Rev Left Radio - Lyndon LaRouche: A Warning & Lesson For The Communist Left

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Donald Parkinson from Cosmonaut Magazine joins Breht to talk about the life, political theory, and legacy of Lyndon LaRouche. In our own time we see LaRouche-type deviations manifesting on the so-called socialist left, and by studying LaRouche and his movement, we can better comprehend - and thus combat - its modern day iterations, while avoiding similar errors. Check out Donald's article in Cosmonaut on LaRouche here: https://cosmonautmag.com/2019/03/larouche-a-warning-for-us-all/ Outro Song: Where is my Mind? by the Pixies Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on Donald Parkinson from Cosmonaut Magazine to talk about the historical figure known as Lyndon LaRouche. This was a person who ostensibly started off on the left as a Trotskyist, and over time created an organization that became increasingly recorist, increasingly cultist, and then ultimately explicitly reactionary and right wing. And so Donald and I kind of trace the trajectory of LaRouche's political career in his organization, and we draw lessons on it for today because today in the left-wing socialist ecosystem, if you will,

we're increasingly seeing this attempt by some revisionist MLs, I guess, to try to do many of the same things that Lyndon LaRouch and his organization tried to do, decades ago, this embrace of chauvinism, this embrace of patriotism, this attailing conservative social views, this sort of reductionist, economicistic workerism, it's all kind of here. And I think it's an incredibly important historical lesson for the left to learn today. Because if you've been on the left for the last several years, you've actually probably seen left-wing cults emerge. And so, as I mentioned in this episode, it's absolutely fascinating to go back

throughout history, to see left-wing colts in the past, and then to live through a period of time in which you can watch in real time as they emerge, you know, spin out, and dissolve in various ways. And so it's a fascinating and timely and important discussion. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Donald Parkinson on Lyndon LaRouche. Enjoy. Hey, I'm Donald Parkinson. You may know me from my previous appearances on Rev. Left Radio and I'm the editor-in-chief

Cosmonaut Mag, and I guess you could call me an independent researcher of history and Marxism. Yeah, well, welcome back. It's always a pleasure and an honor to speak with you and to learn from you. You and I have been trying to figure out a topic to collaborate on for a while, and this finally kind of hit our schedules both such that we could make it happen. So today we'll be talking about Lyndon LaRouche. And this is a really fascinating character that I've certainly heard about, but as I was telling Donald before we started recording, I've never personally invested the time and energy into kind of learning about him to see sort of a fringe figure that I was aware of and kind of knew the gist of what he was and what he represented, but never really, you know, a people. to me enough to dive into it but after going back and forth with donald and prepping for this episode i found it to be absolutely a crazy story like reading some of these articles i just like break out laughing in my bedroom like what the fuck it's it's quite a strange tale um right right it's those

things where like it's like an onion you keep peeling it and finding crazy stuff and peeling it more and finding even crazier stuff and you know it's it's what are you going to get to the core and find like the you know the kind of reason to all the insanity yeah you just keep going deeper and deeper and it gets crazier and crazier with LaRouche. Yeah, it really is quite the story. So today we're going to bring you that story. And Donald, before we get into the questions, what got you interested in this? And why did you, I mean, you wrote an article for Cosmonaut magazine on him a few years back. So what was kind of the way you got into being interested in him? Oh, okay. So back in the day, I knew a guy named Lauren Goldner, who was kind of, he was an old veteran of the

new left and he kind of was a kind of left communist guy and he had a website i really like reading had like a lot of really good like articles on marxist theory and i was kind of like moving from anarchism to marxism at this point and i found out that warren goldner when he was younger was part of a group called the national caucus of labor committees and that he had left the group before they had what was called like an infamous operation mopup and so i decided that you know i wanted to kind of lead more about this group and figure out what they were all about and like why um you know this guy was so embarrassed to like mention that he had been part of them and i had also kind of come across linden lorouche through like conspiracy stuff like um

i've always been interested in fringe movements and just bizarre esoteric stuff i don't know how to justify it but i kind of just knew about him through of the various conspiracy theories that had to kind of seeped in the popular culture from him so this was like maybe like seven years ago i was looking into the national caucus of labor committees which was a lucius group and i found it fascinating because it was an example of a group that started out but was by you know they started out as what from all appearances seemed like a pretty orthodox Marxist group like in fact they kind of like made their claim the fame around being like more orthodox and like other Marxists of the new left era but they seemingly just quickly

transformed into what is pretty much undeniably a far right organization. But I was also interested in the fact that it seemed like a lot of their ideas from like their left wing era when they started as Marxists kind of like still existed in modified forms

when they became a right wing group. And so I was kind of fascinated by how a group could go from being Marxist to becoming essentially what some people say are fascists. Like there's a, you know, Well, there's a lot of people within that,

Lennon and LaRouche is basically a Americanized version of, like, Mussolini-style fascism or even Hitler-style fascism. And so the way about this, you know, this group made this transition itself was interesting to me. And so when LaRouche died in 2019, he was already on my radar. So I wrote an article called LaRouche, a warning for us all, which was essentially a kind of warning about how, like, culty, sectarian.

and authoritarian dynamics and leftist groups can essentially create the most ludicrous types of revisionism, I guess, and decline to just total far-right cultish crankery. And I was really, I want to avoid that. You know, that's one thing I've noticed is like a lot of leftist groups often develop these kind of culty tendencies. And so I wanted to kind of, you know, maybe investigate how like the kind of sectarian approach of LaRouche to Marxism kind of set him on the road to become this kind of far right cold meter. So I wrote that article for Cosmonaut and I kind of thought at this point

was just like his organization was still around. They'll even be like I've even seen them like tabling in Florida where I live. Like they're all over the place. But I kind of thought that they were just kind of declining into like a pure crank sect and there was all that kind of slowly die off. But, you know, recently there's been online in various Marxist Leninist spaces. There's been what I can I only describe as a kind of revival of Larush's ideas. And I don't mean to say that like all Marxist Leninists are guilty of this. Like I think the majority aren't. But there definitely has been this trend around people like Caleb Mappin, Jackson Hinkle and Haas to basically like bring LaRushian ideas into the left and to kind of fuse them

with Marxism, Leninism. And increasingly some of these characters have been getting more and more attention in the media, like that Jackson Hinkle guy was on Tucker Carlson, that guy Haas was on Chinese TV recently. And so in the world, like, we already are part of like a world of fringe politics

as Marxists. Like, yes, socialism is a little less fringe in the United States, but it's still like, you know, actual like Marxism. I still say is like pretty much fringe. And so it's easy to kind of of say like oh this is just fringe like crank stuff and it's not really relevant but like in the world of the left like these kind of things are relevant because they can have you know they can

punch above their way and influencing like the left and the small groups and I think that um you know this kind of rise of larusciousism and in the modern left that I've seen you know and I think it's something that should be combated and you know I think and so part of you know why I want to do this episode is just kind of to spread the word about you know, the real purpose and meaning of these ideas and, you know, and that they're not at all something that we should be like trying to combine with Marxism. And that this is a nefarious group whose own intentions are not in line with those of principled Marxists. Yeah. Amen. I agree with everything you're saying. And I also believe that it's our duty to

combat this rising strain of reaction masquerading as, as Marxism and claiming to speak on behalf of Marxism, claiming to be the true purveyors of Marxism and everybody who doesn't agree with their chauvinist or their settler nationalism or whatever it may be, are fake Marxist or our sciops or whatever. The conspiratorialism is there. The reaction is there. The sense of superiority and we are the true carriers of Marxism are there, even though in our current state, a lot of these people seem to have discovered communism within the last year or two. Certainly many of the fans of these egomaniacs and these people that are popping up on the ML left. But you said something in this article,

which I really highly recommend if you want an overview of who LaRouche was, is your article in Cosmonaut, which I'll link in the show notes here. But I'm going to just going to quote a little bit from it because it's obviously talking about LaRouche and his little crew, but in a lot of ways some of these main strains are still applicable in the sort of Pat Sok or reactionary, you know, pseudo-Marxist, you know, milues that are existing today. So you say in the article, quote, LaRouche was able to stake himself out in the new left as the exception to the race-obsessed

leftists who put a strong emphasis on anti-racism and third world liberation struggles. The LaRushites demonstrated a sort of conservative economism that would stay a central part of their ideology. Concessions to chauvinism became outright propagation of chauvinism as the organization developed. LaRouche's rejection of community control in favor of reactionary trade unionism, distinguish the org from the beginning. And this is the last sentence that I'm going to read, the LaRushites pose themselves as the mature leftists in comparison to the degenerates who made up the new left. And so this idea of mature leftist or true leftist versus degenerate leftist and even the

use of the term degenerate, you know, and in itself is something that's still here, the chauvinism, the dislike and the disdain of anti-racism, struggles, or in the case of these newer, this newer crop, LGBTQ movements and activists. So I thought that was very interesting and very applicable to today. I just wanted to quote that, and I'll link to it in the article. Anything you have to say about that? Yeah, I think that's kind of, when I wrote that article, that was kind of like, my point was like, you know, the Lerushians like kind of embraced this almost like leave it the beaver style

socialism where they would tell their followers to like cut their hair, like to not smoke grass and to listen to like Beethoven instead of rock music. And there was this, like, kind of attempt to, like, appeal to this idealized conservative worker, which you see a lot in the left today. And so, you know, there was, um, we can get into this more when we talk about the history of the, of the early days of the LaRouche movement. But, like I, so, there was definitely, like, tendencies there that you could see, and you could see how they could lead to, like, outright chauvinism. And, like, don't get me wrong. There is, like, an official anti-racist and, like, an official LGBT liberal ideology. that communists do need to be critical of yeah it's just that like when you throw the baby out of

the bathwater and actually like embrace chauvinism in the name of like reaching the working class that's obviously something that you know we can't tolerate you know it's just not what we're about absolutely and i think um roush very quickly went down this road yeah so let's go ahead and zoom out now that we've kind of got the table set and just assume that there's some people out there who have never even heard the name LaRouche. So for those that don't know, and kind of from a bird's eye view, can you just give us a quick sketch of who he was as a historical figure to kind of help orient our audience to the rest of the conversation? Right, right. I'm going to kind of give the whole biography here. So basically, Lyndon LaRouche, you know, he were under the name

