Lost in the day's news is this eye-opener: the presidential public financing system, that brain-child of 1970s reformers, today handed over a cool $840,000 to Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., earned by his showing in a previous run for president.
For those unfamiliar with Larouche, here is a brief description of him and his works, first from a left-wing perspective, dated 2000:
Though often dismissed as a bizarre political cult, the LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology. Beginning in the 1970s, the LaRouchites combined populist antielitism with attacks on leftists, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and organized labor. They advocated a dictatorship in which a "humanist" elite would rule on behalf of industrial capitalists. They developed an idiosyncratic, coded variation on the Illuminati Freemason and Jewish banker conspiracy theories.
Then from a Jewish perspective, dated 1995:
The LaRouche cult - whose leader, 71-year-old, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., was just paroled from federal prison after serving time for his role in defrauding a series of elderly persons of more than $30 million, in many cases of their life savings - blames prominent Jews and Jewish families, organizations and businesses for organized crime and international drug trafficking.
And here is my own take on him, dated 1997:
A world conspiracy theory has served as the main platform for LaRouche's many organizations, publications, and repeated presidential campaigns (starting in 1976). He argues that a single oligarchic conspiracy has been bedeviling mankind since the dawn of history. Its headquarters were first in Babylon, then in Rome, Venice, and now in London. The British aristocracy aspires to achieve world hegemony through conspiratorial means; the queen of England is the number 1 danger to humanity. In his view, the British gain power in large part by reducing the status of other populations through war, starvation, and contraception, and in part by drugging them with popular culture and hallucinogens. Once the British have achieved a "new Dark Ages" of unrestrained capitalism, London-based conspirators will reign supreme and will use their power to kill off large parts of the human race through nuclear weapons, AIDS, and other methods. To prevent this catastrophe, LaRouche advocates preparation for total war against Great Britain.
(December 1, 2003)
