Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has shared a letter written by Missouri State Representative Mazzie Boyd in defense of her “Constituent Lloyd Cruz,” who was convicted on two charges for his breach of the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.
[Note: Cruz was found guilty of one charge of entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds and one charge of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.]
According the Kansas City Star, Cruz is a Missouri resident who “originally denied entering the Capitol, according to prosecutors, [and] later told the FBI that after he reviewed photos and video footage he took that day he remembered going inside the building.”
Boyd calls Cruz a “political prisoner” and says that Cruz is being sentenced to “2 years in the D.C. Federal Gulag.” Boyd says Cruz “did nothing wrong” and asks “why is this happening?”
Greene shared the letter and added: “J6 defendants are being politically persecuted by a politically weaponized government yet Antifa/BLM/Trans protesters and rioters are set free. In order to end it, we must impeach politically weaponized judges and defund and fire weaponized DOJ officials.”
In amplifying Boyd’s use of “gulag” to describe the U.S. justice system and prison conditions, Greene is using a specific word with a brutal history. Here is the background.
Backgrounder: A Gulag was a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, which existed from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term “Gulag” is an acronym for Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerey, which means “Main Camp Administration.”
The Soviet government used the Gulag system to imprison and punish millions of people who were considered enemies of the state, including political dissidents, intellectuals, artists, and ordinary citizens accused of crimes such as hoarding food or expressing critical opinions. The conditions in the camps were notoriously harsh, with prisoners subjected to forced labor, inadequate food, and brutal treatment by camp guards.
The Gulag system was a key part of Stalin’s campaign of terror and repression, and it played a significant role in shaping the Soviet Union’s political and social landscape.
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