Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University. Whatever Kirk stood for, whether you’re pro or con, he didn’t deserve to be murdered like that. It was a tragic death that should give us all pause.
The memorial service, held 11 days later, was held in Glendale, Ariz., and was attended by 90,000 people. One of the speakers was Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller’s speech was in English but struck the same notes as a Nazi propaganda speech by Joseph Goebbels in 1932.
Here are some clips from Miller that echo Goebbels:
“When I see Erika [Kirk’s widow] and her strength and her courage, I’m reminded of a famous expression. The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength and the warrior whispers back, I am the storm.”
Goebbels’ speech was entitled “The Storm Is Coming.” Hitler’s brownshirts were called the Sturmabteilung, the ”storm department.” It is no coincidence that neo-Nazis affectionately use “storm” imagery, such as with the Internet message board that calls itself “The Daily Stormer.”
Another clip from Miller:
“They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.”
Here Miller poses an absolute dichotomy between the pure and good “us” of MAGAs and adorers of Kirk versus the “they” and “them” of degenerate and worthless Democratic voters and anyone who questioned Kirk’s extreme statements (of which there were plenty).
In another clip, Miller switches from “they” to “you.”
“You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wicked. You are jealous. You are envious. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.”
This is nothing like, “We’re in this together as Americans, and we’ll find a way through.” This is more like, “We’ll annihilate you if you don’t fall into line,” an absolute nullification of disfavored people.
Miller is saying, “Vengeance is ours; we will repay,” and he is urging the MAGA faithful, with the martyr Kirk inspiring from heaven, to rise up like a “dragon” and reduce their demonized opponents to “nothing.”
Miller’s actions match his hate-filled talk. In Trump’s first administration, Miller urged using force against peaceful George Floyd protesters. His fingerprints are all over Trump’s Muslim travel ban (assuming all Muslims are potential terrorists and ignoring right-wing domestic terrorism).
Miller was the architect of the “zero tolerance” policy that deliberately ripped thousands of families apart at the southern border, some never to be reunited—a moral travesty that Miller refused to repair.
More recently, Miller instantly blamed Kirk’s assassination on “a vast terrorist network” on the left. But when the violence is instigated by right-wing extremists, he says nothing.
Remember the Jan. 6, 2021, attack against the Capitol? Remember when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked with a hammer? Remember the murder of Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s Democratic speaker emeritus of the House, and her husband? Miller’s selective and partisan condemnation of alleged violence by “antifa” amounts to active encouragement of violence by right-wing extremists.
We can’t forget that Miller sent hundreds of immigrants, without due process, to El Salvador’s infamous “CECOT” torture prison. He has illegally promoted “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida as an inescapable concentration camp for deportation detainees.
Miller tried to but was stopped from deporting nearly 700 unaccompanied minor children to Guatemala. Miller has targeted Columbia and Harvard universities’ diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives, threatening academic integrity and free expression. His influence is behind the attempted elimination of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show.
Miller is responsible for illegally federalizing National Guard troops to establish police states in Democratic-led cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.
Miller is the driving force behind overly aggressive and excessively violent ICE raids and mass deportations across the country. The Supreme Court has enabled Miller’s Gestapo-like tactics of racial profiling, having masked men accosting Hispanic-looking people, throwing them into unmarked cars and vans, and “disappearing” them in undisclosed locations for weeks and longer.
Miller’s hatred of darker-skinned immigrants is exemplified in the militaristic attack on a 130-unit apartment building in Chicago that was occupied by Black and Brown families. Residents were rousted from their beds and separated from their children. Children were zip-tied together and forced to stand in the cold waiting to be put into U-Haul trucks and moved; they and their parents knew not where.
This is domestic terrorism, it is traumatic—and it is endorsed at the highest levels in the White House.
Right-wingers sell Miller’s white supremacy, hatred and wicked abuse of power as “patriotism.”
Technically speaking, Miller is not a Nazi. He’s not looking to destroy Jews wherever they are (he’s Jewish!). Instead, Miller’s hatred, vitriol and rage is directed at darker-skinned people whom he fears are gaining too much power in our culture, and on those who oppose his unjust, unlawful and illegitimate actions.
In short, Miller is a white supremacist who takes gleeful pleasure in inflicting pain and suffering on those weaker than him. He uses Nazi-style language and tactics to achieve his political objectives. He is the definition of a bully.
Miller’s speeches and actions should have set off five-alarm fire bells among conservative evangelicals. Instead, the warning bells have been muted, if they have rung at all.
White evangelical friends who watched all five hours of the Kirk memorial broadcast at the end said that it was “beautiful,” “loving” and, significantly, that there was “no hatred, no bullying”—completely ignoring Miller’s diatribe.
Maybe they just got up and went to the refrigerator during Miller’s speech. Or maybe they heard him but were somehow able to excuse what Miller was saying.
“No hatred, no bullying” was emphatically not the message in Miller’s speech. His message was and is, “Hate your enemy. Deport massively and indiscriminately. Terrorize anybody who opposes you.” Where is the common decency? Where is the loving kind?
Evangelicals, especially white evangelicals, need to take a long hard look in the mirror—not only at how they are behaving now with regard to racist attitudes and laws but also at how they have behaved in our nation’s history with regard to racist attitudes and laws. It’s not a warm and fuzzy story.
Self-criticism is hard but necessary if we’re ever going to get closer to a tolerant, peaceful society, what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community.”
