Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement
Encyclopedia
The Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement (WLYM or LYM) and the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LaRouche PAC or LPAC) are part of the political organization of controversial American political figure Lyndon LaRouche
. The LYM's "war room" is in Leesburg, Virginia
, also the headquarters of LPAC.
when it distributed over a million leaflets across the country picturing Arnold Schwarzenegger
alongside Adolf Hitler
, and tens of thousands of other pamphlets in California.
In a 2004 article in the University of California, Berkeley
independent student newspaper, The Daily Californian
, reporter David Cohn described the local chapter of the LYM as "30 college-aged youths" who spent several hours each day undergoing instruction provided by the LaRouche organization. One member, 23-year-old Jason Ross, told Cohn that he had dropped out of Stanford University
in his junior year to join the movement. "We are in a complete breakdown of the financial system and we know that. We can use our time in a more appropriate manner than going to school," he said. Cohn also talked to three other members who had all quit school to join the movement. The Daily Californian reported the movement's numbers as "about 100 young people from Los Angeles to Oakland" who "travel to dozens of college campuses aggressively recruiting members and not hesitating to ask newcomers to quit school". As a result of the Internet, there are active chapters in nations like Japan where LaRouche has no official organization. The LYM has also expanded its activity into the African nations of South Africa, Zimbabwe
, and Mozambique
.
at the state and local levels. In 2006, LaRouche Youth Movement activist and Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee member Cody Jones was honored as "Democrat of the Year" for the 43rd Assembly District of California, by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. At the April 2007, California State Democratic Convention, LYM activist Quincy O'Neal was elected vice-chairman of the California State Democratic Black Caucus, and Wynneal Innocentes was elected corresponding secretary of the Filipino Caucus. O'Neal is also president of the LYM's Democratic Party Club, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Legacy Club, which is affiliated with the California Democratic Council
. In March 2010, LaRouche Youth leader Kesha Rogers won the Democratic congressional primary in Houston, Texas' 22nd District.
and the modern science of Johannes Kepler
," combined with the performance of classical vocal music, particularly Johann Sebastian Bach
's "Jesu Meine Freude
." They spend time in what are called "Monge
brigades," which emphasize readings of Vladimir Vernadsky
, Alexander Hamilton
, Carl Gauss and Bernhard Riemann
. The LaRouche Youth have been assisted around the U.S. in performance workshops on classical music, as well as African-American spiritual
s, by well known musicians William Warfield
and Sylvia Olden Lee
, and in drama performance by actor Robert Beltran
.
The LYM has disrupted university lectures to distribute their material. On October 23, 2006, a group of LaRouche Youth Movement members twice disrupted a Connecticut U.S. Senate debate between Alan Schlesinger
, Ned Lamont
, and Joseph Lieberman. According to The Day, as Joe Lieberman spoke, the hecklers "sang a harmonized ode targeting Vice President Dick Cheney
, which, according to the group's website, is unofficially titled 'The Fat-Ass Nazi Song'."
During the election campaign of 2006, the LYM came into conflict with organizations including the Ayn Rand Institute
, which the LYM accused of promoting genocide in speeches by its representatives at various campuses. LYM members confronted Institute executive director Yaron Brook
at various universities across the US, heckling him and calling his policies "fascist". In one case, at the University of California, Irvine
, 15 LYM members, some of who violently resisted, were arrested.
LYM members frequently combine political activity with choral music performance. They sang outside the Democratic Party Convention in Boston in 2004, and in 2007 they performed choral music with lyrics about impeaching Dick Cheney in classrooms at Harvard and Boston University.
During 2007, LYM members have been seen in on the streets, campuses and conferences emphasizing two issues in particular: a call by LaRouche for the impeachment of Dick Cheney
, and the assertion that the theory of human-caused global warming
is a fraud motivated by Malthusianism
. On this latter issue, LYM have confronted Al Gore
on several occasions at his public events. In the Philippines
, LYM members debated a variety of spokespersons for the Global Warming theory. In Argentina
, LYM leader Betiana Gonzalez disrupted Gore's speech at a Biofuels conference. A similar incident took place earlier in the year in Montreal, Canada.
