“The Healthcare bill would be Obama’s ‘Enabling Act,’” writes Zak at the top of the email. Down the page, he explains what he means.

History affords many examples of regimes whose motto was “Never let a crisis go to waste.” In 1933, having campaigned for “hope” and “change,” the National Socialist Worker’s Party forced through the German parliament a Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation, also known as the Enabling Act.

The Enabling Act was, of course, the law the Nazis passed after the Reichstag Fire. Zak has helpfully posted all of this at his blog, but here’s the email:

An added bonus: You can catch speeches by such conservative luminaries as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), and many others.

Presumably, Bachmann will be leading the “How to deal with vote fraud, the Census and ACORN” workshop.

Update: The conference is actually two whole days of fun, Sept. 25-26.

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I’ll remind you, a little history lesson. The Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They were leftists. They took over the finance, they took over the car industry, they took over health care in that country. If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.

While conservative bloggers like John McCormack have been claiming that Lyndon LaRouche cultists are the only people making Nazi references at town halls, here’s a proud conservative making that argument, uploading it to YouTube, and getting 250,000 views so far. Ironically, the Pelosi comment that made Hedrick so angry was her suggestion that… town hall protesters were comparing the Democrats to Nazis. (It’s also worth noting how important the government’s temporary takeover of General Motors has been in conservative mythos.) Video after the jump.

His sign didn’t just say ‘death to obama.’ It also said ‘death to michelle and her two stupid little girls.’ Very sad. I did hear that he was arrested, so that is good.

Dave also says he had a brief run-in with the protester, providing a brief glimpse (as if we wanted another) into the guy’s head.

I was stuck at the stoplight right next to where he was standing at the entrance to the community college and I yelled to him that he was an idiot. He yelled back, “Obama’s a Nazi.” I shouted back, “my father’s family was murdered by Nazi’s and Obama is NOT a Nazi.” He shouted back, “Obama’s a Nazi.” The light turned green after that and off I drove into parking lot for the town hall.

What Taitz is talking about, as she told me the last time I called her for a story, is this photo spread from the 2009 Knob Creek machine gun shoot. The twelfth photo from the top is one of Taitz at a booth, getting commitments for “citizen’s grand juries.” And some other photos on the page showcase the Nazi/Third Reich merchandise being sold at the event. Seriously, that’s it.

A couple of things. First, how far is LaRouche from the mainstream of the Democratic Party? So far outside that the DNC banned LaRouche delegates from taking part in the 2000 convention, after a high protest (22 percent) vote in the Arkansas primary temporarily awarded those delegates. So far outside that 1986 Illinois gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III temporarily left the Democratic Party after LaRouche candidates won the party’s primaries for other statewide offices; Stevenson started a new “Solidarity Party,” then lost the election anyway. These people aren’t representative of any political movement.

Second, it’s silly to suggest that the only people who’ll compare Democrats to Hitler at health care events are LaRouchies. McCormack and Morrissey need to direct their ire at talk radio and personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who have frequently compared Democrats to Nazis. In the video below, Beck suggests that Al Gore is trying to create a new Hitlerjugend because he … told young people to get involved in politics!

McCormack and Morrissey have a problem with the media not pointing out that some of the people holding Hitler signs at rallies are fringe activists, not conservatives. McCormack even has a problem with the media reporting that a swastika painted on Rep. David Scott’s (D-Ga.) office might be a legitimate attack, suggesting that it’s “more likely that this act of vandalism was committed by one of Scott’s supporters,” because, well, you know, just because. They’re barking up the wrong tree. Just as there were moronic leftists who compared George W. Bush to Hitler, there will be moronic conservatives who compare Barack Obama to Hitler. Take the complaints to Limbaugh and Beck.

The truth is a little murkier than that. The man was a supporter of fringe Democratic activist Lyndon LaRouche, whose LaRouchePAC has been running with the “Obama=Hitler” theme for a few months now. That “I’ve Changed” poster seen at the rally can be downloaded as a PDF from LaRouche’s Website.

Conservative blogger Stephen Gutowksi pointed out the LaRouche connection in a video linked by BlogProf, the Michigan conservative who questioned the Dingell event.

What’s this mean? It’s really not good for conservative opponents of Democratic health care reform plans when their fellow activists are pictured with signs comparing the president to Hitler or accused of painting swastikas on congressional offices. The solution: Blame these incidents on “plants” or call them hoaxes. If they want to know how hard this will be, though, they should ask the anti-Iraq War protesters who watched coverage of their events focus on the craziest, fringiest people there. The LaRouche cultists are not “plants.” They want, sadly, to be allies.

Comparisons to the Nazis are deeply offensive and only serve to diminish and trivialize the extent of the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity and the murder of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust.I don’t see any comparison here.  It’s off-center, off-issue and completely inappropriate.

The whole statement:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called attempts by some opponents of health care reform to bring Nazi imagery into the debate, “outrageous, deeply offensive and inappropriate” and condemned remarks by talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who compared President Obama’s health care logo to a swastika, and policies championed by the Democratic Party to those of the Nazis.

“Regardless of the political differences and the substantive differences in the debate over health care, the use of Nazi symbolism is outrageous, offensive and inappropriate,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor.  “Americans should be able to disagree on the issues without coloring it with Nazi imagery and comparisons to Hitler.  This is not where the debate should be at all.”

In recent days, street protests against President Obama’s health care plan have gotten ugly, with some protestors appearing in photographs wearing swastika and SS symbols.

That prompted Rush Limbaugh to remark on his radio program that, “They accuse us of being Nazis, and Obama’s got a healthcare logo that’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook.”  He went on to compare certain Democratic Party policies to those of the Nazis.

“Comparisons to the Nazis are deeply offensive and only serve to diminish and trivialize the extent of the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity and the murder of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust,” said Mr. Foxman.  “I don’t see any comparison here.  It’s off-center, off-issue and completely inappropriate.”

The Limbaugh comments comparing Obama (and Pelosi) to Hitler and the Nazis are grossly offensive and intolerable. They reflect a nasty and hyperbolic tendency on our political culture, one which makes reasoned discourse impossible, confuses disagreement with evil, and which makes it impossible to distinguish evil from ordinary politics.

Greenwald is still hounding the people who attacked MoveOn, and I’m especially interested to hear from the Anti-Defamation League. They’re one of the few such groups who can generate instant national headlines by accusing someone of trivializing the Holocaust. For Limbaugh to accuse the party that scored 77 percent of American Jews’ votes in 2008, a party of which every Jewish member of Congress except Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is a member, of being modern Nazis, goes far, far beyond what a MoveOn contest loser did in 2004.

On the day of the protest Hennessy put up another post attacking the White House for setting up an email address to answer questions about “fishy” rumors about health care reform.

Barack Obama wants to turn everyone into a Nazi snitch.

The Nazis used snitches, including children, to turn in enemies of the state.  Barack Obama has unleashed a program inspired by the National Socialists to identify and, presumably, punish citizens who speak out against socialized medicine. [...]

Eric Odom of American Liberty Alliance wants to turn the tables on our Fuhrer.

Yesterday, Republicans pushed back against Democratic attacks on the town hell hecklers by calling them “middle class Americans” who weren’t part of the fringe.