemannian principles" at the locals, probably starting first in LA, the idea being that some people who knew some math and could program would, provided the data, be able to actually study something like the 1940's economic recovery premised on the science of Lyn. He saw it as a "science driver program" which would basically get the movement's sh-t together and fight its own ignorance. Sky was a pretty bright guy. I think he was studying physics and left somewhere around his third undergraduate year or something, but don't quote me on this. Either way, this as most things eventually was scrapped because the youth didn't understand Kepler, which is an obvious prerequisite for the active practice of modern science. Nothing against Kepler, but why not enter a monastery and study Cusa in detail? That wouldn't be a bad idea for a lot of the youth.

As far as the quality of scientific thinking, it's something like Stalinist dialectical materialism. Any decent argument by someone relatively competent can be squashed by someone with well-memorized Lynquotes.

I remember members discussing the movement of people towards and away from the [literature-sales] table and talking about it in terms of dynamically triggering a critical increase in the power of dialogue on the noosphere through singing, when people were just reacting to the outrageous signs and lyrics. Since there could be no science there, people end up discussing things impressionistically. In our sleep-deprived minds, the movements of crowds on the street started to look amazingly like some surreal version of Leonardo's sketches of water. People were creatures out of Goya's drawings, or Bosch's schizophrenic mind.

Really I think the most salient variable in any encounter between organizers and the public was how much the individual approached knew about the Great Patriot. I almost always started out the conversation with "Do you know who LHL is?" So much for now.

USA: Ex. LYM member Chaim, leaving after 9-11!

2009-04-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

By "Chaim" (posted on Factnet, September 18, 2003 - 1:24 pm)

When I left, I wrote a note specifying my reason for departure. In it, I outlined why it was I felt I needed to leave. It largely centered around the organization's response to the 9-11 attacks.

In the months since, I have come to other reasons why I needed to leave, but the one I mention above was the first and most immediate one that came up, and the one that eventually caused me to part ways with the group.

It, in itself, exposed some things about the group to me that I was not willing to go along with for much longer, which is why I left.

When discussing my departure from the group, would it not make more sense to say "Chaim left because he found that he didn't totally agree with some of the things that Lyn was doing, and found that he could not work for him anymore"?

That would make sense, but it's not what the organization does. Instead they say that someone was "blocked" or "impotent" or had, as you say, "confused parents."

I didn't even discuss with them my decision to leave until it was already made.

When I mention, below, the "possible negative light," I mean that protecting LaRouche's image and infallibility is one of the top priorities of his movement. It's better to use words like "blocked" or "confused" than to simply say "Chaim didn't like the strong focus on fundraising right after 9-11" or "chaim didn't like the way that Lyn and his organization regarded people mourning in the aftermath of 9-11" or "Chaim decided that the organization was a cult, and wanted no more part of it." That highlights a possible problem with the organization or Lyn, instead of highlighting a problem with me (or my parents) solely.

As quoted here: http://lyndonlarouche.org/leaving-larouche.htm

USA: Anonymous LYM member: life in the ICLC "is brutal to the spirit"!

