Dec. 26—The following is an edited transcript of the Dec. 22, 2024 interview with Diane Sare, the president of The LaRouche Organization and a longtime associate of the LaRouche movement. The interview was conducted by EIR’s Kynan Thistlethwaite. Subheads have been added. The video is available here.
Kynan Thistlethwaite: I’m Kynan Thistlethwaite, and I’m joined by my guest, Diane Sare, who is the new president of The LaRouche Organization. She, of course, was an independent U.S. Senate candidate here in New York State; she ran against incumbent U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand this year, and in 2022 she ran against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
As we’re doing this interview, we’re about four weeks away from the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. You said in a recent statement that this is the most dangerous time in history, and the “Collective Biden” administration is now seeking to blow up every possibility for Trump to make peace. We’ve seen that with the recent use of the ATACMS missiles, the Storm Shadows, the recent assassination of Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov. Perhaps you can begin by just elaborating on the danger of the strategic crisis, and some of the initiatives that The LaRouche Organization and others have taken recently.
Diane Sare: Sure. First of all, let me just say that what people have to recognize is that we’re in the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic system. That is, the system that has been dominant since the end of World War II, and which was very much perverted after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when Truman took over the United States. That geopolitical ordering of the world is at its end. It really is a kind of Schilleresque moment, as in the Rütli Oath—“There is a limit to a tyrant’s power.”
The people of the Global South have rejected colonialism. I feel very privileged to be in the position I am as an American citizen, and having worked with Lyndon LaRouche for 32 years, starting 37 or 38 years ago. Knowing his fight to establish a new just economic order, and I think his work— He and his wife Helga met with dozens of heads of state and prominent officials in major nations like China, Russia, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, etc. What we are seeing is an entirely new system that is coming into being; the old system simply cannot be maintained.
Twilight of the Gods
Unfortunately, the attitude of the owners of that system is very much like the attitude of Zeus, which was depicted in Wagner’s famous opera, Götterdӓmmerung—Twilight of the Gods. Zeus’ approach was, “If I can’t rule the world, I’m going to destroy it. I don’t care if I destroy virtually everything.” That’s what you have coming from this—whatever you want to call it; you can’t really call it a Biden administration. It’s clear that Joe Biden was senile from the time before he became President in 2021. But whatever it is, it’s the façade of a British colonial takeover of the United States, which has been in process since at least the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. They are determined that incoming-President Donald Trump is not going to get off their trajectory to destroy the world.
They also actually are insane enough to believe that there is such a thing as winning a nuclear war. So, that does put us in an extremely precarious position, because these people are disassociated from reality. It’s as if they’ve declared that gravity doesn’t exist, and they’re going to lead the people of the world into a march off of the roof of a 110-story building—and it’s not going to work out very well.
Thistlethwaite: I want to ask about this new role you have now with The LaRouche Organization (TLO), just coming off your independent Senate campaigns. Of course, as of right now, we’ve taken the initiative of going to the U.S. Congress and lobbying for H.R. 10218, which is a bill to stop sending the ATACMS missiles to Ukraine to be used against Russia. But since you’re the president of TLO now, how do you actually envision this role, and what are your long-term plans for the expansion of the organization?
Sare: Well, I think the most important thing is to allow Americans to recognize that they had a great hero in Lyndon LaRouche. They have a brilliant American leader to be proud of; someone who was a universal genius. If they bother to study his work and his writings, there’s no problem we face today which he didn’t already forecast and outline a solution to.
Now, things are very far gone; worse than probably I could have imagined. But, nonetheless, human beings are very versatile; human beings are capable of changing on a dime what they think—their behavior, their policy. So, the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche are urgent. That’s why one of the things we’ve already started is a weekly showing of some of the video product featuring Lyndon LaRouche. This morning, we showed Firewall: In Defense of the Nation State; every Sunday at 10 a.m. Eastern we will be showing more video footage of Lyndon LaRouche.
The Political Targeting of Lyndon LaRouche
I just did a symposium this past Friday with Dennis Small, who was one of LaRouche’s co-defendants—and who spent, I believe, three years in prison himself—going through the LaRouche case. A very cursory look, because I believe when you begin looking into what they did to LaRouche, you realize that, as Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, said, it was the longest running, broadest systemic witch hunt against an individual and an association ever—and I mean including Donald Trump. We had literally dozens of people who were arrested, who went to jail; most of our publications were shut down; LaRouche’s home was surrounded by 400 FBI agents, U.S. Marshalls, armored personnel carriers, with the intent to assassinate him. This has not been done on this scale to anyone before or since. What they did to try and prevent Donald Trump from becoming President was close, but Trump had the position of having been a former President and also being a billionaire—neither of which LaRouche was—and he used them to fight back.