Lynn Marcus at first. He was born in a far-right Quaker family. And his father was basically this paranoid right-wing John Bercher type who was constantly accusing the rest of the Quaker community of being like communist agents because quakers have always like been involved in like the peace movement and stuff and in the waroos family or not they were like right wing like pro cold warrior kind of quakers and so you know their his father was kind of like what he would become was just like constantly accusing everyone of being like a communist shill and stuff so you know lorouche himself you know he kind of rebelled against his upbringing by becoming a marxist so he's a quaker so he was a conscientious objector in in world war two and

And so he serves in the civilian public service. He gets bored with that, joins the army as a non-combatant. And he comes into contact with communists who are organizing within the army during World War II. And he gets turned on the Dasupital and starts getting into Marxism. And he works as a private and metapentinit stationed in Calcutta. And there he makes connections of local communists. And he's his funny story. He actually suggests that they should stage an immediate.

uprising against the British colonial government and they say no you're nuts that's just ultra-leftism. So he kind of gets disappointed with like the official communist parties and gravitates towards Trotskyism and you know back home from the war he joins the Socialist

Workers Party which is the main Trotskyist party in the U.S. And Socials Workers Party they're the kind of party that had their members like go work in factories and do industrialize themselves essentially to recruit factory workers but LaRouche just hated that

he didn't want to be a factory worker couldn't take the pressure of working like a kind of manual labor job so he actually ends up working as a management consulted for corporations and has his own kind of management consulting firm and this is actually interesting

because he kind of has like a first like a really perfect view of how capitalism is actually working from the inside so he does actually have some like knowledge about the actual like workings of modern corporations which he kind of

was able to use that knowledge it kind of makes his Marxism like a bit more interesting and a bit more intellectually deep even you know he was really interested in cybernetics and he was interested in the idea of like

using computer technology to like you know do planned economies and stuff which is you know interest I share and so he's kind of trying to like use his knowledge from being a business consultant to like modernized Marxism. And so they're actually kind of,

he actually does kind of start out as like an interesting person. But, um, when he's in the SWP, he's like a pretty minor character. He's not really like a big leader. He's mostly known for writing these long, meandering bulletins that nobody read because they were just kind of just too out there

for the average party member, I guess. He forms a 20 person split with, you know, another fellow trotting and they come under the influence, of this was a particularly culty trot group. I think they

were implicated in a bunch of sex scandals and stuff later on in the 70s and 80s. And I think today their main the main continuum of that lineage is the World Socialist websites plus SEP people. But basically like

you know, Lerouche kind of learns some of his later cult kind of techniques from the Socialist Labor League. and Jerry Healy. They already had a very, like, harsh and very authoritarian internal structure. And they use a lot of inner group, and they use a lot of kind of kind of kind of, you know, get people to follow, you know, the, follow the central committee and devote a lot of time to stuff

they normally wouldn't do. So there's already some kind of, some of these, like, authoritarian bureaucratic centralist tendencies that LaRouche kind of learned from the Trotskyist movement. But he ends up, you know, he basically, you know, he's an egomaniac himself and, you know, his little split ends up falling apart. And he goes off to do his own thing. And so this is like around 1967, you know, the new left.

And he starts teaching classes in Marxism at the New York City Free School. And he kind of rejects, like, a lot of what was trendy in the new left. Like, he wasn't really interested. And, you know, Che Guevara or Herbert Marquis. who was interested in Rosa Luxembourg and Marxist capital and German idealism. Like he was really interested in like going deep in the Hegel and Kant and Leibniz

and all these German idealist philosophers. So he's very much like a figure about a lot of the more like theory-oriented Marxist in the new left scene at Columbia kind of gravitate towards. And so, you know, he builds up his reputation as this, you know, this very intellectual and high-minded kind of Marxist theorist.

Keiching Capital and Hegel to people. And so he kind of starts building up his own organization. And, you know, this is the age of SDS. And at this time, SDS is, you know, there's a progressive labor party is working

within SDS. And the progressive labor party is, you know, they, they were split from the Communist Party that at first, like, sided with China and the Sino-Soviet split. And so, Lerush is kind of like picking recruits from the progressive labor party because like one thing the progressive labor party did was

they did the whole thing of like sending their cadre to go work in the factories and LaRouche you know a lot of these college kids were gravitating towards progressive labor party they didn't really want to do that and so what Roos said was well you don't have to go spend your time working in the factory what you need to do is spend time with me learning how to become the kind of intellectual elite that will be necessary for the future vanguard you know and so he was able to appeal to a lot of the more like kind of middle class intellectual Marxist types at Columbia by you know by kind of emphasizing the intellectual side of things and so he ends up building a kind of faction within SDS over time and you know in in 1969 there's a big student strike at Columbia over the relation of the school to the Pentagon it is kind of like one of the biggest moments of the new left and LaRouche actually was able to kind of like make a name for himself as like like a strike leader and you know apparently like all of his old comrades in the SWP you were shocked when they saw LaRouche like speaking to large audiences of students and

stuff because they were just like wait like this guy you didn't talk to anyone he when he was in the SWP now he's like leaving students and so this is kind of where the national caucus of labor committees is for him this is his own organization of the new left and you know it's like very much a kind of ultra centralized elite organization, they develop a, you know, this is, you know, time period where a lot of people think revolution is imminent. There's a lot of people, like, you know, you had the Revolutionary Union form out of SDS who was seen by the FBI as a threat to national security. You have all kinds of, you know, black nationalist and Chicano liberation movements forming. It really is a kind of

feeling that revolution is imminent in the U.S. at this time, or at least it's something that can be entertained. And so LaRouche has this whole thing that their little vanguard needs to be able to prepare to lead the country through the revolution. And he kind of has this Trotskyist, Luxembourgist theory that there's going to be like, you know, a wave of

mass strikes. And the LaRouche, you know, NCLC is going to be able to kind of swoop in and like provide their leadership to the workers. And, you know, they are, they really kind of develop this sectarian and ultra-centralist. perspective, even though they're kind of they're anti-Stalinist and stuff. They're very critical

of the Soviet Union, but they're also critical with Trotsky, and Lerush claims like we have gone beyond Trotskyism. So at this point, they're not even identifying necessarily as Trotskyists, but they're still Marxist, socialist, whatever. Yeah, yeah, like Lerush kind of, um, he actually thought that, like,

it's interesting enough, one of the things that, like, cause him to break with SWP was that he wanted to have, like united front with the mainstream communist or the Stalinist or whatever so he was actually like um he was always more open towards um working with those types and other trotskiists i guess at first interesting but yeah he he decides to like basically like officially like move away from trotskyism it's really rosa luxembourg who they're all looking at and talking about and like even till recently like the russian movement was like citing rosa luxembourg and stuff as an economist which was interesting.

Yeah. But it was really this kind of, you know, they saw the new left as like overly focused on race and gender issues. And they wanted to kind of like promote like a super workerist, like type of, of movement that would strictly focus on kind of, um, this whole master-right strategy. This also, like this leads to them, you know, in like 1969, 70 or so,

there was a teacher strike in Ocean Hill Brownsville in New York City over basically the question of POC communities having control over their own schools. And the teachers union led by Albert Shanker, which was kind of infamously conservative, basically, you know, they went on strike against this community control initiative. And LaRusha's group was able to kind of make its mark at this instance by taking, like, They were the only group in SDS support the teachers against the kind of POC-led community control initiative. And there was like a lot of racial stuff going on with the teacher strike here. And so like a lot of people kind of like already kind of saw like the NCLC as basically like conceding to racism through this position.

Well, just to nail down this just a second. So, so, you know, there's there's a strike on the teacher's strike, which in a vacuum is like, yeah, why wouldn't the left not support that? but it was basically to prevent people of color, specifically black people in their communities, having more say in the curriculum or in just the way the schools run. What exactly was the conflict there? It was over how the schools would be run. Like basically they wanted to have like more control over their,

it was like it was mostly black in Puerto Rican communities, I believe. Okay. And there's a lot of research done about this strike because it's often used as like the classic example of like the old union oriented left versus like the new kind of liberation movement left you know and and so roush's group really kind of um made their name by taking the side of the teachers union here and you know the teachers union was also like majority um jewish at this point or largely jewish so there was kind of this thing of like oh you know there's anti-semitism against teachers union from the black

community and so and this is something that lorush would like later do even more heavily is kind of used these like ethnic stereotypes and conflicts like create outrageous propaganda and stuff and so i feel like this mind of this this whole ocean hill brownsdale strike is interesting if you want to really look at the roots of where this kind of right wing turn goes i guess and there's also interesting echoes of like i don't know like i don't want i don't want to make the connections to you know overstate them but there's like this little like today we're dealing with this issue of like teaching history and critical race theory and how do we tell american history and i don't I saw some of the pictures from the teacher strike in your article, one of the white teachers

is holding up something saying, stop teaching race hatred to children. And I assume that's like the reverse racism of teaching about the crimes against black people in our society. Right, right. Yeah, so there's a straight line culturally, you know, through the culture war to kind of Right, exactly, exactly. It kind of just goes to show that a lot of these like modern day like controversies around wokeness, quote unquote, are really like not that new. totally yeah you know it's it's it's nice nothing new here absolutely and but yeah so that's really like um i thought that was really interesting the whole oceanville ocean hill brownsville strike and that's something i'd like to research more honestly just because it seems like a really complicated

like chapter of new left history and and labor history in general yeah absolutely all right so now we have a basic picture of you know where he comes from why he's an important figure to wrestle with in the first place, what some of the continuities of his ideas and the kind of cultural conditions and issues that were happening in his time bleed into today. And we talked about his various sects, you know, breaking off from larger Trotsky's parties eventually culminating in his own sect, the NCLC. And they're a ostensibly socialist, Marxist organization, but now they're talking about going beyond Trotsky. They're drawing on figures like Luxembourg, but they're also kind of taking in interesting ways kind of some conservative cultural stances more than

anything at this time is that correct yeah definitely i think that's a pretty good picture of how things are going so the next thing that really happens is you have the you know you have the lorush group you know they're mark they're probably a bit more culty and overly centralized the average Marxist group, but it's really Operation Mopup where you see a disconnect from reality. And that's the first phase. And then the second phase

is the Chris White affair. So I'm going to begin with Operation Mopup. So Operation Mopup is essentially it starts as a rivalry with the CPUSA. You know, the NCLC would go to their meetings and harass them and they'd get thrown out.

