As befitting a blog that will cover the unfortunateness that inevitably occurs when politics meets religion, post # 1 will laud a fantastic article by the Washington Post’s April Witt on the cult surrounding presidential-candidate-for-life Lyndon Larouche.
I remember first reading about Larouche back in the mid 80′s and while he was clearly nuts then, he’s morphed into a far deeper brand of nuts – the type that requires a paid staff to nurture properly. Or, in lieu of payment, a fervent set of mantras that approaches religious intensity.
Winstead was pretty much in trouble. He turned out to be not much of a true believer after all. He thought meetings where members professed that they were unworthy to follow LaRouche were like parodies of tent revivals. He wondered why, for all their talk of saving the world, LaRouche activists didn’t seem to accomplish much other than raising money and recruiting new members.
He was stunned, at first, to find out what happened when he asked questions or complained. “Maybe you are too [expletive] busy [masturbating] thinking about your mother to go out and organize,” he recalls one of the leaders barking at him. “How much money did you raise today?”
“I’m caught off-guard, like, what the hell just happened?” Winstead recalls. “The yelling goes on for maybe five or 10 minutes while I’m furiously backpedaling.”
Eventually, he became accustomed to the humiliating insults and tirades. “They call it making somebody a self-conscious organizer,” he says. “It is about getting somebody to break down and cry, just to have an emotional collapse. Once you do that, then people are malleable.”
Additional Lyndon Larouche links:
Wikipedia
Rick Ross
Larouche in 2004
What happened to Jeremiah Duggan?