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Lyndon LaRouche, Holocaust Imagery and the Health Care Debate

January 27, 2014

Read the full report here: Lyndon LaRouche, Holocaust Imagery & the Health Care Debate (PDF).

Conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, leader of a fringe political cult that defies categorization, and his supporters have contributed to the divisiveness surrounding the public debate on health care reform by producing and disseminating materials comparing President Barack Obama and other government officials to Hitler, Nazis and fascists, and by attending Congressional "town hall" meeting and other events around the country.

LaRouche's organization is built upon a cadre of loyal supporters and publications that promote his conspiratorial world views. LaRouche, 91, has a long record of advancing conspiracy theories linking the AIDS crisis, the drug epidemic and international financial crises to prominent Jews and Jewish organizations. For many years, LaRouche has employed Holocaust imagery to express his opposition to a wide range of political issues.

Since May 2009, LaRouche and his network of supporters, many of which are part of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC), have focused on health care reform, producing signs, banners, pamphlets and other items that employ Nazi imagery, including the Hitler comparisons.

LPAC supporters continue to promote their messaging in public areas throughout the U.S. featuring images of President Obama wearing a Hitler mustache and signs calling for Obama’s impeachment.

In his publication, Executive Intelligence Review, and on his Web site, LaRouche consistently refers to the reform proposals as "Hitlerian" and "genocidal" and almost exclusively refers to the proposal as a "Nazi health plan." In August 2009, LaRouche said Obama is "impeachable" because his health care proposal is based on "cost-effectiveness criteria--exactly the infamous 'T-4' policy imposed by Adolf Hitler in 1939."

LaRouche spokesperson Nancy Spannaus said LaRouche and his organization "have declared war against Obama's so-called health care reform because it is a direct copy of the policy Hitler declared in October 1939, when Hitler issued the order for euthanasia against those determined, by a board of medical experts, to have 'lives unworthy to be lived.'"

"Our Obama mustache poster," Spannaus said, "symbolizes the fact that the president is attempting to implement a Hitler health care policy…At any town hall, you'll know LaRouche people are there if you just look for the mustache."