THE LAROUCHE SHOW:
From Now to November:
Prevent the U.S.A. From Going Fascist
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. was interviewed on The LaRouche Show Internet radio program on Aug. 7, by Harley Schlanger, the former Western States coordinator for LaRouche's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The LaRouche Show is webcast live every Saturday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, at larouchepub.com.
Schlanger: Now, we will not be taking your calls during the first half-hour today, because our guest is Lyndon LaRouche, and after all, this is the LaRouche Show, and we want to give him the time to offer his insights on developments since the Democratic Convention ended nine days ago.
Up till then, Mr. LaRouche had been a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. Following the nomination of John Kerry, Mr. LaRouche announced in Boston the formation of LaRouche PAC, to ensure the defeat of the Cheney-Bush team in the Nov. 2 election. Since then, Mr. LaRouche has been at the center of a dramatic shift in both U.S. politics, and global developments, and we'll hear from him on that in a just a moment.
For the second half-hour, we're going to be joined by three members of the LaRouche Youth Movement, who will be reporting on their organizing as part of this LaRouche PAC, in three areas of the country. We'll hear from Michelle Lerner in Boston; Merv Fansler in Detroit; and Sky Shields in Los Angeles.
So, let me welcome Lyndon LaRouche to the show. How are you today, Lyndon?
LaRouche: Well, I'm frisky, I think.
Schlanger: Well, immediately after the convention, you announced your plan for the November election. What was your thinking that led to the creation of the LaRouche PAC and the course you're taking now?
LaRouche: Well, it was obvious even before then. My intention always was to shape the course of U.S. politics, and in some degree, international politics, from an advantageous position. My candidacy—I was the best qualified for President, as events will eventually cause people to reflect—but in the case that I did not secure the nomination, and the Democratic Party was determined that I would not, pre-determined that I would not, then I would hope that I could orchestrate the campaign for the Kerry election, to a sufficient degree, not only to ensure that he would win, but also to put in place the kinds of capabilities and organization which his Presidency would require, to deal with problems which he does not yet understand. But, presumably, being a good-hearted fellow, and an intelligent one, he would be willing to listen at the time he desperately knew he needed to listen.
So, that was my general scheme.
I also am concerned with something else, in which, in this past week's news, my wife Helga is much more important than I am.
Schlanger: Well, I was going to ask you about the parallel developments, because we have the aftermath of Boston, and now we have the revival by your wife of the "We Are the People" rallies [in Germany]. So, why don't you tell us about that?
LaRouche: Well, let's take the case of the international Youth Movement. And you have someone who thinks as I do, Helga, who is a natural leader. I mean, she is a phenomenon. She's one of these people who is a natural leader, a natural political leader and philosophical leader. And they're very rare. She also has a certain amount of what was called in U.S. slang, "gumption."
So, what she's done, in fighting for defense of the Youth Movement's role in Europe and internationally: About three weeks ago, she directed the launching of the first of what had been three, up to now, Monday demonstrations, in celebration of the Monday demonstrations that freed East Germany from the East German regime, because the issue is similar. The issue is over the so-called Hartz IV program of austerity, which is a Nazi-like austerity program—actually, a Schachtian type of austerity program—sponsored by a number of people, including the Economics Minister in the present government of Germany.
Schlanger: This has been passed by the German Parliament, has it not?
LaRouche: It's been passed, but the point is, that's like passing dysentery: You haven't stopped there.
So, what happened was that it started with about 30 or 40 people showing up for the demonstration three weeks ago. Then, a more significant number showed up last week. Then, this past week, this past Monday, 350 showed up in Leipzig. That unleashed an explosion, in which other parts of the German political scene, including the PDS, the East German socialist party, decided they're going to do the same thing. And other voices, including people who had been leaders of the 1989 demonstrations, said they were endorsing this too.
At that point, as of yesterday evening, the leader Wolfgang Clement, the Economics Minister for the present government, went out to denounce, not Helga by name, but denounce the operation. And then you had on the second channel, the national TV channel in Germany, a five-minute denunciation. But meanwhile, the buildup for a spread of the Monday demonstrations is in progress in Europe. And it largely is based on a youth movement phenomenon.
So, what this demonstrates—this one that Helga's leading—it demonstrates that the youth movement phenomenon is going to be the determinant of history in this period. If the youth movement is allowed to have its head, we shall win. If the youth movement does not have its head, and does not function as our Youth Movement functions, we will lose. That's the way history is going right now.
Schlanger: You described this as the end of more than 40 years of history. How is that the case, and what are the implications?
LaRouche: Well, you know, you had two phases of the postwar period in the United States.