2009-04-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

Factnet post by "Anonymous", July 21, 2004 - 11:54 pm:
Without giving too many details as I do not wish my identity to be known by the vindictive LaRouchites: my experience dates from long ago, but from what I read, things have changed little.
When I was a full-time "organizer" I hated every single second of it. Say there are ten people in a local who are full-time "organizers," i.e. those available to be "deployed" in "squads." (N.B. the paramilitary lingo.) The night before the "deployment," the five squads of two each will be determined and you will know who to meet the next morning, usually by 8 AM at the latest.
The squads are grouped in twos; the asinine signs, the ratty cardtable, the (stolen) milk crates replete with "literature" all are jammed into the unwashed rental car. By 9 AM you're at the site and spend the next eight hours hawking literature and subscriptions, lying to people to manipulate them into doing what you want.
At noon, the squad leader calls into the "office" to report on how the deployment is going. Each deployment, by the way, has a target number attached indicating how much money should be raised. It is also expected that contacts be made at each deployment, i.e. people who can be harassed to death by phone from the "boiler room" in the "office" for money.
If the quality of contacts is poor, or an "organizer" supplies contact names with too many wrong numbers, that is cause too for chastisement. If one or the other members are not pulling their weight, they'll get a little talking to from the guy in the "office" by phone to help them get out of their "(ego) state."
And that's all it is, standing around a card table, in all kinds of weather, for at least eight hours per day for at least six if not seven (during "mobilizations") days per week. Then you'll be redeployed to another site for the evening or, better yet, be assigned a neighborhood to go to in order to do a "walking tour" which lasts until 8 or 9 PM, depending on how much money is raised. Needless to say, on $40 a week, cash is quietly pilfered from the deployment so that people can EAT.
At the end of the day people filter back into the office with their love offerings, and often a mandatory briefing will be inflicted on members until 11 PM. The so-called "briefing" is usually a ritual of public abuse by the "leadership" as they rove around the room lighting into one member after another on the basis of their alleged weaknesses. At this time of day, no one has the energy to resist.
It is after a few weeks or months of this that an intelligent person begins to wonder: what happened to all those beautiful ideas I joined to promote? There is not even time to read the literature you are hawking, let alone have a moment for quiet reflection; to date outside the organization (which I did in defiance of the local leadership); to read a newspaper. When I first joined it was the custom to give one night off a week plus Sunday, but for the last few years it was seven days a week with no pretense of providing time to foster the intellectual development of the membership.
I especially hated the walking tours because I was forcibly confronted door after door with people living normal, healthy, productive lives whereas I was advocating stuff I knew in my heart was nuts. Life in the National Caucus of Labor Committees is brutal, not only to the mind and body, but especially to the spirit.

USA: Dialogue from Factnet between ex. LYM member zisepsyche and ex LC xlcr4life!

2009-04-09T05:30:00.000-07:00

A dialogue from the Factnet between an ex. LYM-member and another ex. member of the LaRouchemovement.

zisepsyche Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2008 - 10:14 pm:

Hi all,

I am relatively new here. I am a 'yute' though I don't think I really am and at my age, I don't appreciate being reffered to as such...I joined the org in 2002 and stayed for a year and a half until mid. 2004. I decided to post here after reading all these threads. It is comforting to know I am not the only one who fell for this crap, though I always thought it was odd that we were supposed to tell everyone that one man can do it all (that one man being LaRouche)...also, I hope you have comfort in knowing that many 'yutes' have left recently, esp. after the Ken Kronberg affair/debacle and that any mention of suicide makes the lym squirm and they don't know what to do with it. I organized in Detroit for a while. It was hard to start a local there. Can anyone tell me 'why?' and I don't want to hear that we had some 'boomers that ruined it.' who was in the detroit local as 'boomers,'BTW, the attack on boomers disgusts me, as when I joined, I thought many (some who I know have left and died) were very intelligent and dedicated.

Another thing, why didn't/doesn't anyone say thank you (in the LC/LYM)? I was criticized for being close to my family and I had to explain that is how we Greeks are raised...I got criticized for helping to degenerate Greek culture and got called a 'schizophrenic' by a LYM member while others watched on and no one defended me...which was crazy, what was crazier is that person didn't know what a schizophrenic was and was just using it because LHL (whom everyone refers to as LYN) had used it recently in a paper...

I don't know why if a handful of us can leave, why the others can't...I thought it was me and tried to get in touch with the org.

