by Den­nis King
1989, Dou­ble­day
ISBN-10: 0385238800
ISBN-13: 978–0385238809
415 pages

From Pub­lish­ers Weekly
A Trot­sky­ist in the 1940s, four-time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, head of the National Demo­c­ra­tic Pol­icy Com­mit­tee, right-wing extrem­ist Lyn­don LaRouche was recently con­victed on fraud and con­spir­acy charges. King, a jour­nal­ist who has unveiled the work­ings of the LaRouche cult almost sin­gle­hand­edly over the years, here pro­duces a coura­geous, hard-hitting expose. The LaRouch­i­ans raised over $200 mil­lion in loans and dona­tions from the pub­lic, despite what the author describes as the sect’s “clas­sic fas­cist” ide­ol­ogy, anti-Semitism, brain-washing, smear tac­tics and fanat­i­cal sup­port of the Star Wars defense sys­tem and mil­i­tary build-up. Accord­ing to King, LaRouche’s eccen­tric pos­tur­ing (he claimed the Queen of Eng­land was a drug pusher and branded Henry Kissinger a com­mu­nist agent) was use­ful cover–a pose to dis­tract the media while LaRouche forged bonds with the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, the CIA, the National Secu­rity Coun­cil, the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups, Team­ster bosses and crime lords, among oth­ers. King charges that the major media looked the other way, adopt­ing a “see-no-evil” pol­icy that allowed LaRouche to flourish.

From Library Jour­nal
In this por­trait of LaRouche and his fol­low­ers, jour­nal­ist King pro­vides a case study of the devel­op­ment of a rad­i­cal move­ment. He dis­cusses LaRouche’s child­hood, which helped to shape LaRouche’s par­tic­u­lar world view, as well as LaRouche’s strange odyssey from left-wing Marx­ist to right-wing leader of the reac­tionary National Demo­c­ra­tic Pol­icy Com­mit­tee. King exam­ines the bizarre coalitions–the Ku Klux Klan and black civil rights groups, for example–that LaRouche has man­aged to form and gal­va­nize into polit­i­cal action. LaRouche has also man­aged to main­tain ties to such dis­parate fig­ures as Manuel Nor­iega and Team­sters’ boss Jackie Presser. This is a riv­et­ing nar­ra­tive about a man who would say or do any­thing to gain per­sonal power and who seems to have used his bla­tant anti-Semitism to suc­cess­fully entice fol­low­ers.
- Frank Kessler, Mis­souri West­ern State Coll., St. Joseph

THIS BOOK IS OUT OF PRINT. Learn more about Den­nis King.