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Contemplating the death of Lyndon LaRouche and the future of his movement
- duxup 7y agoI grew up in a rural area for a time and there it seemed to me that Lyndon LaRouche had a surprising number of supporters who I wouldn't have expected to be interested in conspiracy theories. I didn't think much of that for many years until the last 10 years or so, reminded by more recent events.
- smacktoward 7y agoI don't know exactly when you were living there, but back in the 2004-2007 time window LaRouche managed to pick up a bunch of new supporters by coming out strong against the Iraq war, at a time when pretty much every establishment voice on both sides of the aisle was still shell-shocked by 9/11 and terrified of saying anything that might make them look soft on terrorism. So when young people who opposed the war went looking for a leader to follow, LaRouche was one of the few out there who appeared to be talking sense. He wasn't, of course, Lyndon LaRouche was totally Looney Tunes, but if you were desperate to find someone willing to be against the war and too young to be familiar with LaRouche's crackpottery in the '60s and '70s, it's easy to understand how you could get sucked in. (One of these unfortunate kids, a young man from Britain named Jeremiah Duggan, ended up dead under somewhat mysterious circumstances -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeremiah_Duggan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeremiah_Duggan .)
- duxup 7y agoThe time I was thinking of was more the late 80s. It was strange as at the time I thought of the local farmers who really believed in that stuff as mostly conservative and reasonable folks... support for Lyndon didn't make much sense. Recent history of course makes the explanations that conspiracies provide at the very least seem attractive in some ways (even if bonkers)...