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This article appears in the July 23, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

LaRouche Webcast:
Restore FDR Legacy
or U.S. Faces Fascism

by EIR Staff

Speaking to an international Internet broadcast from Washington, D.C. on July 15 [see transcript and media archive], Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche refocussed his 20-month mobilization to force out Vice President Dick Cheney, on the Democratic Party: "It's not who's going to be nominated for President. That's not the issue. Who is going to own the person, who is nominated for President. That's the issue. That's what the Convention in Boston this next week means!" LaRouche thus hit the critical battle now convulsing both campaigns, just below the surface of media headlines: Will Cheney's overripe removal from the race—and from power—be forced through now, shaking up both parties' strategic and economic debates? And will the Democrats keep "protecting" Cheney—even supporting him against Republicans who now want him out—because of synarchist bankers like Lazard Frères' Felix Rohatyn in their back rooms, who have control over Sen. John Kerry's campaign?

After an extensive discussion of the battle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt against the international fascist forces who sought world power in the 1930s and '40s, LaRouche, during the well-attended webcast, sharply encapsulated the current situation going into the Democratic National Convention: "The financial system is bankrupt everywhere on the planet, and the powerful financial forces who created Hitler, are at it again. They are out to collapse the system, and create a new fascist world empire. Dick Cheney is one of their tools—and that pig has to be put in the pen."

LaRouche went on to demonstrate how the economic and financial system is bankrupt, and the underlying physical economy of the United States has been destroyed, with the elimination and down-waging of productive jobs, and the examples of the drastic shrinkage of the machine-tool and steel industries, hospitals, and railroads. As a result, the United States is now a nation of bread and circuses, with an actually fascist faction represented by Cheney's gang trying to make it into a new global Roman Empire.

In addressing the economic collapse, LaRouche used a new set of graphics, which demonstrated what he called the "incredible shrinking economy," in which the financial aggregates (like debt) take over the productive economy. He also showed graphics which depicted the 30-40% shrinkage of physical economic infrastructure, in a time-compressed fashion. This underlying reality, LaRouche argued, underscores the fact that those who believe in the "markets" are insane.

LaRouche was addressing approximately 220 people in Washington and hundreds of groups and individuals at Internet sites around the world. His Washington audience included more than 100 East Coast activists and recruits of the LaRouche Youth Movement, preparing to make an intervention at the Boston Democratic National Convention starting July 27, for LaRouche's "FDR" leadership and policies for the party. The Democratic National Committee is trying to exclude LaRouche, and the LaRouche Youth, going so far as to use "national security" claims and supposed national terror alerts—at the same time claiming that the party is a private club which can exclude whomever its leadership opposes. Also in LaRouche's live Washington audience were state representatives and other elected officials from more than a dozen U.S. states, and diplomats from Asian, African, and Ibero-American nations.

The candidate focussed on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's defeat of the fascist threat and rebuilding of the American economy over the 1933-45 period, as the touchstone legacy of the Democratic Party—currently rejected by Kerry's suicidal campaigning and by the DNC leadership of the party (he noted that 1932 Democratic Chairman Jacob Raskob opposed and tried to exclude candidate Franklin Roosevelt, as Chairman Terry McAuliffe now opposes and excludes LaRouche).

In his webcast invitation, LaRouche had set the theme as "The new threat of fascism today," and argued that the removal of Cheney, while an indispensable objective, begins a larger task of getting Americans to join LaRouche in endorsing the FDR approach to rebuilding the world economy.

But the fact that the event coincided with funeral services for his long-time associate and representative in Germany and Britain, American Mark Burdman, led LaRouche to open his remarks with a discussion of the meaning of immortality expressed in Burdman's life and work, "to humanize, personalize, and make clearer, the subject which I originally intended to present." By engaging policymakers internationally, including many in the senior ranks of the "Atlanticists" of the post-war NATO alliance, in a 20-year dialogue about LaRouche's assessments—talking to individuals who might or might not agree with those assessments—Burdman participated in making history, LaRouche said. "That's why I'm probably one of the best-informed persons in the United States.... It's through people like Mark," whose quality of immortality LaRouche defined by the fact that he was a person who governed his life by ideas and discoveries of principle.

From there, LaRouche launched into the history of the creation of fascism by the financial forces who had pushed through the Versailles Treaty after World War I; and then described how Franklin Roosevelt spoiled their game. He did it in two ways, LaRouche said: first, by saving the United States from those forces who would have made the United States a fascist state by 1934, had Hoover been re-elected; and second, by saving the world from fascism, by preventing the British from joining the Nazis in their world conquest plan.

FDR restored the American System of Political Economy, LaRouche said, but as soon as he was dead, the banking crew went into action again. They first used Truman, and, after having been stymied by Eisenhower, took off like a shot once Kennedy became President. In the course of this transformation, they succeeded in imposing a reign of terror that destroyed a generation, now called the Baby Boomers. That generation, whose leading circles are now in power internationally, has been brainwashed to believe there is no truth, and that work (blue-collar workers) is bad. These beliefs have coincided with the literal takedown of the U.S. economy.

The Democratic Convention

Much of the discussion in the question period—in which many questions came from leading Democrats, as well as members of the LaRouche Youth Movement—focussed on the threat of fascism from the Cheney forces, especially through the possible staging of another Reichstag Fire event, and on what could be done about it in the Democratic Party.

LaRouche was blunt in criticizing frontrunner Kerry, who is showing no guts on either questions of the war or the economy, and who appears prepared to go along with economic policies which are literally fascist as well. The solution lies in reviving FDR's ideas, and mobilizing the lower 80% of income brackets, who now just sit back and wait, or beg for crumbs.

As for what LaRouche himself, who will be at the Convention with a substantial contingent of youth, can do about shifting Kerry's perspective, the candidate stuck to the question of method. It's a matter of campaigning on principle, he said, not tactics, and the principle that we have on our side, is the American System of Political Economy. As for post-Convention perspectives, they could well focus on campaigns to clean up the Congress, he said.

But, the candidate stressed, the emphasis of the youth and others must be on giving the population a sense of optimism, and of their own immortality. Leadership today means challenging the mistakes the population has made, but conveying a sense of optimism about how things can be changed, unlike what happened in Germany when the Nazis came to power. A youth movement committed to saving humanity can uniquely convey that sense of optimism in these days.

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