I'm sure like, you know, we may have encountered like Spartacist League people doing stuff like this like this is something like sectarian kind of like you know groups always do they'll go to like the rival groups meetings and they'll denounce them and do some stuff like that like red guards awesome would do that kind of stuff yeah so c p u s a accuses them of being government agents and you know it's possible like i can understand why they would see the possibility of that but there's really no evidence that they were like at this point it's pretty clear like like they were acting on their own initiative doing this on their own and so

there's already this rivalry between the two. And so the NCLC launches a national welfare rights campaign to rival the CPUSA's own campaign. So CPUSA reacts by kind of starting an anti-NCLC campaign and comparing them to the clan, calling them racist, which I mean, given their position on the strike, we talked about earlier, you know, we can see where that comes from. And I'm sure there's all those other like weird stuff in their propaganda already. So this gives LaRouche the pretext to, launched an all-out campaign to see that the quote CP cannot hold a meeting on the east coast we'll mop them up in two months unquote and so basically you know the narrative that grouche was feeding to his members was that the CPUSA had been like taken over by the CIA and like everyone jokes about how like the CPUSA is like 80% feds or whatever but you know that doesn't it's it's it's it's clearly there are like federal agents who infiltrate the Communist Party, but LaRouche is like basically saying that the whole organization is just completely taken over by the CIA and that they're going to, you know, collaborate with the state

to destroy the NCLC, which is the only like organization that can, uh, lead, you know, the country to revolution and then lead the world revolution. And so they do this whole Operation Mopup thing. He says, um, I'm just going to read some quotes from Lerush himself. He says, Operation Mopop up. The clash struggle is for keeps, echoed Ralucious call. We must dispose of the stinking corpse, the CP, the editorial said, to ensure that it cannot act as a host for maggots and other parasites, preparing future scabby Nixonite attacks on the working class. If we were to vacillate, we would be guilty betraying the human race. Our job is to pulverize the Communist Party. So basically, you know, they start coming up with

this whole thing. The Communist Party is like the biggest enemy and the biggest, like, barrier to revolution which is like you know we see in the left in fighting away some of these left groups fight with each other they do kind of act like other leftist groups are the biggest enemy to them yeah and the biggest thing in the way of like getting to revolution and so that's basically kind of how they justify this whole campaign against the CP but it's an extremely violent campaign yes so they they literally organized dune squads and all over the east coast and go to communist party meetings and just beat people up. Here's a description of it

from this book by Dennis King. Mopup began in New York if it spread the Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, and other cities. Attackers were sometimes brought out from out of town so their faces wouldn't be recognized. In several cities, they broke up public meetings and invaded Left's bookstores, beating anyone who tried to borrow their way.

In New York, they ambushed individual CP leaders on the street. In Detroit, they administered a savage beating to a partially paralyzed left-ling activists on crutches. In Philadelphia, 25 to 30 NCLC members raided a meeting of the Public Workers Action Caucus. Quote, the steps for a mass of blood, said a PWAC activist. As soon as I walked out, I was hit by a poll, unquote. Although no one was critically injured to any of the attacks, several were hospitals, broken bones, and many required medical treatment for cuts and bruises. So that kind of gives you, I just kind of wanted to read that to kind of give a depiction of what was going down.

So you've got these violent attacks on the Communist Party. And so what happens is actually really interesting is the SWP, LaRouche's old organization, you know, decides to kind of bury the hatchet with the CP and actually form a united front to defend them from these attacks. and so other Trotschist groups actually join in. A weird moment of left unity against another ostensibly left organization that's literally physically attacking all these organizations. Right, right. It's really interesting how, like, because this is kind of like an anti-fascist united front in action. Like all these different leftist groups are like putting aside their differences

and forming like a common front to like form defense units against these just crazy thugs who are ostensibly left wing, but it's like, So he's thought about it's like, well, what did Mussolini, like, do? Like, he just started, like, squadrisis that would go around, like, beating up, like, communists and socialists and breaking up trade unions and stuff. And that was really, like, the service he gave to the ruling class. And so it's like, yes, they might be, like, subjectively Marxist, but they're acting like Mussolini did, basically.

Right, right. Yeah, whether they're fascist or CIA plants or just asshole weirdo wreckers, the functionally, their effect is the same. Right, right. And so I think it's interesting. how they um got the left to kind of unite against them and so uh you know you just have a this insane campaign the thing is is like you know like i said before the waroosh movement people they were all pretty like kind of middle class like nerdy types and so they weren't really

the tough types who were able to pull this off so it was you know they did some damage but in the end they weren't hardcore enough to actually like destroy the cp u s a like they wanted. But at this point, it's like anyone who stays with Waroos at this point, it's like, it's kind of like a loyalty test. You know, you go with some insane, ridiculous stuff and people are going to leave. But the people who stay and who go along with it are going to be more loyal because it's like kind of like a way of filtering out that people who aren't like dedicated enough to your

leadership and won't like, you know, go down the path that you're setting, basically, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we see some interesting echoes of that in, you know, not to talk about this organization too much, but in the Black Hammer situation. Right, right. Like the whole Anne Frank thing, for example. Exactly, exactly. Like, that was like a way of, like, creating a dividing line and creating discord.

Or even his, even his Joker video, anti-Antifa, you know, when he was going against Antifa and making those insane Joker-fied videos. Like, if you're going to stand behind him the whole time and, like, and then after it's all over, like, I'm ready for the next shoot. what next video are we doing like you are right or die it's a loyalty test is what it is yeah and that's like it also kind of reminds me of qanon because it's like we laugh at the insane stuff that like qanon believers like say but in the end it functions as a way to kind of um show your loyalty to the cause and say i'm so dedicated to this cause that i actually do believe that the jewish space lasers are going to um you know destroy um you know whatever like it's Exactly.

Or whatever insane stuff comes from, you know, the 4chan or whatever, where all the QNon stuff comes from. Like, it's, it works as a loyalty test and it forges a cohesive group that's not going to question orders. Yes, exactly. And that gets even crazier. Yeah, go ahead. So next step after the whole NCLC goes after the Communist Party Operation Mock is this whole adventure in psychology. Because LaRouche is, you know, he's Mr. Lerl. like renaissance man intellectual

he claims to have been like a he claims it to be a physicist, a psychologist, like an economist, you know, and he kind of develops his own kind of psychological theories and he has an article called Beyond Psychoanalysis from this era where he kind of like claims to have like

overcome psychoanalysis and have developed a whole new version of psychology basically around what's called ego stripping and first it's um first there's this guy constantine george who gets accused of being a spy for pastasi and the kgb by the ncLC he's a member of the ncLC and so lorouge claims that he recognized the symptoms that showed that he was brainwashed by the kgb and he successfully

deprogrammed him and so this was kind of like the first step in the whole like you know brainwashing thing. That kind of was accepted by the membership, because they're already like accepting Operation Mopopo. But then there's another guy, Chris White, who was in Europe, I think he was in Germany and he came back to the

US to attend an NCLC Congress, like one of their big conventions. And he was showing like, you know, signs of, um, just being like very out of it, basically. And I, and, you know, people who are there

say that he, did show signs of like psychological turmoil you know he was not all there but LaRouche basically says that um now this guy is a programmed assassin that was

programmed by the CIA and other intelligence agencies to assassinate LaRouche and that anybody in the organization could be essentially programmed by these um by these um

like kind of Manchurian candidate type schemes. And this was actually before MK Ultra was exposed, which is interesting. But I imagine, like, you still did have, like, discourse around like brainwashing and stuff in the public. But basically, so Rerush was claiming that

like, you know, for using computer science and stuff, because Rooch was really in the computers, too. They have basically figured out a way to program the brain using, like, certain code words. And Lerush had recognized the code words and that he was able to, you know, use his psychological techniques to de-brain-wash people who have been brainwashed.

