LaRouche Supporters Employ Holocaust Comparison to Castigate President Obama

Screenshot from the LaRouchePAC website

Supporters of conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche have recently manned tables outside public areas in several U.S. cities that featured images of President Obama wearing a Hitler mustache and signs calling for Obama’s impeachment.

In New Jersey, LaRouche supporters set up tables on two occasions that displayed posters with the offensive comparison of Obama to Hitler. One of the individuals was quoted by local media, saying “Obama is just like Hitler…he’s sending drones into other countries, killing people, including Americans.”

In late March, members of LaRouche’s political action committee set up a table outside a post office in Litchfield, Connecticut, with the President Obama-Hitler signs and signs of the Republican presidential candidates wearing clown noses and wigs. A similar event took place in San Mateo, California, earlier in the month, where LaRouche supporters gathered signatures calling for the impeachment of Obama outside a local post office.

This is not the first time that LaRouche and his supporters have injected Holocaust rhetoric into the political arena. In 2009, his supporters attended numerous Congressional town hall meetings around the country waving signs with President Obama wearing a Hitler mustache to express their opposition to health care reform and President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

At the time a spokesperson said that 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…our Obama mustache poster symbolizes the fact that the president is attempting to implement a Hitler health care policy.”

Turkish Ad Uses Footage of Hitler to Sell Shampoo

Adolf Hitler is the star of a Turkish commercial for men’s shampoo. The ad for Biomen, which is now appearing on Turkish television, features a video of Hitler angrily gesticulating, with a Turkish voiceover calling on men to purchase the shampoo. 

“If you’re not wearing women’s clothes, then you shouldn’t be wearing woman’s shampoo,” the voiceover says. “Here it is. A real man's shampoo, Biomen.”

The ad is yet another example of how Holocaust-era images are used in advertising around the world, which contribute to the trivialization of and desensitization to the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust.

Earlier this year, photos of a Nazi concentration camp were used in a promotional campaign for a Dubai gym, including an image of the railroad leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau with the slogan, “Kiss your calories goodbye.” After receiving complaints, the founder of The Circuit Factory gym in Dubai, Phil Parkinson, apologized and removed the photo.

In a letter to the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, ADL called on the Turkish government to condemn the ad. The Turkish Jewish community has also released the following statement:

"We follow with sadness and regret the use of Hitler figure in the Biomen Men Shampoo advertisement, which was brought to the screen in recent days."

"Hitler, who massacred 6 Million Jews in gas chambers for the sole reason of being Jewish and also killed its mentally disabled citizens on the purpose of creating “a pure Arian race,” had created the darkest pages of the world history. Using him in an advertisement for whatever reason is an unacceptable situation and could not be accepted by us at all. This is beyond all ethics as well as a huge insult to human rights."