Lessons on functioning in a Toatalitarian Government… or, if you find yourself in one, a Cult.
For some reason, Mikhail Zoshchenko popped into my mind while reading through some comments in the FACTNet board. Actually Mikhail Zoshchenko didn’t pop into my mind properly, as he is not someone who is near the top of my mind, so much as somebody I’d encountered in literature that I could look up easily who is Mikhail Zoshchenko.
What I thought about was an introduction to a collection of some short pieces he wrote explaining how he subverted the Soviet process. There was, with any totalitarian state, an ebb and flow of what the state censors allowed its artists — relative openness came before quick bursts of fury squashed anything that deviated from State Propaganda. It was during a moment of relative freedom that Mikhail Zoshchenko uttered some words that could be construed as back-handed compliments to the Soviet regime, which in later years allowed a tightened Soviet muscle to push him aside in a Show Trial.
Understand, I am murky with the details. Literature-wise, Zoshchenko used a pallete of narrative mis-directions to make veiled criticisms of the Soviet system, which is a skill any good writer should develop — even in a free society where for the most part the censors are simply public mores and temporal fluxuations of acceptable and unacceptable societal norms. (Can’t have anything too didactic, understand.) But what popped Mikhail Zoshchenko into my mind, and more specifically the introduction, was that the chronology showed that in those times when the State Censor was hampering down on the Artists, he pumped out straight-forward Soviet propaganda to appease the Censors and the State, and shove the spot-light away from him for a while.
If you go to Dennis King’s website, — the Devil, if you will, or… (sigh) of High Times Magazine article fame (sigh)… and collaborator with Wall Street Fascist Dennis King… alont with fellow side-kick Chip Berlet … I think I’ve covered my bases for snarky references Larouchians have tossed out about Dennis King.
The series of items King presents for Ken Kronberg stops at, in his characteristically Alarmist and hyper-ventilating manner: Kronberg published laudatory volume to celebrate LaRouche’s 80th birthday, but it wasn’t enough to save him from being dumped
A reference to something he published in 2002… a laudatory volume… to celebrate… Larouche’s 80th birthday.
Which, if you double back to something I had posted previously, and will again here, from a 70s-era Larouchie who has been following developments closely. (What? You don’t subscribe to the Larouche Internal Morning Briefing? It’s all the rage!)
Even with this, people in the FEF had some respect as they had degrees and did no talk like maniacs. they had a life where they could interview people, write articles and produce a magazine that did not look half bad. For Lyn, it was real bad. It was bad because in a cult of personality, Lyn is the focus, nothing else. So in the early 1980s, Lyn issued a memo which made clear that unless your activity involved him, it was not allowed. The way it was worded was very clever in that it demanded that persuing the Larouche presidency was the only thing and every front group and publication had to support that.You liked the Fidelio magazine. Ever wonder why it was not mailed out and promoted? Ken Kronberg created that and tried to make it something which was not crazy. There are reports of endless tirades by Lyn against Ken for trying to do that. The blood vessels would pop in Lyn’s head as he denounced Ken as a boomer over and over and then ended it with a demand for endless printing with out a single thought of how to pay for this. Oh, let me correct that. .There was a single thought , it was called have someone else run up a debt for supplies and have the members do it for nothing.
And we move on to this comment:
The bit about Fidelio magazine gives a clue as to why Lyn hated Ken Kronberg. It was because Ken Kronberg knew too much–not like in the old murder mysteries. He knew too much because he knew something.Lyn hates anyone with academic credentials, areas of expertise, a reading knowledge of various languages, etc. Kronberg knew a lot about poetry and Plato and Francois Villon and Chaucer and Shakespeare and science and plus he could read Attic Greek. Lyn hated that, and he got his sycophants to hate it too. Against the back-drop of
But right now he’s engaged in trying to woo back the Jewish members of the organization, a project he’s been working on since Fernando Quijano and most of the Catholics were driven out of the org in 2000. Especially after Kronberg’s death–so that’s the point of that stupid book review. Please note in the book review that the only thing he actually cites is from the introduction–standard LaRouche approach. That means he read the introduction. Chances are excellent he didn’t read much more.
