Anton "Tony" Chaitkin is an author, historian, and political activist with the LaRouche movement. He serves as History Editor for Executive Intelligence Review. Chaitkin's father was Jacob Chaitkin, who was the legal counsel and strategist for the boycott against Nazi Germany carried on by the American Jewish Congress in the 1930s. His late sister, Marianna Wertz, and his brother-in-law, William F. Wertz Jr., have also been active in the LaRouche movement.
Activism
Chaitkin became a founding member of the LaRouche movement in the mid-1960s. In 1973, Chaitkin was a candidate for Mayor of New York City, representing the National Caucus of Labor Committees. He also ran for Governor of New York in 1974, and for Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district in 1978. During the early 1970s, on multiple occasions, Chaitkin was responsible for disrupting meetings. Chaitkin was among ten NCLC members arrested for participating in a melee at a Newark city council meeting. The group was asserting, among other things, that two local political figures, activist and poet/playwright Imamu Imir Baraka and Anthony Imperiale were tools of the CIA. Because of his heckling, Chaitkin was forcibly ejected from a press conference held by a competing candidate for U.S. Senate, Ramsey Clark, on October 18, 1973. Chaitkin was arrested for disorderly conduct and criminal trespass on April 21, 1975, for trying to sneak into a conference of mayors posing as an accredited journalist. He was quoted in an organization publication as saying "we intend to disrupt the campaigns of our major opponents." He was quoted in the movement's New Solidarity speaking about "Operation Mop Up", saying "many CPers have been sent to hospital after jumping Labor Committee members in the CP's own meetings." in Washington, D.C. During the 1990s, Chaitkin helped to lead a campaign that called for the removal of the Albert Pike Memorial from federal property in Judiciary Square, located in Washington, D.C. Chaitkin charged that Pike was an important founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Chaitkin, along with the Rev. James Bevel, participated in weekly non-violent protests at the site of the statue throughout the 1990s, and was arrested in November 1992 by Federal Park Police for "statue climbing." Chaitkin ushered in the LaRouche movement's campaign against the health care reform proposal of U.S. President Barack Obama. At an open panel session that included Ezekiel Emanuel held June 10, 2009, Chaitkin said:
President Obama has put in place a reform apparatus reviving the euthanasia of Hitler Germany in 1939, that began the genocide there.... Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and other avowed cost-cutters on this panel also lead a propaganda movement for euthanasia... They shape public opinion and the medical profession to accept a death culture... to let physicians help kill patients whose medical care is now rapidly being withdrawn in the universal health-care disaster.
In reporting the incident, journalist Max Blumenthal described it as "the opening volley of an orchestrated propaganda campaign designed to link and the White House's health-care reform proposals to the T-4 mass euthanasia program of Adolph Hitler." See also Views of Lyndon LaRouche#Health care policy.
