A one-day international symposium on the language of far-right movements on Friday, 26 June 2009 .
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THE LAROUCHE ORGANIZATION AND THE LANGUAGE OF HATE
ERICA DUGGAN
A paper presented at the 26 June 2009 University of Northampton international symposium: “Speaking with Forked Tongues: The Rhetoric of Right-Wing Extremism Today”
Introduction:
My son Jeremiah Duggan died in
March 2003 in a very violent and sudden way. Before his death we, like most
British people, knew very little about Lyndon LaRouche, his international
network of front groups, nor his newly-created Youth Movement. Since Jeremiah’s
death, my son’s friends have established our website www.
justiceforjeremiah.com, and now there is much more information circulating about
the LaRouche Organization than before. In addition, there are now more websites
(see list at the end) which describe the ways in which the LaRouche organization
is a threat to the individual and a danger to society.
It was only with time,
research, and further investigations that we found out how the language and
terminology of this group amounted to a form of incitement to hatred.
Background:
It was in March 2003, and the
Iraq War was just starting. Jeremiah was in Paris as a student at the British
Institute of London University. He phoned home saying he had been invited to
attend an anti-war conference in Germany. He felt very strongly that he wanted
to protest against this impending war, and he was full of enthusiasm about how
much he would learn from what thought were to be highly acclaimed political
speakers. Five days later he phoned home again, but this time it was in the
early hours of the morning, and things were very different. He said he was in
big trouble; he sounded in terror for his life and cried out to be rescued from
danger – that minute.
Within the hour, he was dead. His body found on the highway near to the offices of LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review European headquarters the Schiller Institute, and five kilometres outside the town of Wiesbaden. Almost immediately, the local police declared Jeremiah’s death a suicide – even without the investigatin officer interviewing the motorists at the scene or taking any kind of formal witness statement– and despite our pleas for a post mortem and for the return of his clothes and shoes, the case was closed. At that time, we were also excluded from any chance of further investigation.
The police were—or said they were—of the firm mind that this was suicide and that there was no necessity to investigate further. They showed no interest at all in the fact that the LaRouche Organization is documented as a dangerous, anti-Semitic movement, nor were they concerned about the strange circumstances surrounding his sudden,highly suspicious death. Nor did Hessen law enforcement officers appear to know anything about how the language and imagery used by the LaRouche group evokes the central anti-Semitic allegation of a powerful and hidden Jewish conspiracy trying to destroy the world. In fact, the police set up a meeting, and encouraged us to speak to the very people who we now know were involved in the circumstances surrounding Jeremiah’s death.
These were the leaders of Schiller Institute, who spoke to us openly about their goal being to “completely change the recruit’s identity” and to completely change everything recruits had learnt at University. It was further explained to us by two top leaders of the LaRouche Organization, Ortrun Cramer, the Manager of the Schiller Institute, and Jonathan Tennenbaum, a prominent LaRouchite lecturer, that the recruits had all the wrong ideas and that they were teaching them to change their assumptions because all that they had learnt up until then was wrong; at the time, what they were teaching their recruits could be summarised as “Bush is the new Hitler!”
So what happened to Jeremiah? How can our
investigations of the language used by this totalitarian movement throw some
light on what happened to Jeremiah?
Why has such organized anti-Semitism so
long been ignored in Germany?
How can we clarify for the police and lawmakers
Larouche’s language of demonisation and destruction, so that we can assist them
in the identification of hate speech? Finally, how can an understanding of the
phenomenon of speaking with forked tongue help us here? Do we need to understand
how the language of bigoted conspiracies, of demonization and scape-goating, can
have tragic consequences in the real world?
