Extra Extra Read All About it! Nick Walsh Full of Shit!!!!
Mood:  d'oh
Now Playing: Nothing
Topic: things that only cults do

At one of the first meetings I went to in The LYM, I got into a heated argument with Nick Walsh and Anna Shavin because I had gone to a modern art museum the day before, and, heaven forbid, enjoyed the modern art museum.  One of Nick Walsh's arguments, after about his fourth beer while wating for his food to arive at the restaurant (I don't remember if this was before or after someone told me to "slow down on the water"-very funny), that "Hitler worshipped modern art".

I learned in the History class I took last semester that Hitler hated modern art.   "Detested", I believe was the word the professor used.

 I may have only had a high school diploma when I was involved in the cult, and high school may have been more than ten years ago, but contrary to popular myth, I do have a good enough vocabulary to know that "detested" and "worshipped" are two completely different things.

I was right there for the telecast when LaRouche said, "We're not a cult.  Free trade is a cult.  A cult is based in false axioms." --2003

 The cult's favorite thing to do is to point out similarities between people they don't like, and Hitler; things that have nothing to do with genocide or anti-Semitism (i.e., environmentalism, vegetarian lifestyle, owning a pet, having children, someone's taste in art or music).

Even without them being completely full of shit, oh yes, and going on and on and on about Hitler and never mentioning the Holocaust, Hitler was a carbon-based life form.  You think about that.

LaRouche quotes
"America must be cleansed for its righteous war by the immediate elimination of the Nazi Jewish Lobby and other British agents from the councils of government, industry, and labor."

"A War-winning Strategy", Editorial, New Solidarity, March 1978

"Judaism is the religion of a caste of subjects of Christianity, entirely molded by ingenious rabbis to fit into the ideological and secular life of Christianity. In short, a selfsustaining Judaism never existed and never could exist. As for Jewish culture otherwise, it is merely the residue left to the Jewish home after everything saleable has been marketed to the Goyim."

"The Case of Ludwig Feuerbach", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., (under pen name L. Marcus), The Campaigner, December 1973

"Zionism is the state of collective psychosis through which London manipulates most of international Jewry."

"Zionism Is Not Judaism" Editorial, The Campaigner, December 1978

"The first, and most important fact to be recognized concerning the Hitler regime, is that Adolf Hitler was put into power in Germany on orders from London. The documentation of this matter is abundant and conclusive."

"Humboldt Versus Hitler", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., The Campaigner, August 1978

"History as it is taught in leading American universities today is a deliberate systematic fraud. History textbooks in our public schools, in particular insofar as they pertain to the American Revolution and the issues leading up to the Civil War, are total frauds."

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Radio broadcast, WGPR, Detroit, March 20, 1979

"From its beginnings under Quaker-linked Attorney General J. Mitchell Palmer, the FBI was intended to become a political 'Gestapo,' serving the interests of foreign supranational powers dedicated to subverting and taking over the United States."

"Why Reagan Must Purge the FBI", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Executive Intelligence Review, February 3, 1981

"Apart from those accomplishments which are as much an organic product of the U.S. Labor Party as my own efforts, my principal accomplishment is that of being, by a large margin of advantage, the leading economist of the twentieth century to date. That distinction can be most easily defended, since it is not quantitative, but qualitative."

"The Power of Reason - A Kind of an Autobiography", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., New Benjamin Franklin Publishing House, 1979

Can one punish sheep for being sheep? The Israelis have behaved with monstrous, worse-than-Nazi bestiality. But are not sheep bestial? Are not the Israelis behaving with the bestiality of terrified sheep, driven to homicidal psychosis by their won bestial fears? What can be done with such bestial Israelis, except to transform them from bestial sheep, to take them out of the kibbutz sheep-pens of psychosis, and employ the method of the Platonic dialogue to transform them into genuine men and women of reason?"

"Despite What Israel Has Done" Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., The Campaigner, March 1978

"So far, the world's leading experts see no way in which the Soviet biological-warfare apparatus could have created AIDS in a test-tube. However, it is in the strategic interests of Moscow to see to it that the West does nothing to stop this pandemic; within a few years, at the present rates, the spread of AIDS in Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and the Americas would permit Moscow to take over the world almost without firing a shot."

