LaRouche, Lyndon
Identification American political activist and
candidate
Born September 8, 1922; Rochester, New
Hampshire
Over the many decades of his activism, LaRouche became a
lightning rod for controversy. His followers regarded him as
a bold and original voice in American politics, while many
mainstream political thinkers dismissed him as paranoid
and extremist.
By the time the 1980’s began, Lyndon LaRouche
had been an activist and organizer of leftist political
groups for more than two decades. By this time, how-
ever, his ideologies and tactics had veered substan-
tially away from traditional leftist doctrine and be-
come more idiosyncratic, even to the point that his
speeches and language echoed some language of
the far Right. In the 1980’s, his activities cast a wide
net. He was active in, among other things, support-
ing (and even taking partial credit for) President
Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),
proposing a ballot initiative in California (Proposi-
tion 64) to force more aggressive measures to con-
tain acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),
advocating the colonization of Mars, meeting with
leaders of developing nations to discuss economic
policy, and founding the Schiller Institute in Ger-
many as a clearinghouse for his ideas.
The factor that brought LaRouche the most at-
tention during the decade, though, was perhaps his
status as a perennial candidate for U.S. president
during the primary season. He ran as a candidate for
the Democratic Party nomination in 1980, 1984, and
1988, buying television airtime to promote his candi-
dacy but never receiving more than a tiny sliver of
the primary vote or being accepted by the party as a
serious candidate. He had run in 1976 as the candi-
date of the U.S. Labor Party, which he helped found,
and he would continue to run as a dark horse Demo-
crat in the 1990’s and beyond.
By the early 1980’s, LaRouche was being investi-
gated for a number of possibly illegal activities. In
1988, he was convicted of several tax violations, as
well as conspiracy to commit mail fraud. He served
five years of a fifteen-year sentence before being
paroled. Unsurprising, LaRouche and his support-
ers called the affair a “show trial” and claimed the
case against him was trumped up to suppress his
activism. Perhaps more surprising,
LaRouche continued many of his
political activities from his jail cell,
including a 1992 presidential pri-
mary run. His supporters during
his imprisonment consistently re-
ferred to him as a “political pris-
oner.”Impact Critics from both the
Right and the Left tended to por-
tray LaRouche as out of touch with
political reality, a conspiracy theo-
rist, a cult leader, and an ego-
maniac. His supporters saw these
criticisms as evidence of a politi-
cal establishment unready for La-
Rouche’s genius and unwilling to
put their own cherished ideas to
the test. While his ideas never be-
came mainstream, he remained a
prominent figure on the Ameri-
can political scene throughout the
1980’s and beyond.The Eighties in America LaRouche, Lyndon 571
Lyndon LaRouche.(AP/Wide World Photos)