Subject: Re: Growth of Christian Identity

From: [email-masked] (Steve Crocker)
Date: 3 Oct 1992 09:57:53 GMT

NLG Civil Liberties Committee <[email-masked]> (Chip Berlet)
writes:

>  For those who wondered what I do...I am a paralegal investigator employed
>by Political Research Associates in Cambridge, MA. I have worked on several
>lawsuits against government intelligence abuse. My articles have appeared
>in the Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Des Moines Register, The Progressive,
>In These Times, Etc. I have been interviewed on all three TV network news
>programs, been quoted in the New York Times, and appeared live on the
>Today Show to discuss racist right hate groups. I am secretary of the
>National Lawyers Guild Civil Liberties Committee, and a founding co-editor
>of Police Misconduct & Civil Rights Law Report. None of this makes my
>views any more important that anyone else on the net, but it does show that
>other people have found that it the long run my research has proven
>reliable.

As in "politically reliable"? :) But seriously, it doesn't necessarily
show that at all. An alternative possibility is that these people have 
found that you are willing to tell them what they wanted to hear. I.e. what 
they were previously predisposed to believe, but presented in scholarly
form so as to appear more credible.

Chip, I can attack your abilities as a researcher because I actually did
what you only claimed to do. In the early 70's I became aware of the 
LaRouche organization. My tentative eveluation was that these people 
were not only crazy, but quite possibly dangerous. Accordingly, I decided
that it was important to discover precisely what the beliefs and world view
of this group consisted of. I addressed this question, and did a competent
job. From your consistent misstatements of LaRouche's positions it is
clear to me that you did not. 

I am not saying this because you oppose LaRouche and I support him. That
is a separate issue. There are plenty of things LaRouche actually believes
that most progressives would disagree with. (Nuclear power, the primacy
of the human species, etc.) These questions would be genuinely interesting
to debate. This cannot happen, however, as long as center stage is held by 
misstatements about LaRouche's positions by a "researcher" who does not
do competent research.

>-Chip Berlet

-Steve Crocker

---

From: [email-masked] (Steve Crocker)
Date: 7 Oct 1992 08:07:24 GMT

All right, off the top of my head. In citing alleged similarities
between LaRouche and the Liberty Lobby, you said they both drew
upon the thinking of Oswald Spengler. Please supply any evidence
you have that LaRouche owes any philosophical debt to Spengler.

And in case you missed it, I was not questioning your competence due
to differences in analysis or conclusions, but due to your misstatements of
fact, as in this example. This is neither reckless nor defamatory.
It is merely accurate.

-Steve

---

From: [email-masked] (Steve Crocker)
Date: 7 Oct 1992 22:51:59 GMT

Chip, when I posted my original response to you on the issue of
factual innacuracies in your characterization, I did not have 
the relevant quote at hand. I have now located it. It is from
the following message:

>From: NLG Civil Liberties Committee <[email-masked]>
>Newsgroups: alt.activism
>Subject: Re: Lyndon LaRouche & the Liberty L
>Date: Sat Aug 22 11:17:00 1992

and states:

>Both depend heavily on the intellectual ideas
>of Spengler (Decline of the West) and the false assertion that
>today's "Jews" are actually an Asiatic race called the Khazars who
>converted to Judaism and thus have no moral claim to the heritage
>of Biblical Jews.

The Liberty Lobby may well hold these views. What evidence do you
have that LaRouche holds them?

-Steve

---

From: [email-masked] (Steve Crocker)
Date: 7 Oct 1992 22:55:37 GMT

Well Chip, it looks like you have an apology coming, albeit a srtictly
limited and somewhat grudging one. After looking through my small but
growing collection of Berletia, with particular attention to the three
part article "Larouchians as Fascists", it appears that you do not
routinely make blatant errors of objective fact as I had implied. I 
was misled by the one whopper I legitimately DID catch you in, combined
with my overall disagreement with the thrust of your other work.

That said, hiowever, I want to devote some attention to the sense in 
which I nevertheless think it is fair to call your work inaccurate,
even though the inaccuracies do not in general manifest themselves as
factually incorrect statements. One aspect of this is something which
any advocate of a particular viewpoint must do to some extent, but 
which I think you carry to unwarranted extremes. That is the practice
of selecting facts (and quoting opinions) which support your hypothesis
while ignoring or minimizinng those which contradict it. Thus, for 
example, you play up LaRouche's criticism of Jewish individuals and
organizations while giving only grudging acknowledgement to his 
persistent opposition to Naziism. Additionally, you entirely fail
to compare his criticism of Jews to his very similar criticism of
Gentiles to determine whether he is being even handed. And of course
you entirely fail to consider the question of whether any of his
criticisms are objectively justified based on the known or probable
activities of those whom he has attacked.