I write this paper to show that today, as in the past, the consequences of anti-Semitic discourse can be violent, and that more research is needed to provide analytic tools for the police and lawmakers, so that what happened to Jeremiah may provide a greater understanding of how the ‘rhetoric of forked tongues’ can lead to such infliction of pain and hurt. I attempt to provide the means of defining and clarifying what, to my view, constitutes the hate crimes leading to my son’s death. I suggest that the evidence is there, if we can only recognize what I will call here:
1. The Language of Deception
2. The Language
of Hate
3. The Language of Hurt
4. The Language of Destruction
The Language of Deception
From the moment we learnt of our son’s death, we have encountered a range of anti-Semitic discourse disseminated by the LaRouche organization. It ranges through denial, distortions, total reversals of reality, falsification, and ultimately lies and fraud. This deception is even more dangerous because falsehoods are built upon half-truths – and of course that makes its camouflage even more sinister.
Examples: For example, the use of the poet Friedrich Schiller (the name of the LaRouche Organization in Germany being touted as “The Schiller Institute” as an institute engaging in the Arts) hides the political agenda at its base. The study of Plato and mathematics plays its part in deceiving outsiders as to the nature of its fascist ideology. When we were in the police station in Wiesbaden the day after our son was killed, the Inspector said: “Well, the Schiller Institute, that is a ‘respectable organization. They go in for poetry readings and music. Your son went to an exhibition of Rembrandt paintings the night before he died.”
The Language of Deception also works on members
and non-members.
Needless to say, there are outright lies printed about my
person by the LaRouche Organization and published worldwide. This consists of
interwoven fabrications about how I am working for Baroness Symons, the British
Foreign Office Minister —being her pawn only out to “get LaRouche” and of course
my being under direction of Mrs. Lynne Cheney (whom I have never met in my
life). This language of deception is the base of everything that holds the
LaRouche Organization together. My son was surrounded by the language of
deception and exposed to falsifications and lies. He was told that he had been
lied to all his life. He was repeatedly told he could not believe anyone except
Lyndon LaRouche. This use of language to create a controlled environment is the
most dangerous aspect and consequence of such deceptive language.
The dangers of the LaRouche Organization can so easily be overlooked, as there is a tendency to accept groups at face value that insist: “We are not anti-Semitic. We are engaged in cultural activities like poetry, music and mathematics.” However, behind this smokescreen are the anti-Semitic and anti-British conspiracies that animate the organization, providing it with its targets and its goals. When we went to Germany on the day after our son died and were told by the German police that the Schiller Institute organized classes in singing and poetry and that the youth even attended an exhibition of Rembrandt paintings on the last night of Jeremiah’s life, we were witnesses to how easy it is for anyone to fall into the trap of believing that any organization that goes in for ‘High Culture’ and the Arts cannot possibly have any destructive or dangerous intentions.
But the “culture” facade is all predicated upon deceiving initiates in order to exercise power over them, to shut down enquiry and control the minds of new recruits. The unsuspecting recruits then devote their lives to working long hours, with very little pay, being deceived into imagining that their activities are doing something to make the world a better place. Destroying one life is bad enough, but destroying, over the course of years, many lives and the lives of families is an even more serious matter
The Language of Hate: A Conspiracy of Evil People Taking Over the World.
In the lectures and press releases at the 2003 LaRouche Conference in Bad Schwalbach, Germany there are examples of the language of hate. In the “Morning Briefings” found in my son’s knapsack, there are numerous examples of this hateful langauge. It took the form of demonizing Jewish individuals, vilifying and demeaning Jews as a group, and referring to Israel as a Nazi state or their leaders as fascists. Euphemisms and codes are used to imply in Jewish complicity in sinister aims. Reference is made to a pernicious group who are trying to spread a kind of universal fascism all over the world – even to the extent of destroying the world rather than losing worldwide control. There are notes taken down by Jeremiah, who recording these conspiracy theories at the LaRouchite conference in March 2003.
For example, in the Morning Briefings for Sunday, Monday or Tuesday 22nd, 23rd, 24th March 2003 the following can be found:
There is a pernicious group—the evil oligarchs who are attempting to impose fascist imperialism and world domination through nuclear war. This evil group is fomenting nuclear world war and bringing the world to the brink of destruction.