And so this is where, like, everyone in the org is being, like, put through these ego-stripping sessions, which are basically just, like, insane psychological, like, torture, where LaRouche would just, like, berate people for hours on end until, like, they broke down and, like, satisfied him. And, you know, I just want to, like, say real quick that, like, the idea of brainwashing itself is a very controversial idea because it kind of comes out of, you know, the Korean War

there were these claims that like U.S. troops who like defected to, you know, the side of North Korea were basically like just had been like captured and brainwashed by North Koreans and that the Chinese had like figured out how to like do brainwashing and so we all know about

NK Ultra which was itself a response to these like claims that the communists like developed brainwashing technology. But in the end like I think a lot of people like I think convincingly argue about the whole idea of brainwashing itself is just kind of like this crazy anti-communist trope and that it's you know the idea that like you can like kind of break people down that is true and that's what mk ultra did they would use lSD and other stuff to break people down but put them back together to do whatever you want

to do is another story and some people claim you know there are you know people who claim they did figure out how to do that but that's all in the speculation because as far as we know CIA never actually did successfully develop a brainwashing technique right right at least not in the hard brainwashing like you know the the maximum version of what we mean by that yeah yeah at least as far as we know sure maybe there is like some declassified stuff but like I think the idea of brainwashing itself kind of comes from this like misunderstanding of um what happened in Korea because he's like anti-communist state department people couldn't imagine that like good American boys would like on their own volition come to like see North Korea as like you know

the lesser evil in the war right yeah okay had to have some kind of brainwashing technology almost like a yeah European colonizers when they would come to settler colonialism in North America there was constantly defections to the indigenous tribe right right they were just perplexed like we are the carriers of civilization why would you go over to them willingly and very few came the other direction so yeah They have to explain that cognitive dissonance. Exactly, exactly. They probably had some theories about, like, oh, they're doing magic.

Right. You know, hypnotize us or just some nonsense like that. Right. But, yeah, so, you know, this whole Chris White affair, it basically puts the whole organization for this insane paranoid drama. And there is a book, the book, When New American Fashions by Dennis King has a bunch of information about it. But there's another book written,

by this guy Kevin Coogan. It's called Smiling Man from a Dead Planet. It's like a thousand page along PEF that has like a ton of information on all this. And it's written by someone who was an ex-member. He's writing under a name Hilo Zolic Hedgehog

but his real name is Kevin Coogan. And he wrote a really interesting book on Francis Parker Yockey. But he has like this whole book called The Smiling Man from a Dead Planet, The Mystery of Lynding LaRouch, that has like a whole breakdown. of what could have happened during this whole Chris White affair.

And it's really interesting to read and just see, like, how paranoid and out of control this was. Because, you know, because they even, like, did, like, press conferences and stuff publicly. They had, like, public press conferences and they would invite the public. And they would be like, look, look, the CIA is doing a brainwashing operation on our organization. Where's the public outrage? So it's like, we don't really know if LaRouche actually believed and that there was brainwashing a and that he was like preventing it or if it was just like a purely cynical maneuver to just kind of like forage his cult but you know but there is a lot of information out there on it and

people are interested in going deeper into that i recommend checking out that book so just to be a clear chris white was a member of the yes he was a member of the of um of the national committee caucus of labor committees and he at this point they were an international organization they had um people in germany they had people in sweden they had a gift form that was called the european labor party and um they actually they had some really interesting activities in sweden working with u.s war deserters from vietnam who were like refugees in sweden and sweden was neutral and so there was some connection with that as well but yeah in the end he was an international member of lorush of the ncLC and so and he was kind of used as the uh

the example of like a brainwashed person who needed to be deprogrammed by Rousse and it just throws a whole organization into this paranoid conspiracy mode so I think you know and so I think like it's fair to say like at this point like it's a cult like the word the cold gets

thrown around a lot but I think in this case like it's just very appropriate well you have a centralized leader and one of the things that these cult leaders do is begin representing themselves as the only true you know, carrier of the torch for whatever it is that they're claiming to carry for.

And then this whole idea of I'm actually, I have actually access to higher knowledge. I understand the KGB is after me and they actually have this, you know, this experiment they do to brainwash people and now you're an agent of them. And it's like the fantasies of the cult leader, the absurdities, they can almost say anything. And people, the whole organization then becomes shaped around that individual leaders, basically arbitrary whims or psychosis or whatever it is. And that is a fundamental feature of cultism. Yeah.

And it's all about this idea that, like, you know, they are the one at least, the one vanguard that can save the world, you know, from the rising tide of fascism and imperialism and capitalism. Like they are of the one group that has the esoteric knowledge, that has the intellectual skills to do it. And everyone else who just agrees with them, well, they're either CIA or KGB or whatever, ever and violence against them is justified anything against them is justified because they are holding back the revolutionary movement that only lynn marcus or lind lorouche can lead right

and so you know in 19 around like the mid 70s you know the organization like starts to kind of change ideologically and there's one thing they did that's pretty crazy like they um they keep saying that basically they get obsessed with rocket feller and the rocket feller family and i think that the rocket feller family is like going to unleash a fascist coup and they're going to um you know take over america and whatever you know this fascist threat is inevitable and so they tried to organize like their own kind of street gangs called the revolutionary youth movement and like the kind of stuff that they like say about black people in this period is this absolutely offensive and insane like they would talk about amiri baraka who was like a you know he was like a he was like

a poet who became a kind of Marxist-Leninist leader. And they picked him as, like, number one, like, public enemy. And they basically turned him into, like, the worst, like, stereotype of, like, a black person and used, like, him as, like, a way to kind of, like, wander all this, like, anti-black rhetoric. They just had this whole thing about how, you know, you're going to lose your job to a, quote-unquote, welfare loafer, a methadone craze dope theme some gang member brought in from a ghetto

neighborhood. They were just attacking like black activist, like black CP members. So they really like basically like you know, their newspaper would carry headlines such as CP turns rebels into N words.

They would come up with these like the meaning nicknames like Ron, race riot Tyson. And you know, they end up going into this kind of like anti-black, you know, stuff and uh but at the same time they're recruiting young black people to their revolutionary youth movement and so they're kind of able to like say oh but we're not actually racist because you know we're working with black youth in the ghetto but um a lot of these people

they recruited didn't end up staying you know they didn't end up staying you know they didn't end up staying around because they were basically just like treated as like shock troops by like mostly white like intellectual leadership and but they did get some people to stay And they also worked in, like, these anti-bussing campaigns. But in the end, like, I think a lot of this anti-black racism, it's actually a test run for the anti-Semitism that they would indulge in. And they were actually able to, like, get, like, they were, like, a one-four Jewish organization.

They had a lot of Jewish people in the organization. But they were able to kind of reinvent anti-Semitism in a way that would, like, make it so that they could get their Jewish members to, like, spew anti-Semitic propaganda. giving him like a kind of plausible deniability right and and this is like in this period they're also like they're basically saying that the communist party and like left liberals are going to like team up with the rocket fellers to unleash this um dictatorship this fascist dictatorship so they need to form a popular front basically with the right like the far right in order to fight fascism it's kind of like what you see with some of

these like um patricerotic socialist types you think that like we need to form an alliance with maga to fight the true fascist joe biden yeah exactly so it's basically this idea that like the uh the liberals are the real fascists and the far right reactionaries are actually the anti-fascist which is how you get this like everything up is down down is up type worldview where you can kind of just like create this whole intricate ideology where you'll get people to just believe absolute absurdities because within the context of this

ideological system, it all makes sense. So in 1975, the NCLC starts reaching out to the KKK. And they believe that Rocketfeller is planning a fascist takeover using the liberals in the new left.

And the KKK are going to be the working class allies who are going to help fight the fascists. And you know, you know, Yeah, it's first sold as like this tactical alliance, but in the end, like, it's just a total ideological shift to the far right. So, and there's another guy, Willis Cardo, who was on part of what's called the Liberty Lobby. And Willis Cardo was a disciple of Francis Parker Yaqui, who was kind of like one of the first big, like, post-war fascist figures.

So, so, you know, this guy, Willis Cardo starts working with the Lerushians, and that kind of puts them, even further into the pure far-right sphere. You know, Lerlou starts romancing, his future wife, Helazep, who is now basically the leader of his organization as is today. She's like a German woman. And when she gets involved, like apparently the group really starts taking like a strong nationalist turn. They just completely abandoned like discussion of Marxism and frame everything around like

good American patriots versus the financial oligarchy. you said in your in your article they even dropped the term comrades and started using the term patriots to refer to each other right right yeah exactly like and you know that's just like you see all these like people trying to like reinvent marxism as like american patriotism today and it's just like are they just like doing lorushism like you know it's going to lead to the same place that doesn't have been a history right right right it's going to lead nowhere but like you're going to look really dumb while you try it you know and so exactly the question is to what extent was LaRouche and his and his organization embraced by the right? Was it just embraced by a few elements of the fringe far right? Or was there ever any more absorption

into a mainstream or even a maybe little right of mainstream movement? Or did they kind of isolate themselves from both the right and the Marxist left? Yeah, so you know basically they started getting in bed with the Reagan

administration later on basically okay and so i think you could say that in the 80s they did have some success in courting the mainstream right okay and they actually um they actually tried to do entryism in the democratic party in the 80s and in illinois they actually had some minor success that kind of create like a whole crisis in the democratic party in illinois which is pretty um it's there's a pretty detailed exploration of their adventures in the democratic party in the dennis king book but um they ran within it to destroy it or to move it to the right or what was their ultimate goal um i'm not you know i think it might have been the kind of um be useful idiots for the reagan administration in a way like i think it was um i'm not sure exactly what they were

trying to do of a democratic party but they were using it to get more of a public profile because even to this day la ruch's a wikipedia profile you know it has them like political affiliation the democratic party and it's right yeah he kind of like did this whole thing like we're going to like organize conservative democrats you know i see so yeah you know there's that and it's really like um in this like period in like the mid the late 70s too when um he starts actually he first starts out like reaching out the military officers and sending like communicates of them basically saying that um the carter administration is going to destroy the constitution so we should do a military coup basically like

He's very bold, you know, like, I'm just going to, like, reach out to a bunch of military guys and tell them to do a coup for me. And that obviously didn't work, but it does start this tradition of forming relationships of intelligence agencies, which we'll get into more. And it's also, you see a change in the ideology completely. Like, Marxism is less and less an actual thing that they even talk about. And now, like, it becomes this total esoteric doctrine where basically there's, There's this thing you write secrets known only to the inner elites. It's basically this pamphlet where he basically like portrays history as this battle between two tendencies, an oligarchical tendency that follows from Aristotle and the humanist tendency that follows Plato.