This is not your worst failing, however. I reserve that characterization
for the centrally important question you leave unanswered - a question
which was the FIRST question I sought to answer when I first began to
critically examine LaRouche's movement. That deceptively simple question
is this: WHAT DOES LAROUCHE BELIEVE? Now I knew better than this when I 
was writing for a local alternative paper in 1970. I was assigned to do
an article on the local peace movement. I went around to the various 
anti-war groups and employed the innovative and unorthodox research
technique of asking them what their positions were. When I was done I
wrote paragraphs on The New Mobilization Committee, the Resistence, the
Lansing Area Peace Council, and the Student Mobilization Committee 
(including the YSA and WSA/SDS factions). There was general agreement
that I had accurately represented their diverse viewpoints, and even
those who were bitter factional oponents of one another felt that their
views received fair treatment. 

3 to 4 years later when I became aware of the NCLC, I attempted to
employ a similar approach. I attended conferences, read literature,
and talked to organizers. When I heard reference to a concept I
didn't understand, I asked somebody what it meant. It took a while, 
but eventually I was able to grasp the underlying philosophical 
principles which tied together what might seem at first glance to be 
a diverse and unrelated catalog of positions. (To state them in 
overly simplified form, they consist of creativity as a physical
characteristic of the natural universe, self-conscious creative
intelligence as the uniquely defining characteristic of the human 
species, and the Idea of Progress as the central issue separating
the pro and anti humanist factions throughout recorded history).

Now you on the other hand, do not appear to have sought the 
underlying basis of LaRouche's ideology. Had you done so, you
could have performed a useful service, even to your anti-LaRouche
co-thinkers, by identifying the intellectual perspective of your
enemy. You could have attempted to develop arguments against what
LaRouche actually believes, instead of being reduced to the expedient
of arguing that he is racist, fascist, Nazi, etc. and should thus be
avoided. Finally, you would have had the key to what ACTUALLY attracts
people to LaRouche, instead of a rather pathetic reliance on polls
and demographics.

In your "Larouchians as fascist" post we find an intriguing passage
which is perhaps the basis for this glaring omission. You write:

>   Is LaRouche a fascist? The goal of fascism is 
>always raw power, and it will adopt or abandon 
>any principle to obtain power. The chameleon-like 
>nature of fascist theories is one of its 
>hallmarks, and often leads to confusion as to 
>whether it is on the political left or right as 
>it opportunistically gobbles up popular slogans 
>from existing movements.

>   Journalist James Ridgeway notes there are real 
>contradictions in LaRouche's politics: "While it 
>maintains contacts with far-right groups, 
>LaRouche's organization is ideologically at 
>cross-purposes with many which are nativist and 
>anarchist. LaRouche is an internationalist and a 
>totalitarian: he believes the masses are 
>`bestial' and unfit for citizenship."

>   Freelance journalist Nick Gallo takes us a 
>step further. In <The Seattle Weekly> he 
>acknowledges that much of what LaRouche espouses 
>"appears kooky, if only because his ideas 
>certainly defy conventional political analysis. . 
>. .However go beyond the individual positions on 
>different issues and beneath the surface lurk 
>echoes of sinister themes that have been 
>prevalent in the 20th century: preservation of 
>Western Civilization, purity of culture and 
>youth, elimination of Jewish and homosexual 
>influence, suspicion of international 
>banking conspiracies."

>   The opportunistic exploitation of 
>anxiety-producing issues by LaRouchies is no 
>surprise to Clara Fraser who knew LaRouche when 
>he was in the Socialist Workers Party. Writing in the 
><Freedom Socialist> newspaper, she explains, 
> "The pundits are intrigued and puzzled by his 
>amalgam of right and left politics, a tangled web 
>of KKK, Freudian, encounter therapy, Populist, 
>Ayn Rand-like, and Marxist notions. They needn't 
>be. His is the prototypical face of fascism, 
>which is classically a hodgepodge of 
>pseudo-theories crafted for mass appeal. . . ."