The first shock was, you had Harry Truman—who was a factional opponent of Franklin Roosevelt—took the occasion of the President's death, before the President's body was fully cold, to reverse crucial features of Franklin Roosevelt's policy. He brought in, in effect, under the influence of people who had been at one time supporters of Hitler, such as Averell Harriman—he brought in these guys, who introduced modifications in the Roosevelt program.
Now, some things went well. The economic recovery program eventually—the recovery of Western Europe, was good. But this right-wing tendency was there. Truman's right-wing current, which was called McCarthyism—that's another name for it—was stopped by the Eisenhower election. Eisenhower gave the United States about two terms of Presidency, of relative stability, though the right wing was suppurating in the background, building power.
But then, at the beginning of President Kennedy's term, you had the Bay of Pigs, an Allen Dulles operation. Allen Dulles was one of the door-openers to bring the Nazis into the United States in the postwar period, along with James Angleton. Then, you had the Missile Crisis of 1962, and you had then the assassination of Kennedy, and other things, leading into the 1964 launching of the U.S. official war in Indo-China.
Now, this process of events, the right-wing terror in the United States, the so-called anti-communist terror, turned many of the people who had been veterans of the war [World War II], and especially their wives, turned them into real sophist fanatics. And they didn't raise their children too well. They may have raised them fairly well financially, economically, but they didn't raise them well morally. We were under the influence of a moral degeneration, typified by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was a corruption operation.
So, when these young [people], who had reached adolescence, were hit by the succession of the Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, the Indo-China war, that those of them who were going from more privileged family backgrounds, from suburbia, into the leading universities of the country, took off their clothes, took drugs, and went crazy. So as a result of that, we went into a cultural paradigm-shift, from the world's leading producer society, to a post-industrial, utopian paradise, which became more and more imperial, in the sense that we were looting other parts of the world, rather than producing for ourselves.
We're now ruined, and we've come to the end of that system. The present international monetary-financial system is undergoing an economic collapse, right now. The past two weeks have been a threshold of a general collapse, which would be equivalent, in some people's lexicon, to what happened to Hoover in October of 1929. The depression is on. And the people are trying to react to the depression the way they did in Europe, when they put in fascist regimes, in Europe, under the pretext of the economic depression at that time.
Roosevelt in the United States—and only Roosevelt, and only his election—prevented the United States from becoming a fascist state, like those which spread in Europe during that period.
So, we're now at the point that we have to go back to the policies, in a sense, the policy-paradigm of a Franklin Roosevelt, for a recovery program: his approach to these things, rather than the fiscal austerity program of an unwitting fascist—I don't think he could spell the word, President George W. Bush—the fascism of Cheney; the fascism of people who think like that, like Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party. Or, we go to a Roosevelt-type of approach in philosophy, in which case the United States will play a leading role in saving humanity from this horror show.
What Helga is doing in Germany, and in Europe generally, with the Youth Movement in particular there—without the Youth Movement in Europe, there'd be no hope for Europe whatsoever. It wouldn't make it. It's our Youth Movement in Europe which is the sparkplug which may save Europe from the inside. But the cooperation between the United States, going in the direction of a youth movement demand here, and a similar phenomenon emerging in Europe, that combination, is precisely what we need to save civilization.
Schlanger: Now, part of this problem with the reverse paradigm-shift, is that you still have people in the Democratic Party, as you mentioned, Joe Lieberman and others, who think that FDR has to be written out of the party, but at present, there are fights breaking out around FDR. How would you respond to those Democrats who are saying, "Well, the FDR approach is not relevant today, because we have computers, we have globalization." How would you answer that?
LaRouche: They're insane. They're nuts. I mean, the point is, first of all, the collapse of the bubble—. Take what's going to hit these guys.
If you map the country: The country has been physically collapsing, over especially, the past 25 years, especially since about 1979-1982. Now, what's happened is, there's been a shrinking in the parts of the country which were once productive. The collapse of manufacturing, the collapse of privately owned agriculture, that is, of independent-farmer agriculture. The collapse of cities. The collapse of infrastructure. What is called the U.S. economy is becoming narrower and narrower, around a few parts of the country, while the rest of the country decays.
Twenty percent of the population, the upper 20% of income brackets, is the bastion of "let's leave things as they are. Let's continue the present trend." Eighty percent of the lower income brackets of the population, have nothing. So, we're having a social crisis, a social conflict is building up, right now.
The nub of this thing, the typical nub of this, is the oil price. The oil price is now, in Europe, it's gone to nearly $45 a barrel, headed toward $50, maybe toward $60. A $50 to $60 a barrel oil price would collapse the ready- or ripe-for-collapse world economy, especially the U.S. economy.
