“Immortal Regiment” Marches to Honor Those Who Fought, and Fight, Against Fascism

Tens of millions of people in hundreds of cities across the planet are marching this May 7-9, carrying placards with pictures of their fallen relatives from World War II, to honor those who gave their lives to defeat fascism. These so-called “Immortal Regiment” activities, which began in 2012 in the Russian city of Tomsk, had some 12 million participants in Russia last year, including President Vladimir Putin carrying a picture of his father. The “Immortal Regiment” had its first American participation in 2015 in New York City, and it is now spreading rapidly around the world.

Participants of the NYC “Immortal Regiment” march gather in Battery Park holding photographs of relatives from the war. May 7, 2016

This year’s marches in the U.S. include the prominent participation of the LaRouche movement, led by LaRouche’s flagship Manhattan Project in New York City. A Tass wire reported that, on May 7, more than 500 people marched along the Hudson River waterfront from Battery Park to the memorial for the victims of World War II, and quoted extensively from three LaRouche organizers, Alfred Korby (a 91-year-old WWII veteran), Roger Ham, and Michelle Fuchs. “We don’t need any more wars, and for that we must cooperate to develop space and new lands, and make scientific discoveries,” Tass quotes Korby stating. “Americans should unite with Russians, both physically and spiritually, in ideas, and only then will there be no more wars.”

LaRouche organizers also participated prominently in marches in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Houston and Seattle. LaRouche PAC Policy Committee member Dave Christie reported, on a May 8 national call with LaRouche movement organizers, on the participation of a team of LaRouche organizers in the Seattle march, in which he was asked to address the crowd, telling them:

“I had the pleasure and great opportunity to work with Lyndon LaRouche, who was a veteran of the war, and that he continued the mission of FDR in freeing the world from colonialism, and that’s what was intended after the war. But because of Churchill bringing down the iron curtain and pitting our nations against each other, we’ve found ourselves at the throats of our allies, Russia and China. This continues now, because the BRICS represents a consolidation of that end of empire. And we now face a new great war, and as LaRouche has warned, that we are in the middle of it.”

Christie also reported: “We carried different portraits of veterans, including of LaRouche, and also of [the great Russian scientist and friend of LaRouche] Pobisk Kuznetsov. We thought we should honor him as well as a veteran.”

Lyndon LaRouche commented that this process must now echo across the entire country, and achieve a coherent, unified approach to stopping today’s drive for fascism and war by the British Empire and their pawn Obama. “We must use this as the basis for more action,” he stated.

The NYC ‘Immortal Regiment’ march gather at the “East Coast Memorial” in Battery Park . May 7, 2016

Helga Zepp-LaRouche elaborated on how to stop the growing drive for fascism today.

“You have this danger of a new fascism,” she said, “and it is very much associated with an image of Man.” Fascism’s image of man is racist; it is associated with the idea that “blood and soil” define national identity; and it is based on geopolitics. “It’s associated with evoking a certain kind of emotion, like rage. People are becoming desperate about their own perspective for their own life. You have people who appeal to the sense of insecurity, frustration and especially rage, and that is what is turning potentially fascist populations into fascist populations.” Political phenomena like Alternative for Germany and Donald Trump in the U.S. are “just pitching to the rage in the population against the Establishment,” Zepp-LaRouche stated.

“That leaves you with a very difficult situation, and it makes it all the more important that we immediately, in the organizing, bring in the highest level conception of the image of Man, as an antidote. The organizing has to reproduce–in an instant, if possible–the effect of the Palmyra concert. In other words, snatch people out of the lower areas where they normally think, and somehow catapult them to the highest level of thinking, and the image of Man associated with the humanist idea of Man.”