Jacques Cheminade
Jacques Guy Cheminade is a French politician, activist and former diplomat. He is the head of the Solidarity and Progress party, the French arm of the LaRouche movement. He has thrice run for President of France, always placing last.
Education and professional life
Cheminade was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina from French parents. He returned to France at age 18. After graduating from HEC Paris, law school, as well as the École nationale d'administration, Cheminade became a career officer in the Directorate of Foreign Economic Relations of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry, a position he held until 1981.Political career
Discovery of LaRouche's ideas
Cheminade met Lyndon LaRouche in early 1974 in New York, where he was a commercial attaché to the French embassy from 1972 to 1977. He compares this encounter to Socratic midwifery. According to a 1976 FBI document, he was then a "rank and file member" in the National Caucus of Labor Committees, a political organization directed by Lyndon LaRouche which had founded its own "intelligence units" in 1971, where he "work in the International Intelligence Section". His return to France in 1977 was motivated by a desire to devote himself "full time to political activities and the advocacy of Mr. LaRouche's ideas and policies".1978: Return to France
In 1978, he was the Parti Ouvrier Européen candidate for the legislative election in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, and obtained 0.12% of the votes. His program was:- the creation of military force with beam weapons to protect Europe against the USSR;
- the fight against drugs and for the promotion of moral values;
- the fight against the IMF and against the economic crisis.
1981: Head of POE, support for Giscard
1982–1985: Defense of SDI
In 1982, Cheminade published a statement presenting the POE as a "pole of reference for all anti-Malthusian forces committed to reestablish economic growth and cultural morality" and advocating a program "similar to that of Lyndon LaRouche's National Democratic Policy Committee", which included at that time freedom from "British domination of American foreign policy", worldwide public works projects, the development of nuclear energy "to stop genocide" in undeveloped nations, a crackdown on an international drug cartel, and a return to classic education to counter "the genocidalists' plan for our youth".In 1983, Cheminade published a statement on the danger of "new fascism" posed by an alleged plot against French president François Mitterrand by some of his socialist ministers, including Jacques Delors and Michel Rocard. The next year, he published an article in Executive Intelligence Review, accusing French president François Mitterrand of being a "Soviet agent of influence", as well as "the servant of the "families" involved in the Swiss-promoted "synarchist" operations that launched the fascist movement back in the 1920s on an international scale".
During the 1984 European elections, where the POE list he headed obtained 0.09% of the votes, Cheminade defended a program centered on the fight against three threats: an "immediate Russian threat that remains unperceived if not strongly favored"); an economic and financial one caused by "rampant Malthusianism and the role of the International Monetary Fund"; and a moral and intellectual decay, exemplified by the consumption of dangerous drugs. His program also referenced the ideas of Lazare Carnot, a "Republican scientist", Jean Jaurès, the only Socialist "with broad ideas" and the only one who "knew Leibniz and the pre-Socratic philosophers", as well as Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who also "understood the epistemological foundations of France".
During the period of time from 1982 to 1984, according to his own statement, Cheminade was involved in arranging a number of meetings between "French government, military and political leaders, and Mr. LaRouche primarily on the subject of the SDI and its European complement, the Tactical Defense Initiative ".
During the 1985 county elections, where his party presented candidates in 50 counties, Cheminade declared the POE "wholeheartedly supports Reagan's SDI program, a development program for the third world and a change in economic policy away from the International Monetary Fund". Later the same year, he said "unless the policies of the IMF are reversed, the Soviets will rule Europe and most of the rest of the world within this decade".
1986: French PANIC proposals
In 1986, while in the United States the Larouche movement presented the PANIC proposal, Cheminade, at a press conference held together with John Seale – a British physician who claimed that HIV had been created in a Soviet laboratory as part of a plot to destroy the United States, "ridiculed" the "condom campaigns" run in many countries and claimed that AIDS could be transmitted by saliva – presented the draft of a law providing for every resident of France to be screened for AIDS every six months, and every non-resident crossing the border into France to show an AIDS-negativetest certificate dating from less than six months before, or be tested, before he could be admitted into France. Another proposition of the same draft was to quarantine "full-blown AIDS cases until an effective vaccine and cure are found". Later the same year, he contributed to a conference organized by the French section of the Fusion Energy Foundation on "The Importance of the Method of Louis Pasteur for Conquering AIDS and Other Pandemics", where Dr Whiteside developed his views on the transmission of AIDS by mosquito bites, with a speech where he called "upon France to defend Science in the face of the brutal irrationalist attacks on Science".
