In the midst of the tumultuous events of this past week—some hopeful, as with the hundreds of worldwide student assemblies convened to challenge the Anglosphere’s genocide in Gaza; others, catastrophic, as were the recent disastrous legislative actions to finance war, and to suppress freedom of thought, passed into law by the United States Congress—it is important for the LaRouche Organization to call attention to that which defines the higher battle under way for the soul of what was, only a short time ago, known and defended as Western Civilization, and the sovereign nation state. The physical economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, in his 2003 study, “Shakespeare as a Scholar: U.S. Politics as Tragedy,” begins:
“The frequent attempt of academics, and others, to deprecate the authority of Shakespeare’s scholarship, must confront itself with such little details, as in Julius Caesar, for example, as the character Casca’s famously ironical reference to his auditing of a referenced address by the historical Cicero: ‘It was Greek to me.’ In actual history, the manner and circumstances of the death of Cicero, is a crucial turning-point in the history of Rome, as such history may be traced from that point until Rome’s ultimately inevitable doom. How many relevant academics who claim to be authorities, actually understand this history as well as Shakespeare did; or, instead, follow Coleridge, Bradley, or the like, on such matters? The evidence is, that a rare few of today’s academics or political candidates, are qualified in the practice of history as a science, to the degree Shakespeare was.”
On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, 11 people were shot, 4 fatally, in protests against the Vietnam War. Three days ago, May 1, Josh Paul, former State Department Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs who resigned in October in protest against the Biden Administration’s support for the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza, warned that “This generation of youth have spent their entire lives in fear of having guns pointed at them in schools; what a disgrace for America that it is now their own schools that are pointing the guns at them.” How can we avoid tragedy—what might seem, at the moment, to be the inevitable recurrence of precisely such incidents on campuses, either somewhere in the United States or in some other nation? The answer is, we must think like Shakespeare: Elevate this present moment of unfolding tragedy by elevating the subject of the protests, to be what it actually is: the dignity of humanity itself.
We must simultaneously outflank the attempt to deflect focus from the mass graves in Gaza, from the impending attack on Rafah, and from the British India-style imposed famine already slowly killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, with food aid convoys being denied access. We must understand the human terrain, as the intelligence agencies say. The interface, through “counter-terror training programs,” of American police departments with the Israel Defense Forces, established after September 11, 2001, may explain some of the excessive law enforcement response, which is modeled on the IDF response to Palestinians in Gaza; in fact, some of that police training was apparently conducted in the occupied territories of Palestine. Then, there is the “counterinsurgency” deployment of police agents for continuous spying on students, as at Columbia University, as well as organizing of pro-Zionist, non-uniformed “paramilitary” units, as at UCLA. The reason for the attack on the students is not merely to suppress their message about the mass graves in Gaza, or their demands for a ceasefire, etc. The reason is to crush the idea of optimism—that there can, and must be a solution that does not require killing people.
“Since mankind is the only creative species known so far in the universe, and given the fact that human creativity is the only source of wealth through the potentially limitless discovery of new universal principles, one of the main aims of the new International Security and Development Architecture must be providing access to universal education for every child and adult person living. The true nature of man is to become a beautiful soul, as Friedrich Schiller discusses this, and the only person who can fulfill that condition is the genius,” says the Fourth Principle of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles of A New International Security and Development Architecture.” Posing the problem of what is to be done, through the LaRouche Oasis Plan, and how to implement such plans, not only in the case of Gaza, but in the case of Sudan, or Ukraine, or the South Bronx, that is, for the whole world, is now the subject of true education, potentially on every campus and in every school in the world. Higher education based on the higher principle, that “Alle Menschen Werden Brüder”—"All men shall be brothers”—is the pathway to genius, which indeed, can be taught, and reproduced, yielding tragedy to hope.