"The Lesson of the Merchant of Venice", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Executive Intelligence Review, November 1, 1985

"The two official U.S. government agencies most directly responsible for the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Jones Peoples Temple cult are the U.S. Air Force Intelligence and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Until the massive BritishZionist controlling penetration of those two elements of the Pentagon's intelligence establishment is cleaned out, untold horrors will continue to proliferate in the United States."

"Now, Do You Sleep With One Eye Open?", Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., Campaigner Special Report, 1978

"To the extent that my physical powers do not prevent me, I am now confident and capable of ending your [NCLC members'] political - and sexual - impotence; the two are interconnected aspects of the same problem."

"The Politics of Male Impotence", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., (under pen name L. Marcus) NCLC Internal Document, August 16, 1973

"We're not a cult...a cult is based in false axioms." September 2003

"Britain has in fact two governments, the first a parliamentary charade for the edification of the credulous, the other the real monarchial government."

"The Secrets Known Only To The Inner Elites" Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., The Campaigner, May-June 1978

"We shall end the rule of irrationalist episodic majorities, of British liberal notions of 'democracy.'" (see longer version of this quote)

"Creating a Republican Labor Party" Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Citizens for LaRouche Policy Statement, c. 1980

"Jazz was foisted on black Americans by the same oligarchy which had run the U.S. slave trade, with the help of the classically trained but immoral George Gershwin and the Paris-New York circuit of drug-taking avant-garde artists."

"The Racist Roots of Jazz", Back Cover, The Campaigner, September-October 1980

school
It's the first day of the summer semester and the LaRouchies were on campus today as they often are. I saw a guy from a class I was in earlier talking to them. There's something about him I didn't like. I have to admit I kind of hoped he'd join.

LaRouche's Anti-Semitism
Topic: LaRouche's Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism

“Killing Jews isn’t such a bad idea.”

It’s such a little thing, but it’s so damming. Immediately after the first class meeting I was in, the group gathered in the kitchen. There were some snacks, and everyone stood around talking to each other, congratulating each other on a good class. There must have been around 60 people standing around in the kitchen, and crowding out into other areas of the office, all talking at once. Like church, except everyone is about 85 times more amped. It’s no wonder these people consider going off meds and becoming manic to be normal. It’s loud, and it’s as soon as the class ends, everyone sets themselves to fast forward. This is when I met Montez for the first time, after talking to him on the phone so many times, and after he swindled me into coming to this meeting in the first place, and like an idiot, I wanted to talk to him just because we’d talked on the phone so much. He wanted me to meet someone, so he was leading me to the far side of the kitchen. As I walked by a group of guys talking, I heard one of them say, “…killing Jews isn’t such a bad idea…” it sounded to me like he was in mid-sentence.

We had just gotten out of a class on how Frederick Douglass had escaped slavery, met Abraham Lincoln, and been part of the abolitionist movement. I immediately assumed that the guy talking had said these words in some hypothetical sense, as in, “When Hitler was in power, a lot of people must have not liked him at first, but after listening to him enough, they were afraid for their own lives and started to think, ‘Killing Jews isn’t such a bad idea.” In just a split second, I filled in the rest. All I’d heard was, “Killing Jews isn’t such a bad idea.”

At this meeting of this organization that has this reputation for anti-Semitism that they’re so preoccupied with, as to vehemently deny when no one even asked, without even saying hello. In a way, I feel guilty that I didn’t say something right there, “Excuse me, I didn’t catch all of that. What did you mean by that?” Like any other statement or question that made them uncomfortable, it’s likely that it would have been met with a blank stare. I missed it. I missed a lot of things.

Holocaust denial

They talk incessantly about Hitler. They use Hitler as an example of what kind of person not to be. But it’s, don’t own a dog, don’t be concerned about the environment, don’t get married, don’t have the wrong taste in art. They never mention the reason Hitler went down in history. It’s one of those things I did not notice at all when I was in the cult. They’ll stand Hitler up next to anyone they want you to hate, and pick a similarity. They’ll find one. Hitler and Schwarzenegger are the same to LaRouche; they’re both “failed artists from Austria”. To listen to the LaRouchies, Hitler’s biggest crimes against humanity were some bad paintings and trying to conserve water.