I’m not trying to take anything away from what Trump did; the kind of fight that he waged was frankly quite heroic. It inspires Americans, and it gives people a way to say that we can stand up against this incredible injustice. So, I think that the name LaRouche has to become a household word, and he needs to become someone in the American world like J.S. Bach is to the musical world; that people know that this was a Promethean giant who Americans should be proud of and look to in terms of understanding what the proper role of the United States should be in the world.
The LaRouche Organization is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization, and can operate a bit internationally, but it’s primarily an American organization. My idea is to make it a force for policy; that we should have a regular presence in Washington, D.C.; we should be regularly visiting the offices of Congressmen; we should establish chapters in every single state. We will be producing a newspaper at least on a monthly basis to start. Everybody who gets a membership also gets LaRouche’s daily and weekly intelligence service. My idea is growth, expansion, and education of the American people on the highest level of principle and a fight for policy.
Thistlethwaite: I did watch that symposium this Friday, and I have to say, it was incredibly informative just in terms of the effect LaRouche’s ideas had on the world. As you mentioned, we’re seeing a fundamental shift taking place right now in the world: from 500 years of colonialism imposed on the nations of the Global South, to those nations recognizing their own sovereignty and making policies on behalf of their own development. Of course, this was a key highlight of the recent Schiller Institute conference, “In the Spirit of Beethoven and Schiller: All Men, Become Brethren!” where we heard from such representatives as the former Foreign Minister of South Africa, Naledi Pandor, who was crucial in bringing the case on the genocide taking place in Gaza to the scrutiny of the international community.
So, you mentioned that you worked with LaRouche for nearly 40 years. Can you tell us how his ideas on all sorts of things—economy, culture, science, music—are actually shaping the world today?
2,500 Years of Universal History
Sare: Well, that’s a funny question. You know, the Russian economist Sergei Glazyev, who is the lead advisor of the Eurasian Economic Union, sent a message in September 2022 for the 100th anniversary of LaRouche’s birth where he credited LaRouche for contributing many of the ideas that have allowed the Global South to participate in the BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative, and I think that’s very true. I would say on a personal level, that what you got from him was actually your own identity. He was really the epitome of what Schiller identified in the idea of universal history. Lyn, as we called him, used to say, “Well, I’m 2,500 years old.” I thought, that’s really wild; what do you mean 2,500 years old? But he was very conscious of the relationship, the thread between the work of Eratosthenes in 232 B.C., measuring the circumference of the Earth, through Solon of Athens, and Plato and Socrates, and the Italian Renaissance, and the work of Leibniz—who is someone LaRouche studied and had really mastered by the time he was about 14 years old; Leibniz, along with Nicholas of Cusa, being one of the founders of modern science.
Leibniz was totally fascinated with Asia, with China, with Russia. In fact, there was a terrible kind of racism, where Europe was sending these missionaries to go and civilize the barbarians in China. And Leibniz, after meeting with missionaries when they returned and learning something about Chinese culture and Confucius, said that he thought perhaps the Chinese should send some Confucian missionaries to civilize Europe, but also recognized that there was a sort of universal harmony. Confucius had this idea of do unto others as you would have done unto you; don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself. That is called the Golden Rule in the West, but that was in Confucius’ teachings.
LaRouche was very much shaped by his work on Leibniz from an early age. And because he did it when he was so young, he built on it, and he had the confidence to challenge many of his teachers and professors. He had a very strong sense of justice, and a strong sense that every single human being on the planet had the right to develop their God-given talents and make a contribution to mankind as a whole. So, I think that that was his legacy. It wasn’t his legacy as in “Oh, this is my opinion, and your opinion is just as good as mine.” No, he said, you can measure empirically the success of your economy; you can measure empirically the effect of human creativity on society. You may not be able to see creativity; you may not be able to smell a discovery, when that famous light bulb goes off, and someone suddenly gains a flash of insight on a thorny paradox they’ve been working on. But you can figure out how to replicate it, and you can create conditions where the society as a whole can benefit from it. So, in that regard, LaRouche really made a great contribution to the science of human economy—physical economy—by saying that this question of genius and creativity in that regard is not only intelligible, but capable of being assimilated to advance society as a whole.