At the same time you have a real-estate bubble. The real-estate bubble is one of the largest bubbles inside the United States. And it goes with those funny shacks, going at $300,000 to $600,000 apiece, and you hope a wind storm doesn't blow them down, [as has happened] around certain areas, like the greater Washington, D.C. area. These things are going to transform people from homeowners in name, to either squatters or homeless. And this is going to be a mass phenomenon.
So, right now, the world is about to be hit by an international economic crisis, a monetary and financial crisis, beyond anything in people's memory, living people's memory, right now. So that those who are running around smugly, and saying everything is fine, are not going to believe that much longer. So, the question is, what's the alternative?
Schlanger: Well, you are the world's leading physical economist, and you've been reviving the Classical principles behind physical economy and advancing them, beginning with your breakthrough in the '48-52 period, your work with the LaRouche-Riemann model, and this is what's behind your unparalleled record in economic forecasting. I suspect that they're not going to be able to keep your record, and your activity in this, out of the news much longer, as this thing hits.
LaRouche: Well, look what's happened in Germany. The second television program, and the Economics Minister of the present German government, went ablast against Helga. They couldn't mention her name.
You have a similar thing in the United States. The Convention, the Boston Convention, broke through that, and this is largely because of the style and method of work by the Youth Movement. The persistence, the music, the beauty of the deployment broke through. And there are many people in the party who agree with me, including influentials. But, they're afraid of disunity in the party, because of people like Joe Lieberman, who hate me. And Joe Lieberman is a fascist.
He was brought into the Senate by the intervention of the Buckley family, who are authentic pro-Nazi fascists. They're on record, they're Nazis. Joe Lieberman also got support from the tip of Florida, from a bunch of fascists down there, who moved from Cuba into Florida. So, you've got people who, legitimately, hate my guts, because they're of a different species than me. And some of them are in the party. You know, that sort of thing.
But the point is, can the party find the guts to unify itself around a program which is a winning program? Joe Lieberman will just—.
Schlanger: We'll get a sense of that in the days and weeks ahead, the less than three months, because you're deploying the Youth Movement into key fights with this perspective—both of moving the party back to the FDR tradition, around your platform, and secondly, showing the truth about the devastation of the physical economy. Why don't you give the listeners a little bit of your sense of how this deployment is taking place, and what they can expect from the LaRouche Youth Movement over the next 90 days?
LaRouche: All right. First of all, what we did is, we said we're not going to end what we did in Boston. So, we have a team in Boston, who are doing, in Boston, followup on what was done during the Convention. Because, obviously, the character of the Boston area, is such that you can actually enlarge the potential, national potential, in that area, rather quickly. So, rather than run away from it, we have a team staying there, a top team of youth, staying in there, and doing the job. Besides, that's the candidate's home area. He lives on Beacon Hill, as a matter of fact. So, it's his home area. So, we'll use that as a launching point for what we're going to do as a national campaign.
We're going into the industrial, former industrial areas of the Middle West. We're going from Louisville down the Mississippi River, along the Missouri, along the Ohio River of course, and down to the Gulf of Mexico, down by way of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Channel, into Alabama, parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, and so forth. We also have, of course, our California West Coast operation.
So, we're going to take these areas, where we have candidates that want our support, we will help them, and we will try to get strategies which can win.
So, we're not going to be able to determine the outcome of all of the vote, but by going at areas where we can do a job, we will turn enough of the vote, to make a difference. And if some other people, seeing what we do, do the same, we're going to bring the unexpected vote into play. We're going to bring the "forgotten man and woman" into play as voters. People who have not voted recently are going to overwhelm the vote of the usually voting voters. And that's our strategy for winning this election.
Schlanger: Now, Lyn, to go back to this strategy you just outlined for the intervention into the campaign: It's directly modelled on your approach to physical economy. In a sense what you described, the industrial heartland, the Tennessee Valley Authority area, it's what you called more than a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, a Super-TVA. How does that address the problem that we face in the country?
LaRouche: Well, there are two things.
First of all, you've got to change the way people think. That can be done fairly easily. See, people keep talking about money. They talk about "the" market, as if this were some kind of Delphic god, and have this magician, a babbling magician, Alan Greenspan. People are paying attention to this idiot, this dangerous idiot.
All right, now what's the reality? Let's take the United States. Imagine you're coming in from Outer Space, on the territory of the United States. And you have the ability to see a panoply of the changes in the United States, say, since 1926, up and down. Down into the Depression. Up out of the Depression. Postwar recovery, and then a downslide in the physical economy of the United States, which begins essentially in the middle of the 1960s.
