Charles Schmid’s letter, “Who’s really deserving of the Hitler mustache” (June 4), attempts to link Lyndon LaRouche to the Nazi thugs of 1930 Germany. LaRouche’s pedigree actually hails from the Soviet revolutionary agitprop lineage of 1917 onward.

LaRouche was a member of the Socialist Workers Party from 1948 to 1957.

During the late 1960s, following his expulsion from the Socialist Workers Party, he taught a class on Marxist theory and picked up a small following of leftist students in New York. In this period he used the pen-name of Lyn Marcus.

His following became the nucleus of his political movement under the umbrella group called the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) and published a newspaper, New Solidarity.

During the early 1970s LaRouche’s NCLC became known as one of the most preeminent groups of the 1960s New Left with violent attacks in 1973 on members of rival leftist sects such as the Communist Party, which LaRouche called “Operation Mop-Up.”

In a world that has been inundated with the Barack Obama visage on every magazine, video screen, coffee mug and political ads, some claim it is complete blasphemy for Lyndon LaRouchettes to put the Hitler mustache on the cool Obama.

The wry addition of the Fuhrer mustache to Obama’s portrait with the words “You’ve changed” is classic left-wing nonsense like we saw with all the SS festooned President Bush and Vice President Cheney images.

The wingnuts who used the Nazi smear of Bush and Cheney were not neo-Nazi but rather garden-variety left-wing nuts from organizations like Moveon.org and other hard-left groups.

Highlighting LaRouche’s sins is helpful but air-brushing LaRouche’s political camp with the lame Germany 1933 shtick does a disservice to the real danger of Marxist revolutionary tactics and antics. Let’s give credit where credit is due.

James M. Olsen

Bainbridge Island