October 22, 2001

How Do You Organize Under Conditions of Systemic Crisis?

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

[Print version of this transcript]

The following is a previously unpublished, edited transcript of a report delivered by Lyndon LaRouche to his associates on October 22, 2001, and part of the discussion that ensued. Subheads have been added.

Now, we have a very interesting situation, with some good problems to be faced among some of our own people. I think the situation in our Leesburg-based national center area has gone somewhat better than in the organization in general. That’s because a certain crisis has been faced. Because we’ve gone through this, and because of the global implications of the kind of thinking that has to go on in our national center, we have somewhat less of a problem there, than we do more broadly.

There are some typical problems. First of all, you had idiots who, during 1999 and year 2000, were saying that I was exaggerating or wrong on the issue of the so-called “New Economy,” in particular, and on the inevitability of a monetary-financial crisis in general. With the events of the past three quarters, people who have said that, after about $3 trillion or more lost to the New Economy financial stocks—by people out there, ordinary people—who foolishly didn’t listen to us, and didn’t listen to me—. They wouldn’t have lost any of that money to speak of, if they’d listened to us. So, it was their own foolishness, their own gullibility, their credulity, which lost them a lot of money. And there are probably a dozen-trillion dollars of other values have been wiped out from the system.

Now, you’re talking about a dozen-trillion dollars:—Remember that the most generous estimate of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, in dollars, is $42 trillion a year. Now, he U.S. economy is generously estimated as having a Gross Domestic Product of about $11 trillion a year. Figures can be adjusted and corrected one way or the other, but, still the same general order of magnitude. So, therefore, we have a collapse of the U.S. financial system, within about a year or so, which is greater than the GDP of the entire nation for an entire year!

Now that, I think, qualifies as a crisis.

If you have any memory, or by direct knowledge or experience, or, probably, more often, by study, of the way in which the crisis of 1927 through 1932-33 evolved, including, of course, the crucial 1929-1932 interval;—if you have any impression of that, you realize that the rate of collapse of companies, employment and so forth, in the recent period, exceeds that which the United States went through, month by month, week by week, and so forth, during those years, the Depression years of 1929-1933. So, we’re in that kind of situation.

The reason that I’ve been so successful in forecasting, and all my critics have looked like something not attractive—you know, the more unattractive part of the human anatomy—that’s what they look like. They may be quivering and so forth, but, that’s what they may choose to do. The reason I’m so good at this, is because I think systemically, as I’ve identified that, repeatedly, rather than the way that people have been miseducated to think in school and so forth and so on. And therefore, I understand how a systemic collapse unfolds, as opposed to a stock-market prediction, which is what every idiot likes to talk about. Idiots say: “Why don’t you make a prediction? A statistical prediction.” I say, “I don’t make predictions. I make forecasts, which are based on the systemic characteristics and the boundary conditions within which the system operates. That’s why I have always been right, and every one of my critics—whether inside the organization or outside—has always been wrong! Sometimes, they look very silly [laughs]—they’re so wrong. Right?

So, the question is, since the problem is a systemic one, how do you organize, under conditions of systemic crisis? In other words, not how to nail the window back on the house, but, how do you build a house, when the house you’re living in, is uninhabitable, and can’t be repaired? So, therefore, Mr. Agitator has nothing to offer of much value, under those conditions. And, in the organizing, we found a real problem, that you have an effort of some people to say: “We have to have an agitational approach, not a thinking approach.” Heh, heh! Not very smart, huh? So, you have agitation in contrast to reason.

That reminds me of the case of the woman, who bought one of these old-style washing machines, back some decades ago, in which the key feature of the washing machine was the agitator. And, then, the woman was so enamored of this machine’s ability to wash the laundry, that she tried to use the agitator to cook the family’s meal. And we have some people who do things just about as silly as that, politically. We have, also, another case, we have the fellow who says, like the preacher says, “Ah’m gawn to glory, flying up on fried chicken wings.” And, we have some of our people who go along with that crap, too. You’ve got to appeal to the chicken-wing mentality, in the population, that is, the most banal, blocked, superstitious, pitiful form;—get to that pitiful side, make them like you from that pitiful side. You’re not going to solve anything.

Going Along to Get Along

The problem here, is that you have a population which is not really fully human anymore. They’ve lost their sense of human identity; they think of themselves as, more or less, human cattle, who have to go along with popular opinion, or go along with the other members of Congress, or go along with this to get along. And then, when you try to influence them, they’ll listen to you, if they think you fit within an institutional framework, in which you accept these mythologies, these arbitrary beliefs—when it is precisely those axiomatic assumptions which are wrong.

