Stephen Miller spent his weekend, as he is wont to do, describing American politics as if the nation were in the advanced stages of civil war and as if he were dictating a message while racing to a mountain hideout to escape bloodthirsty guerillas. “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded,” he wrote on X. “And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
The provocation for this latest sweaty missive was an unfavorable judicial ruling (by a judge contravening President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of 200 National Guardsmen in Oregon). But violent defiance has become the animating vision through which Miller—and, therefore, on account of his sweeping influence over domestic politics, the Trump administration—views his conflict with Democrats, the media, the judiciary, or any entity that stands in his path.
The most consistent theme in Trump’s career is that any word or deed that he deems contrary to his political interests is illegitimate. Any unfavorable news story is libel, any election he loses is rigged, any unflattering fact pattern is a hoax, and almost anybody who opposes him should be locked up.
Miller’s career was defined, in its early stages, by a fanatical hatred of immigration. Over time, as Miller has emerged as the chief architect of Trump’s second-term agenda, his worldview and Trump’s have blended together.
“The Democrat Party is not a political party,” he said in August. “It is a domestic extremist organization.” Several weeks later, Trump seized on Charlie Kirk’s assassination to depict his own political opponents as accessories to murder. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said, in remarks reportedly written by Miller. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Kirk’s death became the immediate pretext for using state power to crush political opposition. As the shock of that murder has worn off, Miller is shifting to a more durable pretext: the political and legal backlash against Trump’s expansive deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The executive branch certainly has the right, and indeed the obligation, to enforce immigration law. Trump, though, has redefined the boundaries of this enforcement in numerous ways: by detaining people without due process, some of whom have inevitably turned out to be citizens; by seizing law-enforcement powers from states and localities; by employing masked agents who don’t always identify their agency, and who have frequently attacked journalists and bystanders.
These actions have generated public pushback, and even isolated and horrifying acts of violence—but hardly an insurrection. As the ruling turning down Trump’s demand to federalize law enforcement in Oregon notes, the administration’s assertion that Portland is in a state of revolution musters a total of four episodes of threatening behavior by protesters to justify this claim. One of the incidents is “protesters setting up a makeshift guillotine to intimidate federal officials.” Another was “someone posting a photograph of an unmarked ICE vehicle online.” The other two involved flashlights being shone in the faces of agents driving vehicles. These incidents may be regrettable, but they do not even constitute actual violence, let alone terrorism.
In the Miller-Trump formulation, however, Trump embodies both the public will and the only force standing between the public and rampant criminal anarchy. It follows that opposition to Trump in any form, including by judges issuing legal rulings, constitutes an illegal rebellion. “The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life,” Miller asserted on X. “This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.”
Trump’s remarks on the night of Kirk’s murder redefined violent incitement to include harsh criticism of judges. (“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law-enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”) Now Miller himself is going after judges.
To call this “hypocrisy” is to engage Miller’s reasoning at a level upon which it does operate. The essence of postliberalism is the rejection of the notion that some neutral standards of conduct apply to all parties. Miller, like Trump, appears to believe his side stands for what is right and good, and his opponents stand for what is evil. Any methods used by Trump are ipso facto justified, and any methods used against him illegitimate.
A couple of weeks ago, Miller claimed that a disturbed gunman shooting Charlie Kirk impelled the government to crack down on the left. Now he says a handful of activists protesting ICE impel the government to crack down on the left.
Violence is not the cause of Trump and Miller’s desire to use state power to crush their opposition. It is the pretext for which they transparently long.
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