On Thursday, I was walking out of my Native American Literature class in Pray Harrold and I was appalled to see a poster with President Obama posing with Adolf Hitler’s mustache. Being both a Jew and an Eastern Michigan University student, it was something I immediately noticed. There was a group on campus that day called Larouche Pac. Lyndon Larouche claims to be an economist, a genius and an all around great man while trying to brainwash U.S. citizens.
Larouche’s people were trying to get people to agree with them about Obama’s health plan saying it is a lot like Hitler’s health plan. Larouche does not make it a secret that he is against homosexuals. His people tried to deny asking students for money, but I did hear them ask at least one student for $100 for their cause.
When students asked their beliefs, they danced around the subjects. They had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. It was frustrating to have a conversation with Larouche’s people. When a student asked how President Obama is like Hitler one of the young men stated that Obama would soon be killing our grandmothers off.
According to The New York Times, Larouche was sentenced to 15 years in jail for conspiracy to commit mail fraud involving more than $30 million in defaulted loans and 11 counts of actual mail fraud involving $294,000 in defaulted loans. He was convicted of deliberately defaulting on more than $30 million in loans.
Our country is one of the greatest countries in the world in my opinion because of our First Amendment right, the right to free speech. Even though I was called just about every curse word in the book by his followers here at EMU, they did have the legal right to be on campus, and if we started to censor people like Larouche’s followers on campus what else would the U.S. or EMU start to censor *The Eastern Echo*? EMYou? Body Electric, the zine here on campus?
I believe that Larouche and Larouche’s people do have a right to be here under the First Amendment, even though a lot of EMU students that I spoke to say that they should have had to have a permit, and in a perfect world none of this would go on. The problem again as I said earlier when will censorship end if it starts?
I know a lot of people who I talked to that day are not expecting this kind of article, so let me make this clear: I am against Larouche in every way possible.
I witnessed one student take some propaganda and rip it up in front of Larouche’s followers. I also witnessed Lareouche’s people grabbing pamphlets out of student’s hands after giving them the pamphlets if they didn’t agree, calling students names and using a lot of other types of profanity while talking to students.
It almost seemed as though they wanted to start a physical fight with students, and after reading several sources, it seems like Larouche’s followers often start up fights so they can get hit, shoved or have their property damaged so that they can sue the “instigator” of the fight. I have also read that getting kicked off campus is not so bad either, because they can sue the school for silencing their First Amendment rights.
One of Larouche’s people on campus said “I do not go to college, and will not go to college, going to college just makes people stupid.”
Larouche went to Northwestern University, but never graduated because of poor grades. These are not ways to recruit supporters.
In my personal opinion, after having researched Larouche, he is in every sense a cult leader.
According to publiceye.org, a man named Ken Kronberg who was a 30-year-old member of the organization ran a printing company and produced Larouche’s literature for free. When he could no longer afford to do that “an internal memo was circulated within the group suggesting that members who could not adapt might as well just kill themselves.” That is exactly what happened a few hours after that memo went out; Kronberg did in fact commit suicide.
Some ways to protect yourself from this crazy cult would be not to take their CDs, they may have viruses. Don’t give out personal information including your full name; it will save you a headache. Some names are so rare, such as mine, that you can get a lot of information from just a name. Don’t give in to their literature, if you want to know more about them go to www.larouchepac.com. Do not start physical altercations with these guys, because it is what they want.
We all have our own beliefs but for some reason some people are better at brainwashing people than others and use it for evil instead of good.
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