by Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons

(From Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort) The Lyndon LaRouche network, an offshoot of the radical student movement that metamorphosed into a fascist organization in the early 1970s, developed an idiosyncratic doctrine and approach quite different from other far-right groups. Though often dismissed as a bizarre political cult, the LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology. Beginning in the 1970s, the LaRouchites combined populist antielitism with attacks on leftists, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and organized labor. They advocated a dictatorship in which a “humanist” elite would rule on behalf of industrial capitalists. They developed an idiosyncratic, coded variation on the Illuminati Freemason and Jewish banker conspiracy theories. Their views, though exotic, were internally consistent and rooted in right-wing populist traditions....

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