Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement

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The Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement (WLYM) is a political body linked to controversial American political figure Lyndon LaRouche.

History

Begun in 1999, it is perhaps the most significant change in the LaRouche movement since his 1994 release from prison. The recruitment of young people in the 18–25 year old age bracket has reportedly brought more members into the LaRouche organization than at any time in the past, and as a result of the Internet, there are active chapters in nations like Japan where LaRouche has no official organization.

Lyndon LaRouche has explicitly created his youth movement to address what he calls the "baby-boomer problem" among his membership and more generally among the US population. LaRouche writes of "a new quality of youth movement in the U.S.A., a new youth ferment whose existence reflected a certain special quality of opposition to the cultural legacy and life-style of their "Baby Boomer" parents' generation."[1] In fact, one former LaRouche member charges that the LaRouchite leadership has suggested that unless the "Boomers" shape up, they should kill themselves, which is exactly what high level LaRouche "Boomer" Kenneth Kronberg did in 2007.[2][3]

LYM members have been active in the Democratic Party 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. [1]. At the April, 2007 California State Democratic Convention, LYM activist Quincy O'Neal was elected vice-chairman of the California State Democratic Black Caucus,[2] and Wynneal Inocentes was elected corresponding secretary of the Philippino Caucus.[3]

In an article in the University of California, Berkeley independent student newspaper, The Daily Californian on February 11, 2004, 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."

LaRouche Youth chorus performing Bach
LaRouche Youth chorus performing Bach

Campaigns

The LaRouche youth claim that they are fighting for an "intellectual Renaissance," and in addition to conventional political activity such as distributing literature in the streets, they spend time in what are called "Monge brigades," described as leaderless discussion groups where the members work to master important discoveries in classical science and art. Among the topics frequently pursued are the ideas of Plato, Johannes Kepler, Friedrich Schiller, and Carl Friedrich Gauss. There are also performance workshops on the dramas of William Shakespeare and choral compositions of J.S. Bach and other classical composers, as well as African-American Spirituals. Regular "cadre schools" are held in the United States and Europe, where Lyndon LaRouche and other senior members of LaRouche organizations give lectures and take questions from LYM youth.

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.[4][5]

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'." [6]

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 Argentina, LYM leader Betiana Gonzalez disrupted Gore's speech after he recommended that Argentian reduce its population.[7] A similar incident took place earlier in the year in Montreal, Canada.[8] In the Philippines, LYM members debated a variety of spokespersons for the Global Warming theory.[9]

Conflicts with other campus-based organizations

During the election campaign of 2006, the LaRouche Youth Movement 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, disrupting his speeches. The LaRouche activists frequently employed Guerilla theater tactics. In one case, at the University of California, Irvine, 15 LYM members were arrested.[10]

The LYM has also criticized Campus Watch and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, claiming that they act as "thought police" to stifle opposition to the Iraq war and the Bush administration.[11]

Criticism and accusations

According to Scott McLemee: "The emergence of the group is all the more surprising, given that LaRouche himself has long since become the walking punchline to a very strange joke. He is known for some of the most baroque conspiracy theories ever put into circulation. Members of the LYM now deny that he ever accused the Queen of England of drug trafficking – though in fact, he did exactly that throughout the 1980s. At the time, he won admirers on the extreme right wing by denouncing Henry Kissinger as an agent of the KGB and calling for AIDS patients to be quarantined."[12] LaRouche and his organization, in fact, dispute all three of McLemee's characterizations of LaRouche's ideas (see LaRouche vs. the media.)

After spending six days at a Schiller Institute 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 ran onto a busy road in what the British coroner called a "state of terror," and was killed, although subsequent inquiries have shown evidence of serious assault with a blunt instrument [13]. 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 mind control techniques on her son to persuade him to join the movement.[14]

An ex-member of the LaRouche youth movement has asserted that the LaRouche Youth Movement calls parents "brainwashed baby boomers". Ex-member Michael Scott Winstead 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. Winstead 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.[15]

LaRouche's 2004 presidential campaign organization responded by portraying Michael Winstead as an agent of the Washington Post who has plotted slander against LaRouche and his organizations. In a time-line article on the Jeremiah Duggan affair, it says that "Winstead had briefly infiltrated the Baltimore chapter of the LYM, only to abruptly leave the group, and circulate a series of slanders. Accompanied by a Washington Post photographer, Winstead boasts to LYM organizers that he is working for the Post on a forthcoming slander on LaRouche and LYM, which will also heavily feature the Duggan suicide."[16] Claims on both sides of the debate are unsubstantiated.

Notes

  1. ^ Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "The New Cultural-Paradigm Shift", Lyndon LaRouche PAC, May 31, 2005 (accessed 3 February 2007).
  2. ^ Nicholas F. Benton. Rt. 28 Suicide Jumper Was Long-Time Associate of LaRouche, Falls Church News-Press, April 19, 2007.
  3. ^ "- washingtonpost.com". The Washington Post. ISSN 0740-5421. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
  4. ^ Noah S. Bloom, "Singing LaRouchians Interrupt Class", The Harvard Crimson, 2 February 2007 (accessed 3 February 2007).
  5. ^ Christa Majoras, "Activist group trespasses on BU property", The Daily Free Press, 31 January 2007 (accessed 3 February 2007).
  6. ^ http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=9df1b5f0-4ea4-42fc-a689-0be6fb129de7
  7. ^ "LYM Delivers One-Two Punch to Al Gordo in Argentina" - LaRouche PAC
  8. ^ Penev, Pavel, "The Gore Dossier" - EIR, March 30, 2007
  9. ^ "Philippines LaRouche Society Flanks Gore's Minions on IPCC Slide Show" - LaRouche PAC
  10. ^ Paul Backus, "Fifteen Arrested at Ayn Rand Club Event", New University, 13 November 2006 (accessed 3 February 2007).
  11. ^ "John Train's Press Sewer: Is Goebbels on Your Campus?", Executive Intelligence Review, 13 October 2006 (accessed 3 February 2007).
  12. ^ Scott McLemee, ["The LaRouche Youth Movement," http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/07/11/mclemee] Inside Higher Ed., July 11, 2007.
  13. ^ New evidence shows 'suicide' student was beaten to death
  14. ^ Witt, "No Joke".
  15. ^ April Witt, "No Joke", The Washington Post, 24 October 2004 (accessed 3 February 2007).
  16. ^ "A Concise Timeline of the Symons-Duggan Affair," LaRouche in 2004 website

External links

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