In November 2007, the LYM launched a campaign against social networking websites such as MySpace
and Facebook
, with the mass distribution of the pamphlet "The Noosphere
vs. The Blogosphere
: Is the Devil in Your Laptop?" The pamphlet says that Rupert Murdoch
, owner of MySpace, and Microsoft
, owner of Facebook (Microsoft owns only 2.5% of Facebook), are involved in social engineering
to destroy the cognitive
powers and potential for political leadership among young people. It also attacks Wikipedia
in similar terms.
TIME magazine's coverage of Kesha Rogers' campaign says that "The LYM espouses LaRouche opposition to free trade and 'globalism' (the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund) and it also calls for a return to a humanist classical education, emphasizing the works of Plato and Leibniz."
report that called them a political cult. In 2006, college officials in Boston told a reporter that the LYM was one of the two leading high-pressure groups on area campuses, and that it engaged in strong-arm tactics to induce students to leave college and help recruit new members. Boyd called the charges "gossip" and said the movement was working "for ideas and real policies" and was a "youth movement in the Democratic Party". Investigative journalist and LaRouche biographer Dennis King has described the founding of the WLYM by LaRouche as a way of maintaining his legacy after his death by "[going] back to his roots, the roots of his movement in the radical campus movement in the late 1960s." Avi Klein of the Washington Monthly describes this as an element of a campaign LaRouche created to blame the "first generation" of his own movement for fundraising failures, and to appeal to young members by channeling "the rage new acolytes felt toward their parents at a nearby, internal enemy".
conference and LYM cadre school in Germany, 22-year-old Jeremiah Duggan, a Jewish student from London who was studying in Paris, was believed to have run onto a busy road in what the British coroner called a "state of terror," and was killed. The German police investigation concluded that it was a suicide. A private forensic consultant said that he had found evidence of serious assault with a blunt instrument, but no public authorities have given credence to this claim. A LaRouche spokesman has said the young man killed himself because he was disturbed. In October 2004, a British inquest into Duggan's death heard allegations from his mother that LYM and the Schiller Institute may have used brainwashing techniques on her son to persuade him to join the movement.
Jeffrey Steinberg, a top security aide in the LaRouche movement, responded by portraying Michael Winsted as an agent of the Washington Post who "briefly infiltrated the Baltimore chapter of the LYM".
as "FDR PAC" and by "Spannaus in '96". In 2000, LaRouche's FDR PAC made news when, forbidden from soliciting on U.S. Post Office property, it demanded that the Salvation Army
be treated the same way. As of 2002, Nancy Spannaus was the executive director of the PAC.
LPAC and LYM members targeted Senator Joe Lieberman
's reelection campaign in 2006. At one campaign appearance three members sang loudly "If you want a third world war, vote for Joe, Bill Buckley's whore".
In 2007, two associated of LPAC, Robert Lucero and Tony DeFranco, were escorted off Post Office property in Naperville, Illinois
, by police. The two were carrying signs calling President George W. Bush as "dumb" and calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney
.
During his 2007 campaign for the New Jersey General Assembly
, Gordon M. Johnson
's contributions to LPAC became a subject of criticism. Johnson reportedly made seven conributions in 2005 and 2006 totalling $1,850. He apologized repeatedly, saying he regretted that he was not "aware of the LaRouche record of anti-Semitism" and was asking for the contributions to be refunded.
LPAC members promoted LaRouche's "Homeowners and Bank Protection Act" in 2009. One report says the act "would establish a federal agency that would place federal- and state-chartered banks under protection, freeze all existing home mortgages for a period of time, adjust mortgage values to fair prices, restructure existing mortgages at appropriate interest rates, and write off speculative debt obligations of mortgage-backed securities". According to one opponent, Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski
, on closer inspection the act "calls for seizure by the government" of all U.S banks.