Thistlethwaite: It’s interesting talking about LaRouche as this kind of global figure, but he was also someone who was an American who uniquely embodied the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, as our Founding Fathers had actually done. I want to compare that to the statement by Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan to the Center of Strategic and International Studies, on this question of actually winning a nuclear exchange with Russia. I’ll just quote it; we’ve quoted it many times on separate programs: “If we have to have an exchange, then we want to do it on terms that are most acceptable to the United States.” So, it’s “terms that are most acceptable to the United States” that puts us in a condition to continue to lead the world. So, we’re largely viewed as the world leader.
You made a point in a recent statement that “Nowhere in the words of Washington, Franklin, or John Quincy Adams do you see it written that the U.S. is the ‘leader of the free world.’” Or, as Madeleine Albright termed it at one point, “we’re the indispensable nation.” Of course, LaRouche, as you noted, had a different conception of American foreign policy, which was rooted in John Quincy Adams’ notion of a community of sovereign nation-states. I guess my question would be, how do we actually revive that anti-imperialist notion that’s rooted in the nation’s founding?
Fear & Anger over the Economy and War
Sare: I think Americans right now are very stressed out and very fearful and very angry, especially around Christmas, which has been turned into a commercial lollapalooza, and everybody is supposed to be buying things. And people are hurting, and the cost of everything is through the roof. They also are worried about the war danger, and they’re worried about their own security. Apparently, in only 14 states now can someone making the average income actually afford to buy a house. So, there’s enormous fear. And then to have someone like Buchanan—I mean, I don’t know what’s wrong with the guy; he clearly has no grasp on reality. He said, yeah, we all say nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought, but if we had one, well, we’d want to win, right? He clearly has no clue about what a nuclear war even means.
I don’t know how you get into that position, being so clueless, but maybe that’s a prerequisite under this administration. We saw, you remember, in New York, two years ago, the City of New York put out a public service announcement about how to survive a nuclear war. We see this woman standing in front of a brownstone in Harlem saying “Don’t ask me how it happened, but the ‘big one’ has happened. We’ve been hit by a nuclear bomb.” You wonder, “How can anyone stand outside their house, if a nuclear bomb”—I mean, she would have just been a shadow on the sidewalk; that would have been it. She says, “If you happen to be outside when the blast occurred,” as if you would still be there at all—or maybe if you are a few miles away, you would be there, but your skin would all be hanging off or something—“go inside, take off your outer garments and wash them.” Whom do they think they’re fooling? Most people don’t believe this, but some of them do.
So, this idea that a nuclear war is winnable, that it can be won: I’ve heard some circles saying, “Well, yeah, there will be a nuclear winter, but it won’t be for ten years; it’s only going to be a couple months. And 30% of the population will survive.” What kind of person is prepared to let 70% of the world’s population die? What kind of sickness is that?
So, we have a ruling class that is completely out of reality, and they’re being trounced; they’re being defeated. Governments are falling: In Europe, we saw that with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz with a no-confidence vote; we saw that in France. In the U.S., that’s really what that was with the defeat of Kamala Harris and Biden. The question is, how do we guarantee that what comes after will be better? That’s where LaRouche’s work and writings come in, and that’s where everyone watching this—you and your activity—American citizens have more power than almost anyone on the planet. We just aren’t using it. The American people have to use that power to insist that our nation stops carrying out policies which are completely destructive of the future.
Thistlethwaite: Going back to that public service announcement in New York, it reminds you of some of the stories from people who lived in the 1960s about these alerts that people were issued. If there is a nuclear attack, you go under your table in your school or something. But this is just far more ridiculous.
LaRouche Calls for a 5,000-Person Chorus
I want to touch on your expertise in culture and music. You of course founded the Schiller Institute New York City Chorus, and I think you have directed that chorus for nearly 10 years. If I’m remembering this right, LaRouche, who had just called for the formation of a “Manhattan Project” by our organizers around New York, had said that the organization needed to build a 10,000-person chorus in New York City. I think that’s the number he gave, right?
Sare: What I remember is 5,000, but who’s counting. That’s what he said. That was pretty wild, and I had no idea what he was really talking about, although when the chorus—you know, we’re now recovering from the COVID lockdown period, etc.—but there was a point just before that, that whenever we would hold a concert, probably two-thirds of the audience had been in the chorus at one point or another. So, if he meant it in terms of a few thousand people having participated, we’re probably at 2-3,000 now, but I actually think that’s a cop-out. He probably intended for us to have 5,000 people singing together simultaneously.
