Activists Depict Obama as Hitler in Syosset

Representatives from a political action committee seeking to impeach President Barack Obama handed out leaflets and presented posters depicting the president as Adolph Hitler outside the Syosset Post Office Saturday morning. 

Hackensack, N.J.'s Bob Wesser and Tony Esposito from the LaRouche Political Action Committee asked people entering the post office to sign up for their movement to remove the president from office. Wesser and Esposito said that since it was a First Amendment assembly they were not required to obtain a permit and merely needed to inform law enforcement about what they were doing.  

The men said representatives from the organization had been on site about once a month for the past few months. They refused to be directly quoted for the story, although they described LaRouche PAC members as FDR Democrats. They presented literature praising the former president for his support of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act, the repeal of which is largely blamed for the country's financial crisis and subsequent bank bailout.  

The connection between Obama and Hitler, the group claims, largely lies with the president's support of healthcare legislation. The organization feels Obama's healthcare plan closely resembles Hitler legislation in Nazi Germany.  

Reaction from residents was mixed. A few people did sign up, although a majority took a wide turn to avoid the display. Some heckled the men, asking them if they wanted George W. Bush back in office. The men countered that LaRouche PAC did back the impeachment of former Vice President Dick Cheney, but not Bush. 

One Syosset resident who did sign up was Nirav Shah. He expressed dissatisfaction with the country's fiscal policy, but said he was unaffected by the Obama-Hitler depictions.

"That was just funny," Shah of the pictures. "I don't think it meant a lot to me. Maybe it was not accurate. But I didn't care about it."

A Syosset resident who didn't find the pictures nearly as humorous was a woman who identified herself only as Wendy.

"That shows that those people are uneducated," she said in chastising the activists. "And it's cruel and offensive [to compare Obama's politics] to the people who actually had to go through Nazi Germany."

Many of the people who did sign up were not willing to speak with Syosset Patch. One man stopped to speak with the PAC representatives for several minutes, then said he was too pressed for time when approached by a reporter. 

One women with a child in her vehicle stopped by the side of the road, walked up to the men and said they were "preaching to the choir." She signed up and said she wanted to make a donation but didn't have any cash on her. Syosset Patch approached her for an interview, but after a few seconds she grabbed the reporter's camera, afraid that a picture had been taken of her. (One had not.)

She gave back the camera after the reporter handed her a business card. She left without giving her name, but used the number on the card to call the reporter 30 minutes later and make it clear that she did not agree with depicting the president as Hitler.