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Written by: Jason Pitruzzello
This is the first installment in a three-part series. The final installments will be published on Wednesday and Friday of this week.
A few months ago, I had the privilege of being given pamphlets about candidates for political office. Despite the fact that I toss all such material in the trash, as I keep up with the candidates for various offices myself and do not need their propaganda about themselves or others to stay informed, I do like the fact that such activities go on because it is healthy political expression. On my campus, there’s a small but dedicated group of students who support Lyndon LaRouche for president, and every few weeks, I’ll get one of their packets handed to me. Most of the time, I toss them away like any other.
Not this time. It’s kind of hard to throw something away when you’re a computer hobbyist and the title, in big letters, asks “Is the Devil on your laptop?” Thinking to myself, “Well, if the Devil is on my laptop, I’d better know about it so I can format the hard drive and reinstall Windows. (Assuming the Devil in questions isn’t Windows. You never can tell when it comes to die hard Mac OS fans.) I held on to the small packet and began to read it over lunch. What I thought was going to be a typical LaRouche diatribe about global economic downturns and their relation to technology industries turned out to be something very different.
Now, since this is Adrenaline Vault, and since the packet I was given contained a lot more than stuff about computers and video games, let me lay down some simple parameters for my discussion of LaRouche’s claims about video games and America’s youth. First, so that everyone knows I am not making anything up, the relevant parts of the pamphlet are located here and here. Second, it’s not my intention to debate the merits or faults of LaRouche’s economic policy, his claims about the formation or maintenance of an Anglo-Dutch Empire or the veracity of claims that in 1974, the CIA brainwashed a member of his NCLC to become an assassin.
I also do not wish to discuss U.S. presidential politics in any depth, despite the fact that Lyndon LaRouche is running for the office. Since I doubt he has any chance of securing a nomination, much less getting elected, it would be fruitless to compare his policies in relation to the other candidates. Instead, I’m only concerned about LaRouche’s claims about links between video games, violence among school age youths and the broader impact of video games on American culture.
In the article entitled “Terrorism Comes to the West: The New Cult of the Teenage Suicide Bomber,” Nick Walsh, writing for LaRouche’s PAC, argues that violent video games, along with Facebook and MySpace, are conditioning those who play into becoming suicide killers similar to suicide bombers. Specifically, the article claims that “In the United States and Western Europe, the perverted religion of the terrorist, is the video game… If the people of the United States, led by the 16-to-25-year-old age bracket, do not destroy MySpace, Facebook and these computer games, the United States cannot survive.”
These claims might seem to be a bit ridiculous to those of us who choose gaming as one of our hobbies, but this kind of amped up anti-video game rhetoric has been advanced before. Specifically, those of us who remember the aftermath to the Columbine Massacre will remember claims that Doom inspired the deadly events of that day. But this argument has a far longer lineage than video games and school shootings. As far back as Plato, such arguments were advanced against the kind of literature popular in ancient Greece. If you take the time to read Plato’s Republic, you’ll find that Plato’s utopian society wouldn’t allow almost any literature, including drama and poetry, because the literature of ancient Greece, such as the epic poetry of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, were too violent and portrayed the gods in a poor light by having them behave in an immoral fashion. This would simply not do because, in the Platonic view of epistemology and metaphysics, the citizens of the Republic would copy what they read and saw on stage, acting violent and immoral themselves. So it was for Plato, so it is for those who, like LaRouche, hate video games: playing violent video games psychologically conditions you to be a cold blooded killer with a suicidal bent.
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Auvine may have asserted that video games, music and movieshad no influence on him.
Are you going to believe this psychotic mass murderer?
Idiot
The anti-video game crusade, along with items against social networking sites and wikipedia and google, is a matter of controlling the cult members. Since last April (due to events on April 11), a flood of internal items have fallen onto the Internet due to internal strife as older members have fled the cult. This crusade sort of culminated with an edict which ordered the members of the “Larouche Youth Movement” off the Internet.
That is why Larouche hates your hobby.
A well written, unbiased article. Although I wonder why almost uniquely, americans seek to displace the actions of the few to some enviromental factor that could be controled and therefore elimintated, instead, as is more likely to a culmination of social and physcological causes, brought about more by a flaw in the society than a computer game or a film. Hitler didn’t play computer games he was dissolusioned with a less than perfect society, but he did paint perhaps that was the reason he was so racist.
I appologise for the bad grammer and possibly spelling.
The cult will hijack any tragedy and “Laroucheify” it by adding one of a virtual infinite universe of delusions spinning in the cult master’s brains. The cult is desperately trying to replenish Larouche’s precious body fluids by recruiting confused college students to drop out of school and work around the clock, 7 days a week for this madman. Months of goping through lack of sleep. nutrition and being in the Hostile Fantasy World of Larouche will creat a Nick Walsh.
If you waish to have some eye opening material, just google a convicted felon named Don Phau who was at the Va hearings. This multi decade Larouche bootlcker spent aq few years in the big house for his role in the theft of nearly 30 million dollars from elderly supports of Larouche when he was running for the WHite House ijn the 1980s. Don Pahua has lost his family, wife and every bit of dignity in worshipping Larouche. WHen they finally have a funeral for the very old Laoruche. I expect Don to try tom jump into the grave to still be with him.
If it is not video games it is the internet, if it is not that it was rock music. Google Don Phau and rock music to read an insane haze of delusions about the Beatles. This is a sick, sick bunch of llsers who Laoruche breathes life into by elevating them into his Bizarro world of hate and delusions.
For more info you can check out
kenkronberg.com
justiceforjeremiah.com
lyndonlarouchewatch.org
laroucheplanet.info They even have a Laoruche video game set up.
To read a long running documentary about the cult, go to factnet.org and do a search under
Laoruche or find it in “social organisations.
There are also tons of other articles one can find. These Larouche zombies are usually good for a few laughs, but the cult has caused pain, abuse, monetary losses and now has the death of a several people in its portfolio of lunacy
Really, it all boils down to chance. Someone should figure out:
-How often terror-hobbyists are actually into violent games.
-How often gamers become terrorists as opposed to relatively non-violent people.
-How often these terrorists have other factors that vastly outweigh game choice.
-How often taking away violent games from pre-terrorists curbs their appetite to ruin everyone’s life and die.
and
-How often Americans let government take away their trivial freedoms.
I dont claim to be a pych expert but I can realize that games and distractions as a whole can VENT anger and frustration. I think that keeping the YOUTH contained until their mental maturity and INTELLIGENCE, reaches their ability to control their own DESTRUCTIVE IMPULSES, does the world a great service. I am a player and wonder what ballances me more, my personal beliefs in GOD or my ability to use a computer for social development and anger managment. It is my understanding that the youth could be doing far more destructive things. I have learned to see “BOTH SIDES” of the world through the eyes of SCI-FI. I learned, nothing is as it seems. Aliens can be friend and foe. Hasty and rash decisions have dire consequences. Openess leads to discussion and knowledge. Cults tend to control knowledge and people therefore stiffling information. Anything that is not OPEN for discussion is probably very BAD for everyone. Warmongers should sit down with every WAR movie and personalize themselves in the lowest positions. Being forced to make bad things happen on behalf of someone else. EVIL is about personal greed,control, and fear. A tiny bit of it makes us productive and aware. Too much makes us EVIL. Being able to play violent games and press “RESET” after your friends have died is very comforting. To watch War movies and see how things can and do get without the “RESET” switch is a very powerfull lesson.
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