News

Stephen Miller and Me

My relationship with Stephen Miller (one of Donald Trump’s advisors) has been overblown by the media. No surprise there.

I knew Stephen Miller while we both attended Duke University some 10 years ago. I was a graduate student in the History Department; he was an undergrad; we were both members of the Duke Conservative Union. I was extremely impressed with him, and I’m happy to have known him. I am not surprised in the least by his success.

After we left Duke, we drifted apart. The last time we spoke was, I think, around 2009. We were friends, but we haven’t been in communication for some time.

Our major collaboration together was a debate on immigration, which brought Peter Brimelow (Editor and Founder of Vdare.com) to Duke’s campus.

I “mentored” Stephen—the word that has become a meme—in the sense that I was little bit older and tried to impress on him the values that drive my thinking.

Our relationship has been reported on accurately by Josh Harkinson (who first broke the story) and Tim Mak. But unfortunately, the “Richard Spencer is Stephen Miller’s mentor” meme has gotten out of hand.

It’s useful to look back at these reports (both of which were written by liberals who are critical of both Stephen and me).

Josh Harkinson in Mother Jones:

Spencer was more explicit about his views on race and immigration with members of the Duke Conservative Union, where he says he clicked with a columnist for the campus newspaper and fellow DCU member named Stephen Miller. Miller—who would earn acclaim for standing up for white lacrosse players falsely accused of gang raping a black woman—is now a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

Spencer also defended the Duke lacrosse players, writing about the case for The American Conservative—but that’s not the only reason he and Miller hit it off. Spencer says Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007 featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Another former member of the DCU confirmed that Miller and Spencer worked together on the event. At DCU meetings, according to a past president for the group, Miller denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating.

“It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection,” Spencer says. “I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm Trump.”

I never promoted this story. Indeed, many, many journalists asked me if I knew someone on the campaign, and I brushed off the questions. It was only after Josh Harkinson presented me with his research—and he had done a tremendous amount—that I confirmed the relationship and spoke about it publicly.

Tim Mak also quoted me accurately and fairly in his subsequent piece:

“I spent a lot of time with him at Duke… I hope I expanded his thinking… but I think he probably would be where he is today without me as well,” Spencer said, adding that he felt Miller was a “highly competent person, and a brave person.”

I hope I influenced Stephen, as I hope I influence everyone I come into contact with. That said, Stephen is his own man, and we have different political philosophies.

There’s no man behind the curtain.

 

 

Richard Spencer
the authorRichard Spencer
Richard Spencer is American Editor of AltRight.com; he's President of The National Policy Institute and founder of RadixJournal.com.

42 Comments

  • Thanks for these further details, Richard, but we already know that you are a man of honor with a working memory. Our question is whether Miller has a shred of honor, since many of us perfectly recall the following, also from the Mother Jones piece:

    “Miller did not respond on the record to specific questions about his activities with the DCU or his views on immigration, but he denied being close to Spencer. “I have absolutely no relationship with Mr. Spencer,” he wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “I completely repudiate his views, and his claims are 100 percent false.”

    In fairness to Miller, the quoted part of his email may be carefully chosen excerpts. But if it’s that misleading, he should say so, especially now he has won. We’ve strongly guessed for 18 months now that Sailer and Brimelow gave Miller his main ideas, that there was a memetic connection through him to Trump, with Sessions both a source and pipeline too. Now you have essentially confirmed it.

    The only way Miller is off the hook is if he’s a major force behind Trump’s uncanny knack for triggering his fellow Jews. But that we may never know.

    • antisemitism is the symptom of the problem. the problem is non-Jews will be forever unable-unwilling to accepteJews. It is like trying to keep oil and water mixed; as soon as you stop the mixer they revert to their natural unmixed state.

      No mattter houw many Jewish Holocausts antisemitism is always there and Jews know it.

      The Holooaust Museums, and many other things, in fact promote antisemites.

  • Thanks for the nice article augmenting the earlier reporting. Miller’s definitely been a force behind Sessions, and he’s likely to exert considerable influence on Trump’s rhetoric. (And perhaps already did with the Inaugural Address.)

    Unfortunately, this post skips the opportunity to address “disavowals.” It’s been reported that Miller has disavowed Spencer. It’s been exhaustively demonstrated that disavowals don’t accomplish anything for our side. The left just moves on to the next demand, and the normies are no more impressed than if the initial demand had simply been ignored. Furthermore, disavowals reinforce the left’s taboos.

