Hate is the intense, passionate dislike for someone or something. It is a word that expresses emotions, how one may feel about a person, an object, or a policy.
I believe ‘hate’ is a strong word; to say I hate you is to express a level of emotion or personal animosity toward an individual for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, the words are spoken with a twinge to let the person know that the surprise birthday party was not what they wanted. I suppose another way of looking at and understanding hate is it comes in different shades and levels. How one decides to look at it and define it is dependent on the individual(s) or the issue(s) a person is currently engaged with.
The fact that your brother tells you in a fit of anger that he ‘hates you’ after you beat him for the umpteenth time at basketball is the drive he needed to keep practicing until he achieved a level where he dominated your one-on-one games. In that situation, it was frustrating, but it also served as a motivating force that set him on a path to work harder and achieve a goal he had set for himself. It would be easy to let your brother win, but if you knew his goal of making his high school basketball team as a starter, as you did, along with knowing how demanding the coach was when you played for him, you would not let him off easily. You know and understand that his words, ‘I hate you,’ are not real but an utterance of frustration.
Unlike a sibling’s moment of heated banter—rarely meant to wound deeply but rather to spark improvement—Miller’s call for someone to ‘go back to their country’ isn’t born of momentary anger. It’s the crystallization of a deeply held belief in his own superiority.
If you are asking yourself, what does the example have to do with Stephen Miller, and how is hate related to him? You are asking the right question, and I will proffer an explanation with the aid of Requiem For A Soldier and the following from Jean Guerrero’s book Hate Monger. First, from Requiem For A Soldier:
You never lived to see
What you all gave to me
One shining dream of hope
Life and Liberty
I would like you to take a moment to consider the depths of this lyric and what I call its overarching aspect: conveying what this soldier gave to us—the hope of life and liberty, a shining dream. While you are collecting your thoughts on that, add this to the mix from Guerrero’s book regarding Miller:
As a teenager, Stephen sometimes made comments that some interpreted as racist. “I believe that everyone is racist to a certain extent,” Walter says. But, he says, Stephen never expressed hatred toward specific ethnicities. If any group provoked his ire, it was the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán (MEChA). A 1999 MEChA document states: “We are a nationalist movement of Indigenous Gente that lay claim to the land that is ours by birthright. As a nationalist movement, we seek to free our people from the exploitation of an oppressive society that occupies our land.”
Miller interpreted this to mean MEChA wanted to reclaim California, an idea that was widely spreading on right-wing talk radio at the time. MEChA members, however, say the mission was to unite and empower Latin American youths. They didn’t promote a takeover.
Maria Vivanco was MEChA’s president at the school. Stephen told her and her friends to “speak only English” when they crossed paths. The girls spoke a hybrid of English and Spanish, Spanglish. Vivanco usually just laughed, seeing him as “a bizarre and lonely guy, a sad white kid who was disturbed.”
But one time, she was chatting with her friends when Stephen came up to her and said, “Go back to your country!” Vivanco stared him down. “This is my country!” she replied. Vivanco was born in Santa Monica.—Hate Monger, pg 56
Comparing the lyrics from Requiem For A Soldier with Miller’s words, I discover a new meaning and an overarching purpose in what Miller is formulating in his malignant pursuit to end all forms of immigration, which is deeply disturbing. However, we cannot stop with this one event; there is an obligation for us to dig deeper and truly understand what Miller is doing and how it is making a mockery of what took place on June 6, 1944, as this verse demands of us.
With a host of brave unknown soldiers
For your company you will live forever
Here in our memory
In fields of sacrifice
Heroes paid the price
Those who paid the price, so people, regardless of their national origin or the level of melanin in their cells, may perish on the beaches of Normandy; Miller, during his high school days and throughout his college years, harbored his bile of hate which to this day has negated his ability to see what this country is supposed to be about—a lesson he should have learned from his great-great-grandfather who had to flee his home because of his Jewish heritage, coming to America as an immigrant looking to start a new life for himself and his family. When Stephen’s great-great-grandfather came to the US, immigration rules were rather lax, for lack of a better term, raising a question about how Miller would feel if that fact were used against him and questioned his right to citizenship.
Those soldiers who stepped forward to defend this country did so because they believed in the founding principles that make the United States what it is and why people desire to come here. So when Miller said in high school—and is saying now—“Go back to your country,” it was an insult to those families who lost loved ones who died on the beaches of Normandy.
Young men who died for old men’s wars
Gone to paradise
We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you’ll see we can
All live together
What a poignant statement: dying for old men’s wars. One cannot move past this without reflecting deeply on the significance of that phrase. Countries do not send their elderly to war for reasons that are obvious, as they are physically incapable of dealing with the rigors of being in battle. Yet, one would think it would be the older ones who would find the way and means to prevent war; yet, it is these old men who are often at the very nexus of the reason war is selected to solve their issues. Here in our country, it is the older generation who perpetrated the hatred Miller harbors for non-white people.
The concepts of separate but equal, racial superiority, religious intolerance, and second-class citizenship are concepts generated by older men who mistakenly believe, as Miller does, because of their racial identification (white), they are superior—and deliberately ignore that knowledge is not exclusive to those who are blonde and blue-eyed.
While Miller is neither blonde nor blue-eyed, he does project an air of superiority that reeks of elitism and apparent disdain for those who are non-white, forgetting he is part of an ethnic group that Hitler attempted to exterminate. For him to tell Maria Vivanco that she should return to her own country was not only ignorant and insulting but also foolish.
When all the world is free
I wish you’d lived to see
All you gave me
When all the world is free.
To see the world free of its hate and fear of those who are racially different would indeed be something to behold. One can only imagine what the world would be like if that indeed were the case. But, as long as there are individuals like Stephen Miller who feed on the premise of hate and suffer from the falsity, he is somehow superior to others based on lies and wrongly applied concepts he has adopted; the US and the world will constantly be waiting for the reality of this Requiem For A Soldier to come to pass and perhaps the hate that Stephen Miller harbors will become something of the past.
We can only hope he will learn how to dissipate his hate. Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath as it seems to me it’s essential to his existence, and that is troubling.
Miller’s rhetoric stands as a stark reminder that the hate he feeds is not just personal—it’s an affront to the legacy of sacrifice and freedom. While dispelling such entrenched animosity may seem a distant dream, reflecting on the values our fallen heroes fought for offers us the hope of a future free from this venom. Until then, we must vigilantly challenge and expose hate in every guise.
Leave a Comment