In 2009 LPAC members were noted for their posters which depicted Barack Obama
with a Hitler-style toothbrush mustache. They asked pedestrians "Do you want to stop Obama from killing people?" and "Want to fire our Nazi president?" The posters led to violent reactions from passersby, including one man who had lost family members in World War II. LPAC spokesperson Nancy Spannaus said that the posters were an "honest emblem of what the administration policy represents". A 2009 report says that the LPAC website, Larouchpac.com, appeared to have deliberately copied the look of the Barackobama.com website, though the contents were entirely different. The LPAC website reportedly contained satires of Democratic Party leaders and an attack of wind power.
Following complaints from customers, Kroger
, a grocery store chain in Southern California, received an injunction in 2009 barring LPAC activists from soliciting donations or distributing literature on their properties. Another grocery chain, Trader Joe's
, also sought an injunction after customers allegedly complained that the LPAC members had called them "bitches" and "Hitler lovers". Stater Brothers also sought an injunction to bar LPAC members from soliciting in front of their stores. Lyndon LaRouche, LPAC, and its treasurer Barbara Boyd were sued in 2009 by the widow of Kenneth Kronberg
, who alleges that they had defamed her in an LPAC article. Kronberg and his wife had been longtime members of LaRouche movement before his suicide.
By 2010, LPAC members were calling for Obama's impeachment. Members of the Tea Party movement
distanced themselves from the LPAC members, who often appeared at Tea Party rallies. One Tea Party officials complained that the "Obama as Hitler" posters "trivializes the travesties that occurred under the Fascist regime of Nazi Germany". In 2010, LPAC members said the PAC staffed from 80 to 100 tables across the country every day.
Several confrontations between supporters of LPAC candidates and local residents were reported in April 2011 in Healdsburg, California
. The police were called repeatedly, but no one was cited. Other LPAC workers report receiving a positive reception in San Francisco in March 2011.
LPAC received about $6 million dollars during the 2009-2010 election cycle, according to public records and Out of the Storm News, a publication of The Heartland Institute. Donations came from nearly 5000 individuals, a large percentage of them from employees of the PAC or its affiliates. The largest donation, $12,425, came from Kathy Magraw, listed as a supervisor at LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review
. Magraw is also the largest individual recipient of funds from the PAC, receiving $129,705 during the cycle.
LYM received $3,142,142 from LPAC in the 2009-2010 election cycle. The Center for Public Integrity
reports that almost $6 million of the $13 million raised by LPAC since 2007 went to LaRouche Youth, to pay for "grassroots lobbying and advocacy". The LaRouche Political Action Committee paid the group $462,850 in 2006, $2,732,851 during the 2008 election cycle, and $4,186,068 in the 2010 cycle.
According to Boyd, the payments to LaRouche Youth LLC are for web content, field organizing, canvassing, and public advocacy, all of which are categorized as "grassroots lobbying and advocacy". Boyd said the nearly $500,000 in uncategorized "petty cash" payments went to political organizing activities across the country, mostly vehicle operating expenses. In 2006, LPAC paid $7000 in fines to the FEC for failing to file mandatory disclosure forms.
LPAC gave $11,000 in contributions to three candidates in the 2009-2010 election cycle: $4000 each to "Kesha Rogers For Congress" and "Summer Shields for Congress", and $3000 to "Rachel Brown For Congress".
The LYM website lists 21 offices in the U.S. and Canada. The LPAC website lists 12 offices in the U.S.
From 2006 to 2007, members of the team produced a set of computer animations described as a pedagogical tour through Johannes Kepler
's New Astronomy
and Harmony of the World, plus another set on the discovery of the orbit of Ceres titled The Mind of Gauss. After another website, keplersdiscovery.com, appeared that discussed the same works by Kepler, team members asserted that it was a plagiarized and inferior copy of their own work. In August 2008, the team released an hour-long video, The Harvard Yard, in which they elaborate their claim of plagiarism and charge that the "Kepler's Discovery" site was the work of Harvard University
. In 2008 they issued Firewallin Defense of the Nation State. This was followed by the release on July 3 of the feature-length sequel 1932, narrated by Robert Beltran
, and a December production on scientific method
, The Matter of Mind. They are also producing regular short videos on topical issues.
Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. is an American political activist and founder of a network of political committees, parties, and publications known collectively as the LaRouche movement...
. The LYM's "war room" is in Leesburg, Virginia
Leesburg, Virginia
Leesburg is a historic town in, and county seat of, Loudoun County, Virginia, United States of America. Leesburg is located west-northwest of Washington, D.C. along the base of the Catoctin Mountain and adjacent to the Potomac River. Its population according the 2010 Census is 42,616...
, also the headquarters of LPAC.
History
Barbara Boyd, spokesperson for the LYM and treasurer of LPAC, says that LYM was founded in 2000. According to Harley Schlanger, a LaRouche spokesperson, LYM's first major campaign was during the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray DavisGray Davis
Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis, Jr. is an American Democratic politician who served as California's 37th Governor from 1999 until being recalled in 2003...
when it distributed over a million leaflets across the country picturing Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
alongside Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, and tens of thousands of other pamphlets in California.
In a 2004 article in the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
independent student newspaper, The Daily Californian
The Daily Californian
The Daily Californian is an independent, student-run newspaper that serves the University of California, Berkeley campus and its surrounding community. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and twice a week during the summer...
, reporter David Cohn described the local chapter of the LYM as "30 college-aged youths" who spent several hours each day undergoing instruction provided by the LaRouche organization. One member, 23-year-old Jason Ross, told Cohn that he had dropped out of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in his junior year to join the movement. "We are in a complete breakdown of the financial system and we know that. We can use our time in a more appropriate manner than going to school," he said. Cohn also talked to three other members who had all quit school to join the movement. The Daily Californian reported the movement's numbers as "about 100 young people from Los Angeles to Oakland" who "travel to dozens of college campuses aggressively recruiting members and not hesitating to ask newcomers to quit school". As a result of the Internet, there are active chapters in nations like Japan where LaRouche has no official organization. The LYM has also expanded its activity into the African nations of South Africa, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
, and Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
.
Democratic Party involvement
LYM members have been active in the Democratic PartyDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
at the state and local levels. In 2006, LaRouche Youth Movement activist and Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee member Cody Jones was honored as "Democrat of the Year" for the 43rd Assembly District of California, by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. At the April 2007, California State Democratic Convention, LYM activist Quincy O'Neal was elected vice-chairman of the California State Democratic Black Caucus, and Wynneal Innocentes was elected corresponding secretary of the Filipino Caucus. O'Neal is also president of the LYM's Democratic Party Club, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Legacy Club, which is affiliated with the California Democratic Council
California Democratic Council
The California Democratic Council , an unofficial umbrella organization of volunteer Democratic Clubs, was founded at conferences at Asilomar and Fresno conferences in 1952-53 by future U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, State Senator George Miller, Jr...
. In March 2010, LaRouche Youth leader Kesha Rogers won the Democratic congressional primary in Houston, Texas' 22nd District.
Pedagogy and campaigns
LaRouche is highly critical of contemporary college curricula, and has designed his own pedagogy for members of his youth movement, which he describes as "the reliving of the crucial discoveries of universal physical-scientific principle by, successively, the ancient Pythagoreans and PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
and the modern science of Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...
," combined with the performance of classical vocal music, particularly Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's "Jesu Meine Freude
Jesu Meine Freude
Jesu, meine Freude is a motet composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. The full title of the work is Motet No. 3 in E minor, BWV 227.- The work :...
." They spend time in what are called "Monge
Gaspard Monge
Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse was a French mathematician, revolutionary, and was inventor of descriptive geometry. During the French Revolution, he was involved in the complete reorganization of the educational system, founding the École Polytechnique...
brigades," which emphasize readings of Vladimir Vernadsky
Vladimir Vernadsky
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a Russian/Ukrainian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also worked in Ukraine where he...
, Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, Carl Gauss and Bernhard Riemann
Bernhard Riemann
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was an influential German mathematician who made lasting contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them enabling the later development of general relativity....