That did happen, you know, in 1869 I think it was. Right after General Grant was elected President, they had a jubilee—and LaRouche must have been aware of this; I was not. But some people from the Union Army—particularly P.S. Gilmore, who was one of the band directors for the Union Army, and I suspect General Grant—decided they had to unify the country, and they were going to do it through music. They were going to hold a peace jubilee; six days of Classical music at a giant—built for the occasion—stadium in Massachusetts. It was the largest structure built in the United States at that time. It held, I think, 40,000 people. They had a chorus of 10,000 voices; an orchestra of 1,000. They had a bass drum that was 25 feet in diameter. They got some guy at the New England Conservatory of Music—which is where I happen to have gone to school—to send out letters. I think they did it through the Fire Departments, with books of repertoire. They wanted to create choruses in every single city and town across the United States. It included a cover letter of how many sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses you needed; that you had to find an accompanist, you had to find a librarian. You need people who have some proficiency in reading music. And then, we’re all going to come together and sing in this amazing jubilee. They did another one also later, after the end of World War I.
What an amazing thing! In fact, it was the case throughout I think most of the United States—I know certainly in New York and New Jersey—most major industrial corporations actually had a chorus as well. Or, you can think of the paintings by Norman Rockwell, the barbershop, which is closed for the day; it’s after five. You look through and you see in the back room, they’re sitting there with violins; they have a string quartet. Or, the ads of the Curtis-Wright factory which made airplanes for World War II: In the ad, they have a family gathered around the mother playing the piano, and everybody is singing. I think this was just a very important part of the average person’s life. Music is language; it should be everybody’s first or second language after English if you’re an American. We have many immigrants, so maybe people speak Spanish, Italian, Russian, some other language, English, and music. Everybody should be proficient to a basic degree in music. It’s a whole other dimension of access to your mind and language.
Classical Culture and the Peace Movement
Thistlethwaite: I just mentioned that, because we just had an extraordinary event on October 26 with multiple people from the military side that we’ve been working with—Scott Ritter, Col. (ret.) Larry Wilkerson, Dennis Fritz, and others—who have been voices for peace in the recent period. But it was quite striking, because a large component of the event was, of course, the music. The choral performances, the African-American spirituals, the performance of Dvorak’s American String Quartet; there were even some international performances. You got to see at that event why this organization stresses that there needs to be a cultural component to the peace movement, and that it has to be rooted in Classical culture.
I know Professor Norman Finkelstein at one of our campaign events had actually talked about reviving singing in the peace movement. So, I don’t know if you have any extra comments on that aside from what you already said.
Sare: Well, singing brings people together; it drives out fear, and it allows you to access a part of yourself which is not merely in the physical domain. That’s why I think it helps you to transcend whatever fear you have about what might be done to your physical body—whether it’s being beaten, fire-hosed, getting arrested—and to place your identity in something which is eternal. It’s terribly important. And I think it’s a terrible loss. What he pointed out is from the Black Lives Matter demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, until the anti-genocide rallies, there is no singing. He’s working on it, and I know Jewish Voice for Peace has been doing a lot of singing. I concur, it’s something extremely important.
Thistlethwaite: We’re coming up on the end here. I just have one more question for you, and of course you can throw in whatever final thoughts you have. Since you were an independent Senate candidate, I would just ask you what your advice would be to people who are running now, or seeking to run for office in the United States? We saw uniquely the independent candidacies of people like Dennis Kucinich, Ben Wesley in Connecticut. What would be your advice to people?
Sare: What Lyndon LaRouche said to us all the time was, don’t chase votes. The elections are completely rigged at this moment. There’s no point in sugar coating it. Unless you’re a billionaire, or going to suck up to the crooks running the show, or get in bed with the British imperial system Zionist lobby, chances are, they’re not going to allow you to get elected. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run for office; you should run for office because your voice is needed. And if you start from the standpoint that the process at the moment—and I’m not saying it should be left that way; in fact, I’m in a lawsuit myself right now about election fraud, and I hope they’re going to do something about it. But I’m saying, the point is not to try and win votes; the point is to be a voice of leadership to tell the truth. We don’t have enough of those voices. If you conduct yourself as the incumbent Congressman, or, in my case, U.S. Senator should have conducted herself, then you provide a counter pole of leadership. And you begin to create a standard so that the American people can be perhaps a bit better at making judgments about whom they would like to lead them.
