LaRouche Drive to Recruit Farmers Told

Political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. has launched a major new campaign to recruit financially distressed farmers to his organization, a coalition of farm advocacy groups and religious organizations charged Friday.

A LaRouche organization called Food for Peace has held as many as 25 recruitment meetings in mostly rural areas across the country since Labor Day in order to “prey upon a constituency of unsuspecting and financially distressed farm and rural people,” representatives from 22 organizations charged. The coalition includes the National Council of Churches, the American Jewish Committee and Prairiefire Rural Action.

The groups denounced LaRouche’s views as racist and anti-Semitic and said his stands on agricultural issues were simplistic, divisive and potentially dangerous for the country.

No Tie to U.S. Program

They called LaRouche’s Food for Peace campaign “a dangerous deception.” Although it has the same name as a U.S.-sponsored overseas food aid program, the two are not related.

Neither LaRouche nor spokesmen for his organization could be reached for comment Friday. LaRouche, a perennial candidate for President, is now standing trial in Alexandria, Va., along with six associates, on charges of mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.

He is accused of having raised more than $30 million in loans that he never intended to repay. In addition, he is charged with conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by failing to file income tax returns for any year since 1978. If convicted on all 13 counts against him, he faces a maximum penalty of 65 years in prison and fines totaling $3.25 million.

A joint statement issued by the 22 organizations Friday accused LaRouche of using the farm issue to recruit people into his movement, which it says is “based on paranoia and an extreme Cold War mentality.”

‘Feast on the Misfortunes’

“This is a time when many farmers are facing grave financial straits,” said Sandy Schweneker, a farmer from central Illinois who attended the joint press conference. “Right-wing organizations feast on the misfortunes of farmers.”

The LaRouche Food for Peace program was kicked off with a meeting in Chicago on Labor Day, the groups said. A second Chicago meeting, expected to draw several hundred people, is scheduled this weekend.

Daniel Levitas, research director for Prairiefire Rural Action, a Des Moines-based farm advocacy group, said that, unlike other extremist groups that have been trying to recruit farmers, LaRouche’s organization is a “well-oiled political movement that operates through a series of front groups with well-paid professional organizers.”

“The issue is much larger than LaRouche and goes to the continuing distress of farmers and their vulnerability to this type of recruitment,” Levitas said. He said a number of right-wing extremist organizations have increased their recruitment activities in the last six months. “They’re sort of like gophers popping out of gopher holes,” he said. “If you have enough people standing around with mallets to bop them on the head, you can make sure they stay underground.”