Lyndon LaRouche

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922) is an American political activist and founder of various political organizations in the United States and elsewhere.

1969–1973 NCLC, and "Operation Mop-up"

After its expulsion from the SDS in 1969 the SDS Labor Committee became the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). Despite its name, it had no significant connection with the labor movement and viewed intellectuals as the revolutionary vanguard. According to Dennis King, NCLC's internal life was highly regimented. Members gave up their jobs and private lives and became entirely devoted to the group and its leader. The movement developed an internal discipline technique, "ego stripping," which was intended to reinforce conformity and loyalty to LaRouche.

Related Topics:
1969 - National Caucus of Labor Committees - Dennis King

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Around this time there were reports in The New York Times and other newspapers of LaRouche members being kidnapped and forced to admit to being brainwashed. The LaRouche group announced at a national conference it had discovered a brainwashing or assassination plot by the CIA and KGB involving top member Chris White, a 26-year-old British national who had married LaRouche's ex-girlfriend, Carol Schnitzer, before moving with her to London to organize a British branch of the NCLC.

Related Topics:
The New York Times - Brainwashed

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King continues:

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:"…members from across the country had gathered in New York for the conference. The suspense began to mount as alarming rumors emanated from LaRouche's apartment. It was said that White had been tortured and brainwashed in a London basement by the CIA and British intelligence, who had programmed him first to kill his wife upon the utterance of a trigger word and then to finger LaRouche for assassination by Cuban exile frogmen.

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:LaRouche mobilized the entire NCLC. They passed out fliers on a massive scale in New York and other cities, describing White's alleged tortures in lurid detail. The national office issued over forty press releases in a two-week period. LaRouche and the Whites filed a complaint with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and launched a lawsuit against the CIA. NCLC members frantically solicited their parents and friends to serve on an Emergency Commission of Inquiry.

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::Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, (New York: Doubleday, 1989), pp. 27-28.

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Following this, the NCLC adopted violent and disruptive tactics under LaRouche's direction. According to articles in the Village Voice and other publications, NCLC members physically attacked meetings of the Communist Party, and later of the SWP and other groups who were classed by LaRouche as "left-protofascists." These attacks were called "Operation Mop-up." According to Dennis King, some ex-NCLC members who left the group at this time say that LaRouche was studying the career of Adolf Hitler and consciously adopting the tactics of the early Nazi Party.

Related Topics:
Village Voice - Communist Party - Dennis King - Adolf Hitler - Nazi Party

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The NCLC claimed that they acted in self-defense, even though all other accounts say that it was the NCLC that initiated the violence. LaRouche writes that "the FBI was orchestrating its assets in the leadership of the Communist Party U.S.A., to bring about my personal 'elimination',"http://www.larouchespeaks.net/pages/usvslarouche.html, citing a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. http://larouchein2004.net/exoneration/fbicpusa.htm

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Some of LaRouche's most outspoken opponents are to be found among those who remained in the Left, after LaRouche and his followers had moved away from Marxism. According to Tim Wohlforth and Dennis Tourish:

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:The parallel between LaRouche's thinking and that of the classical fascist model is striking. LaRouche, like Mussolini and Hitler before him, borrowed from Marx yet changed his theories fundamentally. Most important, Marx's internationalist outlook was abandoned in favor of a narrow nation-state perspective. Marx's goal of abolishing capitalism was replaced by the model of a totalitarian state that directs an economy where ownership of the means of production is still largely in public hands. The corporations and their owners remain in place but have to take their orders from LaRouche. Hitler called the schema "national socialism". LaRouche hopes the term "the American system" will be more acceptable."

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Whether or not LaRouche has ever called for a political arrangement similar to fascism is disputed. The NCLC engaged in activity such as defending alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk, who was acquitted by the Supreme Court of Israel, and associating with the far-right Liberty Lobby.

Related Topics:
War criminal - John Demjanjuk - Liberty Lobby

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