The Holocaust denial, which they deny, so it’s easy to be in denial about it would be the central issue that I was totally blind to when I was in the cult, and didn’t see until later. They don’t come out and say “The Holocaust didn’t happen.” But they were always talking about Hitler and they never say that it happened.

Then there’s the Jeremiah Duggan case, which they deny had anything to do with their organization. They’ve made several different statements, which contradict each other to me alone since I found out about it; he had psychological problems and killed himself, that he was only a contact and never a member of the organization. The incident was politically motivated hoax orchestrated by the Cheney administration. If they can convince you of the slightest possibility of the latter story, you might stop worrying about whether it was suicide or murder. They’ve come up with a lie more shocking than the truth could possibly be. Their own weapon of mass distraction.

I believe that many of the members who are out at the tables on the street selling newspapers believe that LaRouche is not anti-Semitic. The organization has Jews in it. Two of the L.A. office’s senior members are Jewish. How could that be, if LaRouche were anti-Semitic?

“Look around. It’s a melting pot.” “Eastern cultures have no high purpose in the universe.” The same person will make these two statements in the same night.

Beyond Psychos: The Analysis

What I do know is that they say all that stuff in Beyond Psychoanalysis, not only to make sure you’re scared to have sex, but that you shut the hell up about who you are and where you come from, and ultimately, stop caring. All that stuff about your mother’s nipples. But, “It’s harder to brainwash girls, because the bond between mother and daughter is by nature homosexual,” says LaRouche when he’s on crack, years before crack was ever invented. Yes, because breastfeeding an infant is a sexual act.

The press blinders

They told me not to read mainstream newspapers or watch the news on TV, or listen to the radio, or to use the internet for anything other than listening to webcasts from the Campaign’s website, or for printing out literature from the Campaign’s website. There wasn’t any point. Allegedly. The whole world was going to hell, and they were the only ones doing anything about it.


Jeremiah Duggan

I knew nothing of Jeremiah Duggan’s mysterious death in Weisbadden, Germany until after I was expelled for heresy in September or October 2003. It must have been only a month or two after it happened that I was recruited. In one briefing while I was in the cult, it was announced that Germany was a dangerous place for members of the organization and that someone had been kidnapped recently.

The Duggan story even in 2006 is not the first thing that comes up if you Google “LaRouche” or “Lyndon LaRouche” Maybe try “Schiller Institute” or “state of terror”.

I was tipped off by another ex-member, after posting some things on remainn for antidummies, the cult’s message board, which, at the time, was strictly moderated to protect members from seeing posts such as the ones I wrote. They know better now. I’ve taught them a lesson. I believe I can give myself credit for that.

Remainn for antidummies is hosted by Yahoogroups, and is listed under geometry. Anyone with a Yahoo id can post on it. Yahoo is free to join and easy to use.

Jeremiah Duggan was a British anti-war student who was approached by the Schiller Institute, a front group for the LaRouche Youth Movement in France, where he was studying in March 2003, and decided to go to their conference in Weisbadden, Germany. In the hours before his death, he became extremely uncomfortable with some of the things he was hearing at the conference, announced to the conference that he was Jewish and had a problem with anti-Semitic statements he was hearing from members of the group. He fled from the conference in the wee hours of the morning, made several attempts to call home from a pay phone during which he told his mother he was frightened and wanted to come home. When he was trying to spell the name of the town he was in, the line cut out. He was struck by several vehicles and killed. Police immediately dismissed the case as suicide at the scene.

The British coroner who examined him had not accepted the conclusion by the German police that it was suicide, stating that Duggan had been in a “state of terror” when he died.

When I read that, I felt like I had a pretty good idea what a “state of terror” was. Only instead of fleeing, I felt I had to try to stay in the cult and change it. Sort of like turning into a skid, I guess.

You can read more about Jeremiah Duggan, and his family’s fight to keep the case open at justiceforjeremiah.com.

