AT psychology

I. — We discussed the idea of putting together binders full of visuals (recent LaRouchePAC.com slugs, quotes, maps, diagrams, old pamphlet covers, EIR articles if we are low on EIR hard copies, etc.) to help us effectively communicate a single laser focused idea to a contact out in the field, and get them to sign up. —-

Binders of slugs, old pamphlet covers, EIR articles if we are low on EIR hard copies? This looks like more corroboration of problems in getting things printed, now that PMR is gone. (comment from Rachel Holmes.)

response: I had similar echoes from Europe: they don’t print their newspaper anymore! I suppose this is what “the best economist in the world”‘s solution was all about after their financial/structural crisis last year when the european leadership slammed the door with kingpin Friesecke… The “best economist in the world” thought the solution was to cut down production costs: so why not not printing anymore and have an allout “internet strategy” (the socalled larpac website strategy)?
I suggest even better, why not joining the online “virtual communities” like www.activeworlds.com The youths would have their avatars and their virtual cardtable shrine, trying to make some other avatars to sign up for their virtual copy of EIR? Whenever they organize well they ll win some “virtual credits” to buy some “virtual sandwiches”. Their mission is to save this “virtual 3d world” from the forces of evil.

II. I have gone through the FACTNet posts, sorting them in a most hap-hazard fashion, wanting to but not willing to prune out redundancies and meandering superficialities. One thing that I have done is to place a bunch of anecdotal explanations of life stories of why some posters entered, and why they exited, the Cult.

My cleanest observation is that Lyndon Larouche is a cynical operator indeed.  I suppose a close look at “Beyond Psychology” tells all, but a rudimentary awareness of psychology, and marketing –which is after all psychology applied to commercial purposes– is sufficient.  Here is a post from a LYMer to an exited LYMer:
Cynicism is difficult to combat. It often devolves into existentialism, or even nihilism. The fault dear Scott, lies not in our stars, but, in ourselves that we are underlings.
I am reminded of the fact that professionals who work with schizophrenic patients generally work for six-month stretches, then they are required to get away for six months. This is a standard procedure simply because the condition of schizophrenic patients has a powerful, detrimental effect on the therapist. I fear that if anyone were to spend too much time with you, Scott, they would suffer the same.

That is the craven meanness of a LaRouche follower.  But you already know that if you ever pass by one of their card-table shrines, particularly during crunch-time as they come close to their deadlines for meeting quota lest they be haranged by their orderlings, and they shout out the projection “FASCIST!”

It is a cult that feeds off a sense of elitism, never mind they are serving a master, and they have special hatred for anyone who leaves the orbit of Lyndon Larouche… hence… that. It is also a cult of projection — anything they throw out at the outside world is really just an expression of covering up their hidden agenda (“FASCIST!”), pre-empting an attack against them (“FASCIST!”), or hiding their insecurities.  When Tom says that “cynicism is difficult to combat”, he is referring to his own cynicism — and his initial motivation for joining into this farce.  

When I was a child, I thought like a child. Now I see things clearly. You are still thinking like a child.

You’ve caught yourself in a vicious cycle of pessimism and

This whole thing gets to be tedious.  The “vicious cycle of pessimism” (and more importantly cynicism) refers to Scott’s comments about working at those card-tables and raising money for Larouche, and seeing that as the end instead of the means to an end — namely, um… Saving the World from Economic collapse… and… stuff.

Tediously haughty — and deluded on the significance of their hero to the outside world–, Steven and Tom and their obsession with “axioms”:

The reason why LaRouche has a movement (* later to be lauded with a conference with Russian scientists, an interview on a French Radio station, and blather of that type) with many dedicated members (I think it numbers in the 3 digits, but I really would like a census audit of some sort) rests in the axioms.
Let’s look at the axioms.

The paradigm:

1.Man is evil
2.Technological development is bad.
3.There are too many people.

LaRouche:

1.Man is good.
2.The measure of an idea is it’s effect on the condition of man.
3.If an idea has the net effect of increasing man’s power in the universe, as measured by a continual increase in the population of man, than it is a good idea.

My axiom:

Any discussion of LaRouche in which these axioms are not in some way the issue is useless.
The response proper:

You were given those axioms in countless “classes”. You were taught these things while working 14-20 hours a day, and with low nutrition, while being told to turn away from your old friends and activities, and eventually were broken down in Beyond Psychoanalysis sessions where you confessed things that you were ashamed of. You eventually began reporting other people’s “blocking” (disloyalty, questioning) to the regional leader. This mirrors the indoctrination camps of early Red China.
Sometimes a person with an atonal monotonous voices would sit and talk to a group of you for over an hour–usually about God–in a calm soothing voice. This is hypnotism.

I lay off a few items here, because Scott went on to a few things that are relevant, but he did not personally experience, coming as they did from earlier Larouche years.
Continuing…

I don’t believe any of those things.
I never did.
Neither do most people.
It’s really not that big of a deal.

Responded with the very Larouchian: Wrong again. I know what people believe. I’ve been talking to them about axioms for years. The consistency of those axioms in the general population is stunning. You had the benefit of learning a little bit of LaRouche’s economics, and you know better than to argue points that cannot be argued successfully with someone who knows better.