On the last page of Jeremiah’s lecture notes found in his bags it is stated “Jewish leads to Fascism leads to Cheney, Bush.”
It is further stated in these Morning Briefings, albeit in a veiled way, that there is a group who are essentially trying to destroy the world as we know it. This makes the LaRouche organization’s references even more dangerous because young people like my son are, at first, unaware of the true meaning behind this conspiratorial language of hate. The language is full of sinister undertones, innuendos, and suggestions such as: There are “forces behind,” “group forces,” “slime mould,” or “the people I told you about before.” Everywhere reference is made to a group of people – really Jews or Jewish sympathisers – but, because it is not politically correct to be open about who the group are, we get a form of hidden discourse that makes up this language of hate. Individual hate figures are the focus, with these featuring largely as Jewish persons who are well-known in some way—George Soros, Felix Rohatyn, Henry Kissinger all become targets for smear-mongering, derision and defamation.
Jeremiah heard the keynote opening address by Lyndon LaRouche, entitled “Physical Geometry as Strategy.” Jeremiah scribbled down notes about how Kennedy was killed not by Oswald but by a special warfare Section of the State apparatus that “does that sort of thing.” Again references to a shadowy, hidden group; a dark conspiracy of evil people trying to take control of the world.
Jonathan Tennenbaum, a longstanding official of the LaRouche Organization, told us personally, in our meeting after Jeremiah’s death, that he remembered how Jeremiah had said “But I am a Jew” at a time when he heard LaRouche members stating that the Jews were responsible for starting the Iraq War. This makes it clear that Jeremiah felt under attack from the insidious language of hate around him.
The Language of Hurt.
There is much evidence of how a language of hurt
was exercised upon Jeremiah.
This process of undermining a person’s belief
system is based on deliberate distortion of reality. For example, the British
are said to be responsible for bringing Hitler to power. In fact, according to
LaRouche, the British are the most evil people in the world and are responsible
for Hitler’s fascism and all that followed. The organization’s anti-Semitic
discourse was inflicted upon Jeremiah, in addition to the falsifications around
how the British Tavistock clinic is part of British Intelligence, and a force of
destruction and harm. Being Jewish, British, and having been briefly analysed at
the Tavistock Clinic, Jeremiah appeared to personify several of LaRouche’s
conspiracy theories – and he stood up and publicly said so.
Before this incident, Jeremiah was subjected to an onslaught of the language of hurt. According to the Morning Briefings found in his knapsack, he attended a lecture by LaRouche in which he was told that young people have no ability for independent critical thinking, because they have been lied to and deceived all their lives. Jeremiah was told he had been “brainwashed” and that he could not trust what he was told by his parents, his schooling, or his University. Everything that represented his identity and everything he believed came under attack. Even if Jeremiah made objections, these were not critically examined but turned into a process of attacking him as a person.
How is this done? By undermining a person’s confidence in his own abilities, his own knowledge, and his own judgment. Instead of debating in a normal discussion, sophisticated techniques are used to make a person question their own courage, and to give up his life to help the world. The world is said to be on the brink of destruction and a failure to join the LaRouche Organization is interpreted as meaning that the person is turning his or her back on the very destruction of the planet. When Jeremiah said he did not trust LaRouche or that he did not agree, he was told that the problem was in his character; in what he represented—he was told he had been manipulated. He had been lied to all his life and now, as a result, he just wanted to turn his back on the suffering world. He was told that he was actually bringing world destruction about due his own weakness. In this way, the language of hurt is coupled with brutal and damaging insults. But these go much deeper than insults, because they inflict on the individual a degree of psychological pain that merits being seen as a criminal assault against his person.