Now, how do you get someone to change an axiomatic assumption? You don’t scream at them. You don’t try to agitate them. That’s only going to make them worse. You make them stop and think. Forget the fried chicken wings. Stop trying to bake a cake in the washing machine’s agitator. You don’t go to glory that way [laughs].

Now, the problem here is the lack of confidence in doing that. And the lack of confidence comes from very deep roots in some of our people, at all kinds of levels, in the association. First of all, most people in our association, particularly those who were born after World War II, but practically everybody born after World War II, is automatically incapable of thinking, you know, unstable. Highly neurotic. Incapable of sustained, clear, reasonable thought. Because they were educated, chiefly, on the basis of adapting to things they were taught: You learn this, and you’ll pass your grades. Pass your grades, and you’ll be promoted. Be promoted, and you’ll go to college. Pass your grades in college, and you might get a professional career. Keep your mouth shut, and do as you’ve been told in your profession, and you might not be thrown out of your profession. Keep doing that, and you might become rich.

And then, about the time you’re retired, and about to die, you’re permitted to say all kinds of old grouchy things that really don’t mean much, in a sort of a faint recollection, that along the previous 60 to 70 years, you’ve been so brainwashed, you forgot what it was you wanted to say, 60 or 70 years ago, when they told you to shut up and learn what you’re being told.

And, people who were born after 1945, tend to suffer that problem much more than people in my generation, at least, statistically. You find more people from my generation who can think, than you will from the generations that come after that. People among these younger generations who can think are a precious rarity. And those who have that ability in any degree, are a precious rarity; the whole population depends upon it. If you have those qualities, don’t give them up! Don’t betray them! Because your ability to violate the chicken-wing mentality, is precisely what makes you really human, makes you valuable.

People enjoy that, really, once they get the hang of it. Then, they get very nervous; they may be afraid of what will be done to them. They may feel like the ancient Christians, sitting up there, waiting for the lions to come and get them, or something. There’s really fear out there now. It’s one of our big problems. But, the failure in method, is the tendency to slip to a kind of deductive approach, to what you think are the hot-button prejudices of people with whom you’re speaking, particularly on the issue which you’re addressing.

The same thing comes up in geometry, in the so-called Euclidian classroom geometry, in which you get this guy, who instead of thinking, instead of using reason, the way we do in physical geometry, he tries to use the Sherlock Holmes method.

How to Think About the Sept. 11 Crisis

For example, take the case of this [September 11, 2001 attack] crisis. How did I know what this crisis is all about, when it happened, the very hour it happened? I’m sitting there—within two or three minutes, I’ve got the report of an airplane hitting the New York World Trade tower, and then, a second one—and, I knew exactly what was going on. Well, partly, because I know the parameters of general national security, and a few other things: I knew that this was something that could not be done, except under the control of a coup d’état-style of command center, operating inside the U.S. intelligence establishment. No one from outside the United States could have done to the United States what was done on Sept. 11. Couldn’t happen. I knew that.

Someone says, “What’s the evidence that it was inside?” You don’t need any evidence. You’ve got the evidence. The evidence is: You know that you live in a certain geometry. And you know that, in that geometry, certain things are not possible, and certain things, otherwise, are possible, but only under certain conditions.

Therefore, it’s like the guy who comes home and finds the place was robbed. He’s asked, “Well, how do you know that place was robbed?” Huh? He knows from the circumstances. He doesn’t know who the perpetrator was, and so forth. He may look around and find out what’s stolen. And, looking at what’s stolen may suggest to him who the robber was, or what kind of robber it was, even if he doesn’t know the robber’s mentality. And he goes on from there. Who could have known he had this object in that place? Who knew he was going to be away at that time? And so forth and so on.

So, the circumstances tell you, because of the geometry, of what has happened. Not who did it, or who met with whom to plan it, but how it was done. And when you know how it was done, by what kind of agency, you can now place which part of the world contains such an agency. And, there’s only one part of the world that contains that agency which could do all those things. And that is, simply, an inside operation, inside the security apparatus of the United States, at the very highest level. A military-style planning, at the highest level, operating with networks controlled by need-to-know, in the strictest sense, all the way down. A real conspiracy, of a military-coup style. That’s what was done. We still don’t know who did it. We’ve got some pretty good ideas of where to look, though.