And so now like all history instead of class struggle is a struggle which followers of Aristotle versus followers of Plato. And then really this theory ends up working wonderfully for Rourouche because you can always say that like ex-government that I'm forming intelligence ties to is like it's self-split between the humanists and the oligarchs. And so you can kind of like use this ideology to like justify anything because anything could be like part of this secret conspiracy, right? So it was it was a Plato versus Aristotelian dissection of the world and they're obviously on the side of the. the Platonists against the Aristotelian, whatever, and they kind of shove everything from environmentalism to drug use to anything else into the Aristotelian world order or whatever? Yeah, yeah.

It's like, really the main enemy is the queen of England. And so, you know, it really comes down to the Anglos for LaRouche. Like, there was a lot of, like, anti-Semitism, but, like, you know, he tried to try to use, like, plausible deniability. the anti-Semitism but really what he would do was he kind of like reinvented anti-Semitism where the anglos take the place of the Jews basically so it kind of like creates this like structure of a theory where like you have all the tropes of anti-Semitism there's like a shadowy oligarchy that's controlling the banks and um and everything but it's really the anglos and there actually

like is like a history i guess of like anti-Semites like using like a British connection with the Jews as a kind of trope. Strange, yeah. But the way it works is essentially like, you get all the like conspiracy theory like paranoia of anti-Semitism but without the direct like, you know, anti-Semitism

that would completely discredit LaRouche to like mainstream like right-wing allies. Right, right. And when actually it makes me remind when Jackson Hinkle's dumbass tweet recently about I'm uniting Marxist and Maga and if you're not on this train, you're going to become

irrelevant or whatever what did he say oh he said I'm uniting the Marxist and the Maga against the globalists so like there's already this capitulation to right wing rhetoric and the notion of globalist which from a Marxist's perspective is a

mystification of you know imperialist capitalists whatever but it opens the door to that anti-Semitic conspiratorialism right it's just like the whole idea about like the problem in the world is that the shadowy elite like controls the banks you know when has that ever led anywhere good you know right and it's just not a materialist

explanation you know so someone like ralooch who prided himself on like being like a marxist economist to like a you know a theory of how capitalism works and everything like he had a book called dialectical economics um i actually did try to read it a few years ago it was just way too like into like ethogenesian idealist stuff for me to understand at the point, but you know, so he's, you know, he makes the name as like this Marxist theorist and then he like just totally like

embraces like a bunch of nonsense. And you know, instead of Marxism, he kind of takes up this like corporatist program where instead of like labor versus capital is industrial capital. He's the ally with the labor unions under the leadership of the of the NCLC elite

to basically enforce a dictatorship against finance capital. and any kind of political opposition. And they call it like Hamiltonian economics. Like Alexander Hamilton becomes like the big like great economic thinker about LaRouche things America needs to go back to. And so we kind of argues for this like really state heavy centric like kind of state capitalist corporatist model that would like put the country into this state of total

mobilization for war of Britain, you know, which is supposedly the home of the global Zionist financial oligarchy. And then they actually have a Soviet Union. it's next. It's actually like, you know, but it's funny, like, um, this guy, Dennis King quotes a, like, a Rulush, like pamphlet from back then that says that Hitler's mistake was going after the Soviet Union and said that a Britain first. And so, you know, the Rishites are going to do it right, even though they're anti-Nosio or whatever, but they're going to do it right and go after the British first. And then the Soviet Union, you said? And then the Soviet Union.

Like, they literally have, like, writings where they were talking about how they needed to, like, basically like use microwave radiation guns to destroy the Soviet Union and then rebuild it like so it's it's very interesting how this sort of zombie Trotskyism can develop into this cold warrior neo-conservative reactionary right right it's like the Shackenites almost yeah exactly exactly and uh so yeah so it's um total shift to the right in that sense you know they're just completely like embracing um you know this um this idea of in uniting industrial and financial capital, which is kind

of what against industrial and capital and labor against financial capital and this idea that it's just finance capital, that's the problem. It becomes like super anti-environmentalist. Environmentalists just want to like prevent the like full unimpeded growth of the productive forces.

And it's interesting because like you know, it's in 1970s right and there's kind of like this de-industrialization of America going on. You have factories going overseas. So I think like Roush did kind of have his like finger on the pulse and he

did kind of see what was happening economically you know and I could think maybe like this was like his response to like the de-industrialization of the country was like well now Marxism isn't going to work anymore because the industrial working class is getting gutted. So what we need to do is like unite with the industrial capitalist and re-industrialize

the country. Right, right. But yeah, that's kind of where they are ideologically by the 80s, which is when they start forming an alliance with the Reagan administration. So let's pause right there just to catch everybody kind of up. And I'm just kind of sketching out the chronology of the shift here. So starting as this sect from Trotsky's party, we talked about going beyond Trotsky, etc. And then there's this mop-up campaign.

So it goes from an ostensibly left-wing Marxist organization to one that is directly hostile to the CPUSA, but anybody else also on the new left or anybody they perceive as anything. So first and foremost, the shift is finding enemies on the left and attacking them often physically. Then there's a shift towards a doubling down or getting into the cultism with the Chris White Affair. So you see a movement towards recorism. Then you see a movement towards occultism within the party. And then there is the explicit right wing shift. Is that a chronologically accurate way to describe this?

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Okay. As I said, you can kind of see the beginnings of the right wing shift with the Ocean Hill Brownsville. stuff, but it's like this intensifies as it goes on, basically. And now we're in the 80s with the Reagan administration. Yes, so basically, LaRouche's

plan is to try to forge an alliance with the Reagan admin. And, you know, in 1974, but it had a founded, distinct called a Fusion Energy Foundation. And that's one of the things that Weroosh people are, like, famous for today is, like, their advocacy of nuclear

fusion. Like, one of their big things is, like, promoting a, um, a crass course like Manhattan project type thing to develop fusion energy I'm not going to like fusion energy if it could get it to work that would be pretty cool

but um you know it becomes like this way for them to actually recruit scientists because they go to airports and table at air and stuff and they would like pose as just like

oh we're just advocates of fusion energy trying to like promote this stuff and we were able to recruit a bunch scientists and stuff get involved in this fusion energy promotion stuff and then what ends up happening is that it becomes a way for them to recruit allies to Ronald Reagan's strategic defense initiative are Star Wars because basically a lot of these scientists end up working for the Reagan administration with the whole Star Wars and which is basically like you know the whole idea is to like basically build like laser beams in space that will make it so that it's impossible for the Soviet Union to do a first strike

of nuclear weapons and you know so it's basically through this like promotion of fusion energy actually at first that LaRouche is able to like get connections of real scientists who are able to get connections with the Reagan administration and so the

LaRouche movement becomes like really big promoters of the strategic defense initiative in Star Wars and so They basically just become complete chills for the United States military industrial complex. So you can even go online and look at videos of them and their main sort of approach, especially around this time, is obviously, as you said, to be in airports. So they'd go to an airports and they have their documents and everything. But they'd also dress, as we talked about earlier, you know, respectably, quote unquote, right, in a tie with some nice slacks tucked in shirt, looking very business professional-esque.

right exactly you're able to like on a public face of seriousness so like you know people would work with them they'd you know they would say oh they have a lot of kooky views but they are serious about getting fun for nuclear fusion energy and stuff and so you know they're able to use that as a kind of and they're actually they would like campaign on behalf of ex-nazi scientists who were brought in for operation paperclip and like basically clean up their public image so that they could continue to working in the state department and stuff which is pretty interesting but um and and then next came the uh you know like i was saying before like they were also working in the democratic party but it's clear as an organization they're making overtures towards reagan as as lures personal favorite guy he wasn't like a fan of the republican party as such but he like saw a lot of potential in regan and so you know he didn't really have a ton of electoral success They had some minor successes, but really what they kind of did was like cause confusion and discord and the Democratic Party, which was kind of too to the light of like the right wing of the labor movement. You know, because at this time, LaRouche was also like making connections with the Teamsters officialdom, which were like connected with the mob, like people like Jackie Presser.

And so he was basically working with the Teamsters leadership. And they had, you know, you have like reform efforts. and Teamsters to democratize the union, like Teamsters for Democratic Union. Basically, the Laroosch people, like, worked with Teamsters mobbed up leadership to basically discredit these reform movements and try to shut them down.

They basically keep the mobbing control. All the while, while they're, like, talking about how we have to end the drug trade and the drug trade is controlled by the British, and we're going to do the war on drugs, but do it right this time. And so you have the connections with the Teamsters or working the Democratic Party

for doing the fusion energy stuff. And they even had like press passes into the White House until their legal downfall. So they are able to kind of take overtures of people who do have power and do have influence. And you know

the anti-Semitism is getting worse. You know, they do mostly keep it like internally. But it's really like just insane homophobia becomes a big thing. Like in 1980s there was the whole thing about AIDS, right? And they were like a lot of like conservatives who were like basically panicking about AIDS. So LaRouching, California had a

they had this campaign called Proposition 64 that was basically like, it was a ballot initiative to put AIDS patients in concentration camps. And if you, um, read some of their literature from this period, there's like some really disturbing stuff. Like there's one point where they say that like random mobs who like beat up gay people are like, you know, acting rationally and stuff and just really bad stuff. You know, they go after Henry Kissinger and Roy Kahn. Obviously, Henry Kishinger is terrible and stuff. But, like, the way he acts as a Rooch is kind of like the ultimate symbolic Jew and homosexual, basically.

