You might have spotted them in the last month or so, manning their little table in front of a local Post Office or some other busy public building. They have posters and signs depicting President Barack Obama – altered so that he is sporting a Hitler mustache.

Charming.

These are the Lyndon LaRouche loonies, and they like to show up on sidewalks and public events, handing out their unintelligible screeds and engaging anyone who would talk to them.

They are followers of Lyndon H. LaRouche, a self-styled economist, political activist, and the founder of several political organizations known collectively as “the LaRouche movement.” He has been a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run in eight elections since 1976 and as recently as 2004.

I’m still trying to figure out if these LaRouche folks are so far to the left that they’re on the right or if it’s the other way around. Either way, they are on the fringe of the fringe.

Clearly, it’s the posters and flyers with the altered image of President Obama that catch most people’s eye and provoke the most outrage, as they should. I hope those who are rightly offended by these posters were just as offended by similar Hitlerized images of George Bush that were carried at demonstrations and posted online for the previous eight years. But somehow, I doubt that that’s the case.

It seems the further we get from the real horror of Hitler’s Nazi’s, the more cavalier some people become about the symbols and images associated with Hitler. To suggest that any American president bears any political or moral resemblance to the genocidal maniac Hitler is as absurd as it is offensive.

Lately, the LaRouche followers have set their sights on Obama’s plans to overhaul health care. They have been showing up at many of the “tea party” protests and “town hall meetings.” And guess who the media and critics of the tea party movement zero in on. That’s right – they focus on the one or two LaRouche followers holding big signs with the altered Obama-as-Hitler image and attempt to characterize everyone at the rallies as like-minded kooks.

What’s never mentioned is that the sign-holders represent Lyndon LaRouche, who ran seven times for president – as a Democrat. In fairness, the mainstream Democratic Party has never accepted LaRouche. But somehow, in their haste to discredit honest critics of the Democrat’s health care overhaul plan by pointing to these isolated Obama/Hitler sign holders, nobody ever mentions LaRouche’s connection to the Democratic Party.

Wherever I see the LaRouche followers carrying signs with the image of Obama sporting a Hitler mustache, I’m reminded of the words of John Lennon, who brought a pragmatic approach to his protest of the Vietnam War. In his song, “Revolution,” Lennon offered these words of advice to the radicals who had infiltrated the 1960’s peace movement.

“If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”

Wise words, even today, whether the pictures are of Mao or Hitler.