How Liberalism Created Fascism
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.This statement was issued on March 14, 2003 by the Presidential pre-candidate's political committee, LaRouche in 2004.
The principal source of the difficulty which most Europeans experience in attempting to understand the present U.S. internal crisis, is that the current eruption of wild-eyed U.S. imperialist practices is rooted in the same Anglo-Dutch Liberal model admired by most popular and official opinion in today's Europe. I describe some of the essential mechanics of that connection.
The Liberal system of government, economy, and social philosophy is chiefly a copy of the financier-oligarchy-ruled maritime power of Venice's former imperial hey-days. Under the influence of Venice's powerful Paolo Sarpi and his successors, the Venetian model of financier-oligarchy-managed liberalism was imposed upon two emerging imperial maritime powers in northern Europe—the England of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke; and the Netherlands of William of Orange and the radical empiricist Bernard Mandeville. The philosophical liberalism reigning within the society was complemented by a thrust toward that relatively global maritime supremacy consistent with the adopted self-interest of the financier-oligarchical class as both merchant and usurer.
The crucial feature of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model which was thus essentially consolidated in conception over the course of the Eighteenth Century, is the relative independence from elected government, enjoyed by a privately controlled central banking system. In effect, that central banking system is the agent of the collective assembly-in-fact of the society's financier-oligarchical class.
During the interval from approximately 1763 to 1945, the chief challenge to the power of the Liberal model within extended European civilization was first expressed in wide support, among Europeans, for the struggle for independence of the English colonies in North America. Over the course of the 1763-1789 interval, the shaping of the emerging American constitutional republic produced a Constitution whose Preamble represented the intellectual triumph of the leading U.S. patriots, who reflected the influence of Gottfried Leibniz over that of John Locke. Even today, despite the success of Britain's Edward VII in foisting what became the Federal Reserve System on the U.S.A., the American System of political-economy, as described by Franklin, Hamilton, the Careys, Friedrich List, et al., is based on a principle of the authority of constitutional national banking—over that of any foreign power, or domestic financier-oligarchy—in matters of monetary and financial regulation.
The best way to understand the way in which Chicken-hawk captive President Bush's imperial hubris is being expressed today, is to look at the way in which a concert of Anglo-American financier-oligarchical power led by Britain's Montagu Norman, using Norman's asset Hjalmar Schacht, et al., imposed Adolf Hitler's dictatorship on Germany. The "independent central banking" interest, so expressed, put Hitler into power, both to prevent a Franklin Roosevelt-like option in Chancellor von Schleicher's Germany, and to arm Germany for a world war intended to destroy both Germany and Russia.
Shift in the U.S. World Role
The war did not proceed as Montagu Norman et al. intended. Germany decided to strike West first, instead of East. That put London in the position of screaming for help from the Roosevelt they hated; and the U.S. role left post-war Britain to be faced with absolute U.S. economic superiority world-wide—not exactly the original goal of Hitler's London backers. In strategy, always expect the unexpected as the most likely outcome.
Look at today's bankrupt U.S. system against the lesson of 1933-34 Germany.
Over the course of 1964-2003, the U.S.A. has been transformed from the world's leading producer nation, to an economically parasitical "consumer society" like the ancient Roman Empire, one which lives on the loot garnered by a brew of nuclear weapons and other predatory power over the world at large. In this process, for about two decades now, the leading U.S. political parties concentrate upon a constituency of the upper 20% of family-income brackets (e.g., the so-called "suburban" dogma of the neo-conservative Democratic Leadership Council—DLC), controlling elections, top-down, through vast masses of raw financial power and control of the principal mass media of the nation by those same oligarchically-minded financier interests. Conrad Black, a leading "fallen angel" of the Chicken-hawk flock, like the so-called "Mega Group," is typical of those corrupt connections.
Prior to that 1964-1981 cultural-paradigm shift, during 1933-1963, the U.S. political system was based in relatively large degree on the social and economic forces associated with independent farmers, manufacturing, regulated basic economic infrastructure, and so on. Today, nearly forty years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the true entrepreneur is a vanishing species. The economic-political landscape of power is dominated by predatory forms of financial speculation, such as Enron and Halliburton, rubbing shoulders with the multi-billionaire barons from organized-crime pedigrees. Thus, we have a President, whose family ties are to a facet of that financier interest, but who, although nominally lord of the Federal estate, is being controlled by a pesky pack of wild-eyed "Leporellos," the "Chicken-hawks." This is the pack of lackeys associated with the pro-fascist ideological legacy of Chicago University's Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, et al. The rascals appear to be running the Presidential chicken-coop, at least for the time being.
Choice Between Roosevelt and Hitler
The role of those Chicken-hawks represents an active and immediate, new Hitler threat.
As I shall explain in a forthcoming sequel to today's brief report, the world has only two significant choices: between today's Franklin Roosevelt and today's Hitlers; between Roosevelt-style recovery programs and Chicken-hawks wielding, and intending to use, nuclear weapons. It should be obvious that an FDR strategy means putting the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system into cold storage, at least for the duration. Thus, Europe may recognize the homicidal lunacy of Rumsfeld's and Cheney's Chicken-hawk Hitlers; but to prevent those Hitlers from taking over, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal models must be replaced by reorganization of the presently hopelessly bankrupt world monetary-financial system according to the principles of the American System of political-economy, List's system of national economy—at least "for the duration."
