I’ve been puzzling over Speaker Hastert’s bizarre (and in a just world, libelous) claim that George Soros may have made his fortune through narcotics trafficking (see video of it here, see Soros’ response to Hastert here (PDF), and see Josh Marshall’s commentary to Hastert’s lame and misdirected response here). Thankfully, this Slate piece helped me figure it out – Hastert is apparently a stooge of Lyndon LaRouche.
Where did Hastert get the notion that Soros might be getting money from drug cartels? A good guess would be the organization headed by political fantasist, convicted felon, and perpetual presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. This campaign literature from the “LaRouche in 2004” Web site, dated Oct. 29, 2003, makes the drug charge directly:
Years of investigation by LaRouche’s associates have answered that question in grisly detail: Soros’s money comes from impoverishment of the poor countries against whose currencies he speculates, and from deadly mind-destroying, terrorism-funding drugs.
(Emphasis in the original.)
The LaRouchie slander of Soros dates back to the early ’90s. Michael Lewis recorded an anti-Soros protest by LaRouche followers in a Jan. 10, 1994, profile in the New Republic. Since then, the drug charge has been a LaRouche literature mainstay. See, for example, this cached copy of a 2002 interview with LaRouche from his organization’s Executive Intelligence Review.
Once you remember that Hastert is from Illinois, the state where the LaRouchies had their greatest electoral success ever back in 1986, then it all makes sense. I presume his next step will be to link Soros to the Queen of England, whom we all know is really the hub of the international drug-trafficking business.
Of course, what Jack Shafer and everyone else seems to be overlooking is that the LaRouchies are traditionally associated with the Democratic Party. Is the Republican Speaker of the House actually a stalking horse for the paranoid lunatic fringe that plagues his political opponents? I’m saying we just don’t know.
I think everyone on both sides of the political aisle — who’s still somewhere in the building anyway — would agree that this was a stupid comment on Speaker Hastert’s part.
it’s richly amusing to have a slimeball ratsocrat loftily observing that certain kinds of political discourse are legitimate and certain other kinds are not. it’s revealing of the kind of world so many ratsocrats seem to be striving to create, in which only “legitimate” discourse from “responsible” parties is permitted. In the wet dreams of the fascist ratsocrats, they get to decide what is “legitimate” and who is “responsible.”
But the amusing aspect of this is that Soros and his fellow scumbags in organizations like MoveOn, and his fellow scumbag, Michael Moore, are accusing the president of invading Iraq to benefit the Carlyle Group, they’re comparing him (unfavorably, at that) to Hitler, and simultaneously labeling him a dunce and denouncing his diabolical intergalatic scheme to seize control of the planet.
thansks for the giggles.
“Slimeball”? “Scumbag”? “Fascist”? “Ratsocrat”? Please do tell me more about how certain kinds of political discourse are legitimate and other kinds aren’t. I’m feeling more edified by the minute.
thanks for making my point so vividly. saying that some discourse is not legitimate is what one does when one disagrees with the discourse, but has no other more effective response. You know the old barrister’s maxim: if the facts are with you, argue the facts. if the law is with you, argue the law. if neither is with you, just argue. This kind of remark just screams “I have nothing to say, so i’ll just say you’re not allowed to say what you said.”
Abelard,
We don’t find your commentary “richly amusing,” just irritating, like sand in the vaseline.
But of course you have every right to say it.
By the way, have you stopped molesting infants while dressed as the pope? I’m not sure if that rumor is completely true or not, maybe we ought to have an investigation into it…
The Unbearable Lightness of Literalism
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