Echoes of Mein Kampf
Stephen Miller's words at the Kirk memorial.
I did not initially watch Stephen Miller’s speech at the Charlie Kirk memorial, although Michael Bailey and Kingdaddy both commented to me that it was concerning. I finally got around to it a few days ago, and I will start by saying that if Miller doesn’t want to be compared to Nazis, he really shouldn’t sound like he is cribbing Mein Kampf.
For context on my views of the entire Charlie Kirk situation, please see my post Centering My Thoughts on Kirk’s Assassination. This post is not about Kirk, and Kirk is only mentioned because his memorial was the context for Miller’s words.
Note that I usually talk about fascism and only pull out Hitler/Nazi comparisons sparingly, so here we go.*
Miller (transcript source) said the following with the emphases being mine:
Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.
Erika stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up city, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves and the darkness into the light. The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened.
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. And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.
We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.
[…]
You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong and our grandchildren will be strong. And our children’s children’s children will be strong.
[…]
And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.
And we will defend this world. We will defend goodness. We will defend light. We will defend virtue. You cannot terrify us. You cannot frighten us. You cannot threaten us. Because we are on the side of goodness. We are on the side of God.
[…]
we will achieve victory for our children, for our families, for our civilization, and for every patriot who stands with us.
It is important, for context, to remember two things. First, there is no evidence that the person accused of killing Kirk was part of any broader group. Second, Miller and his allies in the administration have continually painted the entire Democratic Party as “the radical left.” Further,
I would likewise suggest the senior senator from Alabama is playing along as well.
As is the VP.
So, let’s note the elements above in his speech.
First, it is Miller who is using Kirk’s death as a means of incitement against a vague enemy. An enemy he has identified with the Democrats writ large. The echoes of Horst Wessel are not hard to hear. But that is just one parallel.
Second, it is worth highlighting the clear politics of Us v. Them in his speech. It is stark.
Third, if you know anything about Hitler’s worldview, as recorded in Mein Kampf, the highlighted phrases should have leaped out at you even without my bolding of them.
Hitler wrote the following:*
All the human culture, all the results of are, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan.
[…]
If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture, only the Aryan would be representative of the first group…He provides the mightiest building stones and plans for all human progress… (315).
Hitler puts “Asiatics” in the category of culture-bearers, but firmly places Europeans and Americans (of the white, US variety), i.e., Western civilization, in the category of “Aryan peoples” (315).
And, of course, Jews, whom he calls “The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan” (318), belong to the culture-destroying group. He states that “the Jew possesses no culture-creating force of any sort” (319). He also notes “Negroes” as part of the problem and how Jews brought them to the Rhineland with “the clear aim of ruining the hated white race” (322). *** Elsewhere, he also rails against Gypsies and homosexuals, but I don’t think those specifics are in the excerpt I am quoting from.
Hitler continues about Jews:
Culturally he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feelings, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into he sphere of his own base nature.
Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the past props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world has fallen.
Quite frankly, that all sounds an awful lot like the current GOP rhetoric about trans rights, the entertainment industry, and education, among other things.
So, back to Miller. Here is how he describes his version of “we:/Us:
“We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”
[…]
thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up city, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves and the darkness into the light.
[…]
We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.
And here is “you”/Them:
You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.
[…]
To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness.
Go back and read the Hitler excerpts and tell me that Miller’s words don’t track almost perfectly with them.
tl;dr: Miller says about his side, “We are the ones who create,” and about the Other side, “You can create nothing.” And this is about the most condensed version of Hitler’s view of Aryans v. Jews one could conjure.
Again, this is the man who, roughly a month ago, called the entire Democratic Party “a domestic extremist organization.” And Trump keeps equating the Democrats to the “radical left.” It is not a leap to say that the “You” in Miller’s speech is the legitimate opposition party, and by extension, the millions of Americans who voted for it.
This is all rather stark and clear indications of the fascistic leanings of this administration, is it not?
Certainly, if Miller would prefer not to be compared to Nazis and fascists, the first step would be to stop constantly sounding like one.
A side note, Miller started the above remarks with this:
…When I see Erika 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.
Erika is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion.
This maps directly onto QAnon-speak about “the storm.” It stretches credulity that that is a coincidence.
*A reminder: Nazism is a subset of a broader category, fascism. They are related terms, but not direct synonyms.
**All quotations from Mein Kampf are from a translation by Ralph Manheim in Terrance Ball and Richard Dagger, Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. The page numbers correspond to the copy. I am not sure which edition of the book it is from.
