PUBLISH AND PERISH….One of the lead articles in the November issue of the Monthly is a piece by Avi Klein about Lyndon LaRouche. Here’s how it starts:
One of the LaRouche movement’s longest-serving loyalists was Ken Kronberg. A handsome classics scholar and drama teacher, Kronberg owned and managed PMR Printing, the outfit that has generated the idiosyncratic propaganda that sustains LaRouche’s entire enterprise.
….On April 11, 2007, Ken sat in PMR’s offices in Sterling, Virginia, forty-five miles northwest of Washington, to read the “morning briefing,” a daily compendium of political statements that reflect the outcome of the executive committee meetings held at LaRouche’s house in the nearby town of Round Hill….At 10:17 a.m., Kronberg sent an e-mail to his accountant instructing him to transfer $235,000 held in an escrow account to the IRS. He got in his blue-green Toyota Corolla and drove east. He mailed some family bills at the post office, then turned around onto the Waxpool Road overpass. Just before 10:30 a.m., Kronberg parked his car on the side of the overpass, turned on his emergency lights, and flung himself over the railing to his death.
Do yourself a favor and read the entire piece. It has nothing to do with mainstream politics or the current presidential campaign, and it won’t provide you with any red meat attacks on either Democrats or Republicans. It’s just one of those intensely fascinating articles you come across occasionally that explains the workings of a particular subculture better than anything you’ve ever read before. Once you start reading it, you’ll have a hard time stopping.
And when you get to the part about the evil grain cartel, click here to see a vintage LaRouche campaign commercial from 1984. You’ll learn things about Walter Mondale that you never suspected before.
UPDATE: Thirsting to learn more? Scott McLemee runs down LaRouche’s latest folly, the LaRouche Youth Movement, here. It also includes a bit of detail about LaRouche’s obsession with mandating the correct pitch for tuning musical instruments.