. The LaRouche Youth have been assisted around the U.S. in performance workshops on classical music, as well as African-American spiritual
Spiritual (music)
Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...
s, by well known musicians William Warfield
William Warfield
William Caesar Warfield , was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor.-Early life and career:Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town...
and Sylvia Olden Lee
Sylvia Olden Lee
Sylvia Olden Lee was a renowned vocal coach and accompanist, and the first African-American to be employed by the Metropolitan Opera. She was a master of all aspects of European classical music as well as the Negro Spiritual....
, and in drama performance by actor Robert Beltran
Robert Beltran
Robert Adame Beltran is an American actor, known for his role as Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager.-Early life:...
.
The LYM has disrupted university lectures to distribute their material. On October 23, 2006, a group of LaRouche Youth Movement members twice disrupted a Connecticut U.S. Senate debate between Alan Schlesinger
Alan Schlesinger
Alan Schlesinger is an attorney, former Derby, Connecticut mayor, former Connecticut State Representative, and three-time unsuccessful Congressional candidate who received the Republican nomination for the seat representing Connecticut that is currently held by U.S...
, Ned Lamont
Ned Lamont
Edward Miner "Ned" Lamont, Jr. is a businessman and heir and most recently an unsuccessful candidate for the 2010 Democratic nomination for Governor of Connecticut. On May 22, 2010, Lamont received more than fifteen percent of the vote at the state Democratic convention, and appeared on the...
, and Joseph Lieberman. According to The Day, as Joe Lieberman spoke, the hecklers "sang a harmonized ode targeting Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
, which, according to the group's website, is unofficially titled 'The Fat-Ass Nazi Song'."
During the election campaign of 2006, the LYM came into conflict with organizations including the Ayn Rand Institute
Ayn Rand Institute
The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism is a 501 nonprofit think tank in Irvine, California that promotes Ayn Rand's philosophy, called Objectivism. It was established in 1985, three years after Rand's death, by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's legal heir...
, which the LYM accused of promoting genocide in speeches by its representatives at various campuses. LYM members confronted Institute executive director Yaron Brook
Yaron Brook
Yaron Brook is an intellectual and political activist, and is the current president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a non-profit organization in Irvine, California, whose mission is to promote the novels of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism.-Early life in Israel:Brook...
at various universities across the US, heckling him and calling his policies "fascist". In one case, at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
, 15 LYM members, some of who violently resisted, were arrested.
LYM members frequently combine political activity with choral music performance. They sang outside the Democratic Party Convention in Boston in 2004, and in 2007 they performed choral music with lyrics about impeaching Dick Cheney in classrooms at Harvard and Boston University.
During 2007, LYM members have been seen in on the streets, campuses and conferences emphasizing two issues in particular: a call by LaRouche for the impeachment of Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
, and the assertion that the theory of human-caused global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
is a fraud motivated by Malthusianism
Malthusianism
Malthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
. On this latter issue, LYM have confronted Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
on several occasions at his public events. In the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, LYM members debated a variety of spokespersons for the Global Warming theory. In Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, LYM leader Betiana Gonzalez disrupted Gore's speech at a Biofuels conference. A similar incident took place earlier in the year in Montreal, Canada.
In November 2007, the LYM launched a campaign against social networking websites such as MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
and Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, with the mass distribution of the pamphlet "The Noosphere
Noosphere
Noosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought". The word is derived from the Greek νοῦς + σφαῖρα , in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". Introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 1922 in his Cosmogenesis"...
vs. The Blogosphere
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
: Is the Devil in Your Laptop?" The pamphlet says that Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, owner of MySpace, and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, owner of Facebook (Microsoft owns only 2.5% of Facebook), are involved in social engineering
Social engineering (security)
Social engineering is commonly understood to mean the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information...
to destroy the cognitive
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
powers and potential for political leadership among young people. It also attacks Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
in similar terms.
TIME magazine's coverage of Kesha Rogers' campaign says that "The LYM espouses LaRouche opposition to free trade and 'globalism' (the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund) and it also calls for a return to a humanist classical education, emphasizing the works of Plato and Leibniz."