Yeah. And they have these huge, like, public harassment campaigns that really just get really psychotic. I think they got, they got Kissinger in the airport once with his wife or something and accused him of being a pedophile. Yes, yes. That was, like, one of the things they're most famous for. And it's like, you know, obviously you hate Kissinger. He's a terrible guy. But, like, they're also working with Reagan administration spooks, you know?

So it's not principled at all. Exactly. Like, like, your object of the hate is right, but the reason you hate him is completely fucking off. You see that with the, like, the MAGA right today. Like, sometimes they'll be like, you know, like, fuck the FBI. And you're like, okay, tell me more. It's because they raided Trump's house and he should deserve the second term. It's like, oh, God.

There's a million reasons to hate the FBI. but those are none of them exactly exactly it's totally like that i guess this would be like a good place to kind of talk about like the actual connections that they made with intelligence agencies sure yeah absolutely so you know they start reaching out doing the cia in 1976 they had i talked about how they reached out to like military generals and stuff but um they start developing actual ties to CIA. You know, some of the big ones are Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, worked at a CIA deputy director from 1981 to 82 and received a flow of information from Lyndon and Heldazep. Dr. Norman Bailey, Senior National Security Council, who told NBC that LaRouche had, quote, one of the best

private intelligence services in the world, unquote. General Daniel Garam, who claimed that the Lurusians provided sensitive information on Angola and Mozambique. And so basically, like, what you have here is, you know, Belarus people would, like, have these, they had a big main office in New York City. I think they moved to Virginia later on. And they would just have, like, people working in there up to, like, 16 hours a day, like, you know, doing research, making phone calls, doing fundraising,

and, you know, doing a lot of, like, intelligence, you know, gathering stuff. and um like they would do the fund the operation is like they had all kinds of like basically scams which is what would eventually get waroos in prison like they would do um liar scams credit card scams they would like defraud like old elderly people of their life savings and transfer entirely to the loruch organization like um they put a lot of effort into this all this fundraising and intelligence gathering and you know it's it's a cult so you're able to get people to like work their ass off longer than anyone else would.

So they do get like an actual operation going. And there's some of the main people who actually like got them involved in the CIA are really crazy. There's this one guy, Mitchell Livingston

Wehrbell the 3rd, a CIA contract agent and weapons manufacturer. He's basically a suss as it gets. Like he literally worked for Batista as a security consultant. hatched a plot to invade Haiti. He is famous for developing a machine gun silencer.

That was a big hit with drug traffickers. He teamed up with the Libertarian Party and a bunch of mercenaries to invade the island of Abaco and set up a libertarian micro-state, which failed, of course. Ran a counterterrorism training school, worked for

Coca-Cola in Argentina to take care of threats and all kinds of stuff like that. Like, he's your ultimate, like... The fuck. Sketchy, like, mercenary CIA guy basically. Yeah. He was like,

he's a CIA, you know, they like to work with organized crime to do all their dirty work. 100%. Yeah. And he's totally the kind of guy you had those connects with the CIA and so he was a trainer. He would like train the Lurushians and combat and stuff and help forge these connections with the

CIA. Then there's another character, Roy Frankhouser, who they formed connections with. And he was, um, basically had a long career, basically being like every racist hate group in the U.S. And at one point, he was even the Grand Dragon of the Pennsylvania clan.

And, you know, within the far right, he kind of developed the reputation as an FBI agent. Because it's like, if someone's been in that many different, like, hate groups, you know, it's like, what's going on with this guy? Yeah. And, um, but he was able to convince

LaRouge that he was a genuine patriotic fighter who was basically like hung out to dry by the agencies he was working for. And, um, You know, he probably did have, like, some legitimate, like, security-sake connections, but he actually, like, fed a lot of false intelligence of the Irish people and, like, a lot of false information because it was kind of an easy job for him, apparently. And, but he actually, like, found contacts in the KGB as early as 1974.

And so it's complicated because, you know, it's easy to simply say that this group is a CIA op, right? Right? Because usually when you find a group like this and they're super disruptive against the left, you find these ties to CIA, I guess it's pretty much, oh, yeah, this is just a CIA off. But it was really more so that they were trying to act as a private intelligence agency, and they were trying to cultivate different allies and different intelligence agencies. but I will also add that while they did have connections with the KGB, they definitely leaned towards the CIA and definitely saw the CIA as like the main ally. But they did kind of, you know, have this this way of trying to act as a conduit almost, which mean different

intelligence agencies. Like they would be able to tell their CIA guys, oh, so what do you want me to tell the KGB guys we know? Or the KGB people would be like, oh, tell the CIA guys this. or whatever. So, you know, it essentially acts as a kind of, like I said before, a private intelligence agency. And so you can say Rourouche is a CIA op, or Lush is a KGBB op. But it's like, no, the Lerouche org is itself the op,

because it is basically a private intelligence agency with its own nefarious goals that is, like, working with these, you know, very shadowy figures. And, you know, they even, like, work with the you know the south african government they form allies with um the apartheid government and they actually do like economic um advising for some of these um people in the south african apartheid government that they're going they have this whole proposal to use contract labor

to um do like rapid industrial development been to clear war on mizambique which at the time had a marxist government and they also did operations the guatemalan government that was you know engaged in a in various genocidal operations of theft squads and stuff and so they very much got involved with some the ugliest parts of the imperialist world system basically yeah and the whole idea of being ops or being you know CIA plants or whatever

that the truth seems more something like the the Lerushites moved in the direction of the CIA at a certain point rather than from the beginning the CIA had their hooks in the in the organization and we're kind of puppeteering it right like they actually went to the CIA not the other way around right right it's the question of um why what was their motive here why were they trying to form all these connections of the CIA I think in one end it's like you know you want power so you try to suck up the people who do have power but it's also like

you know Dennis King who wrote this book he you know argues that it was basically a um a scheme to like make friends of people in the CIA and they figured that if they had enough friends within the CIA and FBI and stuff, they wouldn't be able to get in trouble for all the racketeering they were doing. And so, um, to make friends of spook spooks and stay out of jail type strategy. So I think it's a bit of both. I think he was genuinely like trying to like form this private intelligence network, but he would, you know, be able to use the traffic information and try to, like, you know,

use this to, like, maneuver into more powerful situations. And so basically, you know, you're going to make an alliance of the deep state. But also, it's, we can do all this, like, fraud and rack at hearing stuff and basically, you know, stay out of jail. Yeah. And that sounds in line with the rest of LaRouche's entire approach and his sort of egomania, especially the first explanation as far as wanting to be a. around power, wanting to have connections, always kind of looking for his next project,

his next little scam, his next little thing where he can be at the top and controlling what's going on. And so it's completely in line with his psychology to want to reach out to powerful agencies, get his fingers into various things and, you know, see what he can do with those connections. Exactly, exactly. It's all about an ego trip with him. And it's like, you look at all the crazy twists and turns about the LaRouche movement has made since its foundation. And it doesn't make any sense. There's no consistency. But there is one consistency, which is that, you know, the Lerush movement needs to get

in the power to save humanity from, you know, the ultimate, like, you know, demise. And only the Lerush movement is able to do this. That's really the only consistency you find. And it's totally just a cult-like ego mania, like you said. Totally. And I think that's one of the lessons we can draw from all of this just as an aside is, you know, any person or any organization claiming, especially on the left and just in our sort of terms, claiming to like solely speak for true Marxism, anybody that's propping themselves up as a great

man or somebody who understands things at a higher level than anybody else should immediately raise every eyebrow in the room. And we are living in a period where we can see real life left-wing cults emerge, do insane controversial things and dissipate or get destroyed or whatever it may be a Black Hammer and the CPI are two recent examples of this, but it's very fascinating to study the history of left-wing cults before seeing them emerge in our own time and then seeing them emerge and being able to draw connections between them. Exactly, exactly. We're in 1986 and LaRouche has several offices raided and multiple indictments are issued for credit card fraud and obstruction of justice. There have ever been like multiple lawsuits issued against

LaRouche before then, but they always lawyered up and were able to, like, defeat them and, you know, through a mix of legal tactics and just, like, insane harassment campaigns using their cult. But they actually get him for good in 1980. They actually are able to get him

in a short trial, and LaRouche ends up going to prison in 1989 for mail fraud, tax evasion, and other related crimes. And he spends, like, five years in prison. Eventually, he gets paroled. But, you know, it's interesting is like while he's in prison the lorush movement keeps on going he even like runs

her president from prison but like the group actually tries to form like an alliance with right-wing catholics while lorush is in prison and apparently like they get really into catholicism and like really into the doctrine and become like their big thing and when lorush gets out of prison he's like wait like this is not close enough to like my teachings and what i'm really about like you're getting too interested in this Catholicism stuff and that's taking away from studying like my teachings and following my ideas and so there's a big purge of all the

Catholics and you know Rerich research his control over his group and they keep going into what they have become today and what have they become today all right well so Roush dies in

2019 as I said and at the age of 90 fucking six it's insane as long as people his hundredth birthday was actually just recently the day that queen elizabeth died which is quite hilarious and the same age they both died at 96 too wow yeah it's it's honestly like just a weird irony of history i don't know what was going on there but you know so yeah it's practically about thinking like all the lorish people today were like celebrating his birthday and then get the news

that the queen is dead yeah i can't imagine like a better feeling that they must have had they must felt so good. And it's important just to reiterate for people that might have forgotten how high of a position Queen Elizabeth held in LaRouchean conspiracy theories, like the top of the British Empire, a drug peddler. He would make these accusations on mainstream American television that the Queen of England is a drug pusher. So that's, that connection is why it's so... Yeah, the world's number one dope dealer. Like, you had a whole book called Dope Inc, which is like his big, like, expose of the international drug trade with Queen Elizabeth at the top. Right, right.

