ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

The ‘New Violence’ Is Deployed to Defend the Broken Paradigm, as LaRouche Warned in 2000

This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s June 10, 2020 interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, by Harley Schlanger. Subheads and embedded links have been added. The video is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello. I’m Harley Schlanger with the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our webcast today with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. It’s June 10, 2020. And as I’m sure all of you are aware, we’ve been going through a very intense strategic situation internationally and a chaos scenario for the United States: Since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, there have been demonstrations, violent provocations, and an escalation of the coup attempt against President Trump. So why don’t we begin with that, Helga? There’s been a lot going on: What’s your assessment of how this period has been unfolding?

The Coup Attempt Escalates Against Trump

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: When President Trump was elected, my late husband at that point commented, saying that this was not a national event of the United States, but that it had strategic implications and significance. In the same way, the recent situation in the United States is not to be judged from a national perspective, but in the reality of a complete breakdown of the old paradigm.

This breakdown has many points to it, many aspects: The pandemic of the coronavirus pulled away the veil of a lot of things already there before, but now crystal clear, and staring into one’s face with all their, in large part, ugliness. One such ugliness was what came out in this absolutely barbaric murder of George Floyd, which revealed a missed development which has many aspects, again. One aspect is that there is racism not only in the United States, but also in Europe—we should mention that a little bit later—but also that this police brutality is something which was part of this retrograde paradigm shift.

And again, I want to quote my late husband, who spoke at an event two decades ago about the terrible consequences of video games and the so-called “new violence,” the brutalization of society which is caused by video games and all this media violence.

He said that one aspect of it, was that the character of the police had changed, that there was a militarization of the police, that the cop as he existed in the community, who knew everybody and many times was able to manage conflicts and bring them to a peaceful end, who was a trusted figure in the community, that kind of cop has completely vanished, and you had, especially in the last decades, especially with the paradigm changes after 9/11, the complete militarization of the police; that actually, many military training techniques were applied to police training. The particularly disgusting way in which this white cop in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, was a technique developed by the Israelis to use against the Palestinians. Many security forces went to Israel to be trained in such techniques.

This kind of role of the policeman in society corresponds to the role of the soldier in an empire as described at great length by Samuel Huntington in his book, The Soldier and The State, that the mercenary soldier should not have anything to do with the civilian economy, because otherwise he doesn’t have the distance to increase his kill ratio. This book is disgusting, but it’s worth reading, if you want to understand the mindset of these people.

There is a reaction coming to the fore that I don’t think will go away. Some Americans, especially in the African-American and Hispanic communities, have been completely forgotten; they do not participate in any of the so-called advantages the economic system had provided, at least up to a certain point. You cannot violate the economic interests, the health, the education of large sections of a population over a long time, without eruption under conditions of a breakdown crisis.

This situation calls for the urgent reform and reorganization of the kind we have been talking about a lot. But I want to absolutely make the point that this kind of racism also exists in Europe: If you look at the disgusting attitude of the EU towards the refugees, if you look at what Frontex, the EU border and coast guard agency, for example, is doing in the Mediterranean; or consider the situation more generally, we would not have a pandemic, we would not have the incredible danger to millions of people dying, potentially in the short term, of famine, the terrible underdevelopment in the developing countries, if there were not a profound racism in the so-called establishment which tolerated all of that.

It’s very easy to get upset about racism in the United States—or racism in Europe, for that matter—if you don’t take into account that the present financial/economic system kept the developing sector in a condition of de facto slavery, consciously, through the IMF conditionalities, through the policies backed by all the leading financial institutions. I think the problem is not being addressed in the right way.

The Racists Are the Warmongers

Schlanger: What we’ve seen, as this thing is unfolding, is that the same forces that created the conditions for it to occur, are now turning it against President Trump, using it to divide the country. And there was a series of articles, one of which was in The Atlantic magazine, comparing what’s going on in the U.S. cities to the Maidan in Kiev, Ukraine. What do you think about that?

Zepp-LaRouche: As I said in the beginning, Trump’s election never was a national phenomenon or a national matter. Trump’s being targetted in the way it is happening right now, because from the very beginning of his Presidency he expressed the potential for improving the U.S. relationship with Russia; and in the beginning of his Presidency, he was not against China. And since the real strategic game of the British Empire forces and their American collaborators, in the form of the former Obama and Bush intelligence chiefs, Wall Street, the City of London, is that they want to prevent the rise of China, and keep their total geopolitical control over the world.

In that context, President Trump has often shown an inclination to improve relations with Russia. But that was prevented from succeeding by Russiagate for three years; the economic collapse, the impeachment attempt; and now, the present situation is being used to paint him as someone who wants to use the military against the American population. Eighty-nine former top defense officials and other military brass have started to distance themselves from Trump. The Economist had an extensive article saying the U.S. military is abandoning Trump. This is another effort to create conditions to get rid of Trump, chase him out of the White House one way or the other, as Paul Wood, World Affairs correspondent for the BBC wrote in the British magazine, The Spectator, on January 21, 2017—get him out through assassination, coup or impeachment, or get him to capitulate to the agenda of the unipolar world.

