STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Occupy Wall Street and Webster Tarpley … We're All LaRouch-ites Now!
By Staff News & Analysis - October 27, 2011

Adbusters Caves to Mass Pressure, Calls for Saturday Day of Action for Wall Street Sales … Mobilize Now to Demand No Cuts in Social Safety Net … Student Loan Amnesty … Foreclosure Freeze … Nationalization of Fed to Create 30 Million New Productive Jobs at Union Wages … – Summary of Webster G. Tarpley interview on INN World Report Radio

Dominant Social Theme: The concept of a Bizarro universe is directly taken from the Superman universe, in addition to verbal references to SupermanJerry: Yeah, like Bizarro Superman – Superman's exact opposite, who lives in the backwards Bizarro world. Up is down; down is up. He says "Hello" when he leaves, "Goodbye" when he arrives. Elaine: Shouldn't he say "bad bye"? Isn't that the opposite of goodbye? Jerry: No, it's still goodbye. Elaine: Does he live underwater? Jerry: No. Elaine: Is he black? Jerry: Look, just forget the whole thing. All right? – Dialogue from "Bizarro" Seinfeld episode.

Free-Market Analysis: The above dialogue seems appropriate as we begin this analysis, which will point out that Lyndon LaRouche and fellow traveler (we use the term ironically) Webster G. Tarpley are fast becoming among the most important thinkers in the alternative blogosphere and maybe eventually in the mainstream as well.

LaRouche, for instance, seems to have been correct on much of his analysis of the West's collapsing fiat-money system. In the past, he has been regarded as something of a crank … but now everyone from Ellen Brown to Congressional representatives are adopting his idea of a nationalized Federal Reserve – and many of his other FDR-oriented solutions. Here's something from LaRouche's own Executive Intelligence Review website on central banking, circa 1993:

Nationalize the Federal Reserve … The Presidential campaign organization of Democrat Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. announced on Feb. 25, 1992 the release of a draft "Federal Reserve Nationalization Act" to recreate the U.S. central bank on the model of the First National Bank of Alexander Hamilton. The act would nationalize the Federal Reserve System, creating new National Bank of the United States, under the Treasury Department, returning to the U.S. government the right to issue legal tender (currency) granted in the Constitution.

On this website, we've often discussed nationalized banking with Ellen Brown who's an attractive spokesperson for the concept; but we wonder what her supporters would say if they knew LaRouche had been there first. Here's a prediction: LaRouche, Tarpley and other FDR-supporters will soon be seen as offering solutions not only to the problems of the "private" Federal Reserve but also to a myriad of other problems.

This will be a triumph for LaRouche himself in his declining years, as he has long been a figure of fun for the mainstream media. Yes, as America continues to spiral down into the pit of an incipient full-blown depression, LaRouche may well get the last laugh. You can see an interview we did with him here: Lyndon LaRouche Explains the Collapsing Western Economy and How the World Really Works

We've noted agreement with LaRouche's analyses, but that doesn't mean we agree when it comes to SOLUTIONS. Like Webster Tarpley (who once tried to run on a LaRouche ticket in New York, according to Wikipedia, and was in younger years a Fullbright Scholar), LaRouche's solutions seem to us "bizarro."

We hear these solutions enunciated yet again in an interview on INN World Report Radio with Webster Tarpley. The man's erudition is immense and like LaRouche, he can talk extemporaneously about the most complex events. But his solutions are directly in line with what FDR proposed, solutions that in our view retarded recovery from the Great Depression and at one point directly threatened the entire free-market system on which the US is (at least putatively) based.

Tarpley will have none of that sort of analysis. Government, Tarpley says, is something that will always be with society. We might as well get used to it and use it as the tool it can and must be. This is perhaps a kind of dominant social theme, though whether Mr. Tarpley is promoting such a meme knowingly is a question we shall leave to others to discern.

There is no doubt OUR point of view is that such a solution as Tarpley presents is one preferred by the very Anglosphere elites that Tarpley and LaRouche claim they oppose. Regardless of motivation, it seems wrongheaded from our point of view. SMALL government is preferable to large government.

Many great, modern episodes of history seem to have begun with small, disparate units … from the Greek city-states, to Rome's Seven Hills, to Italy's city-states and America's 13 separate colonies. In such instances, people could migrate when government became too oppressive to others regions where they could speak the same language, and this this led to governments that competed with each other to attract citizens and were apt not to be overly repressive.

America's "greatness" in our view was the residual effect of its original culture of freedom and its 13 separate colonies that fostered competitiveness and prosperity. America's exceptionalism ENDED when the North conquered the South during the Civil War. For Tarpley, this is where America's greatness BEGAN.

For Tarpley, America's greatness lies in its post-World War II accomplishments. This was when America provided the highest "standard of living" for its citizens. For us, this was the result of World War II itself, which virtually leveled every other major country but America. Tarpley attributes post-war prosperity to an FDR inspired public-private partnership.

Tarpley and LaRouche tend the shrines of Hamilton, Lincoln and FDR. They are pro-central banking, pro-price fixing and pro-the Regulatory State. They want large government, the larger the better. Only the largest governments can protect citizens and provide the massive public works that countries could not otherwise erect. But IS bigger better? Here is something that occurred during FDR's watch from a 'Net article entitled "Evil Price Cutting":

A more dramatic jailing was that of 49-year-old Jacob Maged of Jersey City, New Jersey. Maged had been pressing pants for 22 years, and his low prices and quality work had kept him competitive with larger tailor shops in the better parts of town. The NRA Cleaners and Dyers Code demanded that he charge 40 cents to press a suit. Maged, despite repeated warnings, insisted on charging his customers only 35 cents. "You can't tell me how to run my business," he insisted.