Being an 'x-lymer' makes one a target as we are all considered to be 'enemies of the org' and I was criticized and called names and told that I ave to "work out my personality and psychosis" (why do ppl in the org. think they can diagnose others and that they know everything when they are stuck in a 'a no thrills kill your soul cult?")Anyways, they called my parents house recently trying to get me to come to a webcast...must be getting desperate...plz. reply.}

***********************

xlcr4life Posted on Sunday, January 13, 2008 - 2:17 pm:

zisepsyche, welcome to this site. You bring up a few points worth going over. In the LC/LYM to make you a "Larouche organiser" as they say, requires you to discard every bit of your personal life. This includes any hoobies, interests, ethnic and family connections. If you notice how this works over time, everything you liked is not only considered a distraction, but now enters the Bizarro world of also being eeeevil since this prevents you from achieving an "unblocked state" to save humanity.

The last thing we needed was a new recruit who did anything by him of herself like a hobby or have musical intersests other than what were on the "approved" lists.

The last thing we needed was to have a new member go home for the holidays to their family because that creates the following problems.

-This implies that there is such a thing as a holiday in the org.

-This implies that one's time can be spent away from the cult.

-This implies that YOUR family deserves more attention than our family.

-This allows someone outside the cult, whom you know to love you like your family to question or raise questions about your life.

-This also places you in the "Real world" where you time is not spent in classes or deployments or living in a 24/7 world of anxiety and end of the world hype.

The last thing we ever wanted was to have members physically be with their families and even think of having a life. Thus, one of Lyn's cheap parlor tricks is to always have a new emergency occur around certain holidays which then led to the local NCs creating a level of guilt on a memebr if they decided to go away for a few days.

"What about the quota"

"Lyn is under a new assasination threat"

"The world economy is teetering on the edge"

"Don't you know that nuclear war can break out any minute?"

"The oligarchy do not take vacations"

When you are in the real world you discover that organisations or clubs which do things do not make the type of demands for you to give up your life. During somehting like an election you will see people do a lot of work and give up a lot of their time. But that is temporary and the candidate is not making you worship them for ever.

There is nothing wrong with hard work and giving up things for good reason. Ask any small business owner how their life changed when they started out. I have many charities I contribute to and I have other things I personally involve myself in which directly effect my community. These are healthy things to do and the one thing I hope you never do is to become scared of being involved in different things.

The one thing you will be quite savy about now is how cults of personality work. You will find situations like this crossing your path many time. TV ads, TV preachers, idiot bosses who demand worship, political manipulation of voting blocs, you will be much sharper to pick these things up.

(...)

On a personal level I have mentioned this a few times. When I was in the LC I always had in the back of my head this idea that many of the LCers I know literally gave themselves to Lyn. I always had this funny feeling in me that there was this imaginary boundry I had to cross to be like that. Thus, I always kept much of my life within the real world via daily contact with people, family, newspaper and magazines and any other media. I never wanted to submit my free will to the LC as I veiwed that as somehting scary based on some pof the people I would work with. These members seemed totaly incapable of existing in the real world as their relationship on anything was always a multiply connected manifold of lunacy and endless "Lyn says" quips.

For me to leave the LC was one of mentally leaving before the physical parameters of leaving were met. In restrospect, there were many, many times I thought of leaving, but kept up a delusion that the LC would change in a certain way. In my mind, once I stopped creating excuses and realised that this thing was a nasty cult with nothing of redeeming value, leaving became quite easy.

One thing to NOT worry about is what your friends and family think about you. Your friends and family really do not care about the cult as it really does not exist in any way except the obscure dot that it is. Once you are outside of the org, Lyn is nothing but a bad joke footnote if anything.

If anyone questions you, it really is not too difficult to say a few words and then forget about it. My family and in laws really have no care and all of my fears of them asking me about it were unfounded. When I was once asked about my invovlement I said quite truthfully:

"Yeah, I was interested in some key issues like nuclear power and when I found out how nuts they were I said "Holy Sh*t" and took off".

