Webster Tarpley and Lyndon Larouche

One of the most disturbing aspects of Webster Tarpley's political career is his longtime association with the crypto-fascist cult of Lyndon Larouche. Many activists these days are unaware of Larouche's long and bizarre history on the fringes of extreme politics in America and Europe and this has been a benefit to Tarpley, who has been able to slip into a new movement and set up shop with no questions asked about his highly questionable past.

The story of the Larouche movement is a twisted tale of murder, kidnapping, brainwashing, thievery, far right ideology posing as far left idealism, ballot initiatives to set up internment camps for American citizens, militant youth groups trained in violence and a host of other assorted ugliness revolving around the madness of a man who would be a perennial presidential candidate but wanted nothing more than to be America's first true dictator.

And in the middle of all this was Webster Tarpley.

Tarpley was Lyndon Larouche's right hand man for years. He was Larouche's intelligence chief, he was the point man sent to set up the European branch of the Larouche movement, he served as president of Larouche's Schiller Institute and was the frequent host of Larouche's television show. When Larouche went to prison for fraud, Tarpley became the man in charge.

Naturally, Tarpley has downplayed his involvement in all this sordid business while trying to sell books and present himself as the grand historian and intellectual pundit of the truth movement. But some documentation remains and many a survivor of the Larouche movement will attest to the facts of Tarpley's involvement. Some even feel that his eventual expulsion from the fold was a ploy, a cover for Larouchean infiltration of the modern anti-war movement. Whatever the case,