Criticism and accusations
Journalists, former members and law enforcement officials have made a wide variety of accusations of the LaRouche organizations, including a Scotland YardScotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
report that called them a political cult. In 2006, college officials in Boston told a reporter that the LYM was one of the two leading high-pressure groups on area campuses, and that it engaged in strong-arm tactics to induce students to leave college and help recruit new members. Boyd called the charges "gossip" and said the movement was working "for ideas and real policies" and was a "youth movement in the Democratic Party". Investigative journalist and LaRouche biographer Dennis King has described the founding of the WLYM by LaRouche as a way of maintaining his legacy after his death by "[going] back to his roots, the roots of his movement in the radical campus movement in the late 1960s." Avi Klein of the Washington Monthly describes this as an element of a campaign LaRouche created to blame the "first generation" of his own movement for fundraising failures, and to appeal to young members by channeling "the rage new acolytes felt toward their parents at a nearby, internal enemy".
Jeremiah Duggan
After spending six days at a Schiller InstituteSchiller Institute
The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations of the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States, and supporters in Australia, Canada, Russia, and South America, among others, according to its website.The...
conference and LYM cadre school in Germany, 22-year-old Jeremiah Duggan, a Jewish student from London who was studying in Paris, was believed to have run onto a busy road in what the British coroner called a "state of terror," and was killed. The German police investigation concluded that it was a suicide. A private forensic consultant said that he had found evidence of serious assault with a blunt instrument, but no public authorities have given credence to this claim. A LaRouche spokesman has said the young man killed himself because he was disturbed. In October 2004, a British inquest into Duggan's death heard allegations from his mother that LYM and the Schiller Institute may have used brainwashing techniques on her son to persuade him to join the movement.
Michael Winsted
An ex-member of the LaRouche youth movement has asserted that the LaRouche Youth Movement calls parents "brainwashed baby boomers." Ex-member Michael Winsted says that although members are convinced that they are involved in important political work, the job of most members is only to collect money and recruit more members. He says that group leaders "were constantly asking us if we would die for these ideas" and that members that become critical or disillusioned by the movement often become the focus of brutal psychological attacks by the other members, including accusations of having "mother issues," of homosexuality, sexual deviance, and allegiance to anti-LaRouche conspiracies. They are often encouraged and even led by the group's managers. Winsted recounts:I'm caught off-guard, like, what the hell just happened?...The yelling goes on for maybe five or 10 minutes while I'm furiously backpedaling...They call it making somebody a self-conscious organizer...It is about getting somebody to break down and cry, just to have an emotional collapse. Once you do that, then people are malleable.
Jeffrey Steinberg, a top security aide in the LaRouche movement, responded by portraying Michael Winsted as an agent of the Washington Post who "briefly infiltrated the Baltimore chapter of the LYM".
LaRouche PAC
The Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee was previously registered with the Federal Election CommissionFederal Election Commission
The Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory agency that was founded in 1975 by the United States Congress to regulate the campaign finance legislation in the United States. It was created in a provision of the 1975 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act...
as "FDR PAC" and by "Spannaus in '96". In 2000, LaRouche's FDR PAC made news when, forbidden from soliciting on U.S. Post Office property, it demanded that the Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
be treated the same way. As of 2002, Nancy Spannaus was the executive director of the PAC.
LPAC and LYM members targeted Senator Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.Born in Stamford, Connecticut,...
's reelection campaign in 2006. At one campaign appearance three members sang loudly "If you want a third world war, vote for Joe, Bill Buckley's whore".
In 2007, two associated of LPAC, Robert Lucero and Tony DeFranco, were escorted off Post Office property in Naperville, Illinois
Naperville, Illinois
Naperville is a city in DuPage and Will Counties in Illinois in the United States, voted the second best place to live in the United States by Money Magazine in 2006. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 141,853. It is the fifth largest city in the state, behind Chicago,...
, by police. The two were carrying signs calling President George W. Bush as "dumb" and calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
.
During his 2007 campaign for the New Jersey General Assembly
New Jersey General Assembly
The New Jersey General Assembly is the lower house of the New Jersey Legislature.Since the election of 1967 , the Assembly has consisted of 80 members. Two members are elected from each of New Jersey's 40 legislative districts for a term of two years, each representing districts with average...
