Mixed Nuts (LYM vs. ARI)

[reason.on]

Well, they got it half right...

Activists lob meat, condoms

Kaelyn Forde Eckenrode

Issue date: 10/31/06 Section: News

A battle of political extremists ended in the throwing of meat and condoms Friday as about a dozen protesters from the LaRouche Youth Movement interrupted a lecture by an Ayn Rand Institute speaker.

Department of Public Safety officers asked the protesters to leave after they threw meat and condoms and interrupted the speaker by singing politically charged songs. The protest was one of several the LYM has organized against ARI events.

The USC Objectivist Club hosted Andrew Bernstein of Marist University as its speaker for a lecture titled, "Global Capitalism: The Solution to World Poverty and Oppression."

Witnesses said that as Bernstein spoke, an LYM member unwrapped a raw steak and slammed it onto Bernstein's notes on the podium.

"I believe he said, 'On behalf of the LaRouche campaign, we dedicate this raw meat to you for supporting a philosophy that results in the death of millions of children,'" said Blake Adams, a freshman majoring in business administration and a member of the Objectivist Club.

Witnesses said that the protesters also stood up and sang in unison about the death of Muslims during the Iraq war.

"During parts of the lecture, they sang songs in protest against the treatment of Muslims," said Ilya Golosker, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering. "People started yelling and interrupting Bernstein."

"Nuclear holocaust is the ARI policy," said Michael Steger, a spokesman for the LaRouche Political Action Committee, "Their director, Yaron Brook, is a Nazi who has called for the death of civilian Muslims to end the Iraq war."

Witnesses said a purple-robed protester also interrupted the lecture, claimed that he was Ayn Rand and threw condoms with Vice President Dick Cheney's and other political figures' faces on them at the audience.

DPS Chief Carey Drayton said DPS officers asked the protesters to leave, and they complied. No arrests were made and no force was used.

"It was very peaceful," Drayton said. "No one had to be held."

[snip]

Edited November 6, 2006 by R. Christian Ross

[Chris Grieb]

This story is awful. The police sound like utter crap artists. Slapping raw meat on someone's lecture notes isn't violence. Throwing things. LaRouchies seem to alway be in front of the building that TOC is in and I'm always afraid I may get into a confrontation with them. I guess I may get hit with a steak.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

For as much as I disagree with several policies of ARI, I find the behavior I have read of the LaRouchies at ARI events at colleges to be absolutely despicable. You don't fight ideas with childish antics. You fight bad ideas with better ideas.

Ironically, I think Brook, Bernstein and the others don't complain because of the strong gain the LaRouchies provide to ARI. First, they give the impression that antics are the only answer to ARI, which gives ARI's views much more public force. Then the event gets a great deal more publicity than it would normally get because the disturbance might get some mention in the news.

But that is not the reason I hold contempt for the tactics of the LaRouchies. I don't condone antics in the place of arguments at places of debate. The place for antics is in lampoons and satires. I especially don't condone trying to steal an audience. If you have a good idea and you believe in it, generate your own audience. Stealing the audience of another is second-hand to the extreme.

Who are these people, anyway? I have been gone from the USA way too long...

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Great, I didn't even know Lyndon LaRouche managed to spawn a youth movement. What on earth could be the attraction?

LaRouche=Class A Whack Job from birth. A total, comprehensive douchebag.

Why can't college kids just screw, drink, and smoke weed like usual?

I like the meat and condoms thing. Nothing like stretching out your symbolism a little bit.

Here's from Douchebag Central dot com's site on these little twits:

http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/youth_mov...h_movement.html

It would have been much, much cooler if they had rallied around Peikoff's house and thrown adult diapers at him.

[Chris Grieb]

For over two year I had to listen to the LaRouchies complain about the statue of Albert Pike that is near the DC Federal Courthouse. Their complaint was that Albert Pike was the founder of the KKK. The reason is there is statue is because he was the founder of the Scottish Rite Free Masons. The statue was erected early in 1900s when far fewer premissions were necessary. My reaction was after two years of listening to those haraunges was I would never support the removal of the Albert Pike statue. I also observed that the LaRouchies were very good followers the Communists by using fellow travelers. Many blacks and liberials were willing to support them because they were against the founder of the KKK. I always had a problem in that I was taught that Nathan Bedford Forrest was the founder of the KKK. It would be delightfully ironic if ARI and the LaRouchies became linked in the public mind. But of course it would make it harder for rational followers of Ayn Rand. One more think Albert Pike is not the discoverer of Pike's Peak. That was Zedbulon Pike.

