If you had a class on campus last Friday, you probably encountered at least one of a series of commanding pamphlets. They were strewn across lecture halls from Tech to Leverone and University Hall. In smaller classrooms, including those throughout Harris Hall, individual pamphlets were left in front of every chair. Someone was even handing them out in front of Tech.
“Is the Devil in Your Laptop?” one warned, with a photo of a young gamer haunted by a creepy specter. Others were titled “Let There Be a Time of Thanksgiving” and “Capitalism & Its Law.”
Distributed by the Lyndon LaRouche political action committee (PAC), a group supporting the ideals of political activist and controversial thinker Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., the pamphlets condemned Facebook, MySpace and video games for their negative effect on youth culture.
The literature quickly filled trash cans, and janitors removed all traces by the end of the weekend. But many students flipped through the pages — and very few said they were impressed.
“I just read an essay about Orson Welles being a ‘fascist,’” said Weinberg sophomore Kyle Ewing. “They seemed pretty crazy… it was pretty far-fetched.”
The most negative student reaction was against claims made about social networking sites. Communications sophomore Eric Whobrey found the tirades against Facebook to be particularly bizarre. “I thought it was totally ridiculous and completely biased,” he said.
But the pamphlets offered a window into the thinking of a man who leads a “fringe” political party and has run for president eight times.
A controversial movement
According to the back of the pamphlets, the LaRouche PAC has 14 offices across the nation, from Boston to Seattle.
The Chicago office declined to comment, but recommended that students interested in finding out more about the group visit their website.
The site contains mostly “breaking news” stories with a LaRouche slant, as well as writings from the political figure himself. The piece mostly attack on prominent politicians from both the left and the right. Al Gore is accused of perpetuating a “genocidal fraud” and it is suggested that he will eventually eaten by polar bears.
Only one of the Northwestern political science professors contacted for this story had heard of LaRouche. Professor Mark Iris said that his actual relevance in American politics is minimal. “LaRouche formed his own party, a fringe political party,” Iris said. “In terms of laws, I don’t know.”
Criticism of LaRouche is common. A 1984 report by the Heritage Foundation called his followers “one of the strangest political groups in American history.” He is often seen in the mainstream as perpetuating conspiracy theories, and has been accused of anti-Semitism. His philosophy never caught on.
According to Iris, the LaRouche movement’s crowning moment came in 1986 when Mark Fairchild, a follower of the movement, won the Illinois Democratic primary election for lieutenant governor.
Did he win the general election? “No!” Iris laughed. “It was a weird story.”
Students respond
Kainat Khalid, a Weinberg freshman, thought the “Devil” packet did a poor job backing up its claims, she said. “About the murder of some girl—he kept saying, the girl and the murderer both had Facebook, so that was why [it happened],” she said. “It didn’t really make much sense. I didn’t like it very well.”
But she added that her friends did enjoy one thing about the packet: “They liked the way it was written, without agreeing with it. They liked that it was sarcastic.”
Weinberg sophomore Jack Neubauer said that he was previously familiar with LaRouche from similar pamphlets distributed in the District of Columbia area. The new ones have done nothing to change his negative opinion. “I flipped through it, and saw a few grand articles about how MySpace is destroying the world,” Neubauer said, adding that the articles were “bizarre”.
“People flipped through it, and they know his name now,” Neubauer said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to listen to him, though.”