Subject: Re: NLNS: ANTI-RACIST SKINHEADS

From: NLG Civil Liberties Committee <[email-masked]>
Date: 08 Oct 92 15:27 PDT

Steve,

Why would you claim LaRouche had never done such a thing when any
large library can refute the contention?

Please note that LaRouche personally ordered his followers to
brutally assault his political enemies in 1973, and then explained
in detail why he though it was necessary in a twenty-page (legal
size, single-spaced) discussion paper (available at several
library collections on LaRouche).

LAROUCHE'S OPERATION MOP-UP

by Chip Berlet

(adapted from a work-in-progress and previous articles)

>From approximately May to September of 1973, LaRouche followers
engaged in "Operation Mop-up" which consisted of NCLC members
assaulting rivals such as members of the Communist Party USA
(CPUSA) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).  NCLC thugs used
fists and weapons in their brutal campaign to control and
establish "hegemony" over the American revolutionary movement.
There were many injuries and some persons required
hospitalization.[f-1]

"Operation Mop-up" was front-page news in virtually every American
progressive newspaper during 1973 so it is difficult to believe
the nature of NCLC was not known to Newman and his CFC colleagues
when they first contacted NCLC a few months after Operation Mop-Up
was formally ended and declared a success by LaRouche.
Furthermore, physical assaults by NCLC members against critics
were reported regularly well into 1976, and periodic assaults by
LaRouche fundraisers still occur. In 1974, many former NCLC
members report, they were still required to take paramilitary
training classes led by fellow members.

The trigger for Operation Mop Up was a March, 1973 warning by NCLC
to the Communist Party, USA.  to stop opposing the creation by
LaRouche of an alternative to the respected Black-led National
Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) which LaRouche denounced as
being part of a "union-busting slave-labor" alliance.

LaRouche had attempted to take over and "reorganize" the NWRO.
Eyewitnesses recall primarily-white and young NCLC members
standing up and halting meetings of the primarily-Black and older
NWRO with non-negotiable demands for an immediate debate on
LaRouche's lunatic charges against NWRO leaders. When asked to
leave, the NCLC members refused, and fights broke out.  Members of
the audience were forced to physically drag the NCLC members out
of meetings to stop the disruptions.

Members of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (CP) vowed to prevent
further disruptions of NWRO, and when LaRouche announced the
creation of NU-WRO, members of the CP and NWRO picketed the
founding meeting in Philadelphia. This enraged LaRouche, and his
newspaper "New Solidarity" proclaimed the CP had been warned about
not recognizing the legitimacy of the NU-WRO, and promised "Now
the CP will be destroyed."[f-2]

According to LaRouche, NCLC sent delegations into public meetings,
"demanding that this criminal behavior of the CP leadership"--that
is, support for the original NWRO--"be openly discussed and voted
down by the body assembled." One eyewitness remember a typical
incident where NCLC members with sticks and bats and sports body
padding equipment attacked a meeting to force it to schedule the
debate. When members of the Socialist Workers Party joined in
defending victims of NCLC violence at public meetings, they too
were targeted for unprovoked attacks.

Operation Mop-Up was succinctly described by LNS as "the use and
glorification of brutal violence:"

   "Dozens of people were injured, many seriously enough to be
   hospitalized with broken bones, concussions and bruises.
   Generally the tactic was to attack one or two individuals with
   a superior number of NCLC people. In almost every case, clubs,
   pipes, brass knuckles and numchucks ["nunchukas"] (a karate
   weapon consisting of two pieces of wood connected by a length
   of chain) were used against unarmed people, in clearly
   pre-planned physical assaults."