Now, you look, county by county. Break each county down into 100-square-mile areas. Break each part of the population of those countries down into 100-family units. Now, let's look at all the physical factors of consumption and production, in these areas. Let's look at kilowatts of power generated. Let's look at things like water, water supplies. Let's look at the health care. Let's look at housing. Let's look at employment. Let's look at manufacturing output. Look at all these things which are physical things—reality—on which the productivity and the well-being of the population depends.
And you go around the country, and you find place after place, county after county, state after state, is being destroyed by the present policies.
Then you have babblers talking about: "Wall Street's on the way up. There's a recovery on the way." And as long as people talk about money, ask the financial experts, "How is the market doing?" Say, the market is bankrupt. Money may be worthless tomorrow, unless we make changes.
Look at the physical reality. Look at what you have to wear, to eat. Look at your clothing, look at your health care. Look at whether the community offers employment or not, and what kind of employment. Is the farmer still producing, the independent farmer, still producing? Are the water systems working? Are the power systems working? Are the railroads still working? Do we have an improved type of rail-mass transportation, or do we have turning super-highways into parking lots at rush-hour time?
So, you look at the physical reality of the nation, and say, "This is the problem. This downward trend in the physical conditions of life is the problem."
The homeless people are the problem: the growth of the number of homeless people. The destitution spreading: These are the problems. Look at this, and say, "This must be changed." Force the people to look away from the financial reports, from the "boolah, boolah" of the television networks and so forth. Look instead at physical reality. And in the physical reality of things that people can see and know, the truth is told. Once people respond to physical reality, rather than the boolah, boolah of the financial reports, or the doubletalk of a psychotic President, then they will react accordingly, at least the lower 80%.
The lower 80% have to be encouraged to stop being the lower 80%, to stop being the underdogs, and recognize themselves as citizens, who must think like citizens, who must exert the power of citizens, who must vote for themselves, in effect, by choosing a candidate who is for their interests, actually, not to beg for what kind of marriage, or how many abortions per block are going on. But play to reality. And our job is to convey reality, physical reality of the ups and downs of a changing pattern of existence in our country, and abroad, and put that before them. Under that case, you choose the right agenda, they will begin to choose the right response.
Schlanger: The other thing, I think, that has completely shocked the political world has been the singing of the LaRouche Youth Movement; and for you, this is a special concept, a special idea. You have a specific approach to music, which has caused—and I've seen it from being out there with the youth, and watching mouths drop open, of people who think they don't like you, and are saying, "How can these people be with LaRouche, and sing Bach so beautifully?"
Lyn, can you just tell us why this works, and how this functions to bring beauty to people, causes them to stop and think?
LaRouche: Well, you know, it's a result of the fact that there's been a cultural degeneration, an orchestrated cultural degeneration in the United States, as in Europe, during the entirety of the postwar period. The ideas of Brecht: decadence, extreme decadence. But there are certain principles on which the human race, particularly European culture, developed, and developed especially since the 15th-Century Renaissance. Among these, are music and poetry. The legacy of Dante, the legacy of Petrarca, and so forth. These great legacies. The legacy of Classical Greece.
So, all I've done is say, we've got to look at economy not as just physical economy, or money economy. We have to look at the consumption, and life of people, not merely in terms of so-called physical effects. We've got to look at it in terms of their mental life, their spiritual life; and Classical musical composition is not merely a taste. It is the development of the understanding of a fundamental principle that distinguishes human beings from beasts.
Now, when people get into actually using the principles of Classical well-tempered counterpoint, as developed by Bach and all of his followers, that has a power, to bring a sense of beauty into life. A sense of social beauty, especially when you have four-part counterpoint, as we're using, largely, in the kinds of things we're doing.
And this touches people, because it touches something in them that's there. Something they don't ordinarily use. Where they say, "That is beautiful."
And the key to life, the key to real politics, the key to the ability to withstand suffering, is the sense that you are experiencing, and in social relations, particularly, something that is beautiful. You can come to it with the dingiest rags, and the poorest diet, and you come into an area where you are surrounded by beauty. You are uplifted. Your pessimism shrinks away, and you look at your rags, and you look at your hunger, and you say, "Obviously, can't we make these things better too?" And that's what works.
Schlanger: I'd like to thank you so much for being on with us this afternoon. And everyone should know you'll be keynoting the national conference of the Schiller Institute on Sept. 4, in Virginia.
