Wake Up to the Danger of the `New Violence'

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Here is Lyndon LaRouche's address to the New York City founding meeting of the Commission Against the New Violence, on May 20. Subheads have been added:

Let me begin by making a few observations on the question of what we may call the specificity of "New Violence." Now, by "New Violence," we mean, by first approximation, "Nintendo killers" in the military. We mean the replacement of qualified police officers by "Nintendo cops." We mean "Nintendo kids" in the schools, from the ages of 6-16. This is where the core of the New Violence is located. It is not in the bullet, it is not in the axe, it is not in the hammer, it is not in the fist. The violence is not located in the physical act performed upon the victim. The New Violence is located in the peculiarly perverted minds of the perpetrators. The perpetrators are typically military professionals, trained by the official military, or trained by programs designed originally for the military. These are Nintendo-style brainwashing techniques. This means Nintendo cops, police officers who are not police officers any more. They're merely Nintendo-cop killers. They have no sense of a human relationship and their act, on the one hand, and the effect on the victim, on the other hand.

These are children who play Nintendo and Nintendo-style games, such as Pokémon, who are between the ages of 3 to 7-8--are being brainwashed into becoming rage-controlled killers, who will kill as an adult, in an adult manner, but with a childish mind which has no comprehension of the act which they're perpetrating. It's something which they are just compelled to do. Littleton is a paradigm of this problem.

The difference between the New Violence and the old, lies not in the victim, or what the victim suffers; it lies in the mind of the Nintendo-conditioned perpetrator. The controlling motivation lies in a computer program, not in the human behavior of the mind. This kind of motivation is peculiar to a society which is brainwashed into believing in what is called an "Information Society," as opposed to the pre-, so-called, Information Society. This causes a lot of controversy, because, when you get to the point of pointing out where Columbine began, pointing out where--occasions in New York and elsewhere, of Nintendo cops putting 41 bullets into a man who had no reason to be a suspect, before finding out who the man was....

The problem is, these acts have occurred; when you trace them back to the cause, to the Nintendo-style training programs, or the conditioning programs broadcast over the television networks, distributed as games by game companies, game-selling companies--are used to train cops, are used to brainwash the military the way the cops are brainwashed--you then have to say, "What's wrong with society?" This is the result of the Information Society.

It's the `Information Society' That's Killing

Now, the Information Society is being praised from the President on down, especially the President in charge of Vice, Al Gore, as being a good. That is, the "New Economy." Everything will be better in the Information Society. But, it's the Information Society that's killing! And when you attack that as the source of the problem, you're running into some opposition, and people don't want to hear about it, and say, "No! It's the guns! Take the guns away!" It's not the guns. It's what's being done to the mind. I have not seen a six-year-old child go into a store to buy a weapon--whether the weapon is safety locked, or not. That is not where the violence comes from--from six-year-old kids going into gun stores to buy guns. It comes from other sources.

The characteristic of this also means that we're dealing with a society which is becoming dehumanized, dehumanized in a way which was not peculiar to our society in any previous time. This is a process which has developed, essentially, over the past 30-35 years, which has become an acute problem in the past 10-15 years. This is a new condition. But, it means that when people are so locked into the Internet, and the programmed games, Nintendo-style games, and so forth, that their relations to other people are no longer human relations, but are dehumanized, digital relations controlled by a game. In other words, the motive of the individual ceases to be the effect of their relationship to another human being on a human level, but instead, their motivation becomes their ability to perform according to a program which is built into a digital computing system.

The Insanity of the `New Economy'

Now, for example, we had on Friday [May 19], we had one of the biggest collapses of the market, financial market, especially the Internet market, the Nasdaq, that we've had to date. We are seeing the inevitable doom of the existing financial system in progress. We are being told, "No, this financial system is not going to collapse, because it's a wonderful, good New Economy system which is going to carry us to prosperity forever." But then you go around the country--not only in the state of Mississippi--where you find people saying the economy is booming. Everybody's employed, they say. Well, how about the tax-revenue base; where is the municipal income for the firemen, for the police, for the schools, for the health care, for the other things that the community, the local community, needs, which the state used to support? It's not there any more! Why not? Because with working two or three jobs, instead of one, or one-plus jobs, as they used to work, they're now working two to three. And the real purchasing power they're getting from two to three jobs per person is less, far less, than the purchasing power they were getting when they were working one to one-and-a-half jobs per person.

