November 17, 1993
Issue
Alison Thorne
In this federal election, the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC) is standing candidates for the Senate and in many lower-house seats across the country. The CEC aims to tap into popular concerns and has recently been campaigning against terror laws and globalisation. But don't be tricked into thinking that the CEC is a progressive force. Far from it! It is a dangerous right-wing populist grouping which aims to build a mass fascist movement.
Some facts about the CEC and its leader, Lyndon LaRouche:
- The CEC was founded in rural Queensland in the 1980s by the League of Rights. It is now the Australian wing of an international movement headed by right-wing demagogue Lyndon LaRouche.
- In the 2001 Aston by-election in Victoria, the CEC was the only political party to give preferences to One Nation.
- The CEC claims there is a conspiracy of Jews, leftists and progressives to set up a world dictatorship which only LaRouche can stop. His supporters believe that the Queen of England heads an international drug ring. The CEC argues that Britain is run by a cabal of Jewish banking families.
- LaRouche is a misogynist who accuses women of causing male impotence and turning men into deviants and queers. In a 1998 article, LaRouche blames women for bipolar disorder and domestic violence. While campaigning in 2002, LaRouche made clear that he is against abortion.
- LaRouche said history would not judge harshly if gay men were beaten to death with baseball bats to stop the spread of AIDS. In 1986, the LaRouche movement's California group PANIC sponsored a citizens-initiated referendum which, if passed, would have allowed forced AIDS testing and banned HIV-positive people from working in education or the food industry or from even attending a school.
- In its 1997 article, Land Rights: Prince Philip's racist plot to splinter Australia, the CEC characterised Aboriginal culture as "brutal". It claimed that Aboriginal land rights are a "plot to splinter Australia". This turns reality on its head. The limited land rights which currently exist were won by Aboriginal people struggling against big mining companies such as Rio Tinto. These companies have no need of monarchist inspired land rights plots to grab Australia's resources! Capitalism delivers this result for them perfectly well!
- LaRouche calls environmentalists "terrorists with sinister ties to the British oligarchy and 'degenerate' 1960s culture."
- In May 2003 the LaRouche on-line magazine praised the benefits of low-dose radiation, genetically engineered crops, food irradiation and nuclear power. The movement campaigns to lift the ban on the highly toxic insecticide DDT.
From Green Left Weekly, September 29, 2004.
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