Today I passed my Post Office and there was this sandwich board sign that said: "Impeach Cheney!" Another sign showed Bush looking like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman. There were 3 or 4 people standing around a table with lots of brochures and information on it. I rode past and looked back. I thought I just had to stop. Would I sign a petition to impeach Cheney? You bet.
So I parked a block down and put a couple of quarters in the meter. I walked back to Post Office and now only two people, the people who were in charge of the signs and table, were there. I was ready to sign a petition but the man showed me a copy of the articles of impeachment filed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich against Vice President Dick Cheney in April. And then I saw the huge sign sitting on the table facing me with its back to the street (why I didn't see it when I drove by). They wanted me to donate money to the PAC that was sending kids to Washington D.C. to demonstrate against Cheney. "Oh No," I said. "I thought there was a petition, I won't give money to Lyndon LaRouche." They asked, "Do you know anything about him? Why don't you take some material that tells you about him." I refused the material. Did I know anything about him? Here's what I know:Lyndon LaRouche is an American political activist and founder of several political organizations in the United States and elsewhere, jointly referred to as the
LaRouche movement. He is known as a
perennial candidate for
President of the United States.He advocates a wide variety of conspiracy theories, such as
conspiracy theories about the September 11th attacks, allegations that the British royal family are global drug dealers, that the Queen was involved in the death of
Diana, Princess of Wales, and that
MI6 or senior advisers to the Queen have threatened to assassinate him.
He is an
anti-Semite and an
anti-Zionist. He has questioned the
Holocaust and in 1978 insisted only 1.5 million Jews were killed.
LaRouche publications strongly denounce the policies of Mussolini and Hitler.
But he has also advanced, according to
Dennis King and others, ideas which appear to be modelled on fascist and even Nazi racialist concepts. King described some ex-NCLC members as believing that LaRouche was borrowing ideas from the Nazis. Don and Alice Roth, two members who quit in 1981, reported in their resignation statement that anti-Semitic Holocaust jokes had become rife in the organization.
[38] In an examination of LaRouche's writings on political theory, King argues that LaRouche was really advocating a fascist-style state in which all political dissent would be crushed. LaRouche, however, says that the model he advocates is that of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
When I refused the material, their faces changed and they looked away from me. I turned from them and walked back up the block to my car.theteach
AP | Deb Riechmann | July 20, 2007 12:42 PM