by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Hal Quesnel

Age: 43

Occupation: Organizer/consultant to the Lyndon LaRouche movement.

Bio: This erudite Verdun resident first got involved with the LaRouche movement 21 years ago after stumbling upon a kiosk the group had set up downtown. Politically naïve and apathetic, young Hal soon attended a four-hour meeting the movement had organized at the Holiday Inn on Sherbrooke at Aylmer and found himself “blown away” by what he learned there. Today he works full-time pushing the LaRouche agenda, estimating he devotes anywhere between 60 and 70 hours a week to the cause.

What is a Lyndon LaRouche? A perennial candidate for the presidency of the U.S. of A., having run eight times so far—once even while in prison for mail fraud. He’s been called everything from a commie to a fascist to a racist to a cult leader to a paranoid conspiracy theorist to a brilliant political mind. Hal says the LaRouche crowd see themselves as “classical humanists,” however the hey you choose to interpret that handle. “And he’s the world’s leading economist. All of his forecasts since 1962 have come true.”

A few LaRouche economic forecasts: “In 1983, he predicted the Soviet empire would crumble within the next five years, in May 1987 he predicted the stock market was going to crash that October, and, let’s see… okay, in July 1997, he said the Asian markets were going to crash that fall.”

Something LaRouche is consistently accused of: Anti-Semitism.

Has Hal ever firebombed a synagogue? “That’s a ridiculous question.”

Has he ever masturbated while thinking about firebombing a synagogue? “Of course not.”

A few quotes from LaRouche which might lead certain sensitive types to believe the movement might be vaguely anti-Semitic: Among his many observations regarding, ahem, international Jewry: that there is “a kernel of truth” to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an outrageous 1897 forgery none too flattering to the chosen people, that “the Nazis only killed about a million-and-a-half Jews,” and that Zionism is “the state of selective psychosis through which London manipulates most of the international Jewry.”

What Hal has to say about that: “This sort of information is put out by the various ‘dirty tricks’ departments of the establishment and the idea is to poison the wealth of popular opinion. You know, LaRouche will say something like, ‘The Holocaust didn’t happen the way it was portrayed in [some particular] movie. And they’ll just quote him as saying something like, ‘The Holocaust never happened.’ It’s deliberate misrepresentation. But look at our publications; half our journalists are Jewish. Seriously, put this in your article: I challenge anyone claiming LaRouche is anti-Semitic to debate me in public. Anybody, anytime!”

Who “the establishment” is: “In the U.S., it’s powerful families like the Rockefellers and Morgans, while here in Canada it’s Johnny-come-lately’s like the Bronfmans.”

Childhood ambition: To become a marine biologist.

Musical preferences: Andras Schiff.

Last book read: The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri.

Words of wisdom: “God gives more help to those who help others.”

Comments? dimwit@openface.ca