[Martin Radwin]

There is a rather disturbing similarity between the names "LaRouche Youth Movement" and "Hitler Youth Movement". I wonder if this is just a coincidence. Did it ever occur to these wackjobs that the name selected for their group had such a strong resemblance to that of the Nazi group?

In a rather weak defense of the Larouche nutcases, at least their organization has not advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons against anyone, as far as I know. In this respect, at least, they are one up on ARI.

Martin

[Chris Grieb]

Only because they don't have one. I suspect that the ARI crowd has not served one day in combat. Does anyone know?

[Rich Engle]

That's a good question.

Vegas odds say no way, but I could be wrong. I'm guessing college deferrments out the yingyang.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Only because they don't have one. I suspect that the ARI crowd has not served one day in combat. Does anyone know?

Chris,

Yaron Brook stated in a Q&A to a recent lecture (I would have to look up which one) that he had been a Sergeant in the Israeli army, but I don't know if he saw combat.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; I had heard that Yaron Broke had served in the Israele Army. Yaron is such a resonable person I almost don't think of him as one of the ARI crowd.

[Reidy]

I don't think it's such a good question, because its point is an ad hominem attack. That said, Henry Mark Holzer fought in Korea. Many of the Objectivist establishment, starting with the Brandens, came from Canada, and Canada hasn't gone to war (as distinguished from contributing troops) at least since Korea.

Peter

[Rich Engle]

Well, true all that in that military experience is not a required resume item for practicing global politics. Sometimes it can even be undesirable.

But I still trust what I have observed in some with a more abstract view of war, the ones who have never been exposed to horrors, that often some of them propose extremely grisly solutions that they might not have, were they informed by the personal experience that comes from things like seeing slaughter.

Edited November 9, 2006 by Rich Engle

[Martin Radwin]

The question could certainly be a prelude to an ad-hominem attack, if it is followed up with the argument that some or all of the positions taken by ARI people with no military experience are wrong and deserve no consideration just because of their lack of military experience. But I don't think that anyone here would apply such an ad-hominem argument.

The observation that some of the most militantly pro war people are chickenhawks with no military experience, who have never served in a war or been anywhere near actual combat, who have never seen the horrific aftermath of battle, is not by itself an ad-hominem argument that such people's ideas are therefore to be automatically rejected. The point of the observation is that those with the least direct experience with the actual carnage of war are often the most enthusiastic supporters of wars which lead to such carnage. They advocate policies which kill and maim thousands of people, yet they have never actually seen a dead body or a horribly wounded person. This does not mean that their support for a particular war is necessarily wrong. Nor does it mean that there are not people who do have military experience, who have served in combat, who still support a particular war. But, at least, people with military experience who advocate for a particular war should be expected to have fewer illusions about what the consequences of that war will be.

Martin

[Rich Engle]

Yeah, what Martin said!

[Chris Grieb]

I agree with Martin. Sometimes I get the impression that the ARI folks are trying to convince the rest of us how tough they are.

[mweiss]

My brief investigatio of Lyndon LaRouche revealed that he was a Communist.

And that statement, calling a person who happens to be of Jewish origin a Nazi, was really pathetic.

[Chris Grieb]

Mark; My first knowledge ol Lyndon LaRouche was vaguely socialist candidate for US President. He seems to now believe in free enterprise. He served time in prison for credit card fraud. Several of his followers are also serving time for the same charge. Some of his followers show up at Cato events and ask questions. As I said before I do wish they would go away.

[John Dailey]

~ If I may add, apart from criticizing Larouche's followers' thuggery (can one say that a LYM disease is growing?), that any hint of sympathizing with what happened to ARI's speaker, just because he was one of 'their' speakers, is really not where we want to go, whatever conflicts with, or even contempt for LP, some may have.

LLAP

J:D

Edited December 23, 2006 by John Dailey