Hey Look! A New LaRouche Posting!!
Sooner or later (I likely will be able to toss up tidbits, but may lak the gumption for the entire article until the next calendar year), I’ll post what is sort of the master article on Lyndon LaRouche, published in the New York Times on October 7, 1979. The “tid-bits” I’m sort of promising provide us with some things that echo some experiences found in, of all places, an anonymous PSU student quoted in the Portland State University Vanguard newspaper article from a year and a half ago. The New York Times article is famous in the lore of LaRouche literature as being the “LaRouche is a Bad Man, but We Can’t Tell You Why” hit-piece. (No, I have not spent a heckofalotof time reading his literature, but if you skim around, this sticks out and sticks out well.)
In the meantime, sit back and enjoy an amusing enough example of electoral politics circa 1983, through the eyes of the local New York Times editorial page:
May 2, 1983 “More Than Just A Local School Fight”
New York City’s local school board elections are usually local, important to parents in the district and few others. But tomorrow’s election in the Sixth District, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, holds wider interest. A group calling itself the National Democratic Policy Committee has entered a slate of nine candidates interested in fighting about such local educational issues as “British intelligence and the Israeli Mafia” and the International Money Fund. They hint that city officials are guilty of heinous offenses against law and decency. The election of any members of this group would be a heavy blow to the school district.
The group has no connection with the Democratic Party. It advertises its connection with Lyndon LaRouche. Mr. LaRouche has run for a number of important offices and backed candidates for others. The ostensible program of his organization is to stimulate worldwide economic development through the harnessing of nuclear fusion. His literature, however, devotes far more space to attacks on British bankers, to support for anti-Zionism in a form that is hard to distinguish from anti-Semitism, and to an authoritarian program to counter all conspiracies and perversions.
Residents of District 6 who are either enrolled voters or parents with children in any of the district schools would be wise to select their preferred candidates from among those who are not endorsed by the “National Democratic Policy Committee.” To elect any of its candidates would reward intolerance, and indifference to education.
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May 22, 1983
Well-Schooled Voters
Nine members of the so-called National Democratic Policy Committee, an organization inspired and led by Lyndon LaRouche Jr., entered the New York school board election in District 6, covering Inwood, Washington Heights and upper Harlem. The threat of their candidacies helped bring 14,000 voters to the polls, 6,000 more than three years ago. Not one of the group was elected.
The LaRouche-affiliated candidates complained about inadequacies of the schools and attacked public officials with harsh personal innuendoes. They also warned of the alleged threat of British and Israeli intelligence agents, a standard LaRouche issue. It was impossible to read such broadsides withoug reeling that “anti-British” bias masked ant-Semitism.
Thanks to local organizations, unions and Councilman Stanley Michels, the anti-LaROuche forces were able to rout their opponents. The big turnout, noted also in other districts facing controversy, was in itself encouraging; it may indicate a reversal of the declining interest in school board elections since 1970.
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