Lyndon LaRouche: Reverse the Tsarnaev Death Sentence Before It Becomes a Hitler Phenomenon

Speaking on Saturday, May 16, and again on Sunday, May 17, Lyndon LaRouche said that higher courts should prevent the death sentence imposed in Boston on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from being carried out and the population of Boston and Massachusetts will be a crucial factor in achieving that result.

LaRouche said: We don’t want human executions. In the Boston case you have a minor who committed a crime. He could have been sentenced to life in prison instead of being sentenced to death.

The people of the U.S. are not inclined to lynch people. Most people in the U.S. will not want that to happen. Prison for life, yes. But the death penalty for a minor, no. LaRouche identified the opposition in Boston and Massachusetts to the decision to sentence Tsarnaev to death as a crucial factor, which reflects values going all the way back to the founding of New England. A New York Times article, for example, quotes a former Bostonian, who said the death sentence violated the sense of “exceptionalism that has pervaded Boston since 1630, when the Puritan John Winthrop said this spot in the New World would be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.” The Boston Globe reports that only 15% of Bostonians agree with the death sentence handed down to Tsarnaev and only 19% of the residents of Massachusetts.

LaRouche said, as a result of the fact that the population of Massachusetts does not like the death penalty, this could create an uproar, and produce a revolt. And this revolt has broader implications.

LaRouche pointed to the recent Baltimore riots. Baltimore formerly had a successful economy with shipyards and a steel mill at Sparrows Point. But as a result of the shift in the U.S. economy from production to gambling and drugs, the Baltimore economy has collapsed. Baltimore was turned into a death zone.

Now take the situation in California. In the past, officials in California would never have said, cut the water supply and let the population die, as the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, has now effectively done. That would not have been acceptable. People would have said, instead: Something must be done about it.

Ask yourself how many people have died in this country and around the world as a result of the genocidal austerity policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the speculative policies of Wall Street, especially once Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Glass Steagall Act was repealed in the late 1990s. And yet how many bankers have even gone to jail, let alone been executed?

How many migrants have died in the Mediterranean Sea fleeing from the terrorists unleashed in Northern Africa and the Middle East as a result of the illegal wars launched by successive U.S. Presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

How many people have been prosecuted and gone to prison for torture, drone assassinations, and spying on Americans in violation of the U.S. Constitution, let alone been executed?

While these crimes go unpunished and, at best, result in fines which are written off as business expenses by the criminal banks, it is not just Tsarnaev who is being given a death sentence.

As LaRouche stressed today we are facing a situation like the European Dark Ages where mass death reigned. People were just grabbed up and fried! And burned to death. Tortured and then burned to death. And this was happening all throughout parts of Europe. And it persisted for a long period of time.

And we are looking at something like that happening here, now. “Why? Because you’re looking at people saying, ‘Well, look, buddy – we got too many people; you know that, don’t you? We’re overpopulated, we can’t support this population.”

As LaRouche stated: “There’s no reason to kill people. The point is if you’ve got somebody who’s guilty and they’re convicted, and kept under restraint, that’s as far as you want to go.”

LaRouche stressed that once the killing starts, it is a Hitler phenomenon. The danger is that someone will try to push through the execution and use it to get a national push to spread this action against the population as a whole.

Look, for example, at what is being done to the Greek population. If the Greeks want to leave the Eurozone, they should do so. They are not being offered an alternative that is tolerable. They are being told by the banks that money is more important than human life.

Therefore, the fire must be put out before it burns the house down. This death sentence must be reversed!