CHILDREN OF LAROUCHE

The LaRouche kids are out in force in Harvard Square today, a colorful contrast to its evolution into a dull canvas of commerce and services. Who would have guessed that a giant Citizens Bank branch would make one miss the giant Abercrombie & Fitch it’s replacing?

The youth were singing, as usual, handing out their usual literature (“Children of Satan III,” a title that would seem more at home on a double bill with “Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering”) and talking their usual nonsense.

I made it a point to ask for a copy of “Children of Satan III,” hoping it wouldn’t waste a lot of time on exposition, as sequels often do, but sure it was worth it for the subtitle alone: “The Sexual Congress For Cultural Fascism.” It’s unclear if the italicization of “Sexual” is pure luridness or intended to allow readers to discriminate this publication from one warning about the metallurgist congress for cultural fascism.

It is also unclear who would pay the $5 “Suggested Contribution” for this publication, which is put out by the LaRouche in 2004 campaign — presumably a presidential campaign, but possibly just a statement of being. The text inside, some of which is credited to Lyndon LaRouche, some to no one, is bewildering from the start:

How “The Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism” Ruined the U.S.A. And Gave Us “Beast-Man” Cheney.

During the 1964-81 interval, from the launching of the U.S. official war in Indo-China, through the inauguration of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve System, the United States of America was transformed into the world’s leading producer society, into what became the presently, terminally bankrupt “post-industrial” wreckage, which had been bestowed upon the currently crumbling Administration of Vice President Dick Cheney’s puppet, George W. Bush, Jr.

The jump-cut barrage of ideas without context suggests William S. Burroughs, but the ideas on their own suggest at least a week of psychological observation.

The LaRouche weirdo with whom I spoke also bore a whiff of the padded room, as so many true believers do. Being able to talk knowledgeably about LaRouche’s gibberish, or even to explain what “The Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism” means, obviously requires a lot of commitment and even concentration: It’s learning an entire belief system written in the semantic equivalent of the maniac’s pinched scrawl. And whatever the timing seems to be, it’s not politics alone at play here. The weirdo tried to force an explanation of “Children of Satan III” on me that damned the baby boomers for trading truth and beauty for the “arbitrary” values of the 1960s, what LaRouche’s text refers to as “the characteristically inhuman, madly rutting ‘rock-drug-sex youth counterculture.’”

Many political campaigns have an element of cultural reform to them, and criticism of hippies isn’t limited to this one. What’s oddly terrifying is that it’s not some general expression of ideals, a plank in a platform, but 48 pages of dense, monomaniacal prose digging deep into history to blame our nation’s decline on everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Egyptian midwives and (of course) the Freemasons. It finds time to blast the failure of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. So much for the worry about too much exposition.

The pamphlet ends with a look into a completely different conspiracy theory — although I guess by nature they’re all related -- and a defense of LaRouche against “slanders” printed by media such as The Washington Post, and its last sentence outs a LaRouche Youth Movement member who switched sides by pointing out that “he left behind a large collection of pornography, which he had downloaded from the Internet.”

This is all obviously insane, and I was not going to get lured into a conversation with the LaRouche kid. I left after making sure she knew I wanted a copy of “Children of Satan III” only because it was funny.

I also pointed out that truth and beauty are subjective. She should know that about truth already.