Let’s all say it together: Stephen Miller is a white supremacist. There’s a lot of other things you could also call this ghoul, and “young firebrand” is among the least of them. But that’s the direction The New York Times apparently decided to go, labeling the White House aide as such in a recent profile. Why? Well, there’s always the desire to try to appear “impartial,” even when the dude is the architect behind Muslim bans and blocking brown children from nutritional programs and separating thousands of families at the southern border, the latter of which he reportedly enjoyed seeing.
But we all know he’s a white supremacist because it’s right there in front of our faces. “In an interview,” that New York Times profiles states, “Jason Islas said Mr. Miller told him he was ending their friendship for reasons that included ‘my Latino heritage.’ He added, ‘I think he is a racist.’” But this is also something that’s been clear for years now, if more people had done more listening. Univision’s Fernando Peinado talked to Islas over two years ago, in his February 2017 profile, “How White House advisor Stephen Miller went from pestering Hispanic students to designing Trump's immigration policy.”
Miller and Islas “grew up in sunny southern California in the late 1990s, united by their passion for Star Trek,” Peinado reported at the time (wait, how does a Star Trek fan end up like Miller? Someone has to be on the side of the blob that killed Tasha Yar, we suppose). “But Miller stopped talking to his friend as they prepared to jump from Lincoln Middle School to Santa Monica High School. Miller only returned Islas' phone calls at the end of the summer, to coldly explain the reason for his estrangement. ‘I can't be your friend any more because you are Latino,’ Islas remembers him saying.”
It wasn’t just Islas, either. “Univision Noticias spoke with several classmates who said Miller had few friends, none of them non-white. They said he used to make fun of the children of Latino and Asian immigrants who did not speak English well … Natalie Flores, another student who witnessed Miller's evolution from middle to high school, said he displayed ‘an intense hatred toward people of color, especially toward Latinos.’ She and other students interviewed for this report recalled that Miller became angry whenever he heard students speaking Spanish in the hallways.”
Later, Peinado reports, Miller befriended neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, though Miller now denies ever knowing him. But “young firebrand,” or something. That same little creep is now dictating our nation’s immigration policies with clear goals: keeping brown and black families out, and getting brown and black families already here out. It’s been staring us in the face, as Univision reported years ago. We just need to do a better job of listening, especially when voices of color are warning us. It would do us all good. And, we need to call it out for what it is, so let’s all say it together: Stephen Miller is a white supremacist.