It’s Not an Insult to Call Stephen Miller a White Nationalist, It’s a Fact

A lot of conservatives are angry at Rep. Ilhan Omar today after she tweeted that Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s senior policy advisor, is a white nationalist.

Donald Trump, DT Jr., and other conservative shitposters attacked the congresswoman for being anti-semitic. Since Stephen Miller is Jewish, they say he can’t be a white nationalist. Except here’s the thing: Stephen Miller is definitely a white nationalist. It’s not up for debate, it’s just a fact. Him being Jewish doesn’t change that.

The “Is Stephen Miller a White Nationalist” debate has been going on for a while now. Last summer, Slate’s Jamelle Bouie summed it up well by noting that conservatives have twisted terms like “white nationalist” and “racist” to be personal insults, rather than what they are: a set of clear ideologies.

That’s why it’s not an opinion that Miller is racist. Because his actual job is to push a set of racist ideologies and make them official White House policy. That’s been his job since day one, though in recent days there’s been a renewed spotlight on the role he plays in Trump’s war on immigration.

Last week, Trump declared he wanted to take a “tougher direction” on immigration. He then pulled his nomination of Ronald Vitiello, his pick to lead ICE, and reportedly forced the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen, the most aggressive Homeland Security secretary in US history. Trump has reportedly been impatient to get back to the horrific practice of family separation, something Nielsen objected to (on the basis of legality, not morality).

According to CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, as well as a full report from the Washington Post, Miller is behind Trump’s insistence on toughness.

According to the Post, “Miller has pushed for someone to take over the ICE role who would be more receptive to his policy ideas. He also is ‘particularly adept,’ one administration official said, at placing blame on others in the White House when ideas he promotes do not work.”

Racist Littlefinger here has apparently been pulling the strings and pushing Trump’s buttons, using Trump’s well-known passionate gullibility for conservative media for his own benefit.

So who exactly is vile enough to push through the kind of immigration policy Miller and Trump want? According to one official (via Splinter News), “Stephen wants to put Attila the Hun as director of ICE.” Instead, they’re apparently settling, at least for now, for Miller himself. Following Trump’s dumping of Vitiello, Trump reportedly “told Miller he would be in charge of handling all immigration and border affairs.”

This makes sense, as even with the Trump administration’s ever-revolving door, Miller is one of the few officials not related to Trump, who are racist and sycophantic enough to have stuck around since the very beginning. Not even Steve Bannon can say that.

Stephen Miller has manipulated his way into a position of real power and he’s done it because he’s set on pushing a violently anti-immigration ideology based in white nationalism. It’s not a personal insult to say that he’s driven by racism. A personal insult would be bringing up that time he “jumped, uninvited, into the final stretch of a girls’ track meet, apparently intent on proving his athletic supremacy over the opposite sex,” or reminding you that 3,500 of his fellow Duke alumni signed a letter trying to distance the school’s reputation from Millers, calling him “really icky” and “very creepy,” especially in the way he would interact with female students.

This is an insult:

But calling Stephen Miller a white nationalist isn’t an insult, it’s a fact, and one based solely on his own actions. To deny that fact benefits exactly no one except Stephen Miller himself and his fellow white nationalists.

(image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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