Our campus is a place of political free speech, much like other universities throughout the nation.
We allow the voices of both competing sides of the political spectrum to establish themselves in this place of open thought-provoking debate.
Most of these political organizations are moderate and sound in their claims, while others are provocative and extreme. Nonetheless, they all receive a fairly equal opportunity to present themselves and be judged by the students they try to influence.
There is one activist, arguably the most extreme in his political views, who has no problem dishing out hurtfully slanderous criticism against public officials.
His name is Lyndon LaRouche, and while most students have probably never met the man, we all know what he looks like. Displayed on large print photographs that hang from the tables of his “LaRouche Youth Movement” like the Communist banners that once draped the eastern bloc, his face has become a symbol of an extreme radical and, dare I say it, cultish movement.
A radical politico like LaRouche who resorts to, and endorses, articles that contain such harsh terms as Nazi-Gestapo, fascist, and Children of Satan, would appear on face value to be inviting open criticism of his ideas.
However, any person or group that opposes him is immediately lashed out at with blitzkrieg-style slanders. Typically, these efforts are reserved for hard-line right-wing conservatives, but recently LaRouche turned his attention to a UCLA student publication, attacking it vehemently and ruthlessly in an attempt to discredit Garin Hovannisian, a student who wrote an opinion piece titled “Expose: The Cult of Lyn LaRouche.”
The noticeably hasty response, written by Aaron Yule of the LaRouche Youth Movement and published in LaRouche’s latest pamphlet, “Is Joseph Goebbels on Your Campus,” attacks Hovannisian using the same cookie-cutter tactics they have been using for years: Draw ridiculous parallels between the targeted individual and Nazism in the hopes that readers do not possess enough of a historical background to seriously question the merits of the author’s claims.
In Yule’s article, he writes “another case of this continuing Gestapo onslaught,” claiming a supposed Gestapo-style campus attack against LaRouche “is against their most feared adversary, LaRouche and his youth movement.”
Let’s take a moment for commentary. Nobody fears LaRouche and his youth movement, he is the object of ridicule in most debates and his “movement” is more like a campus street team, it advertises for him, but doesn’t exactly define a generation of students.
Yule goes on to identify the young Gestapo sympathizer and expose his notorious affiliations. “For example, the so-called ‘independent’ campus newspaper at UCLA, the ‘Bruin Standard’ (owned by the Buckleyite Collegiate Network), has run increasingly scurrilous slanders by its chief editor, Garin Hovannisian (the SAF president for UCLA), attacking the LaRouche Youth Movement as a ‘cult’ that wants to ‘brainwash’ students.”
It is sad if people buy into this, but otherwise hysterically ironic that this pamphlet makes accusations against a student writer of being the spearhead of a Gestapo movement. This is a radical fringe politician who thrives on literature that propagates his own likeness and ideas while personally attacking all those who disagree with him.
Adolf Hitler did the same thing when he wrote “Mein Kampf” in a prison cell in Landsberg, where he was incarcerated in 1924 for treason after the Beer Hall Putsch coup attempt.
LaRouche was incarcerated for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion and spent his time in jail furthering his political ambitions, much like Hitler.
He has also been labeled, among many other things, as an anti-Semitic. Luckily for this country, though, a general loathing of radical extremism and relatively peaceful and plentiful living conditions contrast the desperate post-armistice atmosphere that was necessary for Hitler’s rise to political prominence.
There is a tendency to lend too much credit to everybody who preaches within the walls of academia, but I am confident that the majority of students here at CSUN, and nationwide, will continue to have the sense to critically analyze the LaRouche movement.
I am not saying that anybody needs to stand with or against him. But as I read the frequent references to Nazism that LaRouche and his ailing movement have long attributed to members of the government, and now feel necessary to attack a fellow student journalist with, I am compelled to make one last Nazi comparison of my own.
“Make a lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe you.”
This was a quote from Hitler, and it served as a guide for him. I see the unabashed lies and labels spewed from LaRouche, and it leads me to believe that he is guided by the exact same principle.