At the LaRouche youth training school, an attempt was made to recruit Jeremiah, but he was not willing to join. Then, when Jeremiah decided he had to leave, it appeared that they turned against him and no sooner was he was dead than he was seen as the enemy. Why? Was this because he questioned their views? Was it because he was dead and they saw his death as a threat? Or was it because, in trying to recruit him and using the language of hurt, they forced upon an idealistic young person fears and terrors of the world that would come about if he did not join forces with their organization so powerful that those fears and terrors in themselves could destroy people? At the March 2003 conference, in fact, mention was made to the notorious 1973 article “Beyond Psychoanalysis” ( the pen name Lyn Marcus is used, but the author is Lyndon LaRouche) of how, with LaRouche’s suggested method of breaking a person down in order to recruit them. there may be a “mess to clean up,” and LaRouche refers to cases where it can go wrong.
Within hours of Jeremiah’s death, Helga Zepp LaRouche told the youth movement in Wiesbaden that Jeremiah was British and a Jew, and therefore an enemy that intended to harm the organization. There are people even now in the LaRouche Organization that claim my son was a spy. The language of hate, hurt and deception appears to continue up to the point where the recruit is subjected to increasing stress, an overload of information, sleep deprivation—and then, at the point where all the individual’s vulnerabilities are fully exploited, the individual reaches breaking point. It is at that point, that we arrive at the Language of Destruction.
The Language of Destruction.
What evidence do I have of the use of a rhetoric that stirs up hatred against others and continues to the point that the well-being of an individual is threatened—to the point that we now have examples of the language of destruction? How does this work? The danger in the language of hate defines itself by the intention to destroy, an act which is knowingly undertaken. Indeed, the techniques of this process of using interrogation to break a person down are all stated in LaRouche’s 1973 “Beyond Psychoanalysis.” This manual is given to leaders and is mentioned in the lecture notes Jeremiah took at the training school that followed the Conference.
This process of peeling away the layers of a person’s identity, until the person is a shell of his former, self is all documented as a technique to be used in recruiting and organizing. It is a process whereby one person or a group of persons exercise pressure upon an individual: “the world is on the brink of destruction”; “you can trust no one”; “they have all lied to you”; “only by you changing yourself and committing to the truth of our plans and ideas can there be hope for humanity. But you don’t trust us—or believe us–—because you have been brainwashed. You have no independent power of thinking.” To take away an individual’s right to determine his future, to determine his own thought, by using lies, deceptions, and ultimately subjugation—all this is part of the language of destruction. These sentiments are clearly expressed in the Morning Briefings Jeremiah had in his bag when he died.
Article Two European Convention of Human Rights
defines how it is the severity of the mental attack that establishes what can be
legally termed “torture.”
For Jeremiah to die within such a short time after
exposure to the LaRouche Organization’s “ego-stripping” techniques must raise
questions of whether this rhetoric of destruction is not a sustained mental
attack on an individual, one which ultimately led to a violent death, a
crime?
We are back to the question, “Why did Jeremiah die?” He was a student of London University doing a language course in Paris, so why has none of this been exposed in a university before? I raise the question to suggest an answer:
Fear. This organization uses intimidation and the threat of litigation to close down any media coverage that may express ideas about their activities with which they disagree. Over the years, they have acquired a reputation for threatening litigation or making threats of litigation, and this has given the LaRouche Organization a feeling of having won the right to stop others from making criticism, while at the same time have been able to get away with spreading falsifications and lies.
For years, they have defamed the Tavistock Clinic, a highly respected institute in London which pioneered some forms of psychoanalysis. They write that the Tavistock breeds assassins who travel all over the world killing political opponents. The LaRouche Organization also writes about the Queen running the international drug trade, alongside many other acts of defamation against British royalty and nationals.
Many people choose to ignore their vicious attacks. They do this as it is time-consuming and expensive to fight back, even though these individuals—be they politicians, lawyers, media personnel or researchers— think they would surely win against such threats. Ever since his death, my son Jeremiah has been defamed as a drug addict and as mentally unstable, and I, his mother, defamed as a pawn manipulated by Mrs Cheney. The LaRouche Organization has taken it upon themselves to threaten legal action against me, or against media outlet that writes about my son’s death, let alone any politicians figures seeking to support me .