People are quite upset about the situation, and I think a lot of things need to be improved dramatically. But if you judge the situation, you cannot leave out this larger picture, that what is really at stake is peace or war. The military faction that is now attacking Trump, is engaged in a war drive. Of all people, Gen. (ret) Colin Powell, who made the infamous speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, motivating the attack on Iraq because supposedly Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction—which was a complete lie—is one of them. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in one of her more lucid moments, admitted that they all knew—including Colin Powell when he made that speech—that there were no weapons of mass destruction!

These are the people who are for permanent wars, who are for encircling Russia, encircling China. This is now what is openly being discussed again. There was an article by Ian Brzezinski, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s son, who called for a NATO-China Council, pushing the idea to expand NATO to the Pacific. This was then the subject of another meeting of the Atlantic Council, where NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talked about his so-called “vision” for NATO 2030, where he said, yes, we have to expand NATO to include Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, making it a global military alliance surrounding Russia and China. This war push will lead to World War III if it’s not stopped.

And there is the news that there was a May 15 meeting of the National Security Council, discussing the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing on the side of the United States. This has not been officially confirmed—at least I have not found any proof of it—but there was a strong reaction by Chinese media, terming it a matter of grave concern, because it would violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Taken together with the push for moving NATO troops farther toward the Russian border, I think people should understand that we are not out of a war danger at all.

Trump has shown too many signs that he wants to have peace—he even talked about a possible meeting between himself and Putin and Xi Jinping, to discuss global disarmament of especially nuclear weapons; he said at the time, it’s a complete waste to spend all of this money on rearmament. This is exactly what the military-industrial complex doesn’t want to hear; permanent wars must be kept going.

This is the issue. A lot of people who are so hyped up against Trump tend to overlook that, as they continue pushing policies that condone activity that could lead to World War III.

Schlanger: What you just said is extremely important for people to think about. Because they’re being forced into a situation of choosing sides that are phony sides: “Are you for Trump using police and military to put down riots?” “Is Trump a racist?” And on and on and on. If you consider militarization of the police, an issue you brought up earlier, which Lyndon LaRouche talked about, you must go back to President George W. Bush and the Patriot Act, you go back to President Barack Obama, who made surplus military equipment available to the police. And then think about the expansion of NATO—well, it’s been President Trump who has been the one questioning whether NATO should even exist in this world. So there really is an operation to take a complex situation and make it unintelligible for the average person, isn’t there?

The Real Rabble-Rousers

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. People don’t think through the implications of things. For example, who are the key rabble-rousers on this confrontation? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the British, the last British Governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten. Pompeo has compared China with the Nazis, and he got a good answer from the editor in chief of Global Times, who wrote that he [Pompeo] is more like Goebbels. Chris Patten has been calling on Hong Kong’s residents to rise up against Beijing; UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to admit three million Chinese to the UK from Hong Kong by offering them visas.

Who’s supporting that? Well, it’s the Greens! The Green Party in Germany is the war party. Not only is the Green policy—if they were running the government right now, which should be prevented by all means, as that would be the last nail in the coffin of the German economy—towards the developing sector one of depopulation, either explicitly or by implication. Because if you deny development, you have nothing to stop famine or to stop the pandemic and prevent millions of people from dying. But the Greens are also the war party, because of the new antiparliamentarian alliance of war hawks which has been formed.

Who’s part of it? Well, Marco Rubio (D-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who are really the absolute hawks in the U.S. picture. In Germany, Reinhard Bütikofer, a European Parliament member of the Green Party. Who is backing Chris Patten and Pompeo? Claudia Roth [a Green Bundestag member]. The evil role of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and its anti-Russian ravings is also quite visible.

So, the Greens are really a problem. Most people like nature and they like sunflowers, but they don’t think through what it means that the Greens are on the same ideological line as the absolute top warmongers in their confrontation against Russia and China, which can only lead to a catastrophe. People should think through and not latch on to single issues, but rather look at things in context.

Schlanger: And that’s not so surprising with the Greens, given that the other side of the Green New Deal is that it’s Wall Street and the City of London: The former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, Larry Fink from BlackRock, these are the people pushing the Green New Deal, so there’s a total continuity there.

I want to go back to the attacks in the United States, which led to a very poignant statement from a former ambassador about the situation involving your husband.

