“Fascism is very much a mob movement.” P. J. O’Rourke
JD Vance just posted a message on X (Twitter) congratulating Stephen Miller as Trump’s expected pick for Deputy Chief of Policy.
“America is for Americans and Americans only!” was the refrain Stephen Miller shouted from the stage at Madison Square Garden on October 28. The same rally where Puerto Rico was referred to as an island of garbage and racist stereotypical tropes were volleyed about Black, Latino, Palestinian and Jewish people. Many thought this overt racism would be the end of Trump’s bid for the White House, but a majority of white American voters decided that this was not only OK but perhaps they also decided that this was exactly what they hoped for. The exit polls show that 55% of white men and 45% of white women voted for Trump. And in essence, they also voted for the rhetoric and dangerous viewpoint of Stephen Miller.
The same Stephen Miller who has promoted the white nationalist viewpoint that people of color are displacing white Americans. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed leaked emails between Miller and Katie McHugh, then a writer at the far-right website Breitbart. 80% the emails were focused on race and immigration. In many of the emails, Miller quoted or referenced books with racist and conspiracy ideas.
In one of the emails, he encouraged Breitbart to do a story about the book, Camp of the Saints. This incredibly racist book depicts the end of the “white” world as a result of an invasion of refugees. The description of the migrants in the book…”kinky-haired, swarthy-skinned, long-despised phantoms, all the teeming ants toiling for the white man’s comfort.”
I could write a lengthy treatise about how the perilous rhetoric of Trump and his advisors seems to always veer into the murky waters of fascism, how the historical echoes seem to be ever closer, how the poisonous xenophobic intolerance soils and tarnishes the vision of “The New Colossus.” But I think it is better to end with the slogan “Nur für Deutsche” (English translation: “Only for Germans”) the German ethnocentric slogan of the Nazis indicating that certain establishments, transportation and other facilities were reserved exclusively for Germans. “America is for Americans and Americans Only.”
“The New Colossus”
By Emma Lazarus
(the poem appears on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Katharine Viner “Leaked emails reveal Trump aide Stephen Miller’s white nationalist views” The Guardian November 14, 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/stephen-miller-leaked-emails-white-nationalism-trump
Southern Poverty Law Center https://www.splcenter.org/stephen-miller-breitbart-emails
