Lyndon LaRouche has created an organization that is a cult. The selfimposed environment this cult works in is one of "permament warfare"... This method of claiming that the organization is in a state of more or less permanent war is one which LaRouche shares with classical tyrants in history, like Lycurgus and Benito Mussolini.
All that matters in this cult is what the leader says and does. Opposition to the leader, or even different opinions than the leader has, does not exist at all. New recruits are introduced to a black-and-white, dualistic, world of good and evil, where the future of mankind depends on the followers of LaRouche. Without their work to spread the ideas of LaRouche the world is "doomed", they claim!
The followers are working for almost no income, often seven days a week (There are regional differences. In the USA they work seven or six and a half days a week, including the youth. In Europe it is sometimes a bit different.). "We are in war", the LaRouchemovement members often say. "We are in a war for civilization, we are in a constant war-mobilization with LaRouche as our supreme commander", it is claimed. People that get tired or worn out by this are explained to suffer of "battle-fatigue" or being "cowards in tha face of battle". Opposition to the "commander", i.e. LaRouche, is described as opposition to a commander during a war!
Why I dropped out!
I dropped out because I realized the danger with this view of the "permanent warfare".
What will happen when LaRouche gets power, I asked myself... And I studied and realized the similarities between the fascist ideas Mussolini had about the "constant warfare", and its similarities with the classical idea that Schiller wrote about: the tyrannical Lycurgian and spartan method of making WARFARE the most important virtue of the society.
I also realized that LaRouche all the time said one thing and did another. He is a man of double standards.
Just to mention a few examples:
* laRouche talks much about hypothesis and to search for truth, but when he writes his political speeches and articles they are ALWAYS written as if LaRouche has the absolute truth about EVERYTHING. Read anything LaRouche writes, there are NO hypothesis at all, just pure FACTS and absolute statements about how things "are", and "is" and "are not"... No hypothesis at all... Nothing is unclear... LaRouche already knows what the truth is! (Hypothesis non fingo, is a proper slogan for LaRouche!)
* He claims to be for a dialogue, but in order to be for a dialogue you have to believe that there is something to learn from people with a different worldview. But how can one learn anything from others if you already possess the absolute truth, as LaRouche IN FACT does.
* He claims to be against labor-intensive economical methods. "Primitive Accumulation", as it sometimes is called. I believe that labor-intensive work is not good, it tends to degenerate people. This is something LaRouche would agree on, if one asks him about it. But to say something is one thing, TO DO is another. Look at is creation, the LaRouchemovement! Is the organization labor- or capitalintensive? Is the standards of living high, normal or low or lousy among the members? Do they still work 6,5 or 7 days a week, more than twelve hours a day. (The resistancemovements, the armies in war and the civil rights movement DID NOT work constantly without rest, holidays or days off... The ideology of permanent warfare does NOT justify the laborintensive methods of LaRouche!)
* But did he not predict the current economic crisis?
No! If you week after week predict that a certain number will show up on a lottery and it shows up once every ten years, it does not mean that you have predicted that it will show up. LaRouche has claimed that the financial system is "doomed" for 50 years or so now. Look at the archives of the movement (old EIR:s etc...) and count the numbers of times LaRouche has said that the financial system is TOTALLY DOOMED. You can find the articles about that it will not survive at all after the first term of Clinton, after the second term, after the first term of Reagan... Etc... (LaRouche says that he only gives economic forecasts, not predictions. Ok... So why does he present his financial analysis as PREDICTIONS, not forecast? He PREDICTS, he does not say that "perhaps this or this will happen", but IT WILL HAPPEN! PREDICTION, not forecasts.)
* He spreads hatred! The conspiratorical worldview of Lyn divides all people into "good people" or "evil people". Those that laRouche does not like, and that is basicly all scientists, politicians and economists worldwide, are attacked in the most brutal and violent "mussolini-style" manner. Presidents, scientists and politicians are called "nazis", "monkeys", "apes" "agents", "lunatics", "madmen", etc... Yes, there is much talk about "love", "agape", and the unity of mankind in the organization. LaRouches speeches are filled with words like that. There is much talk about liberating the world from starvation, racism, nazis, colonialism and unjustices. But the end does NOT justify the means. One cannot fight one kind of unjustice by using other kinds of unjust methods! Hatred is not a good method to fight back hatred with!