Zepp-LaRouche: The former Ambassador from Burundi to the United States, Jacques Bacamurwanko, who wrote a message commenting on the events in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Ambassador Bacamurwanko, for many years Burundi’s ambassador in Washington, D.C., wrote a message which, when I first heard it, really turned my stomach, because he said that what happened to George Floyd was essentially the same thing that happened politically to Lyndon LaRouche in the United States, and that Lyn was getting the same treatment of somebody putting their knee on his neck, trying to extinguish his ideas. He said they did not succeed in doing it, but that the only way this injustice could be undone would be the full exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche and that would be the best thing to happen for this world. Now, he formulated his message in even stronger language. [Box: Take the Knee Off LaRouche’s Neck]

The image, while very upsetting, is I think absolutely true: Because what was done against my husband in terms of demonizing him, his ideas, to unjustly put him in jail, to try to destroy our movement while he was in jail, which obviously they did not succeed in doing—the methods are absolutely identical.

Olof Palme Murder Investigation

I find it quite incredible that today, the Swedish government announced that the investigation into the 1986 assassination of Olof Palme, then Prime Minister of Sweden, is now closed. The likely assassin was a person by the name of Strid Engström. At the time, Engström had come forward as a witness to the murder, but that was actually his cover, as he himself was the killer. That information was provided to the Swedish intelligence services by South African intelligence. In any case, the 28-year investigation is now closed.

Now, I want to say this: They did not apologize to my husband—I include all the scoundrels of the media—which says something about their moral standing. I want to recall—and some people may remember it—that when Olof Palme was assassinated on Feb. 28, 1986, shortly thereafter we had an election campaign in Illinois in which two members of the LaRouche organization won the Democratic primaries for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State, and immediately with that victory, there began a slander campaign blaming our organization in Sweden for having been involved in the murder of Palme. My husband was accused of having masterminded the assassination of Palme, and you had an unbelievable press barrage, a black propaganda campaign, with Aftonbladet having several long articles, slandering my husband.

A terrible woman named Pat Lynch, an investigative producer for the “NBC Nightly News” program, made a so-called documentary on the supposed involvement of LaRouche in the Palme murder. This was all done to poison the atmosphere, so that no other candidates of the LaRouche movement could possibly win an election. But it also prepared the ground for the October 6-7, 1986 raid on our Leesburg, Virginia offices, and then, as a consequence of that, created the phony environment for the jailing of my husband and many of his associates.

It’s the same thing: If you want to make war against somebody, you have to demonize them first. So, if you look at the demonization against my husband, with something which was completely invented, that was part of the legal frameup. Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States, who became the appeal lawyer for my husband, said this was the most massive case of the bending of justice, in the history of the United States. And, in the Swedish media, later, as became known later, a guy named Herbert Bremer, a former officer in the East German secret police, the Stasi, said that he was in Department X of the Stasi, and that they planted the story blaming LaRouche for the murder of Palme. And then they played it through the media, and this is how it was orchestrated.

That lesson has to be learned: Regarding a lot of what is now called “fake news,” a really big and very destructive fake news story was this story that LaRouche was responsible for the murder of Olof Palme.

This has now come out, and since it has now been acknowledged that neither my husband nor his organization had anything to do with the assassination of Olof Palme, I demand from the Swedish government that it issue a written statement saying that, and that all the accusations against Lyndon LaRouche and his movement were a mistake, and apologize. And if there was any honor at NBC, it would do the same thing—that is a big question mark. Given the fact that NBC is in the business of fake news production, it is very unlikely.

Former Burundi Ambassador Calls for LaRouche’s Exoneration

But the use of these techniques, what Ambassador Bacamurwanko of Burundi wrote, is absolutely true, and the conditions around the Palme murder are just one proof—you don’t have to use your knee to try to murder somebody, you can also use the pencil and typewriters and electronic media, as it has been done by the media.

But I want to state this: It’s really time that the truth comes out, who did this, and why, and if you want to ever get justice anywhere, the truth has to come out.

Schlanger: President Trump insists that he wants to get to the bottom of the Russiagate situation, so that something like what happened to him will never happen again to another President. Had that been done with the LaRouche case, had people taken up the fraud of the attacks on Lyndon LaRouche, the role of the media, and the deployment of people like Robert Mueller as a hit man for the Justice Department against LaRouche, perhaps we never would have had Russiagate. So this has a very current, contemporary, and urgent aspect to it, and that’s why we’re continuing to insist on the exoneration of LaRouche, not just by NBC and the Swedish government, but by the U.S. government, by the corrupt permanent bureaucracy in the Justice Department, and people like Henry Kissinger and others who worked on this.

A 1.5 Billion New Productive Jobs Program

There are a couple of other things I want to get to: One is that you’ve continued to make an urgent point about the LaRouche PAC’s program for 1.5 billion new, productive jobs worldwide, connected to the Health Silk Road. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is spreading into the Southern Hemisphere. It still remains to be seen whether we’re facing a second wave in the North. What kind of update do you have on this?

