Stephen Miller - a fierce personality in the White House
(Baonghean) - People were right to criticize Stephen Miller, senior policy advisor to US President Donald Trump. Recently discovered information shows that this person has promoted the administration's hardline immigration policy, instead of measures to control the flow of people moving across the border.
EXTREME RIGHT IDEOLOGY
A cache of Stephen Miller emails recently leaked by former Breitbart News employee Katie McHugh shows a connection between the immigration policies of the current administration of President Donald Trump and the racist immigration laws of previous presidents.
In the emails, Stephen Miller praised immigration restrictions that were criticized as racist a century ago. The Trump aide lamented that today’s laws have “forgotten” those he considered “progressive.”
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| Photo: Getty Images |
Trump supporters have long denied that these hateful views are connected to the administration’s policies. But the reality is that if they had any chance of containing the rise of the far right, such views would have been kept out of the White House. This is because, in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, many white supremacists took to the streets of Washington, DC.
They are looking for jobs in the Trump administration and even in right-wing media. And there is a fear that this small but active group, with its influence and right-wing connections, could move the country away from its traditional political orbit. And this has been proven under many previous Republican administrations.
“Stephen Miller is a very intense and obsessive character,” McHugh, who recently quit far-right groups, told NBC News earlier this year. “He’s one of those white supremacists who can use rationalism to cover things up. And he can run with it,” McHugh said.
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| Stephen Miller (third right) and White House officials witness US President Donald Trump signing a bill. Photo: AP |
Returning to the content of Stephen Miller's newly revealed emails, they detailed the views and policy-making direction of one of Trump's closest aides, who is considered the architect of the administration's very hardline immigration policies. Stephen Miller often cited information from white supremacist groups in his work.
He also targeted policies that these groups sought: reintroducing immigration restrictions designed to turn America into a white man’s land. Miller’s most prominent example was his praise of the immigration restrictions of the 1920s, which targeted African and Asian groups, as well as those from Southern and Eastern Europe. In his emails, Stephen Miller also expressed his anger at the new 1965 law that repealed the policy.
In another exchange in 2015, Miller praised Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, for “closing the door on immigration.” In the 1920s, when Calvin Coolidge was in office, US immigration laws not only blocked African and Asian immigration, but also sought to reduce the number of people from Europe who were considered to be of inferior genetic origin, such as Italians and Jews.
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| Protests against Mr. Trump's tough immigration policies took place across the United States. Photo: AP |
This discrimination in Immigration law is rooted in a racist scientific assumption that America's success is the result of citizens of Nordic genetic background.
The authors of those policies believed that America’s “Nordic” people were committing “racial suicide” by allowing in people of inferior genetics. This is arguably the first academic version of the ‘White Holocaust’ conspiracy theory that has inspired acts of terrorism and mass shootings from Pittsburgh to New Zealand.
POLITICAL INTRUSION
These racist comments were part of a series of emails Stephen Miller sent to Katie McHugh urging Breibart to devote more space to its white supremacist content and stricter immigration policies.
Miller sought to use his personal relationship with a female Breibart employee to directly influence the news outlet’s content, circumvent Breibart’s editorial guidelines on immigration policy, and help promote his own political views and ideas. Miller is also said to have plotted to use Breibart to “attack” Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
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| Photo: Reuters |
Stephen Miller’s recklessness is evident in the fact that he did so while he was on Trump’s campaign team. Marco Rubio has yet to leave the race for the White House. In an exchange with Katie McHugh, Miller called Rubio “sick” and urged her to do something to smear the Florida senator and his immigration policies.
Rubio’s bill was considered too soft on Miller’s views. The bill, though it failed to pass the Republican-controlled House, was still seen as a challenge to Miller’s hawkish views on immigration. In the US, it is not uncommon for politicians to use op-eds or press releases to spread their messages to the press. However, it is unusual for congressional aides and campaign advisers to directly intervene in the editorial process, attacking presidential candidates they do not like.
That’s exactly what Stephen Miller did: he sent out his ideas, dictated the reporting process, even the structure of the article, and broke Breitbart’s editorial rules. And the goal was clearer than ever: to promote far-right immigration policies for his boss, billionaire Donald Trump, in the 2016 presidential election.
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| Before and even while working at the White House, Stephen Miller promoted white supremacist doctrines in America. Photo: New York Times |