This is not only true in Mississippi, it's true throughout the country. Local communities' tax-revenue base is collapsing. This is not a prosperous economy. Nor is it a secure one. It's one which is doomed. But the ideology here is: This is the New Economy, the New Society; the Internet will bring prosperity.

We have in the school system--this is not just a matter of money. The report is that half the pupils reaching the eighth grade are illiterate. Now, this is not just because of cutting the money to school systems. This is because of an increase of the ratio of bad teachers. And the bad teachers, who are producing this illiteracy, are teachers who are responding to the new ideology that corresponds to the New Economy.

You have, for example, in the nation as a whole, you have hysteria. I'm getting reports from various parts of Europe--from high levels from various parts of Europe, and from elsewhere, from Mexico, from parts of South America, from Africa--people of fair importance, hearing we're from the United States, say, "Don't go back there again. They're insane!" They're talking about the White House, they're talking about the Congress, they're talking about influentials in the press. They're saying the United States is the most insane nation on this planet. "They refuse to discuss anything until after the November elections."

And what's the insanity centered on? It's centered on the Greenspan-Summers phenomenon. You have Larry Summers, the Secretary of the Treasury, and Alan Greenspan--they are building up the biggest hyperinflationary financial bubble in history as a way of trying to prevent, or postpone the greatest financial collapse in history. And there's no solution to that problem. The system is collapsing now. It probably will not make it to the August conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. It will not make it till November, in any case. The system is doomed.

But the whole society is characterized by hysteria. Hysteria is based on confidence in the Information Society, the so-called New Economy. The hysterical belief: "You can not take this away from us. We depend upon it. It's the only possible future. Don't try to go back to the old kind of economy. It doesn't work. It's dead. It's dead. It's dead. The New Economy is here, and we've got to defend it to the last drop!"

Now the New Economy mentality is the same kind of thing as we're seeing in the Nintendo-killers in the military; we're seeing it the replacement of qualified policemen by quick-trained Nintento-killer cops. We're seeing it in Nintendo-killer children, our own children, in increasing numbers. Children from the ages of 6 to 16. We had a case recently of a victim of Pokémon--which is a killer program; if your child is watching Pokémon as an addict, look out! He may kill you, or he may kill himself.

This child, four years old, tried to fly out a window, and he flew to his death, because he believed he could fly, because he was so conditioned by Pokémon that he, as one of the players of Pokémon, believed he had the ability to fly. He flew: He flew to his death. Other children kill other children under the influence of Pokémon--specifically Pokémon. The same kind of games are being pushed in schools, the same methods; the same ideas are being pushed in the schools. So, our children are being destroyed under our eyes. And often, parents who want to keep peace in the family, will encourage their children to play these games, because the parents either have their own entertainment agenda, and they don't want to waste that on spending time with their children, or something of that sort.

A Symptom of a Sick Society

So, the New Violence: It's very specific in the sense it's a part of the Information Society lunacy which has taken over the top level of the White House, as Larry Summers typifies that, and many others--is also a symptom of a sick society. The New Violence is separate, it's distinct, it's specific. But society would not tolerate, would not take the Nintendo games to its heart, unless the society were morally sick, and therefore, we have to address the problem caused by the New Violence as the Nintendo mode of conditioning, of Information Society in general, but we have to recognize it's a symptom of a moral collapse of society. And we have to recognize that the reason we're in this mess, is because we've been doing something wrong. We've been going along to get along, when something was wrong. And that something that was wrong is about to destroy us all.

Killing the New Violence will not solve all our problems. But paying attention to the immediate threat caused by the New Violence, and paying attention to that which caused so many of us to become suckers for tolerating the New Violence, should be treated as a warning sign to us: Wake up! We're doing wrong. We'd better change it, while we still can.

Thank you.