White on white translucent black capes: Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019)

Obituaries will make the pedestrian mistake of lumping Lyndon LaRouche’s journey together with the likes of David Duke or David Icke. Note the characterization of a “mistake”: they will present his 60-odd years of political involvement as some sort of right-wing rhubarb, but not because they find his politics abhorrent. Who knows what his politics really were? Through all of his intelligence-gathering and cult-building and conspiracy-writing,  what wasn’t LaRouche wrong about at some point? Denounced by Communist and Nazi parties, recruiting followers by the thousands through idiosyncratic psychoanalysis from Canada to Germany to the Philippines (peer-reviewed journals connect him to the Ba’aath party of Iraq), intensely paranoid about classical music (A=432hz lives on at YouTube), repeatedly running for president with Plato vs. Aristotle as a signature issue…

These are just randomly picked from the Wikipedia page on him. (The LaRouche Movement has a separate, even longer Wiki article). Lyndon LaRouche, man. The Keith Jarrett of political extremists, the Whitman of cult leaders, the Rothko of tax evaders.

Conspiracy theories emerge from the fact that the world is already saturated by meaning. They float atop, like seagulls in a sea of trash. This is why facts can’t get in the way of, say, Hollow-Earth theory — in effect conspiracy theories don’t contradict reality. As we swim toward an asemic horizon, we move away from the conspiracy merchants (Pinkers and Dugins and Foucaults and Breitbarts and Paglias…) that saturate the already hypoxic waters. But as his lights go out, it’s worth saluting the intensity and fierceness of Lyndon LaRouche.

Here’s hoping we don’t need it.