It Ain't a Party Til the LaRouchies Show Up

So that woman who was querying Barney Frank about the alleged Nazism of Barack Obama turns out to be a LaRouchie. Dave Weigel asks:

As I've pointed out before, when liberals protested the Iraq War, the small number of anarchists and Communists who showed up to their rallies dominated the coverage. Liberals didn't get a pass on their associations. Conservatives have been pointing to the presence of LaRouche activists at these town halls to argue that the only people waving "Nazi" signs are LaRouchies. That's not true, but even if it were true, what would the difference be?

One reply is that it wasn't fair to treat the sane opponents of the Iraq War like they were interchangeable with ANSWER either. Why shouldn't liberals "get a pass on their associations" when the only association at issue is the fact that they marched in some of the same parades? A few folks like Ramsey Clark had more intimate associations with ANSWER than that, and they deserved the flak they got. The average antiwar protester did not.

Another reply is that the LaRouchies turned up at the antiwar marches too. There, as in the health care debate, they offered a critique that mixed ideas you might have heard from other protesters with ideas that only make sense if you've just spent a year undergoing the Ludovico technique. The LaRouchies show up everywhere: sometimes alongside the left, sometimes alongside the right, sometimes alongside a bunch of winos at the bus stop. But aside from a few folks like—again!—Ramsey Clark, most of the people who encounter the cult hold their nose and back away.