Political

December 08, 2006

LaRouche Youth Movement Campus Tactics Questioned

LaRouche movement's comparisons must be ignored

by Nicholas Collard

http://sundial.csun.edu/media/storage/
paper862/news/2006/12/06/Opinion/Larouche.
Movements.Comparisons.Must.Be.Ignored-2524287.
shtml?norewrite200612081512&sourcedomain=sundial.csun.edu

Issue date: 12/6/06 Section: Opinion

Our campus is a place of political free speech, much like other universities throughout the nation.

We allow the voices of both competing sides of the political spectrum to establish themselves in this place of open thought-provoking debate.

Most of these political organizations are moderate and sound in their claims, while others are provocative and extreme. Nonetheless, they all receive a fairly equal opportunity to present themselves and be judged by the students they try to influence.

There is one activist, arguably the most extreme in his political views, who has no problem dishing out hurtfully slanderous criticism against public officials.

His name is Lyndon LaRouche, and while most students have probably never met the man, we all know what he looks like. Displayed on large print photographs that hang from the tables of his "LaRouche Youth Movement" like the Communist banners that once draped the eastern bloc, his face has become a symbol of an extreme radical and, dare I say it, cultish movement.

A radical politico like LaRouche who resorts to, and endorses, articles that contain such harsh terms as Nazi-Gestapo, fascist, and Children of Satan, would appear on face value to be inviting open criticism of his ideas.

However, any person or group that opposes him is immediately lashed out at with blitzkrieg-style slanders. Typically, these efforts are reserved for hard-line right-wing conservatives, but recently LaRouche turned his attention to a UCLA student publication, attacking it vehemently and ruthlessly in an attempt to discredit Garin Hovannisian, a student who wrote an opinion piece titled "Expose: The Cult of Lyn LaRouche."

The noticeably hasty response, written by Aaron Yule of the LaRouche Youth Movement and published in LaRouche's latest pamphlet, "Is Joseph Goebbels on Your Campus," attacks Hovannisian using the same cookie-cutter tactics they have been using for years: Draw ridiculous parallels between the targeted individual and Nazism in the hopes that readers do not possess enough of a historical background to seriously question the merits of the author's claims.

In Yule's article, he writes "another case of this continuing Gestapo onslaught," claiming a supposed Gestapo-style campus attack against LaRouche "is against their most feared adversary, LaRouche and his youth movement."

Let's take a moment for commentary. Nobody fears LaRouche and his youth movement, he is the object of ridicule in most debates and his "movement" is more like a campus street team, it advertises for him, but doesn't exactly define a generation of students.

Yule goes on to identify the young Gestapo sympathizer and expose his notorious affiliations. "For example, the so-called 'independent' campus newspaper at UCLA, the 'Bruin Standard' (owned by the Buckleyite Collegiate Network), has run increasingly scurrilous slanders by its chief editor, Garin Hovannisian (the SAF president for UCLA), attacking the LaRouche Youth Movement as a 'cult' that wants to 'brainwash' students."

It is sad if people buy into this, but otherwise hysterically ironic that this pamphlet makes accusations against a student writer of being the spearhead of a Gestapo movement. This is a radical fringe politician who thrives on literature that propagates his own likeness and ideas while personally attacking all those who disagree with him.

Adolf Hitler did the same thing when he wrote "Mein Kampf" in a prison cell in Landsberg, where he was incarcerated in 1924 for treason after the Beer Hall Putsch coup attempt.

LaRouche was incarcerated for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion and spent his time in jail furthering his political ambitions, much like Hitler.

He has also been labeled, among many other things, as an anti-Semitic. Luckily for this country, though, a general loathing of radical extremism and relatively peaceful and plentiful living conditions contrast the desperate post-armistice atmosphere that was necessary for Hitler's rise to political prominence.

There is a tendency to lend too much credit to everybody who preaches within the walls of academia, but I am confident that the majority of students here at CSUN, and nationwide, will continue to have the sense to critically analyze the LaRouche movement.

I am not saying that anybody needs to stand with or against him. But as I read the frequent references to Nazism that LaRouche and his ailing movement have long attributed to members of the government, and now feel necessary to attack a fellow student journalist with, I am compelled to make one last Nazi comparison of my own.

"Make a lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe you."

This was a quote from Hitler, and it served as a guide for him. I see the unabashed lies and labels spewed from LaRouche, and it leads me to believe that he is guided by the exact same principle.

Posted by Perry at 03:12 PM

German Court Considers Investigation Into Student Death

Germany | 05.12.2006
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/
article/0,2144,2259447,00.html

Jeremiah Duggan was a young British student who met a mysterious death in Germany in 2003. The Constitutional Court is currently considering whether to order a new investigation into what happened.

In the early hours of March 27, 2003, the body of a young man was found on the B455 freeway outside Wiesbaden. After questioning motorists, local police concluded Jeremiah Duggan had committed suicide by running into traffic, and the case was closed.

But in the last three and a half years, Jeremiah's mother has amassed evidence which she says proves her son did not take his own life -- and also suggests that the perfunctory police investigation was badly flawed. Even so, despite the fact that the coroner at the British inquest in November 2003 said there was nothing in the German police evidence to suggest Jeremiah's death could be suicide, German courts have refused to reopen the case.

"The police investigation was incomplete," argues Erica Duggan's lawyer Hans-Eberhard Schultz. "No autopsy was performed on the body, and no witness statements were taken from the drivers of the cars. At the very least, these people need to be questioned again thoroughly."

Erica Duggan is haunted by questions no one seems willing to help her answer. "Why doesn't Germany want to investigate the full circumstances of his death?" she asks.

A search for clues

Jeremiah was described by friends as a happy, well-balanced young manBildunterschrift: Jeremiah was described by friends as a happy, well-balanced young man

One report she commissioned from former Scotland Yard forensics expert Paul Canning earlier this year suggests that nothing less than a cover-up may have taken place.

According to his findings, the tracks on the road did not match the police version of how the accident happened, and there were no signs of glass, tire marks or crushing of the body to prove it had been run over.

After examining photographs of the scene of the accident taken by German police, Canning concluded: "I do not believe that the images depict how Jerry came to meet his premature death. It is possible that Jerry lost his life elsewhere, prior to being placed at this scene."

In November, Erica Duggan filed the case with the German Constitutional Court. "I lost my son, but unless the Constitutional Court supports my rights, I have the added trauma of having lost justice," she says.

With her fresh information all pointing to an unsolved mystery, it is now up to the court in Karlsruhe to decide the next move.

"Who knows why the investigation was so inadequate, but it was, and it's high time it was reopened," says Schultz.

The facts

Jeremiah was a 22-year-old British student who had been studying in Paris. In early 2003, he fell in with a group of young people who sold Nouvelle Solidarité, a newspaper published by controversial US millionaire and political campaigner Lyndon LaRouche.

The group invited Jeremiah to Wiesbaden to attend a conference organized by the LaRouche Youth Movement and the related Schiller Institute run by LaRouche's German wife Helga Zepp, which has been described by Britain's Metropolitan Police as "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections."

But Jeremiah knew nothing of this. Believing he would be attending a seminar critical of the imminent war against Iraq, he left for Wiesbaden on March 21.

On March 27 he rang his mother in London in the middle of the night sounding terrified. "I am in terrible trouble...I'm frightened," he managed to say before being cut off. Minutes later, he was dead. To the German police, the call indicated he was suicidal. To his mother, it sounded as though he feared for his life.

Continue reading "German Court Considers Investigation Into Student Death"

Posted by Perry at 03:03 PM