Discussion with LaRouche Youth Movement Representatives
Schlanger: So, now we're going to turn to our other guests, and one of the reasons that we have a need for funds, is that part of what Lyndon LaRouche laid out on the show today, and in his press conference a week ago Friday, is the necessity of deploying into key battleground states, in key state and local elections, a new force in politics, which is the LaRouche Youth Movement. Now, we're going to hear from three people who were part of that force, who were deployed into these states. Let's start with Michelle Lerner in Boston.
Now, Michelle, you were in Boston for the convention. You've just gone back up with a team of LaRouche Youth Movement organizers. Give us a picture of what you're doing, and what the response is.
Lerner: Okay. Well, one of the things that Mr. LaRouche brought up at the press conference announcing the LaRouche PAC, was that music has magic. And it's been this principle that has been acting as a "science driver" for the organizing that we've been doing here since we've come back. There's a church right across the street from where we're staying, and we've been using one of these rooms in this church to practice our singing. We've been having warm-ups and rehearsals in the morning, and you have great acoustics in this place, so it's wonderful. And we've been going out into the streets taking the singing with us, and particularly yesterday, we were at Harvard Square, right outside of Harvard University, and we had the chorus; we had a bunch of Platforms [LaRouche's "A Real Democratic Platform for November 2004"], and we had white boards, with the question of how to double a cube.
So, this was very provocative to a number of people that are Harvard students, just considering the, I guess you'd say, the prestige that goes along with getting a Harvard degree.
Schlanger: They consider themselves the elite. So, you're singing to the elite, and challenging the elite to engage in Socratic geometry?
Lerner: These guys didn't know how to deal with it. Everyone could come up with the cube root of 2, but when asked how to physically show what that was, how to create a relationship of proportion which would allow you to demonstrate that you can construct that magnitude, they had no idea what to do. I mean, we had some very interesting experiences, where people were just shaken completely by this sort of thing. And they couldn't deal with their emotion.
So, the question of the singing is a very important one, because when you're dealing with that sort of a crowd, they need as much help as they can to develop the emotional capability, especially when you're looking at the crisis that we're facing.
So, we had to really push there last night.
Otherwise, we've been running into people all over the city that have already started working through the Platform, and have questions they were asking. People were excited. They remembered what we had been doing. They remembered the singing that we had been doing on the subways, and all over the city, and they're very curious to know, especially those who have certain ideas, or certain assumptions, about who Mr. LaRouche is, people are very curious to know what singing has to do with politics, or what geometry has to do with economics. All these questions that people are asking. I mean, I know from the standpoint of what we were doing last night, it is a perpetual dialogue.
In this city, you can see that there's the remainder of what was a whole cultural warfare operation by the Congress of Cultural Freedom, especially there's a couple of music schools right around where we're staying, and there's a lot of this sort of counterculture spread throughout the city, so it's in desperate need of some real sense of what Classical composition is, what artistic beauty is.
And I think people are generally starting to be a little bit more open-minded, as to investigating these questions further than they had been, prior to that. I know right now, we have a group out there at Harvard Square again. There's a lot of students there, there's a lot of young people, not just students from Harvard, there's a lot of different people throughout the city that go through that area.
Schlanger: I want to bring in the other two, your colleagues in the youth movement. We have Merv Fansler on the phone; he's also from Philadelphia, but Merv, you're in Detroit right now. What's it look like in Detroit? What are we planning to do in the former Motor City?
Fansler: Well, Detroit is an interesting example, because like all the industrial cities that you have, or the post-industrial cities, people are living in what we're describing as a collapsed economy. And it becomes very pessimistic. And what people have to do, to even be able to, without having hope, and without trying to change things, what they do in a situation like this, such as Detroit, is that they have to somehow justify these paradoxes that the city is rife with. Detroit was, in the 1960s, the most productive city in the world, and today it is one of the least productive cities in the world.
And people have to live with this devastation. And so they find ways to justify this in their mind.
And so, what our mission is, and what it's going to be, in using Detroit as a launching point into the rest of the Midwest, and the industrial cities of the Rust Belt, like Cleveland, and then into the South, is that what has to happen is—there's this existentialism. It's pervasive here. And those people who think they might be able to change things, still have an "underling" mentality. And these things act as a sort of a cultural disease, which prevents a society from coming up, from overcoming its problems.
And so what we're doing in this situation, is that, these things are emotional blocks. And we need to present people with an emotional truthfulness, which is where the music comes in. It's that the problem is not policy, the problem is with the people, and it lies with their inability to overcome the popular opinions, which are holding them back. And so, what the music does, in something like [Bach's] "Jesu Meine Freude," or something, the Negro Spirituals, is that the quality of those ideas lies in their emotional truthfulness. And this is what Lyn was talking about with the idea that, you're presenting truthful ideas which are based on that difference between human beings, and the beasts. So, we have a full chorus here, and we plan to use that to the utmost, and to begin to uplift people in every sense, and really recruit, because this is the period where we need to recruit as many youth as possible, coming into the conference coming up, so that we can really launch a program to get the Democratic Party on its feet again.
