The Larouchies were innoculated from angry Holocaust Survivor (Henry Gasparian) reactions in July
Hitler. George Bush was Hitler. Now Barack Obama is Hitler. I’ve tried to figure out how Gerald Ford might have been Hitler, but I’ve come up empty.
Also it may well be interesting to explore the differences between the war protests (in 2002 through 2003 organized by Ramsey Clarke’s little outfit, eventually another group came to the forefront and butted them out) and the Tea Party (Freedomworks – Dick Armey. Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Movement). The former was larger and had more distance from either of the two major political parties — also generally part of the permanent Protest Culture of the Left and not in any way successful in altering any policy course; the latter probably succeeds in a sort of “murder — suicide” model — everyone’s poll numbers collapse, and probably works for the bottom line interests of the fund-raisings.
Joe Wilson here, along with Dick Armey and others, and see the amusing explanation of Larouche as a “former Labor Party candidate“, is dishonest there — see the video clip I mentioned in a blog post, and libertarian magazine Reason blogger in same for non-Larouchie Obama = Hitler-oids. But basically Larouche has gone where-ever the “We have a new Hitler” people are, whoever they are at the time. (Also see the Jon Stewart clip leading up to the Barney Frank confrontation for speakers at some early tea party events.) I am partial to the “Other side did it” defense, to a large extent.
Now that I’ve gotten that little disclaimer out of the way, I can proceed. But one last item from the attempted wikipedia edits as it settles into its humdrum stasis position:
Leatherstocking: I had never heard of “ego stripping†until SlimVirgin added the new section.
Once again, I don’t believe him.
The major story in the world of Larouche Politics (sorry, but I can’t take these pronouncements as terribly interesting — though, the phrase here that strikes me as particularly playing with fire is “Obama should back down or he might be hung.“) is the Edmonds, Washington man, a Holocaust Survivor, and his angry reaction to an “Obama – Hitler” sign. (See also a post here, here, here, :
“I saw Hitler’s soldiers. I saw swastikas every day. To call Obama stupid, even criminal, OK, that’s politics. But Hitler? It’s hurting to anyone no matter who is president,†he said.)
There are over 400 comments left to this Seattle Times article, most of them uninteresting and unilluminating on every level, a lot of straw being burned and nobody has any interest in communicating, some partisan jabs here and there, some arguments I’m terribly familiar with having stared at this for long enough. I guess this is the first semi-interesting thing I see:
The poster with Adolf Hitler slogan is a clear signal of the evil design of the people working behind the scene be they are political, secret foreign agents or fifth columnist working within the country to foment political unrest with sinister motives, needs immediate apprehension to stop further escalation of their evil designed destructive move.
I love a good conspiracy, don’t you?
They just hate anyone who isn’t LaRouche.
I think there’s a rhyme and reason to some things here. In the late 1960s, Larouche formed an organization peeling off left wing student activists, where the recruits are. In the 1970s he “flanked” the sort of liberal president Carter and moved to support some conservative and right-wing causes into the 1980s, where the money is. In the late 1990s and early 00s, he found recruits where they were, somewhere in a sea of a liberal to conspiracy college aged student base. And now he’s taken them where the money is, flanking the sort of liberal president Obama (they’re “for single payer”, supposedly. And in a fictional land, taking control of a broader movement.) One warning: there are a few glitches to this Grand Unified Theory.
To be fair, susan423, the LaRouche nutjobs that are waving around the Hitler signs are not members of the right or of the left, but are just simple visitors from Planet Crazy.
Do Mr. Gasparian a favor the next time you pass one of the LaRouche tables downtown, along the waterfront or anywhere else. Pick up a pile of their literature, walk away and deposit it in the trash where their messages of hate belong. It’s much more effective than getting arrested.
See also:
LaRouchians remind me of the nuts in Waco and the folks who followed Jim Jones and the tin hatters who thought the Hale Bopp comet was their true home. Where they’re different is that they shove their misguided, ill-conceived theories into the public dialogue. At least the other cults kept to themselves.
But The thing that interests me about this story.
I believe that the Larouche propaganda machine innoculated their membership for this sort of incident. See the article I cut and pasted here.
At a literature table in the New Jersey region, an older woman was at our literature table, getting briefed on the LPAC fight, and looking at our signs on Obama and Hitler. She looked over the LPAC literature, and exclaimed, “You’re right, his policy is Nazi.†Then she pulled up her shirtsleeve to reveal the numbers tattooed on her arm, put there when she was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland at the age of 9.
And so it goes…
Good for the larouchies that guy had no right to loose his cooll like that, and deserved to be arrested.
