Who ARE those nuts?

The ones with the “Impeach Obama” signs.

By Will Collette

You may have seen them in Charlestown when they were camped out for a couple of days near the Post Office. I saw them a few days ago in Westerly on Route One. There’s usually a pair of them working from a folding card table with a sign that reads “Impeach Obama” and a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache.

Several people asked me who the hell they are and I didn’t know. Until now. They are part of a new campaign by one of America’s craziest conspiracy buffs, Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche, who turned 90 last September, founded a political cult in the 1970s loosely referred to as “the LaRouche movement”, although “movement” may not be a very helpful descriptor. He has operated this “movement” under a broad range of names such as the US Labor Party, Schiller Institute, etc. He has run for US President eight times, sometimes as a Democrat, sometimes under the US Labor Party banner.

I had far more frequent run ins with what I called the LaRouchniks when I worked in DC. I’d get a call from someone claiming to be a journalist who would do a quick and sloppy interview with me. Later, I’d get misquoted and then get listed as a “supporter” of some crazy LaRouche campaign and then had to spend time undoing the mischief. 

I got pretty good at spotting LaRouchniks early in conversations and trained my staff how to spot them, too. My standing orders were to cut off all conversations as soon as the caller admitted they were connected with LaRouche.

LaRouche gained fame from two things – wild conspiracy theories, the most infamous of which was his conviction that Queen Elizabeth II was running an international drug cartel and, second, an insatiable push to raise money for murky purposes. LaRouche and 25 of his followers were convicted in 1988 of fund-raising fraud. He was paroled in 1994 after serving six years.

Queen Elizabeth: is that drug bling she's wearing?

It’s hard to pin down LaRouche’s political philosophy or “platform.” He started out pretty much as a leftie (and the U.S. Labor Party name) but has gyrated around the political compass to espouse a festering stew of fringe beliefs that now mostly lean toward the hard right.

He wants Obama impeached largely because of “Obamacare” but also Obama’s failure to get the Glass-Stegall Act reinstated (don’t ask) and for violating the War Powers Act.

LaRouche has found reasons to want to impeach almost every US President since he started his “movement.” In 1973, he wanted to go after Richard Nixon not because of Watergate but because he claimed Nixon was aligned with the Communist Party USA (again, don’t ask).

He opposed Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. I’m not sure if he wanted to impeach Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter – he probably did, but I didn’t find any direct evidence.

He has preached that the world is controlled by an all-powerful conspiracy of bankers, political leaders, Jews and oligarchs that is centered in the Trilateral Commission, a conspiracy that stretches back to the medieval Illuminati. After 9/11, he was among those who preached that it was an inside job and an “attempted coup d’etat.”

He’s been called a fascist, racist and anti-Semite. There’s more than enough material to support those claims, but then again, there’s enough material to support almost any claim.

From watching LaRouche and his followers off and on for around 30 years, I think LaRouche uses any and every angle he can to hook new cult members. He spins yarns that contain a germ of sense wrapped in a puzzling mix of nonsense. 

It keeps his followers engaged and provokes some public engagement, enough to perhaps raise some money and attract new cult members. He doesn’t need – and probably doesn’t even want – everybody to agree with him. Just enough.

If you do a scan of the materials on LaRouche on the web, you’ll find websites devoted to promoting him and lots more than denounce him. The anti-LaRouche sites are often run by people who used to be members.

Within the LaRouche organization, there is his own anti-anti-LaRouche program to try to bring former followers back.

Year after year, LaRouche goes on and on, denouncing whoever is in power and finding evil conspiracies everywhere.

It seems that the more people challenge him and his followers on their deranged beliefs, the more it seems to strengthen their commitment to those beliefs. 

So it does little good to try to engage and argue with the people behind the card tables and throw them the finger as you pass by. As the saying goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and so it is with cults.

On the other hand, if you're one of those folks who hate Obama and find the LaRoucheniks' Obama-as-Hitler posters compelling, by all means, sign their petition. 

Be sure to list your home phone and e-mail on it because then you can count on years of pleasant conversations with the LaRouche folks as they add your phone number to their call list. 

Don't be surprised to see them publish your name as one of their supporters.

And that, dear readers, is the story behind those people behind the card tables with the “Impeach Obama” posters.