Walking around the University of Wisconsin campus, it is not uncommon to see people standing around, ready to accost you with fliers declaring why what they believe is right. It is, however, somewhat uncommon to see people standing next to giant posters of President Obama depicted as Hitler declaring, “Impeach Obama.”
These are the people I encountered last week on Library Mall. If their goal was to shock and awe, they succeeded. If their goal was to inform people as to why Obama should be impeached, however, they failed miserably. I didn’t see a single soul stop and talk to them.
I fully support these people’s right to stand outside with their outrageous signage. I fully support their right to be upset with Obama. I also fully support my own right to be horribly offended by their outrageous signs and arguments against Obama. The images and slogans on the signs stuck with me for days, and I had to find out why these people were choosing to spend valuable time promoting their hateful rhetoric.
With a little digging, I found that these people were representatives of the LaRouche Political Action Committee. According to a spokesperson, “Lyndon 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’.”
You could say, what about the people who said outrageous things during the Bush years? There were definitely some crazy theories surrounding the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, it was some of the same people, the supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, who were convinced the terrorist attack was orchestrated by someone within the Bush administration.
To most people, the glaring wrongness of these people’s message is obvious. But to a few lesser-informed citizens, these posters may touch a nerve, and they may start to believe every word out of Lyndon LaRouche’s mouth. However, the more concerning issue is that these people, instead of furthering their message, are doing a disservice to anyone who has legitimate concerns about Obama and his administration.
To be sure, Obama’s not perfect, and the beauty of the United States is that we are free to express our dissatisfaction, and there are surely both Republicans and Democrats who do have real concerns with the Obama administration and his policies. But with these people spouting conspiracy theories and comparing Obama to Hitler, any legitimate concerns may also be waved off as “just crazy talk” by the people in charge. By blocking the national conversation, the harm that this organization can do reaches much further than the few souls they convert to their cause.
No matter who is in office, and whatever side of the aisle your beliefs lay, it is important to distinguish between this type of hateful and incorrect rhetoric and valid concerns about the way our country is being run. It is just as important to defend Bush against such claims as it is to defend Obama. The worst thing to do would be to fall into the trap of selective hearing and dismiss any and all arguments of your opposition as crazy.
We can’t do anything to stop these people from doing the things they do, but we can make sure that their influence is not widespread and that those people with valid and rational concerns will be heard above LaRouche and his followers. Take the time to sort fact from fiction, and make your decisions about the current administration based on these facts, instead of the hateful rhetoric we see from the LaRouche PAC.
Madhuri Setaluri ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in genetics