Zepp-LaRouche: The condition in some countries, like Brazil, is horrific. There are spikes in India and South Africa. The situation in those countries also remains absolutely horrible. There is the ugliness of the mindset of certain governments which covered up the fact that the privatization of the health sector simply meant that adequate facilities were not there to treat the patients when the pandemic erupted.

Scandals are now coming out: In Madrid there is a total uproar because the regional government of Madrid actually gave written instructions to the nursing homes that people who became sick with coronavirus in nursing homes should not be sent to hospitals for treatment. Result: Only 13% of those affected with the coronavirus were admitted to a hospital, the others were only given morphine, and 6,000 died after a day or so. That is euthanasia. That is the kind of slippery slope that was denounced at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, and it reveals the ugly side of what is behind the privatization of medical care.

A similar scandal is erupting in Lombardy, in Bergamo, and this was the hotspot in Italy where I think 20,000 or so families are suing authorities for not having given necessary treatment to their family members.

This is all terrible, and the only remedy to this whole situation is that we absolutely have to change the economic system. We still have a complete collapse of the economy. All these predictions that just because you have a lowering of the infection rate, that we will have a “V” recovery—like the letter V, that it went down very sharply and is now going up very sharply—I think is questionable, because the right kinds of policies have not yet been produced. You have an incredible collapse of industrial production: 50 million unemployed in the United States, a production collapse of almost 30% in Germany, 15% over the month, but 25% industrial collapse over the year; and similar figures in other European countries.

But that’s not the whole of it, because a lot of people have been put on short work, and if you do not have a real investment in industry and productive jobs, there is a big question mark: What will happen with these short-work jobs when the timespan ends in which these short-work jobs are being supported?

That is why our program to have the 1.5 billion new, productive jobs—50 million in the United States and 50 million for Europe. Because we must count all the different problem areas, like the southern European countries, the Balkans, but also the terrible conditions of infrastructure and other things in Germany, so that Europe can become the engine for a huge technology transfer to the developing countries, starting with investment in a world health system. But that has not yet happened, and that is what we are campaigning for, and that is why I am asking you, our viewers, to join our campaign to get that program on the agenda, because that will determine how this present situation will evolve.

Schlanger: That 1.5 billion new productive jobs program is available on the LaRouche PAC website for people to download, read, and engage others in discussions.

Next Schiller Institute Conference: June 27

Also Helga, it’s just been announced that the Schiller Institute will be holding another online conference on June 27. The invitation is available on the Schiller Institute website. Is there anything you want to say about that?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, this conference will be a continuation of what we did on April 25-26.

The first panel will be a strategic panel, to which we will again try to bring representatives of the most important nations to engage in the kind of dialogue on the solution of a New Bretton Woods system among the United States, Russia, China, India, plus countries from Europe, from Africa, because we have to somehow bring onto the agenda the need to have a change from a monetary system to a credit policy. Without that, the current organization of the bankrupt system, where the central banks are allowed to continue with the kind of money-printing they’re doing, which does not go primarily to industry but instead primarily to maintain the speculative banking sector, will lead to hyperinflation, despite the deflationary collapse, which is also ongoing. So, that will be one panel. There will be important speakers addressing the New Paradigm in International Relations.

The second panel will address the looming danger of famine, the collapse of agriculture, how this affects especially the people and countries of Africa, and what needs to be done to quickly double world food production. On this panel will have a lot of very fascinating speakers from Africa and agriculture.

I want you to not only join the Schiller Institute, but also make as well-known as possible that this conference is taking place and that the people you contact should join the bandwagon of people who are trying to really change the agenda of the world, which is urgently needed.

Schlanger: As I said, the invitation is available on the website, download it, RSVP to attend, share it, do what you can to help build this conference, so more people can get out from under the chaos and fog of war and deliberate as citizens.

Thank you very much for joining us today, Helga, and we’ll see you next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, till next week.

Take the Knee Off LaRouche’s Neck

Jacques Bacamurwanko, former ambassador of the nation of Burundi to the United States, in responding to the recent killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, said:

I’d love to mention that the protest activists, who went to the streets following George Floyd’s heinous killing by the Minnesota police officer, need to be told that it’s the same anti-America system that was responsible for the strangulation of Lyndon LaRouche Jr. LaRouche’s voice was literally choked off by the same white supremacist gang, which did not want him to exercise his right to vote, to move around, or to travel abroad freely.

The good news is the murderous gang did not manage to stop the flow of LaRouche’s freedom and ideas far and wide. The world would be freer today if Mr. Trump could cause an historic Presidential Order to be signed in the Oval Office, urging the anti-America gangsters to get their knee off Lyndon LaRouche’s neck. That’s what our insistent plea and global advocacy to exonerate LaRouche actually means.

If LaRouche were exonerated mankind would usher in a beautiful era of sustainable dialogue for peace, civil rights, and socio-economic development. [back to text]