Schlanger: Merv, let me ask you, because Detroit was once a booming center of industry. People were productive. It's an important Democratic Party state. When you walk out, and see people on the streets, and talk to them, do they have a sense yet of what they've lost? Is that something that's tangible yet, or are they still completely in an illusion, that somehow they're going to win the lottery, or the jackpot, and get out of it?
Fansler: At first, they'll put up an advertisement, that they don't believe it. But everyone truthfully knows it.
The problem with some of the youth, though, is that some of the youth just think, that's how it is. Whereas when you get to some of the adults, they remember what it used to be like, and luckily here, with the youth, you also have an interesting situation, where you still have multi-generational households, so a lot of the youth do have an idea of what they've lost. It's a question of, can they see themselves, can they see the potential of their own, of themselves, as an historic individual who can begin to reverse these things.
Schlanger: Let me remind listeners that we will have a national conference, the 4th and 5th of September. This will be on both coasts. It will be in Virginia. It will also be in Pasadena, California, right outside of Los Angeles, and people should call your local office, for details. This should be an incredible conference, coming, as it is, in this—in a sense—this chorus between the developments in Germany, in Leipzig, and the deployment of the LaRouche Youth to win the election in the United States.
Let me bring on now, Sky Shields. Sky is a member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee. He was up in Boston also, and Sky, what have we been doing in the West Coast, to bring the message of Lyndon LaRouche's press conference and political campaign, out to the laid-back loafers out on the West Coast?
Shields: They're a part of the humming in the background.
What we've done, in line with what LaRouche laid out as a battleplan in Boston, we've begun doing the four-voice deployments here as well, making sure that we've got, on every squad that we've got out, we've got at least one tenor, one soprano, one alto, one bass, depending upon the repertoire they'll be singing. But we've got a deployment which is designed to take over the entire California as a whole, here in Los Angeles, the broader Los Angeles area, and down into San Diego, as well. We've got a mission really, to continue what we've been doing, to organize the population, create a real cultural and political renaissance and revolution here, by introducing real ideas of culture, real ideas of science. Doing this, bringing this to people in the streets, in the metros, in the mass transit system. Doing a mass distribution of the Real Democratic Party Platform, the one that was put out by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.
Also, as part of this, we already had a chance to demonstrate to the California Democratic Party, what we could mobilize; that we're capable of mobilizing a force within the LaRouche Youth Movement, that they can't buy with all the money in the world—and they've been trying. We were able to actually organize a real movement, and a real force, to oppose the Recall [of former Democratic governor Gray Davis last year] here in California. And now we're bringing that to bear on LaRouche's program, how to re-elect Congress without DeLay.
Now, what we're targetting here in California, are a number of these different Congressional figures who've been involved in blocking the Congressional investigations [of Iraqi prisoner abuse and related issues]. And we're going to demonstrate that, if you've got a movement like LaRouche, if you represent the ideas that LaRouche represents, if you can really represent the lower 80% of the income brackets, with the ideas of Roosevelt, the ideas of big development projects, a real sense of mission for the country, you can mobilize a force that can eliminate creeps like [Congressman] Duncan Hunter down in San Diego, creeps like Schwarzenegger here, the "Governator" whom we've got here in California. And you can do that, if you've got a real movement. You can have a real movement, if you have real ideas.
Schlanger: Well, Sky, on this question of real ideas, of course, you're not too far, with the office there, from Hollywood, and the fantasy life that—I guess most people probably don't know this, but it really doesn't come out of Hollywood anymore; it comes out of Algeria, Mexico, Austin, Texas and so on. But the center is still in the Los Angeles areas. And a lot of people out there sort of have this view that, well, look, we're elite, we're educated, we're cool, we're going to go Democrat, and the rest of the country can go to hell. How do you take that on?
Shields: Well, I'll tell you, right now, the one thing that people are beginning to see, and beginning to see more and more, is just the bare fact that we've got the massive presence that we do here in California, in areas where we're organizing. People can see that you don't have this anywhere else. I mean, you've got this sort of fascination with the power of media, the power of this, the power of that, but we're demonstrating that we've been shut out of the press, except for slander attacks; we're not, I can guarantee you we're not commanding massive amounts of funds; we're not controlling any political positions; but we've got a movement in the streets, and they can't even attempt [that], even with all of the control of the press they've got. I mean, people are disillusioned with the so-called power of the media. There's still a market for fantasy now, because people are recognizing what the crisis is. But we've got a certain kind of political power that they don't. We can move the population, and that's enough to get—people are starting to recognize that more and more.