And it's like, you know, maybe there is some truth to that. Maybe the royal monarchy was involved in the drug trade to some extent. But, like, I highly doubt, you know, it was the extent that they claimed, you know. Because we do know that, like, you know, CIA was involved in the drug trade. And then, you know, official imperialist power does have involvement in the drug trade. But it's like if everything with LaRouche, but whenever they do kind of put their pulse on something reasonable, it's like this shit. coded with so much other nonsense that it's like not even really worth like dealing with like you know when i saw interviews with him he would kind of he would level the accusation of drug

peddler against multiple enemies like anybody that was shitting on him or uh critiquing him or whoever was being brought up as somebody who was opposing him he he would consistently kind of the first thing he would come out of his mouth is that person's a drug pusher that person's involved with drugs it's a weird obsession of his and um like when they were be campaigning and like these rural, like, Midwest places, you know, to win elections, they would always, like, our big campaign promise would be that we're going to, like, have the death penalty for dope pushers. We're going to clean up the streets and do a real war on drugs. You know.

Tehr-te style. Yeah, basically, like, it's basically, you know, it became very, like, much, like, focused on anti-drug, like, anti-counterculture. Like, the Beatles were a, um, a sci-op experiment designed by the Queen of England and the Tavistock Institute to, you know destroy the mind of the youth you know so um you know it's very much like trying to appeal to like american conservatives and stuff with this kind of stuff but um nowadays you know lorush you know dies in 19 i mean that's sorry 2019 and so but at the time lorush had died they had basically pivoted towards supporting russia and china

very interestingly like basically um their big thing their big like selling point in the 90s it came up this idea of like the world land bridge where basically like um we're going to like use a kind of like state developmental like world banking system to um unite the all to unite um russia china Brazil, India, with the United States to build a global land bridge that will, like, you know, connect the entire world with one big, like, infrastructure project. And it's going to bring peace to the world, like getting everyone to economically cooperate. And so now it's, you know, the LaRouche people, like, their big thing is, like, promoting China's Belt and Road initiative. Yeah. Because they see the Belt and Road initiative as basically their version of LaRouche's land bridge.

idea and they kind of like tried to like hint that actually we came up with it or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And like when the whole Ukraine crisis broke out with Russia, like they were big on being pro-Pooten and supporting Putin.

Like they formed connections with um, this Russian economist, Sergei Glazeev who was apparently pretty influential on Putin. And so they basically like, kind of in a way reinvent themselves as like almost like an anti-imperialist group. What was their feelings towards Trump?

Because I know La Roche died in 2019, so we had a few years under Trump. Did they take any... At first they were anti-Trump and they thought it was all a like a scam from the elite or whatever. But then they kind of warmed up to Trump, but like they still have ambiguous views on it. I mean, this would complicate things like there was a split after LaRouche died. because the LaRouche movement is composed of like several different organizations and they just like all move money

between them and it's all just like this whole patchwork of like front groups and different stuff like that and so they get they get split where the LaRouche pack wing of the movement basically takes like a hard pro-Trump stance

and they're actually the people that I've encountered in real life like campaigning for Trump like they basically just come off as like a pro MAGA group and but the other wing the wing that um is probably the legitimate followers of larush because um his his wife is the leader basically they have a more ambiguous relationship with trump they'll criticize him for like anti-china stuff but they'll like kind of support him against the the deep state or whatever like they'll you know they'll kind of take this position of like

well you know the maga movement is itself like it's it has potential of being a way of re-indvigure reigning America, but it's being misled by, um, you know, the, um, you know, by, uh, you know, whoever their big enemies are, you know, so I think that's, um, it's complicated. They have an ambiguous relationship towards Trump, but it's still like, you can see that they do try to, like, appeal to Maga people and stuff. Because we see, we, we see kind of in the, in the current Pat Sock movement, I thought at first it was sort of an ironic, um, praise. Um, of Trump, kind of using God Emperor Trump memes, etc.

Dark Maga. Didn't that start, you know, it was all kind of, at first it was kind of ironic and now at least some segments of that formation have now more or less unironically accepted MAGA and are on the Trump train. It's fucking

fascinating to watch. It's just absolutely ludicrous. But like because of what the whole Rousch mindset, the way it works is like it's all about this like struggle between different conspiracies of the elite. right yeah so it makes sense that they could like see maga as like you know maybe like split between the two conspiracies of the elite right and so trump himself is like you know split between like

humanist forces and oligarch forces and so like the roush movement needs like intervene to like you know provide the proper leadership to maga basically and so for them their big thing is like we need to get the maga people to like support an alliance of russia and china to um you know do the Belt and Road Initiative. And so, you know, and they've been on, or on Chinese TV and stuff all the time talking about the Belt and Road initiative. Like, Helix Zeple Rouge is supposedly known as Miss Belt and Road or whatever in China. That's what they say online.

I don't know how true that is. And from China's perspective, it's just a novelty that Americans are so vociferously for their policy? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just pure opportunism on the part of China. They see, oh, here's some Americans who are supporting what we want. So let's, you know, use them. Yeah, interesting. You know, and they probably do, like, you know, have some intelligence connections, you know,

because maybe they do have, like, some intelligence work stuff that they offer to the Chinese. Like, they have a magazine called Executive Intelligence Review, and this has been, like, a big thing of LaRouche since the 70s. It was, like, their big kind of pride and joy was their intelligence magazine. And, like, it costs, like, I don't know, $400 for a subscription, but it's, like, supposedly where they have, like, all the really good stuff, you know. yeah although like really like you know niche like intelligence stuff and um but they also have like um you know they'll do like uh intelligence work just like you know per hire like i imagine

like some of these governments be able to throw you some money if you can find us some information on this connection of you you know that's it yeah which is like a reason to just not be involved with these people at all because you know that like anything they uh you know about you they're willing to like sell to like other people basically yeah exactly because like their only allegiance ultimately is to themselves you know so in the end like their interest in china and then their interest in the belt and road initiative like in the end like it's just because they see that as like a way to like get closer to power and and somehow um you know maneuvered their way into a more powerful position it's in a way like it's as i call it's a private

intelligence racketeering cult and today there's no is there even any semblance of them pretending to be on the left or is that just completely jettisoned? Well you know I think you know because the whole pro-China stuff and the whole pro

Russia stuff like they are able to like make points that would appeal to leftists right they're not entirely wrong and all their propaganda today they'll talk about the war in Ukraine and how you know the West is you know

provoked Russia into this war and how NATO is bad they're really anti-Nado now even though in the 70s they were literally like campaigning in Sweden to join NATO out of anti-communism out of anti-communism yeah interesting so

but now they're like campaigning against Sweden joining NATO and you know so I think it's um you know and I actually like I had an argument with one of their main guys Daniel Burke on Twitter and I was just like, well, any reasonable point that

the LaRouche people make can be found in Marxism without the insane shit coding. He was like, well, we have communists in our movement. So I think they have been making overtures to the left again, especially to people who are disillusioned with the existing left, especially with

the failure of Bernie and the kind of a lot of disillusionment after the whole like summer 2020 and all the insurrections that went on there. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of ideological confusion there's a lot of contradictions in the left and we're in a really tough time you know as a movement and so I think that a lot of people like you know they they fall prey to a lot of this like

kind of culty recruitment stuff because of the existing contradictions in the left and stuff and I also think there's a a little bit of like being blown around by the winds of cultural change like you know that if you just live long enough on the left there's periods of time where the left like in 2020 for example seems hey we're getting to our feet and there's times when we feel like oh you know everything stacked against us is a particularly dark period and these kind of oscillate and you know principled marxist or people that are rooted in values in a tradition and an analysis keeps them rooted you know they weather those storms but if you're a new leftist there's nothing wrong with that or you're just a disaffected Bernie guy but the winds then move right and you see

yourself being blown to the right and then oh now there's more lefties who are interested in this, maybe we can reach out and now there's some communist in our organization. It's very like, it's very flippant. It's very, you know, arbitrary and it's very at the whims of the cultural wind shifts. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, you know, when you're a Marxist, you know, you, you educate yourself about history and theory and you try to get a kind of a broad historical vision of where you are in the grand scheme of things. And so you see that like, you know, we're embedded in a struggle that has been going on for, you know years and years and years and years and so much has changed and you know we've had tough times

and hard times but the thing is the conditions change and we have to be able to change the conditions all still staying principled and sticking to our cause yeah so i think like you know there's a lot of confusion after 2020 with like some like a lot of the ruling class like kind of taking up the BLM movement and stuff and taking up these slogans and like trying to do like what they call woke capital and then you have like the whole MAGA movement like you know they do the capital riot and so i feel like a lot of people kind of think like oh the revolutionary energy is there you know that's where the like you know dialectical contradicts is that's where the real action is and so um you know there's been this uh and a lot of people find that appeal and i think like if

you have that broader historical understanding of things you know that like the left has tried to do that kind of stuff in the past and has completely failed and that these kind of, like, demagogic, like, populist figures are not friends of the working class, even when they make, like, decent points. Yes. You know, even when they say the FBI is bad or talk about the role of the CIA and corrupting democracy or whatever, like, they don't have your best interests at heart, you know. Absolutely. I think that's incredibly well said.