Any real organization would recognize this as bad pr. Ah those LaRouche people; so damn classy!
The mindset is shown with what silverchild57 says (from earlier deployment onto a campus): I am horrified to witness young people being so “politically correctâ€, thoughtless, and controlled by popular opinion, as to react to the LaRouche organizers in the same way stupid “liberal†and “right-wing†baby boomers do.
LaRouche has been fighting fascism his entire adult life, even when he was a voice crying in the wilderness, slandered by the rotten news media, unjustly thrown in prison by the George H.W. Bush Administration, etc. A courageous fighter for the truth no matter what was thrown at him. That is one of the things I most admire about him; he fights for what’s right, even if nobody else does! That takes some stones, something virtually nobody in Washington has anymore!
Bleh. Obama was at the University of Maryland yesterday, rallying his base of youngsters. One sentence describes something: A solitary LaRouche volunteer stood at attention with a poster of the president depicted as Adolf Hitler.
In other news, Washington Monthly saw to it to repost their Avi Klein “Publish or Perish” article such that it now surfaces in the google news. If anybody can illuminate what they did and what thought process went into that, please feel free to do so.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
My guess about the Washington Monthly reposting is that the folks over there know that
(1) LaRouche is in the news now, sorta, because of his Obama=Hitler trope or meme or shtick or ….
(2) LaRouche will be in the news with Molly Kronberg’s lawsuit, in the good old Eastern District (“rocket docket”) of Virginia, scene of LaRouche’s glory days getting indicted, tried, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned by the Feds in 1988-89.
Maybe Avi Klein will cover the Kronberg vs. LaRouche case….
Anyhow, LHL is about to become news–or as close as he gets.
September 20th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
During the last election, when John McCain selected Sarah Palin for his running mate, the Anchorage Times reposted a large number of Palin articles dating back to her days as Wasilla mayor. That’s about the first comparison I can think of for reasoning of reposting, though it’s still kind of curious. Larouche has been on the edge of the news, frankly as much as the org wants him to have — lest the delusion of “Mass Strike” fall.
Of some interest, from Germany, tangeantly related to “meme” / “schtik”:
http://watchingamerica.com/News/34570/obama-with-a-hitler-moustache/
Also of interest… http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-book-exposes-pedophilia-government.html … Conspiracy mongerals spreading useless conspiracy theories.
On this blog… I think this blogger letting his hatred of Larwence O’Donnell (whatever works for you)’s punditry get the best of them.:
http://thecablegame.blogspot.com/2009/09/lawrence-odonnell-tells-whopper-about.html
I may well leave a comment there to pull him straight. I don’t think anyone should seriously fault O’Donnell as telling a “Whopper” for disclaiming Larouche as a member of the Democratic Party, whatever his registration.
And hey! Howie G makes an appearance there. “In Fashion”?
I’m somewhat surprised by a question at factnet on “Why the Mass Strike?”, but I’ve occasionally surprised by matters that I take to be settled common knowledge but apparently aren’t. Chartor provides a better answer than I might have,
http://www.factnet.org/vbforum/showpost.php?p=381128&postcount=2888
, and I was waiting to see how Rosa Luxemberg would slide into place here. I chafe a bit at some characterizations, finding them beside the point: Obama a Popular President? He will be at times during his four or eight years, and he will not be at other times during his four or eight years.
My further answer I already posted, the Carter = Obama and Labor Committee to LYM explanation and political environs throughout.
In this way, there is no sudden ideological or partisan flip-flop from the vantage point of the LYM members, that their new partisan allies are the same parts of the electorate that they were warring against (“brainwashed” though they might be) just a couple years ago.
Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth’s book On the Edge ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Edge_(book) ) a pertinent observation on the Trotskyite origins of a large number of political cults, Trotskyism with their eye on a Historical Mission, and I can see how easy it is to imagine throwing yourself at the Vanguard of various political causes and imagined them as something altogether different.
…………….
And your Creepy Ron Paul comment-er that justifies the scattered comparisons with Larouchies of the day:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/state-a-local-politics/59389-the-republican-value-voters-straw-poll-and-the-ted-nugent-republicans
Ron Paul is the only hope for the United States of America, and you and everyone else knows it. Some may be afraid to admit it and some may be too uninformed to recognize it, but by 2012 it will be plain as day.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:56 am
Interesting way of defining the Larouchies. Lawrence O’donnell, filling in for Keith Obermann, that blogger called this a “whopper” (I accuse him/her of having partisan blinders on.) September 18, 2009, MSNBC
O`DONNELL: You had to do a lot of homework on this one. I know you don`t think this way yourself. I`m trying to follow what the “Fox and Friends” crew is up to here. They`re saying that if the crazy off the wall rhetoric at the anti-health reform rallies and all of that, some of it verging on the violence is — that won`t cause anyone to tend toward violence. But Nancy Pelosi preaching against violence, that will definitely provoke violence. That`s the “Fox and Friends” notion of how this works?