I know, last night, I was in downtown Long Beach, and people see what it is we're organizing, and they understand what LaRouche is saying when he says that we're going to win this, we're going to be the margin that wins this election. We're going to move the chunk of the population that the rest of the party, that the Democratic Leadership Council, the Republican Party, and all these other hacks have written off, as unmoveable, as unlikely voters.
We can move them by inspiring them. And that people can see. And people can see how that's going to happen, just by what we've got as a mobilization.
Schlanger: Michelle, let me go back to you now; let's come back to this question that you talked about, the magic of music, that Lyn had brought up. How do you see that this gets into the head? Take a typical counterculture person, who's not familiar with Bach, doesn't know very much about the U.S. Constitution, probably thinks that the American Revolution was based on a tea party against taxes. How do you go about starting to bring them to reality?
Lerner: Well, that's a good question. Because for somebody like that, most of the time they don't even have a conception that anyone can know reality. Like for instance, just before I got on this call, there was a guy, a young guy, who's out on the street, asking for money, because he had apparently lost his job, lost his apartment, he didn't have anywhere to go. So, I was talking to him. He was trying to argue with me: "Everyone has their own reality." And this is why the epistemology, the epistemological method that LaRouche has developed through the study of Plato, Leibniz, and also Bach, Classical composition, is key to this. Because you can only know a principle, not by what your senses immediately tell you, but by investigating the paradoxes that those things bring up.
So, the immediate thing that people are confronted with when they see us, is that you have a bunch of young people who are seemingly rejecting the counterculture. And then they're handing them a Real Democratic Party Platform, at the same time a pamphlet called "The Children of Satan III," that goes through how the population was brainwashed.
So, they don't quite know how to respond to it, so you have to develop within the population, you have to educate people around the ideas that prove that humanity actually has a right to exist. That there is something unique about human individuals that makes the species able to sustain the amount of people that we actually have. And it's only because we're able to discover truthful principles, that we have that authority.
So, you have to work with these youth, who don't get a sense of that in school, they don't get a sense of that in society in general, to really rediscover the potential that they have, the potential that they've been carrying around with them all along.
Schlanger: Do you find that the music actually does get through to them, that they do get a sense that there's something missing from their life?
Lerner: Well, I wouldn't say it does completely, immediately, but it poses the paradox, from which you have a basis to start a discussion, and even if there isn't any discussion, something that they're going to be thinking about afterwards, or maybe after the discussion is over. So, it starts a process by which people can think about things that they're not usually . . . it begins to put a crack in the fishbowl [in which they're swimming].
Schlanger: Now, Merv, I'm going to throw one of the e-mails we have from one of our listeners to you, because actually, it's someone, S. Beal from Buffalo, New York, which is sort of in that natural economic zone of the Great Lakes, where you're right in the center right now.
This is someone who says, "Early in the Democratic primaries, you called John Kerry the only decent fellow among those; that despite his flaws and unpreparedness, he did have some intelligence, and wished to do the right thing. They go on to say that both clearly, they don't have a real plan at the convention. Did Kerry and Edwards and the Democrats show enough of the kind of fight that you've been advocating? Are we treading somewhat of a fine line? Will it backfire with voters, that we're supporting Kerry?"
Now, let me pose it a little bit differently to you. Because what I'm getting, including from a lot of our organizers, is that they're caught between saying what Lyn is actually saying, which is that we face fascism, we face people who are insane, so we have to fight them, and on the other hand, feeling somewhat defensive about supporting Kerry. So, how do you see this, and how do you address this in people?
Fansler: Well, look, Kerry really has not shown that he's going to fight, so far. But what he has shown, is that he thinks, and he has shown that he has the potential to fight, through his past history, with the Iran-Contra, and different things like that. In the crisis we're in, you have to think about what is physically efficient action that you can take on the universe, to change the situation we're in. And what we're presented with, is, you know, you have the Cheney-Bush Administration, or Kerry, or you have Nader, and the way that this stage is set up right now, is that, if someone doesn't intervene in this, and provide a sort of a counterpoint to the operation—not that we're saying, "Go Kerry, everybody support what Kerry's saying right now." No.
You provide—what a counterpoint does, a counterpoint in a musical polyphony, is, it brings out the paradoxes which exist implicitly in the other voices, but it will not be brought out unless you have multiple voices. And so what we're going to do is, we're going to bring those paradoxes which lie in the reality right now, and we're going to make sure that we can ensure that there will be people, that when the crash does occur, when a financial breakdown does occur, there are people who can act in a sane way. And the Bush-Cheney Administration has demonstrated that they will act in a very fascist way, and Kerry has demonstrated that he has the potential to act in a sane way, if we get the right people around him.
