By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

Don't get on Robert Lederman's bad side. Just ask Rudy Giuliani.

Artist, First Amendment activist and Greenwich Village Gazette (and other mags) columnist Lederman has waged an eight-year, one-man campaign, to the tune of hundreds of essays, 41 arrests, hundreds of paintings, postcards and well-maintained websites, all aimed at the erstwhile Big Apple mayor. His art often appears at demonstrations against issues like the Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo incidents, West Nile pesticide spraying ("Orthodox Jews Gassed Again!" he accuses, as the poison hits religious areas on Friday evenings) and Guiliani's homeless policies. His work has appeared in People, New York Magazine, the Times, New York Post Daily News and Newsday; he's been featured on 20/20 and CNN.

His titles include: "Racist Rudy," "KKK-iani," "The Godmother," "Jailiani," "Enemy of Art," "Fooliani," "Ghouliani," and "Mussoliniani."

Why Giuliani?

Lederman, 50,'s first beef with the mayor occurred in 1994, when street artists arrested for selling art without licenses formed A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response to Illegal State Tactics), and in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately won a lawsuit against the mayor (one of many Lederman legal challenges to Hizzoner).

He had personal experience; in the '80's, occasionally homeless, he sold artwork instead of panhandling.

Lederman welcomes the media exposure for his causes and his artwork, which are, incidentally, not limited to New York, or to secular themes.

"For a Jewish person," he begins, "learning that the President's family fortune and political connections began with financing Hitler (in the Standard Oil/IG Farben concerns) is a serious matter."

There are no Jewish members of Bush's cabinet, he notes, while Ari Fleischer's role adds "ethnic credibility in the event questions arise regarding the President's Hitler connection." Lederman accuses Bush of appointing, and embracing, a few token Blacks and minorities. "In Nazi Germany," he analogizes, "there were Jewish leaders, the Judenrate, who similarly advised their followers not to resist Adolf Hitler. Elevating a few members of a targeted group is an effective way to disarm your victims."

Lederman names prominent American Nazi collaborators. After the war? "The US government," he charges, "brought thousands of Nazis to America, provided them with false identities and established them in the newly formed CIA, in universities, in the media, in medical and psychological research institutions and in the US military."

Allen Dulles, GHW Bush associate and fellow Nazi financier, became the CIA's first director. His brother, John Foster Dulles, major shareholder and lawyer for Standard Oil/IG Farben became U.S. Secretary of State. William Casey, Reagan's CIA director who "helped the Dulles' bring Nazis to the U.S.", "created the Manhattan Institute - the think tank that invented GW Bush's political agenda and advises him on a daily basis.

"It was the first Bush administration," Lederman writes, "which gave Saddam Hussein the chemical and biological weapons we've spent the past decade trying to locate in Iraq. It was the anti-Semitic, anti-Christian Arab oil partners of the Bush family that our soldiers risked their lives to protect in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. The corrupt dynasties that oppressively rule these Arab nations were among Hitler's closest allies in WWII."

W? The Christian far right, John Ashcroft, Bob Jones U., the inauguration exclusion of non-Christians, the fact that abortion, globally opposed by Bush in an initial act, was strictly prohibited in Nazi Germany but forced upon Jewish women - all are exposed and denounced.

"All I'd ask of President Bush," he closes, "is something very simple for him to do. Mr. President, please make a public statement - as many of the corporations associated with you have already done - acknowledging your family's past relationship with Nazi Germany, and then, apologize for it - as the Pope recently did.

"Unlike your father, former President Bush, who said it was time to forgive Nazi Germany's war criminals, you have made seemingly sincere speeches about the Holocaust while fundraising at synagogues and Jewish community centers.

"Now it's time for you to complete the 'healing process' you are always referring to and publicly repent for your family's part in bringing the Holocaust about."

Will Lederman's message reach Bush? Ask Mayor Giuliani.

seems to voraciously take on all his other causes. He is President which fights for justice in the face of issues such as the West Nile Virus spraying (No Spray Coalition)