Echoes of Mein Kampf
Stephen Miller's words at the Kirk memorial.
· Friday, October 3, 2025
Idid 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.”