And this is why, it's not just a campaign for the Presidency that we're running. We're running a campaign throughout the Democratic Party; I mean, we're acting as the leadership in the Democratic Party, which the DNC refuses to take up. And so, we're mobilizing not just for the Presidential elections, but for the Congressional elections, and the Senatorial elections, the Congressional elections, because you need—if you got Kerry in there, and you still had this Republican stronghold, with DeLay and others in there, there would still be the problem of, how can he react properly? And so, it's a multiply-connected operation.
Schlanger: But, as Lyn said also, the real goal is to bring economic justice to the world, and to create a Renaissance, so if we could do that by electing John Kerry, that would be a pretty good trick.
Now Merv, just to take one other point you brought up, the question of the fascist nature of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, of the neo-conservatives. Are you finding a shift in the population? Are there more people now who are beginning to get this, or do you still find just people freaking out if you use the word fascism?
Fansler: Some of them get it. I think, like this Fahrenheit 9/11 movie softened some people up for that. But I mean, what I've really been nailing people on, is the question of the economics, and the fascism which is associated with that, which is what's getting crucial. And especially this comes up with what Helga has been doing in Europe, against the Hartz IV, which is a very important question.
Schlanger: I want to turn to our third participant, Sky Shields. Sky, what haven't we covered today that you think should be brought up, with your insightful mind, and your heightened sense of irony? What have we missed here so far today?
Shields: I don't think there's anything we've missed. I mean, it's important for people to get a real sense that we're in the middle of a real break right now. I mean, all the existing practices, all the existing institutions, everything that people ever took for granted over the course of the last 30-40 years, is blowing apart right now. And the only person who's been keen on that, who's had a real sharp sense of that, during this entire breakdown, and because of that, has a chance to intervene into this, and completely change the course that we've been on for this time, through all this period, is LaRouche. And the movement that he's organizing is based on that insight. And, because of that, right now we've got a chance to decide in these next few months ahead, which direction, what the future of humanity is going to look like; whether we're going to see the sort of Dark Age, that people like Vice President Cheney, and his puppet Bush, around this Administration, are pushing for: wars, dictatorships, and a collapse in living standards and economic austerity policies, globally. Or whether we're going to see a Renaissance of the sort that the movement we heard discussed today is exemplifying, all across the United States. With a Renaissance in Classical culture, a Renaissance in the ideas on which humanity, the existence of humanity is premised, a Renaissance of the greatest ideas in science, a Renaissance of massive development projects globally. That's going to be decided, and it's going to be decided by what we're mobilizing, what people heard from today.
And that's important for people to get a real living sense. And you'll get a greater sense of that if you attend the conference we'll be having over Labor Day weekend, either at Pasadena or out on the East Coast, in Virginia, and you'll get a greater sense of that if you're involved in the fight that we're mobilizing. And people should. That's the only way to get a real sense of where we're at right now in history, is to take part in it.
Schlanger: We're going to have a totally mobile deployment, as I know the three of you know, and maybe our listeners don't know. We are committed during this next period leading up to the Nov. 2nd elections, to hit the key battleground states, to go in and help some Senate and Congressional candidates who are understanding what Mr. LaRouche is saying, and, as well, to look at some of the local races, for example, Assembly seats in California, or maybe in Texas, or Pennsylvania, where you can swing the balance back to the Democrats. But it's got to be a different Democratic Party. Just from any of the three of you, what do you think, do you think the Democrats are ready to change? Do you see a better sense of fight?
Fansler: I hope they're ready for what we have for them.
Schlanger: Michelle, do you have anything else from Boston, quickly?
Lerner: No, I was just going to add that I think that looking at what Mr. LaRouche had put forward during the time period of the mid-term elections, that he had warned that if they don't separate themselves, and make themselves known, the Democrats, that is, as something distinctly separate from the Republican Party, they would fail. And I think that's the same sort of sense that a lot of people have right now. So, I think there's a lot of possibilities for what might happen.
Schlanger: Well, as Lyndon LaRouche said in his invitation to the Conference, this is something that the cowards refuse to face, but the fact that we are ending an era of history, which he spoke about today. And again, I would remind people, listen to this again. Go back to the archive on the larouchepub.com. Call us for literature. Call us to make your pledges. And by the way, when you make a pledge, don't be a Baby Boomer—actually send it in. It's very easy to make pledges. You can call us at 888-347-3258.