These paragraphs present a view of fascism which emphasizes its
irrationalism and unprincipled opportunism, and attributes those
same qualities to LaRouche. In one master stroke you have rationalized
your failure to report on LaRouche's ideology. LaRouche has no ideology!, 
you tell us. Only a cynical laundry list of unrelated positions crafted
for mass appeal with no underlying coherence. 

The fact is that the philosophical coherence in LaRouche's work exists,
but is perhaps especially difficult to see if your view of the political
scene relies heavily on the use of terms like "Left" and "Right" as
though THEY identified coherent bodies of opposing thought. As a
then-anarchist I had already learned to view these terms as the 
artificial and misleading constructs they actually are. Thus the failure
of LaRouche's ideology to fit on that presumed spectrum didn't give me
a problem. I just continued to evaluate how their individual positions
related to their own standard of the struggle for Progress, and I found
them extraordinarily principled and consistent. 

Various progressive thinkers have attacked the idea of Progress on
philosophical grounds (Jeremy Rifkin comes to mind) so it is not that
this issue is not recognized on the Left. One is led to suspect that
those who philosophically oppose technologically mediated progress 
would prefer to make their arguments against straw men of their own 
choosing, rather than enter the lists with a living opponent who has
their number and would not hesitate to expose the truly wretched
anti-human implications of their position. They seek to arrogate to
themselves the moral high ground by claiming the anti-technology
position to be the pro-human position. It is not surprising that they
would prefer not to hear from the one voice today who clearly and 
consistently challenges that assumption.

Chip, if you want to do a competent job of researching LaRouche,
figure out for yuorself what he believes and report it. If you 
want to do a competent job of criticizing him, explain why you
think he is wrong.

-Steve

---

From: [email-masked] (Chip Salzenberg)
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 17:25:45 GMT

According to [email-masked] (Steve Crocker):
>I would observe that the principal "action" engaged in by LaRouche
>et. al. is to publicize their beliefs, whether by running for office,
>selling New Federalist, or spending hundresd of thousands of ### [$$$?]

... in money obtained fraudulently from callers' credit cards ...

>putting Lyn on TV.

There is also the issue of association.  Who did (and does) LaRouche
work with?  Who support him?  These facts also have a bearing.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>
   "I am truly as big a genius as all other Rush fans." -- Bruce Bufalini

---

From: [email-masked] (Steve Crocker)
Date: 12 Oct 1992 08:43:10 GMT

Well Chip, I may have saved you the trouble of documenting LaRouche's
supposed adherence to the views of Oswald Spengler. Unfortunately
the source I found for this is not one I consider credible (Your
mileage is almost sure to vary). In Dennis King's book "Lyndon
LaRouche and the New American Fascism" I find passages where King
says in essence "Well, uh, LaRouche says thus and so, and it sure 
sounds a lot like something Spengler said".  Now lest you think I'm
being unfair, I'll quote a typical statement of this sort for all to 
see:

"LaRouche also rails against the "Persian Empire" and "Persian
agents" who supposedly destroyed the ancient world. Again, this 
is not new: Both Spengler and Chamberlin claimed that the Jews
and the Persians were linked in a common conspircay; Spengler 
said the Jews actually dominated much of the Persian Empire, 
while Chamberlin described them as Persian puppets."

This flies in the face of the fact that nowhere does LaRouche
descend to the idiocy of a "Jewish Conspiracy" although he does
indeed discuss conspiracies in which prominent Jews have been 
involved. In fact, King labors arduously to distort the plain
and forthright statements LaRouche has made repeatedly as to 
how he thinks conspiratorial elites are organized and who 
populates them. To do this, he concocts an bizarre system
of "code words" which he attributes to LaRouche. "Babylon" 
refers to the Jews, he tells us (conveniently ignoring the fact
known to anybody with even a nodding acquaintance with the Old
Testament that Babylon is repeatedly used as a symbol of oppression
of the Jewish people, based on the historical events of the 
Babylonian captivity). "British" is a code word for Jewish, he
says, ignoring LaRouche's clear statement that the Jewish families
allied with the British oligarchy are subordinate to that oligarchy, 
after the fashion of the medieval "Court Jews".

Unlike yourself, King at least makes an attempt to analyze some
aspects of LaRouche's ideology. Unfortunately, he succeeds only 
in standing it on its head, using out of context quotes, tortuous
twists of logic, and massive omissions to make it appear that 
LaRouche says almost diametrically the opposite of what he in
fact believes. 

-Steve