***This also echoes, I would not, variations on the Great Replacement Theory wherein the Jews facilitate the importation of persons to “poison the blood” of whites (via interbreeding) and such. It was what the Charlottesville marchers were carrying on about when they shouted, “Jews will not replace us.”
What we need here is a side-by-side, maybe with videos, or maybe just photos and excerpts.
Now the primary question for me is do I put Miller on the right side or the left side?
I had read somewhere that it was far closer to a 1932 speech by Goebbels referred to as “The Storm Is Coming.”
(Google, Google) How on earth is my memory that precise? Here’s the first link I found, yahoo news republishing Snopes — so definitely the highest quality journalism here. I don’t want to start my day with Nazi speeches, so I won’t go further and find something a bit more weighty.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/investigating-whether-stephen-millers-speech-130000145.html
It’s a speech that is using the killing of some dumb Nazi shithead as a rallying cry for a crackdown on everyone else.
@Gustopher: I expect there are a number of concerning comparisons we could make.
Crazed Stephen Miller:
—–
In fact, there is zero evidence that Stephen Miller has “built anything” other than an extremist militant activism generating all of the hatred and destructiveness and evil expression that he decries in those he scapegoats — pretty much the same as Charlie Kirk, who in a fit of consummate hypocrisy cloaked his hateful bigoty and intolerance in the hallowed image of a peaceseeking Christ.
The killing of Charlie Kirk had absolutely nothing to do with the object for deflecting the outrage of the MAGA Right, as they blame their political opposition,
“liberals .”
Rather, Kirk’s killing was the intersection of the Right’s own decades long malfeasance including absurdly lax gun regulation, grossly negligent mental healthcare policy, and hyper-partisan culture war disemination through a massively monolitithic media/social media empire that they themselves own .
They have spent unfathomable boatloads of money on controlling narratives, quashing dissent and critique, jacking up outrage over their own bigoted fixations, and armed an entire continuency (theirs) to the teeth. They created the powderkeg to which they light a fuse. Charkie Kirk’s death has become just another fuse for them to light, which Stephen Miller does with great flourish and probably not just a little relish.
All the while, the rest of us were attempting to create a humane society, responsive to basic human needs and inclusive regard for all of our members, with additional concern for the most vulnerable. You know, what rational, loving, kind, community minded people would do — what true followers of Christ are called to do — by their own godhead!!!
Man! In merely reading Stephen Miller’s words, one can feel the spittle flecks flying from the foam at the corners of his mouth!
Whatever this guy is channeling, Nazi or no, it’s pretty damn demonic. But it plays well to those conditioned on WWE drama, FOX disinformation, and Trumpian delusions.
Take note: in recent weeks, the tenor of Trump’s screeds are aligning with Miller’s sentiment, not reigning it in.
As a rule, I try not to spend any time trying to figure out Stephen Miller’s thinking, as surely getting inside that fetid mind will damage my own brain.
But, pause for a moment and consider what kind of twisted psyche could possibly decide the memorial for a purported friend was the appropriate setting to spew such divisive, hateful vitriol, while simultaneously holding as profound truth that he is on the side that has beauty, light, and goodness? WTF!
Western Civilization also owes much of its knowledge of the oldest of those claimed forebears to the preservation of texts by those in the East. No number of straws constructed by right-wing publishers with names meant to imply scholarly intentions can refute that the Latin West was not interested in inquiry.
Western Civilization produced the Inquisition, but I’m sure Miller would have been considered one of the good ones in 15th century Spain.
Miller would have been more than happy to replace a member of the Judenrat who had been resistant to Nazis—of course needing the baton-wielding Ghetto Police to do the dirty work. One also wonders if Miller’s wife would have had an intense jealousy of Eva Braun.
On the “we built . . .”:
Yeah, just as Trump built his buildings. No, slaves and then immigrants working for peanuts built them; the ‘we’ peacocked and pointed and yelled and prodded while various groups of the Other built them.
The ‘we’ produced Kid Rock and Morgan Wallen; the Other produced Coltrane and Prince.
How many times have these people used walk-out music by artists who stand against them?
Here is a piece about a MAGA hat guy at a recent Rage Against the Machine concert:
MAGA Followers Think They’re Punk Rock—but Then Why Are They All Such Cowards?
—
Kirk had to do the college undergrad circuit designed to pit him against younger interlocutors, because when faced with accomplished scholars of history or religion, he was reduced to a stammering, self-satisfied frosh fresh out of an insular community.
The pattern is self-evident.
ETA: I wonder how many of the patrons backing Trump and Miller would love add a Basquiat to their collection. Or would gladly pay billions to buy Guernica from Spain.
