--- Following message extracted from ANEWS @ 1:374/14 ---
By Christopher Baker on Tue Oct 04 16:18:01 1994
From: Randy Edwards
To: All
Date: 03 Oct 94 19:23:48
Subj: [CDR] Larouche and the Cairo Conf.
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/* ---------- "CDR: Larouche and the Cairo Conf." ---------- */
Center for Democratic Renewal
P.O. Box 50469
Atlanta, GA 30302
(404) 221-0025
LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION AND
DEVELOPMENT
On January 26, 1994, Lyndon H. LaRouche was released from
federal prison after serving five years of a fifteen-year sentence
for his convictions on tax evasion and mail fraud. These
activities stemmed from illegal fundraising during his political
campaigns. On June 29, 1994, it was evident that he was back in
the political fray when he published an advertisement in The
Washington Post with 275 local, national and international
signatures demanding active opposition to the upcoming
International Conference on Population and Development. The five
years spent in prison obviously had no impact on LaRouche's style
of dirty politics.
Filled with lies, innuendoes, and twists on familiar political
buzzwords--family values, moral decline, abortion, euthanasia, and
Hitleresque eugenics--the advertisement was designed to provoke a
hysterical reaction and fear among anyone who is legitimately
concerned about these issues and their relationship to the
Population and Development Conference. CDR has been monitoring
LaRouche for the past 15 years. These tactics are not new among
LaRouchians--their opposition to this conference is but the latest
in a long line of issues exploited by LaRouche and his cult
followers to win support for their own racist and neo-fascist
agenda. LaRouche must be taken seriously because of his assault on
democracy and pluralistic values important to our society.
LAROUCHE AND AFRICAN AMERICANS
As part of this agenda, LaRouche and his followers have
orchestrated an extensive campaign to establish inroads into the
African American community. The number of prominent African
Americans on the signature ad indicate their degree of success.
LaRouchians have launched vicious attacks through front groups
against religious, community and civil rights leaders while at the
same time maintaining ties with racists such as the Ku Klux Klan
and Liberty Lobby. They attempt to drive a wedge between the
leaders and the rank-and-file members of national civil rights
organizations like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC).
LaRouche is building on attempts by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon
who wooed black clergy and leaders to oppose the civil rights
movement through shared opposition to lesbian and gay rights, drugs
and crime, and reproductive rights. Many of the same people caught
up previously in Moonie politics now appear in the LaRouche
advertisement.
Perhaps the most cynical stance taken by LaRouche was the
staging of a 1985 Martin Luther King Day rally in Washington, D.C.
LaRouche used Dr. King's name to attract a sizable crowd, which
found itself rallying for Ronald Reagan's Star Wars weaponry
system, rather than for Martin Luther King. During election
campaigns in the 1980s and early 1990s, LaRouchians fielded slates
of mostly black candidates in local elections around the country.
The campaigns in Georgia were typical: seasoned LaRouche organizers
from out of town convinced local black residents unfamiliar with
the cult to run for city council. The slate could not win, but
LaRouche gained a platform and an apparently credible position from
which to insult and harass legitimate black leaders through
violently-worded distorted, criticisms of Jesse Jackson, Julian
Bond, and Andrew Young. LaRouchians often attend national
conventions of large black organizations like the NAACP and SCLC to
disrupt or verbally assault conferees. His recruiters claim to
have "basically taken over the civil rights movement in the United
States." However, LaRouche cannot legitimately claim to represent
the spirit and values of the civil rights movement and also work
with Klansmen and other racists at the same time.
THE LAROUCHE AGENDA
What is the LaRouche agenda? The only clear answer to emerge
from the conflicting, contradictory stances and tactics he and his
followers take is power. A perennial presidential candidate,
LaRouche again vowed, after his release from prison, that he would
run in 1996. In switching from communist tendencies in the 1950s
and 1960s to alliances with the far right in the 1970s, LaRouche
recognized that he would never achieve significant influence within
the left, and that on the right, he could gain access to many more
potential followers and the wealth of the radical right.
Described as a neo-Nazi, a fascist, and a totalitarian,
LaRouche has used both overt and covert deceptions to advance
himself in the political sphere over the past three decades. His
platforms on issues such as labor, the farm crisis, and civil
rights has been a mishmash of a public "party" lines designed to
garner support from workers, farmers, and African-Americans, and a
private hatred and denigration of these same groups that emerge
upon closer examination of the man and his politics.
For example, although LaRouche claims to support African
Americans, as far back as 1973, LaRouche members worked with the Ku
Klux Klan through what was then their main political arm, the
National Caucus of Labor Committees. They were linked with the
followers of convicted school bus bomber Robert Miles, a former
Michigan United Klans of America Grand Dragon. In the Klan
newsletter, Miles applauded LaRouche as being "a white racist to
the core." In 1974, LaRouchians ran Michigan Klansman Vernon
Higgins as a candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives.