When I criticized that Hinkle guy on Twitter for his maga Marxist tweet, somebody in the replies is like, you know, Brett, I really like and respect to you. I just wanted to say like, you know, he might not be perfect or, you know, Hinkle might be wrong in these various ways, but, you know, he is right about the Democrats and he is right about Russia and Ukraine. And my response is like, yeah, lots of people on the new and the alt-right are right, more or less on the Russia-Ukraine shit. And anybody with half a brain can criticize the Democratic Party. These are not core Marxist principles and these are not things. You could have right-wing articulations of these exact same things in and of themselves. They are meaningless. And, you know, I I think that's something that can hook some people is like, well, on this issue and this issue and this issue, they seem so right. So then, you know, I'm more willing to buy in on this other shit that is increasingly Looney Tunes, you know, but it feels like, well, at least they're rooted in something that's somewhat right. I don't know. It's kind of an interesting phenomenon in and of itself. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, Caleb Moppin's CPI is interesting because, you know, they, Caleb Malpin was a Marseus. you know, he was in the Workers' World Party for quite some time. And his ideology, you know, he's not really, like, in public.

I don't know what he's doing right now, like, because he got exposed in a sex scandal. I made him really bad. And a lot of his own supporters have completely, like, turned on him, rightfully. So, you know, because he's just turned out to be even more of a scumbag than real. But, you know, he was, and I've heard from various sources that he's been with Belarus people. for 10 years, you know, even when he was, I think, so, you know, he's had his connections with the LaRouche movement for a while. And like I said, he's a Marciest in a lot of ways still. But like all

the places where he breaks from Marciism are LaRouche talking points. Like the whole anti-environmentalism stuff. The whole like anti-Sinetic left stuff. Like there's a bunch of them, like all the ways that Caleb Malpins like Marxism, quote, unquote, is unique is basically all just LaRouche talk. points absolutely which is interesting because I've always wondered like I have no idea either way it's like well is Caleb Malpin himself a lorushist who's like part of like one of their later schemes to like recruit leftists or is he just like you know doing his own kind of thing but like in league with the LaRouche people and they kind of like are trying different approaches like I don't know there's some there's something weird going on there yeah but opportunists of all

stripes will always find some fertile ground in this attempt to, you know, tail reaction, dress it up as the left, do these attempts at whatever, you know, red-brown alliances or the ushering in of right-wing conspiratorial bullshit into left-wing rhetoric or whatever it may be. As long as politics exist, there's going to be people trying to fill in those spots on the political spectrum and make a name for themselves and opportunistically grab at that opportunity. And so, you know, one of the things that an episode like this is supposed to do, and I think Donald and me both agree on this, is to help people, whether you're new to the left, a veteran, or somewhere in between, this has happened before. There's nothing new under the sun. This is a reinvention of a wheel.

And by going back and studying closely how these previous manifestations of this exact same current, you know, lived and died, and where they led, we can learn a lot about our present conditions. And if you don't know that, you're much more susceptible, especially if you're new to the left, by being one in by these people you know yeah yeah definitely definitely well we're coming up on uh over an hour and a half in between an hour and a half and two hours here and i think we covered everything we wanted to cover in this episode is there anything else that you want to say before we wrap up with plugs and recommendations any other lessons you think we can we can draw from this story uh anything at all you want to say before we wrap this up yeah i think in the end like you know it's it's not just that

these uh you know kind of alliances right to never lead anywhere good you know it's it's also that like if there's you just have to be aware of overly charismatic figures who seem to like think that their intellectual talents are the key to the world being saved itself and i think marxism is supposed to be at least parts of marxism is supposed to be scientific right we're trying to develop a scientific understanding of the world and we're trying to act on that understanding to change the world in a positive way but if if someone isn't willing to like be criticized and have their theories be put up to scrutiny from other people in the name of scientific improvement then you know you're probably not dealing with someone who's doing

science you're probably dealing with a a demagogic you know cult like figure basically absolutely and i think you see that tendency all throughout like the marxist left is like sectarian groups that aren't willing to engage with other leftist groups and criticism and to learn from other leftist groups and kind of seeing their own group as the perfect like vanguard but doesn't need to work with anyone else or if they do work with anyone else always got to be on their terms only and you know i don't sound like an anarchist or i'm not like against like the idea of a vanguard and of course like i'm very much for building a party and and uniting you know you know intellectuals and the workers movement and stuff but i think that um you know you just have to watch

out for those kind of tendencies absolutely and um you know another thing i would add also that doesn't get talked about as much as like the amount of sexual abuse that women in the kurish movement were um put through it's you know it gets talked about in some of the sources i've read but there was just a lot of misogyny and patriarchy and um domestic abuse going on so i think there's something to be said about that as well in the way that um you know It's very much a kind of paternalistic, patriarchal kind of dynamic going on with a lot of these types. Yeah. And if somebody expresses bigotry in one area, the odds that they also have problematic or retrograde or shitty views in another area are pretty high.

So if somebody's railing against LGBTQ people or trans people in particular, the chances that they're going to be super good feminists and, you know, show solidarity with other races goes down dramatically. And those errors permeate and destroying entire organizations, as we've seen time and time again. Right, right. And one thing I wanted to say, too, kind of bouncing off what you said, Donald, is the importance. Of course, we should always be suspicious of any individuals claiming to have superior knowledge, egomaniacs of all sorts. But there also needs to be a stress on communal analysis. No one person understands all of anything. No one person understands all of Marxism.

and no one person can apply Marxism perfectly all the time. And so what the best sort of hedge against this sort of cultish behavior, this turn towards reaction, is to be wedded to an organization that can keep you accountable, to have a de-emphasis on individual echoes in favor of an emphasis on communal activity, all of us coming together. And, of course, tried and true ways of staying connected to the working class, like, let's say, the mass line, these organizing tactics that have been. been tried throughout, you know, history in many different locations and I've shown to be successful

and shows how it ties organizations to communities and real material interest of people in those communities. Because when you're completely devoid from that, when you're completely untethered from, you know, the real life day-to-day struggles of regular working people, you can float off in the clouds in any number of directions. And I think that's something to keep in mind as well. Yeah, I mean, there's really just no alternative to democratic organizing, you know. Like, that's really, like, what the left has failed in a lot of ways since, like, the 1960s and 70s, I think. A lot of, like, Leninist groups have failed to understand the importance of, like, having democratic accountability and having democratic structures in organizations and not kind of not creating a system that lends itself to a cult of personality of any kind. Like, communal analysis, like you said, is exactly what we need.

You know, we don't need, you know, one really smart guy who's figured it all out. mastered, you know, all the secrets of the universe and discovered the, you know, all the new theories we need, you know, we need people like that who are smart and have interesting ideas and compelling ideas, but they need to be embedded in a movement that keeps them, like, kind of grounded. And as one of many other people who are, you know, exploring these problems and engaging in a scientific dialogue. Exactly right. Exactly right. Well, my friend, this has been a fascinating trip through a really interesting figure, organization, and chunk of left-wing history, or just political history in general. Really appreciate you coming on. Always have been a fan of your work. I still continue

to be, and I even plug when I go on other shows, I think recently I went on another show and plugged at Cosmonaut Magazine because I really do appreciate the principled stuff that comes out of that outlet. So before I let you go, though, do you have anything to plug any recommendations for people that might want to learn more? Anything else you want to say before we wrap up? Well, first I think, you know, Likewise, you know, I think for having me on, Comrade, you know, I, I love your stuff too. I guess I would just say, check out cosmonautmag.com.

You know, that's really, that's, you know, the big project I put a lot of work into, and I think a lot of people, you know, I've said it's useful, so I think it'll be useful for your listeners as well. You know, we have a podcast, and we have, you know, articles, and we try to promote

debate and actual dialogue amongst the left. And, you know, I think our project serves that kind of purpose. And I think, you know, our goal is to, you know, work with the rest of the left and to engage in that kind of dialogue rather than kind of sequestering ourselves off into a sectarian group. And so I think, you know, hopefully we do accomplish something like that. But again, thanks for having me on, Brad. It's my pleasure. I also want to say real quick, you know, I recommend, you know, people like look into this stuff and look into the sources on this stuff and go deeper into it because like I barely scratched the surface of how crazy this stuff gets. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I'll link to Cosmonaut and to that specific article in the show

notes as well. Really appreciate the consistency of your organization. You and I go back many years at this point. We've met in real life at socialist conferences. Yeah, yeah, the Marxist Senator Conference. Absolutely. We had some some beers and some nice conversations after that. And it's always stuck with me and the values that you promoted back then are still the ones you promote now, and it's admirable, it's consistent, and I salute you and your, and your, the whole team over at Cosmonaut for sure. Awesome, brother. That means a lot coming from you.

Absolutely. All right, man. Well, you're welcome back on Rev Left at any time. Thanks again. All right, man. Have a good night. With your feet on the air Your head on the ground

Try this trick and spin it Yeah You have collapsed But there's nothing in it And you'll ask yourself Where is my mind Where is my mind Where is my mind?

Where is my mind lay out in the waters I was swimming I was swimming in the Caribbean Animals were hiding behind the rock Except a little fish But they told me Where is trying to touch

I'm in the wetlands Where is my mind Where is my mind Where is my mind We're in the water in a water, see you're swimming. When you're beyond the air, we're beyond the air, on the ground

Try Restrict and spinning Yeah You have my colors And there's nothing in it And you'll ask you soon Where is my mind Where is my mind

Where is my mind? We are out of the water since then. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. No one can't go, oh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah, I'll just think of it. I don't know.