An afternoon with Helga...
A world led by Lyndon LaRouche would be a world led in the same way that LaRouche leads his organization. One can easily judge what a person is like really, by looking at what a person does, not only what a person says. And if you want to find out how a political leader will be, once he or she gets power, look at how he or she leads any organization they are leading today and look at how he or she manages his or her private social affairs.
And the organization is run as by a madman!
I finally realized this one day in november 2003. I was invited to the home of Helga Zepp LaRouche, LaRouches wife and leader of the european organization. I had threathened to drop out and therefore she wanted to meet me, to make me stay. I asked her about the U.S. organization and why the members were forced to work so much. "They work almost seven days a week, 12 hours a day", I said,"and there is nothing that justifies anything like that". "We are in war for the survival of the civilization", she answered. "But no leading general would let their troops work during a war as much as the members in USA work", I replied. "ALL good generals have known that a soldier that gets to rest, that perhaps only fights five or six days a week or so, is a more capable soldier than one that fights constantly without being able to rest..." To this helga answered: "But Lyn (Lyndon laRouche) decided that the members should work seven days a week, and now six and a half day, and surely you know that he is the best commander and a brilliant general?"...
That was the crucial moment (puntum saliens!). That very moment I realized that LaRouche was mad! And that Helga was an incompetent subcommander.
Some months afterwards I left the organization!
Lycurgus!
During my time in the organization we often talked about the little essay by Friedrich Schiller, The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon. We, off course, viewed ourselves as followers of the great Solon and the communists/Brittish/hedonists/ etc were the followers of Lycurgus! In short LaRouchian worldview versus the oligarchical outlook. (It is available in an abriged version at one of the LaRouche homepages: http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/lycurgus_solon.html)
The essay is definitely one about the difference between a tyrannical leader and a more "humanist" kind of leader, but now that I have left the organization I hardly think Schiller would have said that LaRouche was a good representative of the "good guys".
The spartan leader Lycurgus created a state in which warfare was the highest virtue. The joy, freedom and development of individual citizens was sacrificed in order for the highest good; that the citizens were to devote themselves totally for the good of the state and the leaders of the state. The joy of life was replaced by the duties and responsibilities of the state! Lycurgus brainwashed his citizens so that they did not want to live by themselves; to choose their own way of doing things. No one was allowed to live according to his own desires. The state was an armed camp with the state and its leaders as the highest good.
This is why Lycurgus sometimes has been called the first fascist! And that is why I would caratherize LaRouche as a politician in the tradition of Lycurgus!
To end with Schiller, once more:
"Lycurgus's plan also entailed, that attachment to property was supplanted by attachment to the fatherland, and that emotions, undiverted by any private concerns, only lived for the state. Thus, he thought it good and necessary, to also spare his fellow citizens the business of normal life, and to let these affairs be attended to by foreigners, so that not even concerns of work, nor the joy of domestic matters, would divert their attentions from the affairs of the fatherland..."
"Beautiful and fitting it was of Solon, that he had respect for human nature, and never sacrificed people to the state, never the end to the means, rather let the state serve the people. His laws were loose bonds, in which the minds of the citizens moved freely and easily in all directions, and never perceived, that the bonds were directing them; the laws of Lycurgus were iron chains, in which bold courage chafed itself bloody, which pulled down the mind by their pressing weight. All possible paths were opened by the Athenian legislator to the genius and diligence of his citizens; the Spartan legislator walled off all of his citizens' potentials, except one: political service. Lycurgus decreed indolence by law, Solon punished it severely. In Athens, therefore, all virtues matured, industry and art flourished, the blessings of diligence abounded, all fields of knowledge were cultivated."
/T
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycurgus_(Sparta)
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