Register for the June 10, 2023 Schiller Institute conference, “The World Needs JFK’s Vision of Peace”
TRANSCRIPT
HARLEY SCHLANGER: This is someone who is circulating the statement for signatures. She asks: “Can you say what you hope to accomplish with the statement the Schiller Institute issued, ‘Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World to the (Next) President of the United States!’ What is the intent of circulating that?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, on the 10th of June is 60th anniversary of the famous speech by John F. Kennedy at the American University, which is generally called the “Peace Speech.” And if you haven’t don’t that yet, you should read that speech, or even listen to him on YouTube, because it is a beautiful speech, where Kennedy says that the world needs peace, coming from America, but not a Pax Americana, where the United States would enforce with weapons to subject all others and that way have a “peace of grave.” But to have a peace where each country can flourish and work together.
And it’s a very beautiful, poetical speech. And it is so important that people listen to that speech—there are also other, incredible speeches by Kennedy, for example, one where he talks about the importance of art and culture, which I can only underwrite every word he is saying there, that it is the culture of a country which is what makes it human and what makes it beautiful.
First of all, many young people have no real idea who Kennedy was, because they were born long, long after he had been assassinated, and therefore they don’t have a vivid idea any more that he represented a completely different paradigm of American politics. And this is very important, because what I want to accomplish with that statement is, as I mentioned before: We are in an unbelievable historic transformation right now, of which people in the West are hardly aware. The Global South is shifting—first of all, they have a completely new self-assurance; they have the economic ties, especially with China, but also among each other, Brazil, India, Indonesia—these are all major countries that are now rising. And the danger would be that the West remains arrogant, and basically says, “who are these people from the South? They should be submitting to the unipolar world,” because they will not.
And it would be very dangerous if you would have a complete separation into two blocs, a Western bloc, and a bloc of Russia, China, and the Global South, because you can’t solve the problems of the world by this separation. And if the dynamic would continue, that it would all turn anti-America, which is clearly a tendency, because the United States—there was just a report by Brown University; and they made a study and they said the interventionist wars in which the United States was involved after 9/11, resulted in 4.5 million deaths! Now, that is an unbelievable figure! And naturally, there are many people in the Global South also, who are not exactly friendly to the United States, and that’s probably the understatement of the year. And it would be very devastating if that would remain like that. Because I think if that is the tendency, World War III is unfortunately very likely down the road, or sooner or later.
So, since Kennedy represents a completely different paradigm of American politics, more like it was meant to be with the Founding Fathers, the American Revolution, the War of Independence against the British Empire, John Quincy Adams’ conception of foreign policy; Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and then Kennedy, who, after all, defused the Cuban Missile Crisis, together with Khrushchev, and who had a very optimistic idea about the ability of man to solve any problems through science and technology.
So, it’s a different paradigm. And by making this appeal, by saying, that what the whole world wishes, is that the United States would go back to that kind of a paradigm, which Kennedy represented. I think that first of all, it will help to educate people around the world to look at the United States in a more differentiated way, and hopefully, inside the United States also causes Americans to review their own history. Because, as my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, emphatically always said, that things went wrong with America after the assassination of Kennedy, and especially the cover-up through the Warrant Commission. Because, if you assassinate the President of a country, which, obviously, the “lone assassin” theory does not hold for one minute, and then you have a cover-up and the institutions of that country are not able to remedy that, or find out the truth and find justice, this is an extremely—this was a break in the history of the United States. And the last 50, now 60 years, that is something one has to work through and find back to the kinds of values that existed with Franklin Roosevelt, with Kennedy, and I think that that’s the purpose.
And I always think one should relate to the best tradition of the other, and not the worst. When I founded the Schiller Institute in 1984, the main purpose was to contribute to a just, new world economic order, and the idea that this is only possible if one has a renaissance of Classical culture and a dialogue of the best traditions of all cultures, with the idea that peace is really possible when you relate to the best of the other person, or the other country, or the other tradition, and vice versa. Because, when you bring forth what is good in the other, then that is the basis for peace.
So I hope with that, and the memory comes back, that America should become, again, a force for good in the world, and then the whole world would be peaceful, and happy.
