Anatomy of Paranoia

My first interest in politics came during the 1984 Presidential elections. After that though, I developed a fascination with the local politics of my hometown, Chicago. I followed the rise of our mayor, Harold Washington, and even more his tragic and untimely death. During that time, Lyndon Larouche had made a name for himself not only nationally but more substantially on the state level in Illinois. Larouche is a remarkable figure who always tested the bounds of the extreme but for a time he was on the brink of substantively shaking up our political system. Here are some highlights...

He began teaching classes at New York City's Free School on dialectical materialism and attracted around him a group of undergraduates and graduate students from Columbia University and the City College of New York, several of whom were involved with the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), itself very prominent in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the 1988 version of his autobiography, LaRouche writes that he was not really a Marxist when he gave his lectures at the Free School but that he used his familiarity with Marxism to win students away from the New Left counterculture. This assertion is contradicted by the autobiographical material in a 1974 work [27] where he depicts himself as having been a staunch Marxist revolutionary since 1945. However, what LaRouche began to write and teach in the late 1960s was somewhat different from orthodox Marxism, supplementing the doctrine of class struggle with a strong emphasis on the dangers of a supposedly parasitical finance capital as opposed to industrial capital. He would continue with this latter emphasis in the following decade while abandoning for the most part the use of Marxist jargon.

and...

On December 2, 1971, LaRouche engaged in a spirited debate with leading Keynesian economist Abba Lerner at Queens College, in New York City. The debate pertained to arguments put forward in a leaflet by LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees, specifically on the questions of the wage and price controls and austerity policies being put into place at that time by the Nixon administration, and by Brazil's military regime. Lerner offered a qualified defense of those policies against LaRouche's claim that they represented a revival of the ideas of Hjalmar Schacht. According to the only published accounts, those of the LaRouche organization, Lerner said, “But if Germany had accepted Schacht's policies, Hitler would not have been necessary.” LaRouche supporters claim that Lerner's friend, the late philosopher Sidney Hook, attended the debate and stated, "LaRouche won the debate", but "will lose much more as a result of that."[41] LaRouche interpreted Hook's remark to mean that the "establishment" in economics departments in academia would unite against him and no longer debate him, for fear of another
upset.[42]

Whatever potential he had, it came crashing down when in the late 1980's he was convicted of several felonies and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. I remember Larouche's name only because his rise correlated to my interest in local and state politics at the time.

I had long forgotten Larouche when one of his new minions passed out his latest newsletter at the train station I was at. Larouche, now in his mid 80's, has gone from maverick and pioneer to paranoid conspiracy theorist.

This latest newsletter hypothesizes that not only is Michael Bloomberg going to be the next President, but that the whole thing is being orchestrated by a consortium of business interests as well as media from London. He purports the two puppetteers as Felix Rohatyn and Rupert Murdoch. In perfect machievallian fashion, he predicts that Murdoch will use his London media connections to orchestrate all of this. Bloomberg makes for a perfect demon of any conspiracy theory involving international financier moguls acting as puppet masters because of his long history in such matter. He believes that this syndicate already brought down Rudy Giuliani, and in fact, he tries to create credibility by proclaiming that this is something he predicted before the fact. I won't check the facts, however Larouche proclaims

Giuliani was built up to be shot down

I assume that Larouche was referring to the media. If the media built up Giuliani, I missed it. The New York Times has had a long running feud with Giuliani going back to his days as mayor, and I frankly saw little positive coverage of him. In my opinion, Giuliani was brought down by a flawed campaign strategy not by some nefarious media orchestration. Then again, I don't see Giuliani's demise as a conspiracy theory.

Furthermore, he sees Obama's rise as nothing more than the puppetteer's method of eliminating Hillary Clinton. He predicts that these same nefarious London forces will soon drive a steak through the heart of Obama and open the way for a Bloomberg run.

Over the past week, the rea news is that London has launched its attack n Obama, through a series of news stories, typified by the Feb. 26 London Times story by James Bone and Dominic Kennedy, headlined, "Mansion Mistake Piles the Pressure on Barack Obama.

Larouche goes on to mention Rezko and frames that trial and its media coverage into the context of an overall strategy of bringing Obama down. It is interesting because Conservatives like me see even the media's new found vigor in challenging Obama as not enough. Hillary supporters would see nothing short of making up a lurid thirty year affair with a male prostitute as not enough. Yet, Larouche sees this buzz in media attention toward Obama as part of an overall orchestration by the powers that be controlling Bloomberg. Such is the nature of conspiracy theorists, nothing is ever what it appears. It would be perfectly machiavellian for Murdoch to use only his London connections to bring down Obama. On the other hand, there is one thing that Larouche doesn't account for. If the London media brought down Obama, it would be the first time foreign media brought down a U.S. Presidential candidate. (for obvious reasons).

Larouche finishes off the conspiracy theory by painting an economic picture that is ripe for a fascist takeover by its new puppet, Michael Bloomberg...

About the only thing that is certain is that the current post Bretton Woods system is finished. Between now and election day, the financial crash will accelereate, through a series of shocks to the system. The United States will be a very different place by the time the nominating conventions occur and the vote is cast.

At this point, Larouche sees ghosts and demons behind every corner and in every shadow. I am reminded of something that happened to one of my favorite sports casters, Jeremy Schaap. Schaap had been assigned to cover Bobby Fischer's reappearance in Iceland after years of isolation. Jeremy's father, Dick, had recently died and also he had a long and complicated history with Fischer. Dick Schaap had befriended Fischer when he was just a young prodigy but after they grew apart, he also wrote a very critical column of Fischer in the early eighties. Fischer used the encounter in 2005 in Iceland to attack Jeremy's recently departed father in a vicious and cruel way. Upon finishing the piece, Schaap said he wasn't angry about the cruel things that Fischer said about his dad but sad that this once great champion became a shell of his former self. He was sad that he was so broken that all he could do was attack a dead man to his son.
That is much the way I feel about Larouche. He was a man on the brink of greatness and all that greatness has gone away and all that is left is paranoia and conspiracy theories.