A Whiff of Fascism in Warwick
By Michael Kaufman
It seems like this year we have been inundated with a plethora of 40th anniversary articles and celebrations, covering everything from the Apollo moon landing to the 1969 Mets to Woodstock. This post might also have been about Woodstock but for something that happened in Warwick Saturday. And to be honest I have to admit I don’t have much to say about Woodstock: My friends and I—having turned on, tuned in, and dropped out from “the Establishment” prior to 1969—elected to pass. We didn’t want to fight the traffic. Besides, we heard it was going to rain.
So my contribution to the anniversary collection is about something far less festive. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the expulsion from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) of Lyndon LaRouche (then known as “Prof. Lyn Marcus”) and his followers. LaRouche had been chair of the radical student organization’s National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). The expulsion of LaRouche and the NCLC from SDS may be said to mark the beginning of the violent, racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and homophobic cult that has been in continuous operation under his direction ever since.
Two LaRouche operatives were in Warwick Saturday, where they set up a table in front of the post office, collected signatures on a petition, solicited donations, and distributed a 16-page pamphlet with an article by LaRouche decrying “Obama’s Nazi Health Plan.”
The cover features a doctored photograph that places President Obama beside Adolf Hitler, who smiles at him as a group of admirers look on. A smaller version of the same photo appears on the back cover with the caption, “Obama’s HMO Policy Is Killing Your Grandmother.”
Among several large posters displayed was one depicting the president sporting a Hitler moustache. A large swastika adorned another. (Some of the same posters have been showing up at town-hall meetings around the country, courtesy of the LaRouche Web site, which encourages viewers to print out copies.)
Sadly, some unsuspecting passersby expressed enthusiastic approval of the display, thanks, in part, to another message prominently expressed, namely, justifiable outrage at the Wall Street bailouts. And in explaining their position on healthcare reform, the two LaRouche supporters portrayed themselves as proponents of a single-payer national health system. Their calm demeanor seemed a far cry from the offensive visual messages and bellicose writing that characterize their literature. The opening sentence of the pamphlet begins with LaRouche’s words, “Since his visit to hug the wicked little Queen in London…” (LaRouche has accused Queen Elizabeth of controlling the international heroin trade.)
Many Warwick residents objected to the Nazi imagery. “My mother lost most of her family in Auschwitz and barely escaped the gas chambers herself,” said a woman who took part in a hastily organized counter demonstration and asked not to be identified.
“I am offended by the literature portraying President Obama, a black man, as a Nazi and buddy of Hitler. Such propaganda distorts history. Hitler and his regime killed millions in the name of Aryan superiority, and it stands history on its head to insert Obama’s picture into a Nazi rally scene or to compare his health plan to Nazi war crimes or tactics.” The images also drew angry shouts from two African-American men and several other men who appeared stunned when they came upon the scene.
Nevertheless, a surprising number of motorists honked horns and shouted support as they drove by. And more than a few men and women eagerly made donations and signed petitions. Thus it would be a mistake to dismiss LaRouche and his followers as fringe characters with no chance of achieving success. They have already succeeded in adding to the confusion and hate that already characterizes the raucous national debate over healthcare reform.
“In a democracy based on informed consent, to not understand the nature of the LaRouche phenomenon is a dangerously naive rejection of the lessons of history—because Lyndon LaRouche represents the most recent incarnation of the unique 20th century phenomenon known as totalitarian fascism,” wrote investigative journalists Chip Berlet and Joel Bellman in “Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag,” a three-part report issued by Political Research Associates in 1989.
“His view of history is paranoid,” they continued. “His economic theories are similar to Italian Fascism. His conspiratorial views are laced with racial and cultural bigotry and a large dose of anti-Jewish hysteria. His zealous storm troopers are motivated by an internal organizational structure that is to politics what the blitzkrieg was to international diplomacy…the totalitarian movement. History teaches us that to ignore or dismiss such a person as an ineffectual crank can have devastating consequences.”
Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.
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