, Gordon M. Johnson
Gordon M. Johnson
Gordon M. Johnson is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in the New Jersey General Assembly since 2002, where he represents the 37th Legislative District....
's contributions to LPAC became a subject of criticism. Johnson reportedly made seven conributions in 2005 and 2006 totalling $1,850. He apologized repeatedly, saying he regretted that he was not "aware of the LaRouche record of anti-Semitism" and was asking for the contributions to be refunded.
LPAC members promoted LaRouche's "Homeowners and Bank Protection Act" in 2009. One report says the act "would establish a federal agency that would place federal- and state-chartered banks under protection, freeze all existing home mortgages for a period of time, adjust mortgage values to fair prices, restructure existing mortgages at appropriate interest rates, and write off speculative debt obligations of mortgage-backed securities". According to one opponent, Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski
Paul E. Kanjorski
Paul E. Kanjorski is the former U.S. Representative for , serving from 1985 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party.The district includes the cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton, as well as most of the Poconos....
, on closer inspection the act "calls for seizure by the government" of all U.S banks.
In 2009 LPAC members were noted for their posters which depicted Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
with a Hitler-style toothbrush mustache. They asked pedestrians "Do you want to stop Obama from killing people?" and "Want to fire our Nazi president?" The posters led to violent reactions from passersby, including one man who had lost family members in World War II. LPAC spokesperson Nancy Spannaus said that the posters were an "honest emblem of what the administration policy represents". A 2009 report says that the LPAC website, Larouchpac.com, appeared to have deliberately copied the look of the Barackobama.com website, though the contents were entirely different. The LPAC website reportedly contained satires of Democratic Party leaders and an attack of wind power.
Following complaints from customers, Kroger
Kroger
The Kroger Co. is an American supermarket chain founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It reported US$ 76.7 billion in sales during fiscal year 2009. It is the country's largest grocery store chain and its second-largest grocery retailer by volume and second-place general retailer...
, a grocery store chain in Southern California, received an injunction in 2009 barring LPAC activists from soliciting donations or distributing literature on their properties. Another grocery chain, Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's is a privately held chain of specialty grocery stores headquartered in Monrovia, California. , Trader Joe's had a total of 365 stores. Approximately half of its stores are in California, with the heaviest concentration in Southern California, but the company also has locations in 30...
, also sought an injunction after customers allegedly complained that the LPAC members had called them "bitches" and "Hitler lovers". Stater Brothers also sought an injunction to bar LPAC members from soliciting in front of their stores. Lyndon LaRouche, LPAC, and its treasurer Barbara Boyd were sued in 2009 by the widow of Kenneth Kronberg
Kenneth Kronberg
Kenneth Lewis Kronberg was an American businessman and long-time member of the LaRouche movement, an organization founded by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.He was president of PMR Printing Co...
, who alleges that they had defamed her in an LPAC article. Kronberg and his wife had been longtime members of LaRouche movement before his suicide.
By 2010, LPAC members were calling for Obama's impeachment. Members of the Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
distanced themselves from the LPAC members, who often appeared at Tea Party rallies. One Tea Party officials complained that the "Obama as Hitler" posters "trivializes the travesties that occurred under the Fascist regime of Nazi Germany". In 2010, LPAC members said the PAC staffed from 80 to 100 tables across the country every day.
Several confrontations between supporters of LPAC candidates and local residents were reported in April 2011 in Healdsburg, California
Healdsburg, California
Healdsburg is a city located in Sonoma County, California, in the United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a population of 11,254...
. The police were called repeatedly, but no one was cited. Other LPAC workers report receiving a positive reception in San Francisco in March 2011.
Funding and locations
Executive Intelligence Review
Executive Intelligence Review is a weekly newsmagazine founded in 1974 by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. Based in Leesburg, Virginia, it maintains offices in a number of countries, according to its masthead, including Wiesbaden, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Melbourne, and Mexico City...
