OK Tough Guy

You can imagine Stephen Miller practicing his shouty fascist speeches in the mirror. An empty-eyed man he loathes looks back at him and barks out various threats and promises and harsh words meant to scare and intimate and bully. The hate flows from the reflection.

Miller smiles at the pasty, weirdly-aged man before him: He sounds respectable, serious. This practiced hate, he's sure, can garner love. Like former ABC News journalist Terry Moran correctly said, Miller is "richly endowed with hatred," which functions as his "spiritual nourishment."

No one besides that twisted man in the mirror takes Miller seriously. I think he knows that. It’s why his public speeches have gotten more unhinged in recent weeks. Every few days I log on or turn on the TV and I see Miller, the Oldest and Worst Millennial, doing his best to make us believe history is over, we’ve lost, and he will run things from now on, effectively acting as the president as the actual president sinks further into dementia and gets lost in a sea of artificial intelligence that now shapes his every day. 

This week Miller slithered down to Memphis to threaten people there with a simulacrum of a military takeover in line with the imitation military takeover of Washington, D.C. Miller pointed and scowled and did all the things he’s rehearsed in the mirror while pretending to talk to the multinational gangs that – in the fascist imagination – have taken over American cities. If you were to pump some good-faith serum into Miller, he would tell you these rantings were not for big, back gangs running huge swaths of the country, but for normal folks who might not be sufficiently afraid of Miller and Trump and Vance and Noem and the rest. 

"All that bullshit is done, over, it's finished. The gangbangers you deal with – they think they're ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they're tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they're hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are."

"So much more hardcore." Come the fuck on man. Be serious. You're not Fred Durst circa 1999, brother.

Stop trying to sound like you’re starring in a documentary about 1930s-style European fascism. You sound fucking weird dude. Sweaty and desperate for love and approval and adoration, Miller goes on a rehearsed tirade about what the Republican mind perceives as unchecked, rampant crime in cities with large black and brown populations. It does not matter in any way that crime in these cities – and in the US more generally – has never been lower. We're all way too logged on and anxious and depressed to do crimes anymore. We'd rather doomscroll or watch the newest shitty show on Netflix or get lost in something from our childhoods that offers the merciful numbing balm of nostalgia.

Falling crime rates nationwide are not convenient for the fascist agenda. In fact, they ruin the whole goddamn plan. Crime must be running wild in America. Otherwise there's no reason to use the military as a training ground against us. Miller and the black-pilled crowds he leads like a dead-eyed pied piper have bought into this unreality because their agenda has no place in the real world. If they're going to torment those they hate – the liberals, the folks of color, soccer fans, the Starbucks barista with tasteful blue highlights in her hair – they need to exist in a post-apocalyptic United States that has no time for laws anymore. Guys like Miller have advanced this unreality for years and years. In 2024, the algorithms and media finally bought it (in bad faith).

The Nourishing Hate Of Stephen Miller

The devourer of hate is now in charge of creating the conditions for a military crackdown on the American public.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

Miller was especially screechy during one of the memorial services for the late Charlie Kirk. Sounding particularly excited to summon the fear and hatred of his listening audience, Miller got religious, telling the throngs, "We are on the side of God." Miller says this not because he really believes the almighty is on his side, but because he knows no loving god would ever condone such naked evil. God, Miller knows as he lies down to sleep, would wince at his calls for subjugation and domination, for the dehumanizing rhetoric that flows so easily from his blackened soul, through his horrible little mouth, out into the world made sicker by his words.

You can't convince me that Miller, given that aforementioned good-faith serum, would say yes, God is firmly on my side. He would either say that he is god or Trump is god, or he would conclude that no true creator would look upon their creation spewing such vitriol and say: This is good. God would say: What the fuck have I done?

His memorial service tirade was hardly the first time Miller has painted God as a MAGA Republican. During the monstrous hate rally at Madison Square Garden in late October 2024 – a rally with a seedy history – Miller followed up calls for righteous vengeance and purification of the glorious fatherland with a promise to his red-hat audience: "In nine days," he said, "your salvation is at hand." God's messenger on earth, the failed casino magnate and former game show host, would soon rise like a dementia-stricken Phoenix and reclaim his rightful spot as the first American king. You shall have your salvation, a return to glory, Miller pledged, a world shaped by me and my gnawing self hatred.

The Defector's David Roth, perhaps the greatest poster to ever live, once called Miller's barking speech routine a Cobra Commander impression. I dare you to watch a Miller cable news hit or public speech and try not to think of the G.I. Joe antagonist, who would probably be a centrist Democrat in today's political environment. Watching the G.I. Joe cartoon as a kid, wondering why all the bad guys weren't Russian – a people we had bee trained to hate – I remember not being afraid of Cobra Commander because he sounded so fucking ridiculous. His voice was more irritating than frightening. His pronouncements were too grand. The same goes for Miller, who treats every Fox News hit like he's leading troops into the Last Battle when in fact, he's talking to retirees sitting on their sofas, spending their final years on earth alienating their loved ones, ruminating on crime in Portland and LA and D.C. and Memphis and Chicago and other places they don't live and wouldn't visit under threat of death.

Everything 21st century fascists do is for content. Creating content that crafts an illusion of control and domination guides everything they do. Some of it is effective and overwhelming, like the grainy war crime videos of American drones blowing up random boats full of fishermen, or the movie trailer-style videos posted to social media showing the president's secret police knocking down doors and dragging his enemies away in unmarked vehicles or the right-wing porn of brown-skinned humans in chains being led to a plane that will take them to a death camp in some developing nation ruled by a 30-something fascist leader with low-quality hair plugs, wearing spanks that make him look slightly trimmer. This week's gathering of every bigwig in the U.S. military was strictly for content purposes. The cable news host who leads the so-called War Department did a Steve Jobs-style walk-and-talk speech not to lay out military priorities or talk strategy, but to denigrate LGBTQ service members and to chastise soldiers who didn't look like an Instagram influencer selling me weird mushroom juice to replace my beer.

But not all content was created equally. The content Miller strives to create, imitating 20th century fascists he admired as a child like most children might admire the left fielder on their hometown baseball team, just does not work.

Miller tries to feed the right-wing content machine with words and gestures that make you tremble, that turn your spine to ice, and leave you no choice but to doom and doom and doom some more (shoutout to the person on Bluesky who told me the US has no path back to democracy because ... Republicans cut Medicaid funding). None of it works, or none of it should work. The content Miller generates for the machine is deeply unserious and ineffective. We have to laugh at this guy and his ridiculous displays of faux bravado, for laughing at fascist tough guys has a long and proud tradition in nations that have beaten back political movements made of decay.

My plea to you is to laugh at Stephen Miller. Do not take him seriously. Let the broken man glaring back at him from the full-length mirror in his bedroom remain the only one who respects him. Miller is a joke, a dark one, but a joke nonetheless.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.