For example: Why did it happen? Isn’t that important? Well, how do you know why it happened? Well, what are the effects produced? Now, someone who’s clever enough, and powerful enough to do the things that were done in that way, obviously, has some kind of a fairly clever, sophisticated motive. And, this thing was not planned on an impulse. This thing had been under way for a year, or two years, before this thing could have happened. It took a lot of planning, a lot of preparation, a lot of recruitment, a lot of selection. It’s all there. It’s known. Well, who would have done it?

Well, first of all, we do have something like that running loose. It’s called the special warfare concept, and someone has reminded us that [Gen.] Ed Lansdale, from the 1950s, 1960s, fits that kind of profile. We know a lot about that kind of profile. We know how that was run. That was seen as terrorism, and irregular warfare, and Iran-Contra, and so forth: We’ve seen that,—in which the Israelis, the British, and Americans, all engaged in this special warfare operation, swapped spit, and worked together, to create phenomena such as we called Iran-Contra. That’s how these things are done.

So, a capability like that, which has been using Islamic and other assets, for things like the war that Zbigniew Brzezinski organized in Afghanistan back in 1979, and prepared before then, these guys are lying around all over the landscape—and they’re under control of, privately funded, largely drug-money funded, or weapons-trafficking funded operations, which are operating essentially off the reservation, but have the highest quality of military capabilities generally available to any government. They’re hiring people from all over the world, and they have the ability. They can do it. So, you know that it was something like that. If it wasn’t done by George Bush personally, and he’s not the type that knows how to do that,—and if it was done against him, as obviously was the case, because he was part of the target of this operation; not the primary target, but he was part of the target. The U.S. government was the target. To induce the U.S. government to do something.

To do what?

Well,—to establish a dictatorship, in conditions of a great financial collapse? Well, we have evidence to that effect; that was a factor. That’s going on in Britain. That was going on in that kind of discussion at the New York Council on Foreign Relations and similar think-tanks. It’s been going on for some time. What do they do in terms of a financial crisis?

They establish a dictatorship! You know, like they did, like Montagu Norman, and the Harrimans, did with Hitler, back there in 1933. That’s what they do. Okay. It’s simple.

What more do we know about it?

Well, we know that the key to this thing, the way it was played, particularly when this Osama bin Laden thing came up—which otherwise makes no sense; and especially as it began to zero in on Afghanistan—we knew exactly what was up. Or we should have known. What was up? Well, Israel.

Go back to the time that Bill Clinton goofed,—when he capitulated to Barack Obama, and didn’t say the thing he should have said publicly, about Barack’s stupidity on the question of the Jerusalem and the Temple Mount issue. Clinton actually set this thing into motion by his cowardice on that question. That’s how it worked. Since that time, there’s been a steady march.

Now, remember that Barack was intimating that he was afraid he’d be killed, if he did not buck what Clinton was trying to negotiate. Who would kill him? Well, guess who? The same people I think killed this guy, Rehavam Ze’evi, this past week. That is, guys I thought would kill Sharon, if they needed to kill him to have a martyr to let them attack Syria, Iraq, and a few other places like that. They were a threat to Barak. They kept him in line. Clinton didn’t appreciate that; therefore he made a mistake and bungled the way he handled the outgoing section of that Camp David negotiation, which we said.

So, what are they trying to do?

Well, they’re using the breakaway ally syndrome, the so-called chicken-game syndrome. Israel is going to create a situation, where it’s going to threaten to create international general warfare, the kind Brzezinski wants. And they tell the United States, if you don’t do it, we’ll start the war, and you’ll have to fight it. And they’ve got the Mega Group around Edgar Bronfman in the United States, who will back them up on that; they’ve got some of these crazy fundamentalists who’ll back them up on that. You’ve got Paul Wolfowitz, who will back them up on that, and he’s a Deputy Defense Secretary. Richard Armitage undoubtedly will tend to back them up, if he does not try to protect his own hide in that case. Other people will back it up. Tom Lantos will back it up. The Zionist Lobby, the Richard Perle, the Perle-divers, will back it up. And the so-called Committee X, they’ll back it up.

So you’ve got a push against the U.S. government, to use a terrifying incident, attacking the population of New York City in the financial district, and the Pentagon, to intimidate the U.S. population, and the government, to take drastic action of revenge against the alleged perpetrator, who doesn’t happen to be the perpetrator. And the direction is to push the United States to go beyond this thing with Afghanistan, which is a loser, and to push on Syria, Iraq, and other countries. It’s all plain. That’s the purpose. To get the world to go along with an alliance which is based on that principle: that’s a coup d’état to get the U.S. government to bend to the will of a bunch of plotters. That was obvious to me, as I described it, as it unfolded beginning with my observations on the 11th, shortly after 9 o’clock that morning.