. Magraw is also the largest individual recipient of funds from the PAC, receiving $129,705 during the cycle.
LYM received $3,142,142 from LPAC in the 2009-2010 election cycle. The Center for Public Integrity
Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...
reports that almost $6 million of the $13 million raised by LPAC since 2007 went to LaRouche Youth, to pay for "grassroots lobbying and advocacy". The LaRouche Political Action Committee paid the group $462,850 in 2006, $2,732,851 during the 2008 election cycle, and $4,186,068 in the 2010 cycle.
According to Boyd, the payments to LaRouche Youth LLC are for web content, field organizing, canvassing, and public advocacy, all of which are categorized as "grassroots lobbying and advocacy". Boyd said the nearly $500,000 in uncategorized "petty cash" payments went to political organizing activities across the country, mostly vehicle operating expenses. In 2006, LPAC paid $7000 in fines to the FEC for failing to file mandatory disclosure forms.
LPAC gave $11,000 in contributions to three candidates in the 2009-2010 election cycle: $4000 each to "Kesha Rogers For Congress" and "Summer Shields for Congress", and $3000 to "Rachel Brown For Congress".
The LYM website lists 21 offices in the U.S. and Canada. The LPAC website lists 12 offices in the U.S.
Publications
LPAC produces pamphlets which carry suggested donation requests. Publications include:- The People of the U.S. No Longer Accept Their President or Congress August 2009
- President Obama’s ‘Narcissus Syndrome’ April 2009
- The Last Chance For Civilization? November 2008
- LaRouche’s Trip to Moscow: A Strategy For War Avoidance June 2007
- Implications of the Gore Hoax for International Policy March 2007
- Organizing the Recovery from the Great Crash of 2007 December 2006
- Is Joseph Goebbels On Your Campus? October 2006
- PROLEGOMENA FOR A PARTY PLATFORM: Franklin Roosevelt’s Legacy March 2006
- Children of Satan IV: Cheney’s ‘Schmittlerian’ Drive for Dictatorship January 2006
- ‘Pulling This Nation Together Now!’ September 2005
- Soldiers of Satan August 2005
- LaRouche on ‘The Case of a Vice-President’s Mass Insanity’ August 2005
- Dialogue with The Senate on Economic Policy: LaRouche’s Historic Webcast Of June 16, 2005 Jun 2005
- Earth's Next Fifty Years March 2005
Videos and animations
The "Basement team" is variously described as belonging to the LYM or to LPAC. According to Boyd, LPAC pays LYM to produce videos. Most of the videos on Kesha Roger's campaign website were created by LPAC.From 2006 to 2007, members of the team produced a set of computer animations described as a pedagogical tour through Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...
's New Astronomy
Astronomia nova
The Astronomia nova is a book, published in 1609, that contains the results of the astronomer Johannes Kepler's ten-year long investigation of the motion of Mars...
and Harmony of the World, plus another set on the discovery of the orbit of Ceres titled The Mind of Gauss. After another website, keplersdiscovery.com, appeared that discussed the same works by Kepler, team members asserted that it was a plagiarized and inferior copy of their own work. In August 2008, the team released an hour-long video, The Harvard Yard, in which they elaborate their claim of plagiarism and charge that the "Kepler's Discovery" site was the work of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. In 2008 they issued Firewallin Defense of the Nation State. This was followed by the release on July 3 of the feature-length sequel 1932, narrated by Robert Beltran
Robert Beltran
Robert Adame Beltran is an American actor, known for his role as Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager.-Early life:...
, and a December production on scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, The Matter of Mind. They are also producing regular short videos on topical issues.
External links
- WLYM official website
- LaRouche PAC official website
- Video: LaRouche Youth at Texas Democratic Convention nominating LaKesha Rogers for state Party Chair, 2006
- Lyndon LaRouche PAC at OpenSecrets.org
Critical
- Letter on LaRouche Youth Movement at UCSD
- "LaRouchiacs" an Ever-Present Element On Howard's Campus
- Larouche Exposed Matthew Robinson, Pasadena City College Courier November 15, 2001