1986: First appearance on national TV
During the campaign for the legislative election of 1986, the POE having presented more than 75 candidates in 27 departments, Cheminade was for the first time granted 8 minutes of national television time, and presented a program which included:- an abolition of the International Monetary Fund;
- an industrialization of the Third World;
- a French Strategic Defense Initiative in cooperation with the United States, and deployment of the neutron bomb;
- a "Colbertist" approach to finance productive investments;
- an elimination of EC quotas to increase farm output;
- a war on drugs and terrorism;
- and an introduction of a classical education curriculum.
1987–1989: The end of the POE
In 1989, Cheminade headed the POE's list for the European Parliament election, called Rassemblement pour une France libre. Its program was to fight against "European financial cartels dominated by the London stock market" and to promote "the construction of Europe by means of large public works". Larousse's Journal of the year considered these positions were close to those expressed by the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. The list obtained 0.18% of the votes.
He remained general secretary of the Parti Ouvrier Européen until its dissolution for bankruptcy in 1989. The POE was replaced in 1991 by the Fédération pour une Nouvelle Solidarité.
1991–1995: The FNS replaces the POE
In 1993, he was the sole candidate of his movement for the legislative election in Paris and obtained 0.32% of the votes.1992: Theft trial
In 1992, Cheminade was condemned with suspension to 15 months of imprisonment for theft. He was charged of having received, through 3 associations, 1.2 million francs from an elderly lady with Alzheimer's disease. An appellate court confirmed in 1996 the qualification of theft, but reduced the sentence to 9 months with suspension. The judgement mentioned "conditioning" by "professional canvassers". The reduced sentence allowed Cheminade to benefit from an amnesty law.1995: Presidential candidate
In 1995, Cheminade obtained 556 endorsements from mayors, allowing him to run in the presidential election. Eric Incyan and Sylvie Kaufman in Le Monde described the obtaining of these endorsements as the result of a "generalized phone harassment". According to Daniel Hourquebie in Le Monde, Cheminade's envoys targeted the mayors of small rural villages, presumed to favor small candidates and 7 out of 8 of Cheminade's endorsers in the department of Gers administered municipalities of less than 165 inhabitants. According to Renaud Dely in Libération, they pointed out to left-leaning mayors that Cheminade "filled a void" in the absence of Jacques Delors, while offering them a copy of Jean Jaurès doctoral thesis republished in 1994 by Cheminade's party press with a foreword by Cheminade (described as an absurd rambling by Roger-Pol Droit in Le Monde; to right-leaning mayors, the "need of defense against Russia"; to thoses with a concern for environment, his concern for a re-emphasis of the rural world. The mayors of Ayguetinte, Bézues-Bajon and Saint-Justin said Cheminade's envoys had been the first ones to contact them. The mayor of Ayguetinte said he wanted to express his dissatisfaction with the political class. Other mayors commented on the insistence of Cheminade's emissaries : The mayor of Thoux said he finally accepted to be left in peace. The mayor of Planèzes that he was constantly called, at any hour, at home or at the office. Three mayors from Creuse considered they had been "deceived" on Cheminade's program and political career. The mayor of Saint-Junien-la-Bregère said he was for sorry to have signed for somebody "who does not seem to be very honest, though I don't have a proof". The mayor of Sannat said on television: "I was told they were against racism, they seemed to be leaning to the left and he was a small candidate. But when I learned he was at the far-right and had been condemned, I jumped". Cheminade replied they had been harassed by journalists who told them he was a crank and his party was a sect.His speeches, invoking the patronages of Jean Jaurès and Charles de Gaulle, were centered on a "speculative cancer" destroying the world economy and for which Cheminade was blaming the "financial oligarchy" of the City of London, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the IMF, as well as their French "relays", such as the Banque de France. He advocated bankrupting agents of the international monetary and financial system, a "new Marshall Plan" and credit control.
Cheminade obtained 0.27% of the votes.
According to El Pais, his campaign raised little interest except for the origin of its funding. According to Cécile Chambaud in Le Monde, LaRouche was a "billionaire" and Cheminade's POE had always benefited of "large financial means". LaRouche sent a letter to Le Monde claiming he did not own his residence and his only revenue was his salary at Executive Intelligence Review". Didier Micoine wrote in Le Parisien that Jacques Cheminade claimed to have a taxable income of 42,000 francs, to live with 6,000 francs a month and to own a 10-year-old Peugeot 305. Renaud Leblond and Loïc Stavidrès reported in L'Express Cheminade owned a apartment in Paris, earned 3,000 francs a month and benefited from the remains of a family inheritance. Nevertheless, according to Le Monde, Cheminade claimed to be the largest donator of his campaign.