Some stuff about how brainwashing works
I started to believe pretty much anything they told me. There was still a logical part of me that realized how ridiculous, and even completely untrue some of the things they said were, but if you're surrounded by people who beleive the same untruth, and they make an active practice of affirming this untruth enough times, it becomes difficult for anyone to be sure what is true anymore. Even when you know you're being manipulated, and you're angry at the people who are surrounding you and lying to you, you start to believe them. You can hardly help it.
A cult isolates a person from his or her normal environment, as much as is in their power to do. Sometimes by illegal means, like kidnapping. I the case of the LYM with me, it's by convincing a person that the outside world is evil in some way; immoral, unsatisfying, substandard, not as good as the cult. The cult creates extremes of good and evil, right and wrong. Why anyone would choose to think this way, is beyond me.
A cult will never admit that it's a cult. A group that isn't a cult will also deny that it's a cult, so that doesn't help you much in determining whether a group is a cult.

When I first received The Children of Satan, I didn't appreciate their attitude that it was of so much importance that I read it in the first place. It wasn't even my usual trouble with focusing that made it difficult for me to get through this pamphlet. It was being surrounded by this, "this is the only thing in the world that's important" attitude, and knowing I had to maintain some sort of balance in my life. They didn't understand this. And it showed. I could tell you just from being around them that a big part of a lot of these people's problem is none of them sleep enough, they're malnurished, and they don't take time for the things in life that matter. They don't exercise, their humor is sick, and they won't talk to anyone unless it's about LaRouche.

Pre-existing condition
It's important to say here that I have bipolar disorder, knew about it when I went in, and told them about it. This is because of the way they handled it. They responded by telling me bipolar disorder didn't exist. And they would not shut up about it.

This is an irresponsible statement made by someone who is merely ignorant. All I thought when I was hearing this again and again from members was that they just didn't know any better. I am formally disabled because of it. They would just say, "You're not disabled." It would start out as a seeming casual conversation, just the one or two people I was working with that day were asking me about something they'd heard. I'd explan to them that I have bipolar disorder, and collect Social Security because of it.

It did no good to explain to them why it's classified as a disability in my case. Or the difference between how my condition actually affects me, and all the legality of the "disability". They would just say, "You're not disabled." These weren't well-meaning people who didn't know what they were doing. They intended to convince me that I didn't have a mental illness and that it was ok to stop treatment.

They cared even less about what had happened in my life involving the bipolar disorder to make it extremely inappropriate for them to attempt to diagnose me, not even knowing anything about me, than they did about the facts.

One member in particular, Vicki told me that she has a brother with a mental illness. Even she tried to tell me it was "just a label". Yes, yes, people who have conditions like this are labeled by society and by the system and that does not help them. No, she insisted it was "just a label" and was not real at all. "Who cares? It's just a label." Vicki was one of the dumber ones if I may make a personal commentary. She was one of the ones who, when I complained of not having had enough sleep the night before, or a shower, would say, "Who cares? It's the revolution!"

Who cares? it's the revolution! Be a revolutionary and go off your meds!

I have a feeling if I had gone off my meds and joined this organization permanently, I would not be the first.

After I was expelled, I sent LaRouche an email. In it, I asked him if his supporters would try to convince someone who had diabetes that diabetes didn't exist based on something he wrote. I received no answer to this question. For a while after I was expelled I was so confused I actually thought I could change their minds about some of the things they were doing.

It is extremely dangerous to tell someone with a condition such as mine that they don't really have it. I knew this. I tried to tell them that it was wrong.

The LYM ignores medial emergencies and health problems. The only medical procedure LaRouche isn't too cheap to spring for for one of his young supporters is a forced abortion.

At Cadre School, I got stung by a bee. I just had to suffer through it because everyone I said something about it to just stared at me. When I yelled "Ow!" The all just looked blankly at me. They sort of asked what happened. I told them a bee was stinging me. It's not that none of them knows what to do for a bee sting. They don't care. And there was absolutely no procedure for any kind of injury at this Cadre School. No insurance. No nurse's station. You had to be there. Their reaction wasn't normal.

I don't even think they can legally do that. Bring 300 people out into the woods. Have an event. 2 nights. They fed us. That's all. There are laws about having to make sure everyone is safe at a thing like this. There are also labor laws, but they don't care.
Because it's a revolution and they don't have time to be concerned with labor laws, child labor laws, or health codes, or common decency; they're saving humanity.

Slavery
"We are living slavery." Those are the last words of the class on Frederick Douglass. Writing about it today, I want to say, "Who would fall for that?"