AND You made a good observation about Lyn’s book review method: read only the introduction (if that) and then use it as a springboard from which to crazily pontificate, free-association style. That’s why when he attempt’s to express ideas, especially in science or mathematics, he substitutes concepts with names (bad guys get the epithet “evil” prefixed.) Thus, LaRouche’s Law: the greater the density of personal names within a LaRouche paragraph, the greater his ignorance of the putative subject under discussion. (I can only imagine Paolo Sarpi, wherever he is, wondering: what did I ever do to this guy?) Even when a member I was convinced that Lyn had never read Dante, except perhaps in Monarch Notes. I bet that once he kicks people will find Monarch Notes within the floorboards for Plato, Leibniz, etc. It took me very long to discover that he is as ignorant and unintelligent as he is evil. The business dealings of the World’s Greatest Economist since Methuselah in Leesburg are further proof of that. ALONG WITH In the book review, the references to Sholem Aleichem and the Workman’s Circle suggest that Kronberg is haunting LHL. Kronberg was the one who started all the work in the org on Sholem Aleichem et al. and the Yiddish Renaissance, and Kronberg used to talk about the Workman’s Circle and his family’s activities in that (including the Jewish school he went to on Saturdays).
But right now he’s engaged in trying to woo back the Jewish members of the organization, a project he’s been working on since Fernando Quijano and most of the Catholics were driven out of the org in 2000. Especially after Kronberg’s death–so that’s the point of that stupid book review. Please note in the book review that the only thing he actually cites is from the introduction–standard LaRouche approach. That means he read the introduction. Chances are excellent he didn’t read much more.
AND You made a good observation about Lyn’s book review method: read only the introduction (if that) and then use it as a springboard from which to crazily pontificate, free-association style. That’s why when he attempt’s to express ideas, especially in science or mathematics, he substitutes concepts with names (bad guys get the epithet “evil” prefixed.) Thus, LaRouche’s Law: the greater the density of personal names within a LaRouche paragraph, the greater his ignorance of the putative subject under discussion. (I can only imagine Paolo Sarpi, wherever he is, wondering: what did I ever do to this guy?) Even when a member I was convinced that Lyn had never read Dante, except perhaps in Monarch Notes. I bet that once he kicks people will find Monarch Notes within the floorboards for Plato, Leibniz, etc. It took me very long to discover that he is as ignorant and unintelligent as he is evil. The business dealings of the World’s Greatest Economist since Methuselah in Leesburg are further proof of that. ALONG WITH In the book review, the references to Sholem Aleichem and the Workman’s Circle suggest that Kronberg is haunting LHL. Kronberg was the one who started all the work in the org on Sholem Aleichem et al. and the Yiddish Renaissance, and Kronberg used to talk about the Workman’s Circle and his family’s activities in that (including the Jewish school he went to on Saturdays).
Now we get an idea of how you operate within a cult, or for that matter a totalitarian government. Which makes this doubly interesting:
[Interestingly, in the U.S., just at the time in the mid to late 1980s that LaRouche was trying to insinuate himself into the Catholic Church (unsuccessfully, of course), the Jews in the org, at least in Leesburg, were having virtually underground Passover and Hannukah celebrations, suddenly discovering or re-discovering themselves as Jews. Kronberg was one of the leaders in this.]
Presumably this “Catholic faze” was that period of the contradictory Forced Abortions along with the front organization … was it called “Club for Life”?
Actually any number of examples of “Undergrounds” admist Authoratarian governances pop into my mind.
Anyways…
May 20th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
The free association name-lists that appear in LaRouche’s writings are a good clinical indication that something is seriously wrong with the Great One’s mind. They are like magic incantations, charms he weaves to make the universe obey him. LaRouche is a great believer in the “power of ideas” = the “power of my ideas” = the “power of wishful thinking” = “I run the universe.”
He deeply believes that merely by speaking the Word, he can cause things to happen. Hence the obsessive litanies of names he inserts in his writings in place of actual thought. And of course, the analogy to God the Creator is there, because he can create by the Word just like God.
Mircea Eliade, call your office!