cover image Lyndon Larouche

Lyndon Larouche

Dennis King. Doubleday Books, $18.95 (415pp) ISBN 978-0-385-23880-9

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. (May)