In a paper discussing the early phase of Operation Mop-Up,
LaRouche (writing under the pen-name L. Marcus) wrote:

   "Our `operation Mop-Up' against the CPUSA has done more for our
   recruitment and for our attractiveness to old and new working
   class strata of contacts than all the other things combined we
   have presented to such strata in the past. By eliminating
   Communist Party hegemony from the left in the USA, we have
   abruptly destroyed a seemingly fixed aspect of a fifty-year old
   order of things. `You people are really serious!' even certain
   of our bitterest left critics concede. In general, worker
   contacts and left-opponents alike are awed as they so
   frequently acknowledge: `You really mean what you say!'"

   "This operation is simply something we were implicitly prepared
   to undertake and something which had to be done. The importance
   of `Operation Mop-Up' is chiefly negative: if we had refrained
   from carrying out our commitments on this, which would have
   meant resorting to academic, phrasemongering nonsense to
   `explain' why we would not `initiate violence,' the state of
   mind induced by those rationalizations would have perhaps
   destroyed the dynamic of our organization's internal
   development. Necessary as `Operation Mop-Up' <continues to be>,
   it should be properly viewed as a secondary, soon tertiary
   aspect of out overall tactical perspectives and
   commitments."[f-3]

While the Operation Mop-Up attacks were officially ended in late
1973, another campaign of physical assaults was launched in 1974
against local rank-and-file leaders of the United Autoworkers and
other industrial unions. Reports of these assaults continued
through 1976, and NCLC members continued into the 1980's to assist
in assaults on members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and
another rank-and-file Teamster reform group, PROD. [f-4]

When NCLC threatened to attack radical bookstores that refused to
carry their materials on the NU-WRO debate, broad-based volunteer
groups formed in several cities to defend the stores from being
ransacked by NCLC cadre.[f-5] As resistance to the wave of
LaRouche-ordered violence grew, NCLC became completely isolated.
And, according to LNS, it soon became clear that "anyplace that
NCLC met with serious resistance they invariably fled, preferring
the techniques of ambush and mugging." As Operation Mop-Up began
to collapse, LaRouche announced its total success.

The similarity between LaRouche's Operation Mop-Up and the growth
of the Nazi movement in 1930's Germany did not go unnoticed.
Several leftist newspapers denounced the episode as fascist. A
paper on NCLC circulated in Madison, Wisconsin observed that while
a direct analogy might not be appropriate, there were clear and
troubling similarities:

   "When the Nazi Party first came on the scene in 1920, they were
   avowedly anti-capitalist.  their first mass meeting called for
   opportunity of employment, nationalization of trusts,
   communalization of department stores, extension of old-age
   pensions, prohibition of child labor and the prosecution of
   usurers and profiteers. Even the Nazi flag was chosen to be
   red, the traditional color of revolutionary socialism."

   "NCLC, as it seems to exist today, has the makings of a truly
   indigenous fascist movement." [f-6]

Their fears were soon realized.

=======================================================

1.  Hentoff, Nat. "Of Thugs and Liars," Village Voice,
       January 24, 1974, p. 8. Montgomery, Paul L. "How a
       Radical-Left Group Moved Toward Savagery," New York Times,
       January 20, 1974, pp. 1, 51. "An Introduction to NCLC:
       `The Word is "Beware"'", Liberation News Service, March 23,
       1974, pp. 9-14. LNS cites to various articles in the
       alternative press, including articles in The Daily World,
       The Militant, Workers Power, The Fifth Estate, The Boston
       Phoenix, and The Drummer. The author has also interviewed
       several former NCLC members who took part in Operation
       Mop-Up and who prefer not to have their names mentioned.
       See also "Brownshirts of the Seventies," Washington D.C.,
       TIP, 1973.
2.  "New Solidarity," April 16-20, 1973 as cited in LNS.
3.  Marcus, L, "The Challenge of Left-Hegemony," NCLC "Internal
       Discussion" paper, May 10, 1973.
4.  Op.Cit. King, "Lyndon LaRouche and the New American
       Fascism." "Brownshirts of the Seventies" and various
       newspaper accounts of incidents.
5.  The author was part of one of these defense groups in 1973.
6.  As quoted in LNS.