So, I was right. But that’s not Sherlock Holmes’ methods. It’s not the D’Oyly methods, huh?

So, that’s where we stand, and that’s the kind of thing we have to apply.

A Systemic Crisis

We also are in a situation—let’s take the very obvious thing; it keeps coming up with me. Someone says, some idiot in Japan, or someplace else, says: “Well, we can’t do what you want us to do. Maybe we can do something more limited, but what you want us to do, we can’t do. You’re crazy. Go ‘way.” Right?

Well, now if you have a situation in which you have a mounting hyper-inflationary growing mass of debt. . . Let’s take the question of U.S. mortgage-related consumer debt. Now you have the Federal Reserve, with Fannie Mae and so forth, has been pumping fictional increases in the value of real estate and mortgages based on that, as a way of providing consumer purchasing power for people who are householders. It’s a bubble.

To pay that bubble, the carrying charges on that bubble, means that you have to tax payment from the economy. It’s like that 20%, 22%, 23% monthly credit-card charge you’ve got to meet. Huh? It’s got to come out of something, hasn’t it?

Now, take the case of Argentina. The amount that Argentina is supposed to pay has already passed the point that people in Argentina can live. Which means, if you try to collect the debt that’s imposed on Argentina, Argentina will die, physically die. That is, the amount of wealth being produced is not only being looted by so-called fiscal responsibility measures, but the amount of production, from which payments presumably will come to pay these financial charges, is being collapsed by the measures of fiscal austerity.

So you have a situation globally, in the United States and outside, in which the total amount of debt service being extracted from the economies, is increasing cancerously, and the debt service payment requirement accordingly. This is collapsing the actual productive power of nations and their populations, precisely at the time that the amount of debt to be paid is increasing. So, there’s no possible way that the present international monetary, financial system could be continued without collapsing civilization into a generalized and prolonged New Dark Age, out of which most nations will disappear, and the human population will drop rapidly during the course of this century to below 1 billion. And the first drop down will tend to be a big one.

So therefore, we are in a situation in which anybody who doesn’t support my proposals on bankruptcy reorganization of the international monetary and financial system, does not support the measures which I’ve proposed as required for this purpose, has to be an idiot.

So, why do we not say that? Why do we not make that case clearly, and say: “Now, sit down and listen. Here’s what the situation is. Now, listen. Don’t block, don’t scream, don’t yell, listen, and think. So, we’re now in a situation where you can’t survive under this system. Are you therefore going to say nothing can be done to change the system? Is that what you’re going to say?”

So, that’s where we are. And that’s the nature of our general problem.

We have other problems, but the other problems are a result largely of our failure to deal with the problems I just identified. And typified by this idea that you can fly to glory on fried chicken wings, instead of organizing.

Okay, let’s see what you have to say.

[During the ensuing discussion, a question was asked about how to deal with the huge anthrax scare in the Baltimore-Washington area. LaRouche responded:]

What’s your first thing?

First of all, you see, you always have to use my name. If you don’t use my name, it’s not going to work. Why?

Let’s take the anthrax case.

Well, don’t say, “D.C. General Hospital should be restored.” That’s not what you say. That doesn’t break any axioms.

It’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say that’s important.

See, what you say is not important. What you don’t say is what’s important.

For example, say, “Well, we have a Presidential candidate, a former Presidential candidate [referring to himself—ed.], who’s a candidate again, who warned you of the importance of this, and you didn’t pay any attention. Now, you’re worried about anthrax, buddy?”

That’s the point. You’ve got to confront people, and say:

Look, we know, you know you’ve been stupid. You know you’ve been going along because you thought you had to go along to get along. You know you’ve been stupid. But this is what you get. We don’t have a capability. You let the HMO [Health Maintenance Organization] system go into effect; it destroyed most of our hospitals.

What do you think our defense against disease is, against bacteriological warfare is, biological warfare? It’s medical science and its auxiliaries—that means hospitals, that means physicians, that means access. That means especially free, available medicine for the very poor, who have no money, because it’s the very poor, who live in the poorest places, who tend to be the easiest ones to contract and spread diseases, if they don’t get treatment. You want to fight disease? You have to fight to defend the health of the poor. That’s what we’ve been telling you guys.

So, it’s what you don’t say, is the killer. Don’t try to appeal to somebody’s prejudices. Don’t try to whomp them up agitationally. That’s been the big problem. . . .