Wise Words of Lyndon LaRouche on MLK and JFK

The following are transcripts of three video clips of Lyndon LaRouche that were shown at the Schiller Institute’s January 14, 2023 Symposium, “Resurrect the True Mission of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Stop NATO’s World War, and Dismantle the JFK International Assassination Bureau.” The video of the entire Symposium is available here.

The Immortal Talent of Martin Luther King

Two excerpts from Lyndon LaRouche’s address to the MLK Prayer Breakfast, Talladega County, Alabama, January 19, 2004. The video of his entire address in Talladega is available here.

So, we do not face a new problem today, in one sense. We face the same problem, in principle, that Martin faced. And faced successfully. And I would propose, that in the lesson of Martin Luther King, and his life, there is something we can learn today, which brings him back to life, as if he were standing here, alive, today. There’s something special about his life, his development, which should be captured today, by us, not only in addressing the problems of our nation, which are becoming terrible; but the problems of our relationship with the world as a whole. How are we going to deal with these cultures that are different than our own? With an Asian culture; with the Muslim cultures around the world—over a billion Muslims around the world; with the culture of China, which is different than ours; the culture of Southeast Asia, which is different than ours; the cultural background?

They’re all human. They all have the same ultimate requirements, the same needs. But, they’re different cultures. They think differently. They respond to different predicates than we respond to. But, we must have peaceful cooperation with these people, to solve world problems.

Then you start thinking about someone like Martin. And I want to indicate, in the context I just stated, what the significance of Martin is, today.

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Martin was truly a man of God. Truly. In a way that very few people are actually able to realize in their lifetime. It wasn’t just that he was a man of God: It’s that he rose to the fuller appreciation of what that meant. Obviously, the image for him was Christ, and the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. That was his source of strength. He lived that. He had gone to the mountaintop, at a point that he knew his life was threatened by powerful forces in the United States. And he said, “I will not shrink from this mission, even if they kill me.” Just as Christ said, and I’m sure that was in Martin’s mind, at that point. The Passion and Crucifixion of Christ is the image which is the essence of Christianity. It’s an image, for example, in Germany, or elsewhere, where the Bach St. Matthew Passion is performed. It’s a two-hour performance, approximately. In those two hours, the audience, the congregation, the singers, the musicians, re-live, in a powerful way, the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ. And this has always been important: To re-live that. To capture the essence of what Christ means, for all Christians. And Martin showed that.

Kennedy Was Killed Because He Was the President

Excerpt from an interview with Lyndon LaRouche, conducted by the International Connection, Alexandria Detention Center, Alexandria, Virginia, 1989. The video of the interview begins here.

Q: Welcome to the International Connection. Today we continue our conversation with Lyndon LaRouche, from his jail cell in Alexandria, Virginia.

LaRouche: The point is this: Was Kennedy killed because he was John F. Kennedy, or was President Kennedy killed because he was President?

Q: That’s the problem?

LaRouche: That’s right. And I lean to the second one.

Q: Because he was the President?

LaRouche: That’s right. He happened to have the misfortune of being the President at the time, which is the primary reason for it.

Q: So there were forces—I mean, Kennedy even said there was a government behind his back. There was this group behind him that was orchestrating a lot of these crises.

LaRouche: It was essentially, it’s not unknown who they are.

Q: Well, the Rockefellers, would they be part of them?

LaRouche: I think the Rockefellers— my own view is that I think that’s exaggerated. Yes, the Rockefeller interest is very specific. I know the thing. I’ve done a lot in exposing it. And David Rockefeller is certainly no friend of mine! [laughs]

But I think that misses the point, because it makes it too narrow and makes it too linear.

Q: Right, in other words, it’s the idea of the fondi [“the funds”], there’s a group of associates.

LaRouche: There’s a social formation to the effect that no one individual, and no one individual group determines the group. It’s the inner within the group that determines what the group does.

Q: And that’s why they can’t put the finger on who killed Kennedy, those kind of things, they can’t …

LaRouche: It wasn’t that. I think it’s—the problem is more than that: When you organize an assassination of that type, of the President of the United States, a conspiracy which operated on the scale of which that thing operated—remember, the killing of Kennedy enveloped an overlay, efforts to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. The same operation, in effect.

So, it’s a vast conspiracy. Then, when you get a vast conspiracy, what makes a conspiracy work is a lot of perceptions in the conspiracy, and a lot of exploitation of the particular motivation of people who are drawn in to playing particular roles. So that if you interrogate somebody, who, say, who pulled a trigger, and say, “Why was the President of the United States killed? Why’d you shoot him?” this fellow might have a motive. He might simply say, “Because I was paid to do so”! Or, somebody else might explain a motive. That might have been the motive for their behavior, or the induced motive. That doesn’t mean that’s why the thing happened.

So it comes to a question—the people who planned this, and I don’t think I should name it on the air, but the people who planned this were functioning at a very high level. So they knew what they were doing, unlike people on a lower level, who may not have known fully what they were doing, apart from the killing—and even some didn’t know they were involved in the killing!

Q: Say that again?

LaRouche: They knew that they were destabilizing the institution of the Presidency of the United States.

Q: You just said those people who didn’t know what they were—?

LaRouche: They didn’t know the full implications of what they were doing.

Q: —they were doing.

LaRouche: They knew what they were doing, but they didn’t know what somebody else intended this to lead to.

And what they were doing was destabilizing, particularly with the cover-up, the Warren Commission cover-up—the combination of the assassination with the cover-up, actually did destabilize the United States; destabilized the institutions of government of the United States, destroyed the presidency as an efficient instrument of government, the constitutional instrument. And the fellows who organized the thing at that level knew they were doing this! So therefore, I would say, they weren’t out to kill Kennedy, though somebody may have come up with motives for killing John F. Kennedy: They were out to kill President Kennedy, because he was President.

Q: The institution?

LaRouche: The institution.