Stephen Miller and Ethnic Cleansing, Amerikkkan-Style

August 31, 2020 | revcom.us

Stephen Miller is the Trump/Pence regime’s “mastermind” of ethnic cleansing now underway in the U.S., and a senior advisor to Trump. Miller’s entire adult life has been about stopping virtually all immigration, legal and illegal, and driving millions of people out of the country, especially people from what Trump has called “shit-hole countries.”

A Perfect Fit

Last year hundreds of hateful, racist emails became public that Miller wrote shortly before the election in which he promoted openly white supremacist websites and articles, whined about Confederate flags being taken down after a white supremacist murdered nine people in Charleston, and viciously railed against immigrants. There was no attempt by the Trump/Pence regime to remove, or even chastise, this Nazi. That’s because Miller is a perfect fit in the fascist regime.

Miller’s world view that anything goes in the defense of “western civilization” has been shaped by the white supremacist book The Camp of the Saints, a novel that depicts the “end of the white world” after it is overrun by “kinky-haired, swarthy skinned, long-despised phantoms” led by a “turd eater.” He enthusiastically encouraged his associates at Breitbart News to read it during a debate on immigration, writing "Someone should point out the parallels (in the U.S. today) to Camp of the Saints."

He has drawn extensively on the “Center for Immigration Studies” (CIS) for his policy proposals. CIS is an anti-immigrant group founded by a eugenicist who thinks people considered inferior should not be allowed to reproduce, and Miller has been the keynote speaker at their awards ceremony. The founder of CIS wrote that he had “come to the view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that… Demography is destiny. We decline to bequeath to our children minority status in their own land.” Miller has worked feverishly to make this hateful view a political reality in a fascist U.S.

The Ghost of Calvin Coolidge

In the years before Trump came to office there were attempts in Congress to address “immigration reform.” Miller, then on the staff of the rabidly anti-immigrant Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, played a major role in defeating these efforts. During those battles Miller wrote, “This would seem a good opportunity to remind people about the heritage established by Calvin Coolidge, which covers four decades of the 20th century.” Coolidge is revered by white supremacists because the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted legal immigration almost exclusively to people from Northern Europe, became law during his presidency.

For Miller, transforming immigration means not only ferocious efforts to “seal the border” and deport millions of people with legal status in the U.S., it means a relentless and still ongoing effort to transform all policy relating to immigration, asylum, and refugees.

In a radio conversation between Miller and Steve Bannon, formerly the “chief strategist” in Trump’s entourage, both expressed how they saw the perils of the growing immigrant population in the U.S.: Bannon—“Isn’t the beating heart of the problem right now, the real, beating heart of it... not illegal immigration, as horrific as that is, and it’s horrific… [but] legal immigration [emphasis added]. Miller—“yes, it’s mind-boggling.... [T]here’s no precedent for that kind of growth whatsoever.”

Miller has been the “mastermind” behind the regime’s relentless assault on immigrants (with and without “papers”) that includes over 400 executive actions restricting immigration Trump has issued. These form a vicious, interlocking web of deportation, incarceration, and impoverishment, and are both a fascist re-working of immigration policy, and a serious effort to change the demographics of the U.S.

Miller boasted in a recorded phone call that “The first and most important thing is to turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor—mission accomplished.” And, as the Washington Post reported, he said he is developing a “… strategy (that) is part of a long-term vision and not seen only as a stopgap.”

Showing Them Who’s in Charge

Miller has written many of Trump’s hate-filled speeches, and in 2016 he also “warmed up” the fascist mobs at Trump’s campaign rallies. Miller’s speeches were a toxic stew of belligerent white supremacy, American chauvinism, support for brutalizing police—and a promise of much more to come as the fascist regime moves to “make America great.”

Miller primed an overwhelmingly white Trump rally in San Diego, while largely Latino protesters were assaulted by police on the streets outside: “Are you ready to secure that border? Are you ready to stop Islamic terrorism? And are you ready to make sure that American children are given their birthright in their own country?…Are you ready to show them who’s in charge? Are you ready to do something they will write about for a thousand years?” At a Dallas rally in 2016, he bellowed, “Hillary Clinton loves open borders! Donald Trump loves American workers! Donald Trump loves secure borders! Donald Trump loves safe communities!… Are you ready to send to Washington a man who will put Americans first, last, and always! Are you ready to elect Donald J. Trump!”

The Worst is Yet to Come … If They Aren’t Stopped

The fascist regime is laying the groundwork for an openly white, English-speaking America. It has already inflicted great pain on millions of people, and the regime’s rapid-fire approach to transforming immigration policy “makes it likely that the Trump presidency will have long-lasting effects on the U.S. immigration system.” But Trump and Miller aren’t stopping here. The regime has seized on the crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic to further push goals, like bans on travel, closing off the U.S.-Mexico border, and pausing visa issuances.

And they are raising the prospect of bringing about even more fundamental changes as part of fully consolidating their fascist, white supremacist agenda. Miller has railed against “birthright citizenship”—the constitutional right that all people born in this country are U.S. citizens—for years. In January this year he opposed the demand that “DREAMers [immigrant youth brought to this country as children] be given citizenship because they 'know no other home.' That principle is an endorsement of perpetual birthright citizenship for the foreign-born. Not only will the U.S.-born children of future illegal immigrants and guest workers be made automatic U.S. citizens, but their foreign-born children will too…” Trump has been more explicit in his contempt for birthright citizenship, saying in an interview this year, “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

As Revolution pointed out recently, Trump’s “birther” assault on Kamala Harris is a threat to a political opponent, and also implies that ending birthright citizenship could be a foundation to launch ethnic cleansing campaigns against millions of people born in this country. And if you still don’t think they could try this, keep in mind another of Miller’s driving convictions: “… the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned”.

This fascist nightmare must not be allowed to continue. Fighting to “STOP The Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border” is vital in its own right, and as a component of the mass protests beginning on September 5 to drive out the Trump/Pence regime.

Sources

Stephen Miller’s Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails, Southern Poverty Law Center, 11/12/19

Stephen Miller And White Nationalism, NPR, 11/114/19

Must It Be the Rest Against the West?, The Atlantic, December 1994

Stephen Miller And 'The Camp Of The Saints,' A White Nationalist Reference, NPR, 11/19/19

Center for Immigration Studies, Southern Poverty Law Center

John Tanton, the fountainhead of modern anti-immigrant bile, Tribune Content Agency, 7/26/19

John Tanton, Southern Poverty Law Center

Trump official Stephen Miller's racist emails leaked, AA.com, 12/11/19

Stephen Miller Said He'd Be 'Happy If Not a Single Refugee Foot Ever Again Touched American Soil,' Ex-Trump Aide Claims, Newsweek, 1/28/19

How the Pandemic Has Strengthened Stephen Miller’s Hand, Daily Beast, 6/25/20

New MPI Report Catalogs the 400-Plus Immigration Executive Actions That Have Occurred During the Trump Presidency, Migration Policy Institute, 7/31/20