CRAWFORD: And where was the outrage about some of those who talked fairly violently on their side of the fence? How about the guy who brought the gun to an event? Where was the outrage about that from this side?
Absolutely. There`s no way the Fox folks think their crowd is going to follow Pelosi over anything. I think disingenuous is the word for that.
O`DONNELL: Glenn Beck seems to maybe have feelings not that dissimilar from Nancy Pelosi, because earlier this summer he pleaded with his followers to be vigilant and be angry, but specifically pleaded with his followers not to be violent. He didn`t want another Timothy McVeigh scenario. He seems to know something about his audience, doesn`t he, if he`s wanting them not to be violent?
CRAWFORD: If I could be extra cynical, what if the thinking here is if something does happen down the road, they`ve created cover, that it`s Pelosi`s fault, if something did happen. That is at least a consequence of what they`re doing, if not the purpose.
O`DONNELL: Craig, there aren`t a lot of us in this country who have any idea of who Lyndon LaRouche is or where he stands or where he has stood on our political spectrum. I find it a little bit indescribable and challenging to try to explain Lyndon LaRouche to anyone. But would you call him a good and faithful Democrat?
CRAWFORD: Not at all, considering that not too long ago he told a crowd of supporters that under Obama, their sisters would be carted off to ovens. I don`t think that is a supporter of at least the president, certainly not the Democratic party. I haven`t understood LaRouche since about 15 years ago, when his people threw some sort of wine on my suit.
And in those days, media companies had more money. I got the budget to get dry cleaning.
But here`s how I explain LaRouche, Lawrence. His movement is nativist revolutionaries. Revolutionaries in the sense that they really want to be the second coming of the founding fathers. And they have to have something to revolt against. They want to run out that experience that the revolutionaries had against the British occupiers.
Nativist in the sense that it`s ethnic and even racial chauvinism. In the sense that white Europeans don`t run the country anymore. This is why we hear all of this we want our country back. People — there are people who just can`t accept that that`s what`s happening.
O`DONNELL: So in his — and Joe Wilson`s mounting of his defense, he, you know, blames some of these things on Lyndon LaRouche, who he says is a Democrat, which is completely untrue. He continues to bumble along here.
Is he — keeping him in the Congress, is that an asset for the Democrats, to keep a clown like that around to represent the Republican party?
CRAWFORD: It might even be an asset for Republicans, some Republicans, because it`s the people like him and Michele Bachmann and others and Sarah Palin who are going to keep the faithful energized. But I think it`s going to keep the Republican party a minority party, just a very loud one. And if anything, standing on a postage stamp of whatever their principles are. And in the end, yes, I think it`s better for Democrats, even though I think some Republicans see this as an advantage.
O`DONNELL: Craig Crawford of “CQ Politics” and MSNBC, thanks for your time tonight.
………………….
And Keith Olbermann, September 17, 2009
These stories ahead, but first time for COUNTDOWN`s top three best persons in the world.
[… some partisan targets, and then…]
Dateline, Edmunds, Washington, number one, best reality check, Henry Gasparian. When he saw the Larouche-bags with a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache, his reaction was, in his words, personal and emotional.
And he tried to grab the fliers the Larouche-bags were handing out.
Shoving ensued. People arrested Mr. Gasparian, which they will probably regret.
He was born in Armenia in 1939. He was there and saw the Nazis invade and kill two of his uncles and wound his father and induce a famine that led to his brother starving to death. Right now, they`re calling this fourth-degree assault. Mr. Gasparian, who has seen actual Nazis, is calling it an attempt by an old man to say, you cannot insult the president with this outrageous campaign.
If Mr. Gasparian really did push somebody first, I wish he hadn`t.
But the rest of it, he not only had the right to do, but he is my hero for doing it.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
The thing about comparing everyone to Hitler, as LaRouche does incessantly (he compared Al Gore to Hitler when Gore was a Senator)–the thing about comparing everyone to Hitler is that if everyone’s Hitler, nobody is–not even Hitler.
It’s a way of saying, in effect, that Hitler is on a scale with every other politician–which is, of course, a monstrous lie.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:06 am
Not everybody’s Hitler. Some figures are Mussolini. Schwarzenegger, for instance. Why is Schwarzenegger Mussolini? Just for one smidgeon of variety, I suppose.