So the intrepid LYMers waited around to discuss these “axioms”, while most of the posters at FACTNet entertained themselves with the down-to-earth matters of LaRouche and cultism. Looking through the posts, Steven gave himself away with more stupid axioms:

My old logic:

Democrats good. Republicans bad.
Religion bad. Agnosticism good.
Help people. Why? I dunno. Ok, so half-ass care.
U.S.A. is fucking shit up, so to speak.
Dad, Mom, so what do I do now?
Text books boring. Lectures a drab. MTV is lame but I’ll skim through the tube anyway.
Oh, and FoxNews knows the something about the news.

This “old logic” made sense before I was willing to challenge myself. In the first place, they were never to closely held by me. I was never passionate about anything except baseball and family, with the latter fading because there was no dinner table. I knew I did not have answers to important questions, unless they were on a scantron.

If you can, prove my old axioms to be truthful. And if you are like me, drop the axioms and live in accordance with principle, as much as possible.
And thus it is the cynicism of Larouche.  The insecurities of youth, the late-adolescent crisis, the ennui and haunting insignificance of one individual — you.  I note the admission that the importance of family was fading from this young soul’s life due to the lack of the dinner table.  I note also that he lacked the self-awareness when he haranged Scott when he shared his frustrated story of joining the Larouchies and knocking the admission that he was “at a cross-roads”.
Later on, I believe by a different individual, we have the discussion from a Larouche follower for the not terribly original but certainly true enough revelation of what the Larouchie dropped out of — if I could find it off the bat I would post it, but it was to the effect of how Youth define and divide themselves by the Music they listen to, and how that is largely a Consumer Marketing trick, the realization apparently getting to this Larouchite — his identity had been defined for him.  And if I may move a step or two further, The Beatles were a plot from British Intelligence to corrupt the youth and…

Create a pessimistic jaded public.  Incapable of humming “Ode to Joy” and appreciating… JOY.  But that is all beside the point.  This Larouche follower is also a little unaware that that “Defined by the music they listen to” shifts and, in general, our society and culture tends to define themselves in the adult world by their Careers, perhaps with some weekend hobby as a secondary definition.  A state of flux, remember.
I would like somebody that is NOT in a cult of Church, Fashion, Hollywood, Sport, Video Games, Magic the Gathering and other card games, Cars, Music to make a comment as well, it would be interesting.

Where the heck did “Magic the Gathering” come from? This is an individual looking around at a somewhat narrow strata of individuals — again, as I posted in the last Larouche-related post — he’s in a college dorm and knows someone who spends maybe a bit too much time playing video games or Magic the Gathering… or perhaps himself at an earlier age, when he might otherwise have found spiritual fulfillment elsewhere.

From Larouche himownself, closing a system to keep the Larouchites away from being inflicted with criticism of the Guru in Chief.: “You’ve seen and heard them. They say things like LaRouche is a leader of a cult, or that he is anti-semitic, or some other vile epithet. Invariably, those repeating these lies, when challenged, can never back up what they say.”

“These very same Foundations which run the slander mill against LaRouche are behind what is, in fact, the most dangerous cult in the world today. A cult of utopian military lunatics, typified by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Henry Kissinger, or the current Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. These lunatics are the real masterminds behind the attacks of September 11. Watching their power crumble under the weight of the collapsing financial system, their aim is to drive the world into a racist global religious war, that Huntington calls a “Clash of Civilization”. They are the ones who engineered the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, then concocted the Osama bin Laden hoax, sending the U.S. military off to fight the “Clash of Civilization”, and diverting attention from their own culpability in an ongoing coup against the interests of the United States. This powerful and crazed utopian cult is the greatest real security threat to our nation.”

“That’s who is spreading lies about LaRouche. You hear them repeated, often by people who don’t know their source, but who would rather be overheard repeating these lies, because they think it will make them popular.”

Elsewhere, and by various other Larouche-followers we receive more of the same, lining up “The Cult of Mass Opinion” against Larouche — I believe this in reaction to statements of Larouche’s World Insignificance — that retort misses the point with a grouping who will glow about Larouche’s meeting with a conference of Russian Scientists or a French radio broadcast or behind the scenes deal-making with Conyers, Clinton, or Kucinich — depending on the moment.

There was a poll taken in 1986, probably the height of American awareness of Larouche.  Larouche received the lowest favorable rating ever, of one percent.  And 80 percent of those polled responded with, more or less, “WHO?”  The upshoot being that degrading Larouche is not a road to popularity, and it is incredulous that — say — Dennis King would think as much.  But the age of the young LYMer is such that they are sorting out those weird vestiges of the definition of “popularity”, and apparently passing the age demographics of MTV.

One Response to “AT psychology”

  1. Rachel Holmes Says:

    1. Nobody thinks that saying things about LaRouche one way or the other will “make them popular.”

    2. The people who circulate the “slanders” about LaRouche are not people who don’t know him–they are people who DO know him.

    3. The people who DON’T know LaRouche–which is almost everyone–could care less about him. He is relevant to just a tiny handful of people.

    The LYM’s problem is that they don’t know him at all. That’s why they all sound like ingenues.

    Memo to LYM: Just hang around for 10 more years, children, and then you can speak with authority about this fellow.

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