***********************

zisepsyche Posted on Monday, January 14, 2008

Thanks for all the input, it helps. I am at school and working part time. Trying to pull my life together and I enjoy it. I like investigating and reading things on my own. My life in the org (although brief was hell, degredation, never good enough...Steve D. even chastisted me). How can these youth eat up the crap Lyn says, I know there might be a shortage of food and how can they believ the org has no money. In the Detroit office, I have heard Dalto's name and Kostas too. Bob Bowen runs it now. In any case, they are on my campus and they use my 'friends' in the org to get to me. I have been getting the help I need, but how can they be so heartless and inhumane. I feel horrendous for what we did to Public officials, which is nothing short of harassment or even the students...who thinks this is love (agape, philos, etc.) I never understood what LaR wrote and thought it was ADD on my part, but now I know he is no literary genius, am amazed how these kids last so long...and abuse others and admit with a straight face that they are fully developed human beings who scare everyone....

I am getting over my time in the org. It took me a while to realize I had been taken in, esp. since I was always and independent thinker searching for the truth...your testimonies have helped me and I don't believe one has to criticize or blame someone else for their wrong doing. You are right, when I joined, I was sick of school and having problems with my life. I have always been into helping people and the world and they organized me based on that...

I wasn't a good organizer because I couldn't get myself to sell someone on LaR and that was considered a weakness, so I received 'intervention.' When I came home, I was in dept, unkempt and starving for food and affection....I will tell you more about the youth...when I think of the horrible events I engaged in and how we harassed students and public officials I am disgusted...I would like to know more about the history, as it is hidden from the youth...they are just told Quijano is bad, Molly is bad and other names are mentioned so only the elite few know what is going on....THERE IS NOTHING HUMAN OR HUMANISTIC about the org...only getting little people to do the dirty work. btw, for me (even while in the org, I never believed we never had any money...how can others believe it?)

More to come!

The anti-LaRouchian sourceblog

Not that active for the moment...

Professors warn: cults like the LaRouche Youth Movement are dangerous!

USA, 2007: Ex. LYM Akka and jmp87 about LYM.

Testimony about LYM (sourcewatch.org-talk...)

New posts about Lyndon LaRouche!

LaRouche Youth Movement (from www.insidehighered.com)

Vaclav Havel: The Power of the powerless (1978).

LYM: A cult of Personality with Lyndon LaRouche in the center

To LYM!

USA, 2009, ex LYM member writes about friendship inside the cult.

USA: LYM, Ray Hengst tells his story.

USA: "LaRouche exposed!" The student "Tom" tells his story.

Germany: The German parliament debates: Is the LYM a cult?

USA. Cult of Lyndon LaRouche: Confessions of a failed genius!

Cult of Lyn LaRouche: Confessions of a Failed Genius

Australia: "Families fight back", an article about how youngsters were recruited to the Australian branch of the LaRouche-cult in the 90s.

Families fight back

http://www.rickross.com/reference/larouche/larouche12.html

The Age/January 30, 1996 By Martin Daly

USA: "Scott" tells his story (part 3).

"So the mama's boy who's never done anything in his life is going to come here and say 'Alex made some homosexual kid cry and I want my mommy'...are you homosexual, Frank? Is that it? Is that why you haven't been able to raise any money out there?"

USA: "Charltonroom", "Jimmyo" and others writes about youthorganizing and LYM.

How LYM and LYMettes will be screwed by the cult

FRANCE: Ex. LYM-member Nicholas from France writes about his time in the organization

USA: Ex. LYM member "Maia" tells her story on the Factnet.

FactNet postings by "Maia," an ex-member of the LaRouche Youth Movement, March 2005

USA: Discussion on Factnet initiated by ex. member "Donebeenaround"

USA: Erin_b writes about the LYM.

USA: Ex. LYM members XYLM and ERIN_B and others discuss on the Factnet.

USA: yamabkad, ex. LYM-member on the life in the LaRouche Youthmovement.

USA: Ex. LYM member Chaim, leaving after 9-11!

By "Chaim" (posted on Factnet, September 18, 2003 - 1:24 pm)

USA: Anonymous LYM member: life in the ICLC "is brutal to the spirit"!

USA: Dialogue from Factnet between ex. LYM member zisepsyche and ex LC xlcr4life!

The Age/January 30, 1996
By Martin Daly