LAROUCHIAN TACTICS FROM THE PAST
Even as LaRouche traveled the gamut from the far-left to the
far-right on the political continuum, his political thrust has
always been based on anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. While these
bizarre notions are similar to those of other white supremacist
groups (Jewish-led banking interests control the United States and
the world), the anti-Semitic stance taken by LaRouchians is often
cloaked by euphemisms. The Rothschilds and "British imperialism"
are cited as the cause of America's woes. His connections to the
Liberty Lobby, the Ku Klux Klan, Holocaust-deniers, Georgia
segregationist Tom McCrary, and his support for apartheid forces in
South Africa further enforce his anti-Semitic image, and reveal as
well his racism.
The racist and anti-Semitic basis of Larouchian ideologies is
often hidden from the public in the quest for political power.
Over the years, various front organizations have duped the public
into supporting his mixture of far-right and far-left politics.
The National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), the official
organization of the LaRouchian cult, has stretched its tentacles
under various fronts. The National Democratic Policy Committee
(NDPC), the National Anti-Drug Coalition, the Fusion Energy
Foundation, and the Lafayette Foundation for the Arts and Sciences
are just some of the LaRouchian arms that have made significant
inroads into mainstream American politics. Each raises funds and
gains support by pretending to be what they are not in order to
advance the political power of their leader and his followers, who
sometimes run for political office as well.
Beginning in the 1970s, LaRouchians staged a campaign to win
support from labor unions that was, at the same time, an attempt to
destroy the unions from without and from within. The NCLC
attempted to persuade workers that strikes were useless and
virtually un-American and used smear tactics, vicious personal
attacks, lies, and fear to debilitate union leaders. The purpose
was to undermine union opposition to capitalist managerial
practices and divert workers' attention to fighting Jewish "usury"
and "Zionism," under LaRouche's leadership. Construction workers
were wooed under the guise of pro-nuclear power rhetoric when the
underlying motivation was to discredit and weaken support for
environmentalists. The 1980 elections saw LaRouchians blatantly
misrepresent union leaders to make it appear that LaRouche had
their political support. This tactic of overt exploitation and
accompanying covert destruction of existing institutions has been
used again and again throughout the years by LaRouche supporters
and front organizations.
The farm crisis of the 1980s is an example. His "Food for
Peace" campaign was designed to lead farmers to believe that he
offered the solution to the farmers' problems. In reality, this
program did little for the farmer and attempted to enfeeble more
legitimate activist farm groups. The blame for the farmers' crisis
was laid at the feet of international conspirators, a thinly veiled
anti-Semitic reference.
The NDPC, the Schiller Institute, and the International Civil
Rights Movement-Solidarity are LaRouchian political arms that have
courted the support of people of color and indigenous nations at
the same time that they have claimed that "99 and 4/100ths of the
human race" is composed of a "bestial mass." "We do not regard all
cultures and nations as equally deserving of sovereignty and
survival," wrote LaRouche in The Case of Walter Lippman, speaking
specifically about Native American claims to tribal lands.
Support of black candidates during past elections has hidden
LaRouchian support of South African apartheid. The Schiller
Institute and LaRouche newspapers published a barrage of written
attacks on leading anti-apartheid activists, including Randall
Robinson, the director of TransAfrica, and Rev. C.T. Vivian, CDR's
board chair. LaRouche's organization was paid to produce private
intelligence reports on the U.S. anti-apartheid movement for the
South Africa Bureau of State Security, according to the October 7,
1979 issue of The New York Times. The goal of these efforts was to
weaken and destroy the disinvestment campaign of the anti-apartheid
movement.
LAROUCHIAN IDEOLOGY
Through this confusing mixture of deception, trickeries, smear
tactics, and outright lies, it is difficult to ascertain exactly
what LaRouche and his supporters stand for. The themes that
underlie whatever policy LaRouche supports at any given time,
however, are strikingly clear to CDR which closely examines the
inner-workings of white supremacist politics. Anti-Semitism and
racism, intolerance of any person or idea opposed to their own,
totalitarian rule within the organization, a neo-Nazi belief in a
master race (LaRouche and his supporters) that will someday rule
the world, and a fascist reaction to existing American and
international institutions are always present underneath the
rhetoric.
Claimed by neither legitimate conservative nor liberal
political forces, LaRouchians have used tactics that include
attempted infiltration of and the appearance of support by standing
institutions or organizations, such as trade unions and the
Democratic Party. The sanitization of LaRouchian racist and anti-
Semitic beliefs takes place in local as well as national political
arenas under cover of "traditional American values." However,
according to journalist Nick Gallo, LaRouchian politics aim for
"preservation of Western Civilization, purity of culture and youth,
elimination of Jewish and homosexual influence, suspicion of
international banking conspiracies" (The Seattle Weekly). This
xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist agenda is common
in far-right circles in the U.S. today, but LaRouchians are, at
times, more clever in disguising their intent than many other white
supremacist organizations.