Not only was Maged thrown in jail, he was also slapped with a $100 fine [Ed note: a lot of money in the 1930s]. "We think that this is the only way to enforce the NRA," said Abraham Traube, a director of the NRA code authority for the Cleaners and Dyers Board of Trade. "If we did the same thing in New York City we would soon get the whole industry in line." Many editorialists, however, sided with Maged. "It didn't matter," the Washington Post said, "if Maged had to charge less than the bright and shiny tailor shop up the street if he wanted to continue to exist. The law said he couldn't." "For a parallel," the New York Herald Tribune said, "it is necessary to go to the Fascist or Communist states of Europe."

Indeed, FDR's policies, if taken to their logical conclusion, were "fascist" in the sense that they demanded that Leviathan control every part of society for the greater good – and as well, a buy-in from America's largest corporations. For Tarpley, such an approach (ameliorated no doubt by reasonableness) is a necessary antidote to elite Money Power. Government, he says in his interview with INN World Report Radio, can be hostile to the middle classes and the poor, or it can be indifferent or it can be helpful. He wants it to be "helpful."

Tarpley, not surprisingly, is no fan of Austrian economics and makes a point of deliberately labeling those who believe in free-markets as "insane." In fact, almost every point of Misesian thought is to be refuted as crazy "anarchism" (though in fairness to Tarpley, he has written in the past that "gold has a critical role to play in a new international currency system"). He favors Hamilton over Jefferson and declares that America's post-war prosperity was built entirely on the foundations of the New Deal.

He goes farther. In the interview, Tarpley accuses libertarian Congressman Ron Paul of formulating anti-poor policies that will amount to, well … genocide. He is also emphatic that there needs to be a transaction tax on all financial trades in America (and around the world?), a policy that will surely be as intrusive as FDR's attempt at universal price fixing. We've written about it here: "Washington Post: Occupy Wall Street Is Controlled Opposition, Maybe LaRouchite?" Here's an excerpt:

The Occupy Wall Street crowd in particular seems determined to impose statist solutions when the free market once served well, at least until the Civil War destroyed the US republic. The Occupy Wall Street movement with its emphasis on public central banks, regulations like Glass-Steagall and an emphasis on public solutions to private problems is headed in the wrong direction, in our humble view. And now the movement is going global. Call it Lyndon LaRouche's revenge?

What Tarpley (and LaRouche) want is a New Deal on steroids. But Tarpley's version of events seems to ignore the founding of the IMF, World Bank, UN and even the BIS – all of which David Rockefeller had a very strong influence on. How can Tarpley damn British elitism on the one hand and endorse their enterprises on the other? His position contains considerable contradictions in our view. (Ed Note: In fairness to Tarpley, he has stated in the past that he would abolish the IMF and World Bank to set up a "new world monetary system based on full employment through the revival of industrial production," but this still does not seem to address the larger contradictions).

And there is this. Human action shows us that every regulation and law is a price fix and every price fix redistributes wealth from those who produce it to those who won't know what to do with it. Tarpley's response would be that the system is so distorted by PREVIOUS laws advantaging the elites that one must pass (similarly distortive) laws that advantage the rest of us. This is a "two wrongs make a right" kind of argument.

Additionally, central banking doesn't work. History shows us even when a mercantilist central bank is bounded by a gold base, those in charge will find a way around it. Once the ability to print is concentrated in a few hands the disaster begins, as no one knows how much money is too much.

Those who operate central banks in such a manner, whether politicians or "banksters," will always print too much money, causing terrible booms and busts and giving rise to Great Recessions like this one, or even depressions (where we're headed). India and China both have "public" central banks and it has made no difference.

People who believe in free markets want LESS government because government is inevitably manipulated by the richest among us. Only LESS government can guarantee less manipulation. Tarpley, LaRouche and others see it the opposite way. They want MORE government, but they never explain how to avoid an elite takeover. Yet such takeovers in our view are historical and inevitable. More government means MORE elite control, not less.

They also ignore the horrible ramifications of Leviathan. Republican, small-government states rarely if ever are accused of genocide but in the 20th century large, totalitarian governments were among the largest of mass murderers. Government has a monopoly on force, as Lew Rockwell pointed out recently, and given enough time those in high positions of authority will begin to use it.

Despite Tarpley and LaRouche's mainstream marginalization, their ideas shall have increasing resonance as the "American dream" winds down and people call desperately for solutions to salvage the remnants of their lifestyles – or even to put food on the table. Occupy Wall Street's non-leader/leaders are already echoing LaRouche and Tarpley – not just when it comes to analyzing the problem but also the solution. We would suggest humbly this might be just what the Anglosphere power elite actually wants to have happen. Hear that sound? Laughter!

Tarpley speaks admiringly of mercantilism and protectionism. He claims that only a Hamilton dirigiste/authoritarian regime can save the US and the world. Tarpley's solution is more authority at the top. Our hope is that what we call the ongoing Internet Reformation shall counteract these trends with information and education about the way the world really works.

Edited on date of posting before noon EST.

After Thoughts

What Tarpley proudly calls populism is in our view another sort of dominant social theme that mis-directs people's energy and makes them agitate for state solutions that ultimately provide only more impoverishment and chaos. Our solution is human action and individual freedom from intrusive and heavy-handed government. To Tarpley such solutions are "insane." To us, LaRouche-ite solutions – despite the brilliance of their backers – seem, well, bizarro …

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