Lindsey Graham (R-Batshit Crazy) claims that the Consumer Protection Bureau is "Is something out of the Stalinist era." This is standard Republican fare. See historycommons.org for a full history of this.) Some instances from the link:
Image 1: CPB = Comrade's Police Bureau!
Representative Paul Broun (R-GA) ... has made headlines by claiming the health care reform proposal “is gonna kill people” (see July 10, 2009) and comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler. During the forum, he calls Latin American socialist leaders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez Obama’s “good buddy” (sic).
Fox News host Glenn Beck ... tells his viewers that Social Security was created by Harry Hopkins, an adviser to then-President Franklin Roosevelt who, Beck says, “had a relationship with [Josef] Stalin,” the then-dictator of the Soviet Union. Therefore, Beck says, Social Security is a Stalinist “redistribution of wealth” program that is inherently Marxist in its nature. [MEDIA MATTERS, 1/27/2010; MEDIA MATTERS, 9/7/2010]
Fox News commentators and hosts have frequently tarred Obama and his advisors as socialists, “Stalinists,” and “Marxists” (see October 27, 2008, January 2009, March 17, 2009, March 29, 2009, April 1-2, 2009, May 13, 2009, May 28, 2009, September 1, 2009, January 27, 2010, May 19, 2010, September 18, 2010, September 29, 2010, and October 26, 2010).
Well, let's see how apropos this little comparison may be below the squiggle.
Image 2: Memo to "Comrade Stalin" requesting
authority for execution of Polish officers (page 1)
Image 2 is page 1 of a March 1940 memorandum to Comrade Stalin from Lavrenti Beria, proposing the execution of 10 to 15 thousand Polish officers who had been captured when the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the eastern half of Poland as part of Stalin's deal with Hitler which allowed Hitler to begin World War II.
You can clearly see the Cyrillic letters for "COMRADE STALIN" at the top of the page, which is signed by Stalin and his various maximum henchmen to indicate his approval, and their slavish acquiescence, to the execution of the officers as "counter revolutionaries" or "c r" Here's the translation:
TOP SECRET
From the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to comrade STALIN
In the NKVD POW camps and in the prisons of the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia there is currently a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former Polish police officers and employees of intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist c-r (counterrevolutionary) parties, participants in underground c-r rebel organizations, defectors and so on. All of them are implacable enemies of Soviet power and full of hatred for the Soviet system.
POW officers and policemen located in the camps are attempting to continue c-r work and are leading anti-Soviet agitation. Each of them is simply waiting to be freed so they can have the opportunity to actively join the fight against Soviet power.
NKVD agents in the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia have uncovered a number of c-r rebel organizations. In each of these c-r organizations the former officers of the former Polish army and former Polish police officers played an active leadership role.
Among the detained defectors and violators of the state-
(Signatures: In favor - Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan)
(In margin: Comrade Kalinin - In favor. Comrade Kaganovich - In favor.)
Image 3: Body exhumed in Katyn Forest.
Stalinism in practice.
In image 3, we see part of the results of this order, which became known as the
Katyn massacre Stalin's executions were not so clever as to strip the officers of their uniforms before shooting them, and they did not ever believe that the graves would be discovered. The corpse shown in Image 3 can be identified as that of a Polish major from the shoulder tabs.
Stalin didn't figure that his partner in crime, Hitler would turn on him, and when he did, the Germans were able to occupy huge portions of European Russia, including the forest (Katyn) where the officers had been buried. In 1943, the Germans discovered the graves, and sensing a chance for a propaganda coup, brought in neutral examiners (the Swiss) who conclusively identified the officers as Polish and as having been killed in March 1940. The Russians sought to blame the Germans, who certainly weren't above such things, but nobody was ever really fooled by this. And many years later, the actual order (Image 2) for the execution of the officers was found in the Soviet archives and published.
Now, that's what I call Stalinism.
But ... indefinite military detention? Meh.
Well, I think there is a bit of stretch to describe the Consumer Protection Bureau as Stalinist. But Lindsey Graham keeps using that word. Does it mean what he thinks it means?
One of Graham's little pet projects was to authorize indefinite detention of U.S. citizens arrested in the United States.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
.