Washington

By CHARLES J. ABBOTT

The two-party system and extremists

ONE THING keeps getting overlooked in the hullabaloo over the victories by Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, the Lyndon LaRouche-backed winners in the Illinois Democrat primary: These people live in a different world. News coverage of them has tended to follow the formula of reciting their proposals, leavened with a few quotes, like Hart's, "You bet I'm going to roll those tanks down State Street." It is left to the reader to decide if LaRouchites deserve office. The approach is standard political coverage; let the candidates speak and examine the ideas for flaws and merits.

That's fine in most cases since most candidates share the same perspective on how America and its government work. It falters when candidates hold a far different philosophy. LaRouchites describe global conspiracies and corrupt international bankers who are heavily involved in drug-trafficking and who are to blame for the spread of AIDS. In LaRouche's version of the State of the Union message, the New England banking system is fingered as the center of money-laundering. "It's the Boston bluebloods; it's Harvard University, Harvard Law School and that type — which are up to their ears in the drug-trafficking in the United States. And why not? They made their original fortunes with the British East India Company, in the China opium trade, so why shouldn't they still be in the drug business today?" LaRouche said.

In the LaRouche view, inept leaders of the federal government want the United States to abandon the defense of Europe. The LaRouche group also believes that the federal government is engaged in an AIDS coverup on the callous grounds that it would cost too much to eradicate the disease.

The LaRouchites "are the fascists of this time, proto-fascists," says Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). In a Senate speech March 21 Moynihan drew parallels with the Fascists of the 1930s. The LaRouchites use AIDS as their test of purity, Moynihan said, and their denunciations of bankers translate easily into dark claims of Jewish conspiracies.

LaRouchites deny the charges of neo-Nazism and extremism. "We stand for everything in violent opposition" to Hitler, Fairchild said. LaRouchites say that they represent the views of grassroots Democrats dissatisfied with liberalism. Are they conservatives?

There initially was an amount of glee in some Washington circles at the distress of Illinois Democrats. The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, for instance, saw the chance to win votes against Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Belleville). Some conservatives soon realized that they have a problem, too. LaRouche claims some of their issues, like the Strategic Defense Initiative. The Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation called a news conference, in the words of a spokesman, "to disabuse anyone of the notion that these people somehow represent conservatives or are associated with the mainstream conservative movement." The spokesman suggested that LaRouchites are using popular ideas to win support while cloaking their philosophy. "They do more to harm our issues than to help them," he said. In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, right-wing fundraiser Richard Viguerie said that LaRouche does not fit the definition of a conservative.

LaRouche and his followers may be as much a problem to the mainstream conservatives as they are to the regular Democrats. Conservatives point to LaRouche's leftist beginnings and imply he still may be advancing those goals by disrupting true conservative action. LaRouche himself started on the radical left in New York but shifted to the radical right.

The LaRouche "movement" calls for grass-roots debate on the philosophy of the Democratic party, but it draws its inspiration from a man who rarely appears in public. LaRouche lives at a Leesburg, Va., estate. Literature from his National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC) says that assassination attempts are a constant concern.

Also overlooked so far is what the LaRouchite victories in Illinois could mean for political parties. Traditionally the Republican and Democratic parties have been open to everyone. There is little rigidity in philosophy; they make a virtue of absorbing ideas and re-forming themselves to meet public demands. Now they may have to find ways to retain accessibility while screening extremists — a hard thing to do.

Meanwhile Democrats are making a nationwide effort to identify and defeat the LaRouche candidates running under the label of the Democratic party. Republicans may not be untouched in this effort. Dominick Jeffrey of LaGrange, the LaRouche candidate winning the Democratic nomination to face incumbent, U.S. Rep. Harris Fawell (R-13, Naperville), was a Republican precinct captain for eight years before switching allegiances to become a "patriotic Democrat." The other LaRouchite winning the Democratic nomination as an Illinois congressional candidate is William Brenner of Onarga, who is running against Rep. Edward Madigan (R-15, Lincoln).

The LaRouchites claim a mandate from the March 18 election, although they say they spent only a few hundred dollars to link their names and issues with the voters. Three analyses come to mind: They are cynically misstating the results; they really campaigned but it was undetected; or the LaRouchites believe lightning struck and their era is dawning. So far, no LaRouche-backed candidate has been elected to statewide office in the United States. "We look forward to 1986 as the year ...[we] will begin to govern," said NDPC chairman Warren Hamerman.

Think about it.

42/May 1986/Illinois Issues