Posted by: res publica | October 29, 2007 2:35 PM
Speaking as Ken Kronberg's widow, and a LaRouche "insider" from 1973 till earlier this year--when Ken died--res publica is kidding himself/herself about LaRouche's relevance and the quality of his discoveries and the coherence of his worldview.
I was in the organization, I knew the players, I was on the National Committee from 1982 till, I guess, now--and coherence was never a characteristic, nor did LaRouche make any significant discoveries--economic, philosophical, ontological, or otherwise.
That's what I thought was so on the mark about Avi Klein's article: It didn't get sidetracked onto politics or policies, which makes sense, because LaRouche has neither.
Marielle,
I respect your perspective. However, I would never have discovered List and Carey, or appreciated the genius of Benjamin Franklin without the work done by the best of the writers Ken published over the years: Spannaus, Chaiken, Salisbury. Or alumni like Robert Dreyfus. LaRouche, on the other hand, always needed a good editor, although I'm sure the problem is he would never permit it. IMO he hasn't written much that's new and interesting since Dialectical Economics. On coherence. If the ideas are not coherent, why I am able to guess LaRouche's reaction to world events (whether I agree or not) before I open up the website or see the street sign. From its own points of reference, it holds together as a way of thinking. My real point is that people who feel that they wasted their time are over-estimating the value of much of what we "normal" working folks have done over the last 15 years. Apart from creating islands of sanity and joy in our families, friends and local communities, not much (at least for me, except I keep hacking away). Enjoy your freedom and the rest of your life without looking back with regret.
I'm not likely to "enjoy my freedom and the rest of my life without looking back with regret," since my greatly loved husband, the most important person on the planet to me, along with my son, was driven to suicide by LaRouche.
As for Spannaus, Chaitkin, etc.--if you want to read something decent published by a LaRouchie, read Ken's stuff.
And as for being "free" of LaRouche--I've been free of him for decades.
Ken's death didn't give me any kind of freedom, it made my distaste for and disapproval of LaRouche into something far more visceral.
I just want to comment that from my own experience Res Publica is correct on the question of coherence and Molly is wrong. I am a long time supporter of Lyn and his ideas who was never a "full time member". However, as a supporter, I was not recruited. I recruited myself through my reading of Lyn's work. The way you can tell that his insights and discoveries are real is that you can read his work, and that of his associates, figure out the underlying coherence for yourself, look at the world around you in that light, and find that the world now makes better sense.
etc. etc. blah de blah nutcase kookery blah blah... boring and tedious buffoonery but this is worthy of a laugh.:
Lyn has too much personal integrity to reduce adherence to his ideas to the level of parrots repeating a set of buzzwords. In fact if one has access to the briefings one will see that he frequently polemicizes against just that tendency. Unfortunately, though Lyn clearly has intellectual integrity, it would seem some members do not. Although Lyn would never willfully form a cult, I don't think there is any way to prevent members from reducing his ideas to the status of a cult, due undoubtedly to their own other-directedness.
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http://lyndonlarouche.org/kronberg7.htm
I had thought it had been agreed, that the documentation of Molly Kronberg's public filings of financial contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Republican National Committee would have appeared prominently in the Saturday AM Ops Bulletin.
Wha' happened, huh?Members who have been suffering distress for reason of a lack of this sort of information bearing on the actual circumstances of Ken's suicide, deserve the reassurance which those facts supply. Once any among our associates have possession of those facts, the other available, crucially relevant facts tumble properly into their relevant places. Withholding circulation of well-documentation of firmly established, relevant facts, is itself a form of fraud when a crucial issue is involved. [...]
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/kronberg2.htm
The Boomers will be scared into becoming human, because you're in the real world, and they're not. Unless they want to commit suicide.
Our members became demoralized by taking their approach of the 1980s and '90s, and trying to adapt it to a different situation, where it can't function. They stopped thinking how to win, and instead tried to adapt to failure. The right approach is not a ritual in which we glorify our "suffering." It's to provide effective leadership to society, and to go to society: "this role must be supported."
Take the website. How insane were we, not to do all that time what we are doing now? It was clinically insane. To build a mass movement, you need a mass base. The easiest way is through this sort of website! It you think you can succeed without a mass effect, you're an idiot!
The Boomer is characterized by a self-imposed insecurity; a sense of jeopardy regarding his personal identity in society. Imagine yourself at a big party of cannibals, wondering if you'll be next.
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/kronberg12.htm
>
And then we had, of course, the operation in the United
> States, which was run largely run through various agencies, but
> most notably the private agency was Mellon Scaife, who was
> funding the operation against us from 1983, oh about I would say
> about March 1983 on, and in conjunction with John Train: Who is
> actually an Anglo-American agent, more than just an American
> agent, who runs a private company who specializes in this. And
> the most recent thing, with people like Molly, for example, was
> being controlled by those circuits, and had been controlled by
> them for some time. Although her husband, Ken, who had committed
> suicide recently, was quite loyal to the organization, she was an
> enemy, actually. So, there wasn't much loss.
),
and I'll let you work out the details.
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/4/39986.html?1193981880
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=10&year=2007&base_name=political_cults
The Washington Monthly article is an interesting piece of journalism that sheds real light on a truly disturbing event: the death of Ken Kronberg. Unfortunately both Kate's post and Avi's article suffer from the usual problems with LaRouche critics: (i) over-reliance on emotive words like "crazy" and "cult" which don't describe much except to advertise the writer's status in the respectible anti-LaRouche crowd (ii) and mischaracterization of the ideas of the LaRouche movement. The key test I use to judge the level of mischaracterization is to ask the question: could I gain any understanding of what the movement's ideas are solely by reading the article? The answer for Avi's piece is "no." Although I have never been a member of the movement, I have read LaRouche's publications over a long period of time. My verdict is that the movement represents a coherent set of ideas. These ideas are not beyond of criticism, but charge of impenetrability is an empty one. If you read the movement's writings with an open mind and a critical eye, in the aggregate the basic points will be clear and you will end up learning much of value. Sometimes I think that those who like to present the ideas themselves as "crazy" use that term as a device to convince intelligent fair-minded people not to bother reading the movement's writings. At the same time, LaRouche's personal behavior and often rhetorical style makes the critics' mischaracterizations an easier sell. That may be the true crime. Just because Lyndon LaRouche made some unique discoveries in method (intersection of economics, mathematics and technological development)does not necessarily qualify him to lead a movement to put those ideas into practice. I encourage those former cadres who are worried about irrelevence to consider how many people have absorbed important discoveries from he writings but still wanted to keep as far away from the movement as possible because of LaRouche's (let's be kind) ideosyncracies in leadership style. But I would also urge them to stay active politically and bring the best of those ideas into the deliberations of mainstream political organizations that could benefit from them.