The LaRouche Organization has also threatened university lecturers and authors of books, and one wonders whether this is the reason why the academic world until now has preferred not to engage in critical research on LaRouche. These forms of intimidation are, to my mind, worthy of serious criminal investigation, as they threaten the democratic and political process, in addition to strangling the possibility of academic research.
Conclusions:
Is it not offensive to allow the LaRouche Organization to use the Nazi card against anyone they consider a threat? Is it not doubly offensive in that they use it to evoke hatred against Jews as a group? Are the academic world and the media too afraid to enquire into areas of research when they assume such organizations are known to use intimidation? Meanwhile, the LaRouche Organization has free rein to defame and lie, without any legal challenges from anyone. For example, it is alleged by the LaRouche Organization that I said something on the phone that drove my son to suicide. Lyndon LaRouche can publish that I work for Cheney’s wife, for Baroness Symons, and so, and people laugh and ignore itWhat can be done about such a situation, where bullies are able to win by intimidation?
It is time for us to define our terms and classification so that calling Jews, or Jewish bankers Nazis, or referring in a masked way to conspiracies of Jews, is seen as part of the language of hate and comes under criminal law. For such rhetoric poses a threat to the individual and undermines the democratic process. Anti-Semitic discourse must be better understood and more effectively combated before it grows worse. An examination of the circumstances surrounding the death of our son, Jeremiah Duggan, provides much evidence of how the incitement to hatred, and the rhetoric of hatred, creates the consequences of terror and violence.
Why should any mother accept the unnecessary loss of a beloved son without answers to the question: Why did he die?
I know why he died. He died because for too long too many people have preferred to ignore the rhetoric of modern day fascism, and failed to use the law that does exist to prosecute crimes against incitement to hatred.
Online Resources:
In German:
Action for Psychological Freedom (Ingo Heinemann) – http://www.AGPF.de/LaRouche.htm
Facts on LaRouche’s ties
to former German military elites – http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/dokument/dokument.html?id=13521056&top=SPIEGEL
In English:
Justice for Jeremiah (Duggan family and friends) – http://justiceforjeremiah.org/
LaRouche Planet (website
run by ex-members) – http://laroucheplanet.com/
Political Research Associates
(Chip Berlet) – http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/index.html
Lyndon LaRouche Watch (Dennis King) – http://www.lyndonlarouchewatch.com/ (for massive
documentation on LaRouche’s support for death squads and other perpetrators of
human rights abuses around the world, go to http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/larouche-fascism.htm)
Compass: Political Religions (Matthew Feldman) – http://www.religion-compass.com/
Factnet (discussion board
for ex-LaRouche followers) – http://www.factnet.org/
Freedom of Mind archive – http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/larouche-movement
Rick Ross’s archive – http://rickross.com/groups/larouche.htm (GIVE SENTENCE ON ROSS IN PARENTHESES LIKE ABOVE…)
BOOKS:
In German:
Verrit: Mein Leben in einer radikalen Politorganisation, Aglaja Beyes-Corleis,
Freiburg: Herder/Spektrum, 1994.
Deckname Schiller: die Deutschen Patrioten
des Lyndon LaRouche, Helmut Lorscheid and Leo A. Mueller, Rembek bei Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1986.
In English:
Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism,
Dennis King, New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Gilbert, Helen, Lyndon LaRouche:
Fascism restyled for the New Millennium (Red Letter Press, Seattle: 2003)
PLEASE HAVE ALL REFERENCE CONFORM TO THE FORMAT OF THE ONE ABOVE
On the Edge:
Political Cults Right and Left, Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth, Armonk, NY: ME
Sharpe Inc., 2000 (see Chap. 5).
Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close
for Comfort, Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, New York: Guildford Publications,
2000.