Often described as an extremist crank and fringe figure, Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. cut a shadowy and alarming path through American politics for a half-century. He built a political organization often likened to a cult and ran for president eight times, once while in prison for mail fraud. In recent decades, he operated from a heavily guarded compound near Leesburg, Va.
LaRouche, who built a worldwide following based on conspiracy theories, economic doom, anti-Semitism, homophobia and racism, died Feb. 12. He was 96.
His political organization, Larouche PAC, confirmed the death but did not say where or how he died.
LaRouche drew headlines for his more outrageous claims: that England’s Queen Elizabeth II was a drug trafficker and that the International Monetary Fund created and spread the AIDS virus. He also said the CIA, KGB and British intelligence officials were plotting to assassinate him, according to a 1985 Washington Post profile that included interviews with followers.
LaRouchians, as the group was known, never numbered more than 3,000, according to some estimates, but were a vocal, sometimes disturbing presence on the American political landscape. They heckled, harassed and occasionally threatened opponents.
His followers “made extraordinary inroads into American politics, surpassing the achievements of any other extremist movement in recent American history,” wrote Dennis King, a New York-based LaRouche expert in his 1989 book “Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism.”
Members of his National Democratic Policy Committee ran several hundred candidates a year in state and local elections and won many local seats and Democratic Party posts in the 1980s.
During the 1984 presidential election, LaRouche received more than 76,000 votes, his highest count.
His campaigns proved financially lucrative. By raising $5,000 in 20 states, he qualified for federal matching funds that brought his organization millions of dollars over the years.
His operation suffered a massive blow in 1988 after he was convicted of income-tax evasion, mail fraud and a scheme that took money without permission from the credit-card accounts of elderly donors. He served five years of a 15-year sentence and ran his 1992 campaign from a federal prison in Rochester, Minn.
The LaRouche movement became a multimillion-dollar industry, according to King.