@Scott F.:
It is entirely appropriate if that friend is as twisted and hateful as the one giving the eulogy.
I worry less about Germany 1933 and more about Rwanda 1994.
@Michael Reynolds:
Without the need to stockpile weapons months ahead of time. Just some telegram groups and a couple signal chats.
Echo? Seems more like a modern translation from the original German.
On the one hand, a grudging credit to Miller for being just about smart enough to avoid saying the really quiet things out loud, while nonetheless providing all the signposts required to the numbskulls who think only they can decode the screamingly obvious messaging.
On the other, I confess to finding such infantile simplifications of the history of civilization, with crayon colour-in pictures for the midwitted, increasingly tedious.
While using fascist-coded rhetoric that would make many traditionalist European conservatives puke.
So, Miller, who exactly were those “others” who did not participate in such “building”?
Incidentally, could someone advise Miller that he looks a bit too much like a bald Goebbels?
Maybe he should grow a beard, and try doing Lenin impersonations instead, just for a bit of variety?
PS:
@Kurtz:
I’d argue the details of Latin Christendom: there was always a certain strain of enquiry in it; see Peter Abelard, etc.
And a fair bit of the Hellenic tradition was recycled via the Byzantines, who were never entirely detatched from “Western” connections, as well as via Muslim redistribution and independent Islamic (or semi-Islamic) development.
My habitual pedantry aside, you make a very good point about Coltrane (see also Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, etc etc etc)
One I’ve argued myself from time to time.
Much of the enormous cultural achievements of 20th century America are based on either African-American, or Jewish American, traditions and innovations.
There was a reason that Hitler is reported as regarding the contemporary US with both loathing and scorn.
It was in many ways the antithesis of the Nazi fantasies of the “purified volk”
One, among many, of the tragic consequences of the brief, yet murderous, Nazi ascendancy, was the wreckage of the former great centres of European culture, in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest.
And f@ckwits like Miller are entirely unable to realise this.
The regime’s lawlessness continues at a pace the legal system can’t hope to match. What’s the betting some protesters get detained at Guantanamo Bay for a year by the DoJ, in obedience to Trump’s order, causing yet another prolonged court battle for the benefit of the media?
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115312821068691123
@JohnSF:
Not sure if you will see this, but you’re certainly correct that the view of Europe in the Middle Ages as a period of universal decline, and a complete disconnect from the past (as well as the ERE) is incorrect.
In fact, whether you meant it this way or not, I felt a twinge of shame, because my point about it could credibly be described as sophomoric, if not outright juvenile. 😉
But compared to antiquity and the periods that followed it, the Middle Ages were certainly dimmer*. And, exceptions aside, that era does not resemble the description of ‘the West’ given by Miller.
For me, your pedantry is welcome. Accuracy and detail are important.
*yeah, I know 😉
@Kurtz:
Hi, I seez!
Dunno if you will see this. but:
My personal historical proclivity is that the perod c. 500 to 1000 CE was indeed one of “regression”.
But the next 500 years saw considerable advances at a basic level (agriculture, achitecture, metallurgy, etc) that lifted much of Europe beyond the carrying capacity of the Romano-Greek economic model.
It was not a culture as interested in basic intellectual enquiry as, say, Ionia or Athens in their heyday, or the Renaissance subsequently.
In some respects it seems to resemble China (or the Caliphates, or India?) at about the same time; but absent the universalised bureaucratised single-state ascendancy of China.
Also absent the artistic and scholastic sophistication of China, except in ecclesiastical architecture: Medieval Europe was amazing in that respect, whereas China was far ahead in pictorial art and literature.
Miller, meanwhile, has approximately the historical perspective of a rather retarded barnacle.
He reminds me of both the fascist numbskulls, and their predecessors in 19th century Germany.
Hegel: so much to answer for.
@JohnSF:
Well, I enjoy hearing from you on many topics. So if I reply late into the life of a thread, I usually check the comment count the next day to see if it changed.
And your response here is why.
We are similar in that we seem to be generalists, but you have a depth of knowledge on several topics that I doubt I will ever achieve in one. That, and an outside perspective on domestic politics can be invaluable.
Also, you seem to have a good grasp on how I think about things. So our exchanges tend to be breezy.
Oh, wrt an old conversation. I have found Steve Vai’s book Vaideology pretty helpful in how it explains a modes. Not that I have successfully wrapped my arms around it yet. But it may be worth your time.
@Kurtz:
Now that looks intersting.
Thanks.
*blushes*
It’s mostly just because I’m gettin’ old, and have been a curious critter for a long time.
One thing Hegel did get right:
“The owl of Minerva takes flight in the twilight.”
😉