Common criminality, not his political extremism, was the undoing of Lyndon LaRouche Jr., the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith commented Friday, following LaRouche’s sentencing to 15 years in prison for tax evasion and fraud.
The 66-year-old politician, who ran three times for president, was sentenced by Judge Albert Bryan of federal district court in Alexandria, Va., along with six co-defendants.
They were found guilty of scheming to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and deliberately defaulting on more than $30 million in loans from LaRouche supporters, many of them elderly.
“The sentencing sends a strong message that this anti-Semitic extremist cult leader cannot use his ‘political’ activities as a shield for criminal wrongdoing on a nationwide scale,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL.
“This case was not about politics; it was about crime. It was about defrauding the elderly of their savings and spending lavishly to maintain a high life style,” Foxman said.
LaRouche was the subject of a 54-page “ADL Special Report” released in 1986.
It focused on his bizarre world outlook, heavily laden with anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, denial of the Holocaust and allegations that the queen of England, among other things, headed a worldwide ring of drug traffickers.
LaRouche, who gave credence to the wildly anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” maintained that “Adolf Hitler was put into power largely on the initiative of the Rothschilds, Warburgs and Oppenheimers.”
LaRouche posed a danger because he cloaked his lunatic fringe notions by championing popular causes such as strong defense, and legitimate sounding fronts, for example, the “National Anti-Drug Coalition,” the ADL study pointed out.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