Professor Richard Hofstadter sees the periodical rise of
conspiracy-minded groups related to economic, social, or political
crises ("The Paranoid Style in American Politics"). Groups like
the NCLC prey on people's fear of political and economic
instability. LaRouche and his followers have become experts in
choosing volatile issues and exploiting them to their own
advantage. Their latest attack on the International Conference on
Population and Development echoes earlier campaigns using fear and
the twisting of facts to promote hysteria and lure the fearful into
their camp.
THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT (ICPD)
The ICPD, sponsored by the United Nations, will be held in
Cairo, Egypt in September 1994. The purpose is "to forge a new
international consensus that population concerns should be at the
centre of all economic, social, political, and environmental
activities." The conference aims to do so within the confines of
"universally recognized principles of human rights and sovereignty"
and with the goal of "respect[ing] the rights and choices of
individuals."
This noble pursuit recognizes the impact of population growth
on individual lives, communities, and nations. Widely accepted and
reputable research in population, consumption and development and
their effect is the basis for this concern. LaRouchians, however,
have turned this notion on its head in the recently published
advertisement condemning the conference.
Claiming that the dangers of population growth are not just
exaggerated but blatantly false, and that the earth can support an
unlimited number of people, LaRouchians call for a "shut down" of
the Cairo conference.
They claim that the aim of the conference is to "slash
population growth rates to zero over the next decades through the
rampant spread of abortion, sterilization, and euthanasia."
LaRouche compares UN organizers of this conference with Hitler, and
claims the conference will bring on the death of the "family"
worldwide. The ad espouses the "sacredness of human life" and
claims that "billions of people must die to meet the ICPD's
population goals."
This is, of course, based purely on the imagination and
political savvy of LaRouche. The great irony in this particularly
twisted and manipulative tactic is that LaRouche's true beliefs on
the sanctity of human life have been documented and are actually
the antithesis of his claims in the ad. In 1987, LaRouche was a
proponent of mass screening and complete quarantine of AIDS
victims. He wrote that, unless this were to take place, "other
ways of reducing the number of carriers will become increasingly
popular. . . [T]he only solution [to AIDS] is either public health
measures including isolation as necessary, or 'accelerated death'
of carriers" (New Solidarity). Even though this proposal was
reportedly to "save the human species from extinction," this is
hardly the viewpoint of one who holds human life sacred.
The anti-conference ad also implies a respect for people the
world over and rails against the use of eugenics that the
conference would supposedly employ. LaRouche's often quoted
sentiments belie this notion. A man who sees a large proportion of
the human race as composed of subhuman types, fit only to be
conquered and dominated, cannot expect to be believed when he
professes a concern for the oppressed majority of the world's
population. The Chinese people, according to LaRouche, are a
"paranoid" people who share, with "lower forms of animal life," a
"fundamental distinction from actual human personalities." African
Americans who insist on equality, LaRouche says, are obsessed with
"zoological specifications of micro-constituencies' self-interests"
and with "distinctions...which would be proper to the
classification of monkeys and baboons." Tribal peoples have a
"likeness to the lower beasts" and ancient civilizations in Africa
and America declined because they fell into "an 'heritable' moral
degeneration." One might wonder, then, why LaRouche is now
possessed with a concern for worldwide human life.
The real agenda is revealed in the second part of the
advertisement when LaRouche accuses the conference of being "part
and parcel of a larger game plan to make the United Nations the
centerpiece of a new world empire...a United Nations world
dictatorship." This is the crux of LaRouchian politics that has
been consistent through the years of twisting political
manipulation.
This time, the reference to "international financial networks"
is slight, yet his carping on the "one-worldists who run the United
Nations" as the perpetrators of a conspiracy to rob the world of
"the family as we know it" and who have "the same contempt for
human life that drove Hitler's extermination camps" expose his
fanaticism. LaRouche's global conspiracy to rule the world is a
grave threat to human rights worldwide.
This appeal to the public is as inconsistent with true
LaRouchian ideologies as it is calculated to stir fear in the
hearts of those already concerned with "family" issues, individual
autonomy, and the U.S. position of power in a rapidly changing
world structure. LaRouche again has chosen an issue to exploit in
order to put himself at the forefront of the battle against
international and national "conspirators." His totalitarian, neo-
Nazi, fascist, anti-Semitic, and racist beliefs are cleverly hidden
in an outrageous ad that cannot be taken lightly. LaRouche is
again making himself a part of American politics and must continue
to be monitored and exposed as a charlatan and demagogue who is
nevertheless a threat to progressive American politics and to
democracy itself.
The Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR) is a national non-profit
clearinghouse for information on white supremacist groups
throughout the world. Founded in 1979 as the National Anti-Klan
Network, CDR monitors hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and
researches how racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic views affect the
mainstream of American society. As part of the U.S. Network for
Cairo, CDR provides information and analysis about how the goals of
the ICPD are subverted by far-right attacks from the religious
right, ultra-conservatives, and white supremacists. This report
was prepared by Loretta J. Ross, Program Research Director, and
Mary Ann Mauney, Research Assistant.
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