This is where it becomes difficult, because this is where I became really, really confused.

Just listening to this class, I started to get the feeling that I was here for a reason. I felt like I could relate to Douglass's story in a way most people couldn't.

Ok, sure, sure, there were some people here who were pretty strange. I thought most of the people in this group didn't know how to present themselves. I thought if I decided I wanted to be here, I could help people with their speeches. I could say, "That was a really good class, but you're really losing a lot of people by always wrapping it by saying there's no reason to do anything other than the campaign." I was that blind about what was going on. There was a lot that I saw that didn't seem right, but I missed enough.

I didn't realize that the constant reiteration that "there's no point in doing anything else", was a tactic used by cults to just reinforce this belief. All I knew was that I didn't believe it, and it bugged me. A lot. I argued with them about it. I just thought it was stupid, it didn't really occur to me when I was in how much danger I was in.

From the first day they come right out and ask you if you're going to join. The pressure starts right away. Even at the table. They don't care whether you feel you are making an educated decision about joining their campaign, or making a donation to it. They are convinced that they know what's best for you.

This whole class on Fredrick Douglass compares the working class lifestyle to slavery. The kind of slavery Frederick Douglass endured. Working, collecting a paycheck, supporting yourself, and whoever else you need to support. That's the same thing as slavery, according to the LaRouche campaign.

The campaign pays its members $40 a week--maybe. The campaign pays their rent. This is all on the condition that everybody think the same way. If you start to have doubts, they can stop paying your rent. Having cut off all ties with family and friends, anyone who's been in who has had their rent cut off has no where to go.

They claim that they're helping people who work in sweatshops for 7 cents an hour in third world countries. But none of the money they collect goes to any of these people they're always congratulating themselves for working so hard to help. It goes to LaRouche's neverending campaign. LaRouche and his wife use the campaign money to take luxurious trips around the world, where he makes speeches, does the same thing he's doing in the United States, and lives very well for doing it.

How does $40 a week in Los Angeles compare to 7 cents an hour in a third world country when you consider the cost of living?

Members of the LYM have to campaign at a book table 6 days a week, then in the evening, they have to be at meetings. At each class meeting, they're told they have to read 5 to 10 books to really understand what was just said at the class meeting.

Even if I read something they told me I should read, it was never enough for me to have read it. I was told countless times that I had to "reeeeaaaly read it." Then they would imitate someone reading something and concentrating really hard. What an ingenius way to cure my bipolar disorder.

I realize now of course that being homeless for a year in Los Angeles as difficult as it was, is not anything like slavery. I don't mean any offense by saying that I made a comparison of the two when I heard the class. It's the reaction they were going for, and discovered later that the same story worked on other homeless people.

Introduction
In 2003 for several months I was part of the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM).
This is something I feel a need to write, but it's difficult.
I didn't have to leave. I was expelled.

The dates on these posts are the dates that I wrote them. I will try to include any relevant dates of things when they happened within the posts.

Before I met the LaRouchies, I had been homeless for a little over a year, and had barely moved into my apartment. I had been living here for only a few months. The only friends I really had were other people who used to live at the shelter and I really wanted to get away from that.

I also was very opposed to the war in Iraq, and that's their main hook that draws new members into the LaRouche Campaign these last couple of years.

I came accross this book table at the Santa Monica College campus. Normally, I figure I can talk to someone who sounds crazy, what harm can there possibly be in that? I'm serious. Maybe not consciously, but I'd been homeless for over a year. I have bipolar disorder. Practically everyone I knew had something at least a little wrong with them. At the time, there was no way for me to judge whether it was ok to go to one of their meetings.

People who are recruited to cults are typically vulnerable or at transitional times in their lives.

Cults want people who are really intelligent, but also vulnerable or in a transitional period in their lives.

When you meet the LaRouchies at a campaign table, they ask for your number and a donation. I gave them my number, but I didn't have any money I could give them if I wanted to. Maybe I did, but I needed it. I was living on $200 a month at the time. "Come on, not even a dollar?" Already they reminded me of panhandlers who either had no idea how humiliating it was what they were doing, or just didn't mind, who had no idea that I was nearly as broke as they were, or didn't care.