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.