    Jumping from Miller to Bud, Anheuser-Busch is running a pro-immigration ad during the Super Bowl. It presents a Cultural Marxist version of 19th Century immigration with young Adolphus having to endure the hate speech of his day until he finally gets the nod of acceptance from a noble Negro (who, no doubt, understands the institutional racism of America.) Then he’s welcomed to St. Louis by warm, loving Germans (who probably will become cold, hateful Nazis in next year’s ad campaign.)

    You’d think that a corporation trying to fool the dullards into buying their faux patriotism would tackle some issue other than immigration. America just had a contentious election in which the people rejected the globalist demand for more immigration. If the Budweiser Brigade wants to play up sudsy patriotism, shouldn’t it show respect for the American electoral process?

    It’s clear that speaking up on Election Day isn’t enough for the anti-White globalists. So let’s make this a Super Bowl they don’t forget. Spread your memes around now so our people are ready by game day. Here are a few to start:

    Budweiser: Buy our beer so we can call you a racist

    Bud Lite: More liberal than a SWPL

    Anheuser-Busch: Our patriotism means America Last

    Better buy Bud now, cause when we bring in the Muslims, it’s Prohibition 2.0

    Budweiser: Is your Super Bowl party a safe space for rapefugees?

    When you say Budweiser, you’ve cucked your nation

  • Well, again. The alt-right is “the enemy”. The ammo the Jews use is the false holocaust narrative and therefore the evil German Nazis. As long as you avoid these background charges that allow them to paint you, there is no way to legitimize, not to mention your disowning what is in reality a proud past where a great white leader did the right thing rather than cave to Jewish power https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2416884b5880d95f642282bca3200583496fb9cc06c14d869051c0834f28421a.png

  • any enemy of my enemy is not only my friend, but my hero. richard rocks. the more my enemy fusses and frets on richard, or any one else, the more they rock.

  • OT: Why does Hunter Wallace’s website OccidentalDissent website seem so more advanced and professional-looking than AltRight.com? Will there be anyone else other than Hunter Wallace involved in AltRight.com going forward?

    • It’s the same software, running the same version of the software. The only difference is the template/style, and it’s not very much of a difference. What exactly is “advanced” about OD?

        • They are both WordPress websites. The layout is virtually identically—as are 90% of all WordPress websites. There are very minor “widget” differences and basic style/css differences, but nothing I would ever categorize as “more advanced and professional looking.” I’ve done web design and UI & UX design for years. I’ve listened to suggestions and complaints about website design for a long time, but I’m really having a hard time seeing anything that is even remotely significant between the two website presentations.

    • well you can upgrade the house before you move in or after. If before, you own another house as well. All that said, this website looks fine. Go to Raddix if you want eye-candy

      • No, it doesn’t. No reason we can’t have superior content and a good-looking site. Note to self: must be more patient.

        • the site is typical. I would assume it’s not important to focus on and a decision of little consequence to doing our job- removing the Jews from power

  • Miller seems to have thrown Richard under the bus. He could have said:

    “Richard is a smart and hard-working person with whom I worked closely at Duke despite the deep disagreements on some issues that we had and still have.”

    Instead, he went full cuck.

    Fuck him. He’s a coward.

    • On the other hand, that this is even being discussed is a sign that things are headed in our direction. This is a much “higher quality problem” to have, for example, than being stuck debating cucks on the merits or otherwise of a war on Iraq.

    • I’m no fan of (((Steven miller))), (I’m neutral / skeptical) but get real man.

      The guy is a big deal at the white house while Spencer is a hated figure on the political margins, radioactive to mainstream conservatives.

      Even if Miller was actually on our side, practical considerations would make it prudent for him to distance himself from Spencer in clear terms, rather than equivocating.

      Taqiyya

      • What?

        Did I advocate “equivocating”?

        Miller could make it very clear that he profoundly disagrees with many of Richard’s beliefs and that he and Richard haven’t been in contact in many years without lying. Or cucking.

        • Forgiving or not forgiving isn’t particularly relevant. It’s more like those comments should make you aware that you might have been projecting too much onto Eric Trump or whoever.

          It’s a mistake to think that these people are us, or anything close to us. Civic nationalism is in many ways the opposite of White Nationalism. Eventually, we’ll find ourselves on opposite sides.

          And it’s not really cucking for a Jew (or a guy with a family full of Jews) to disavow the actual Alt-Right, which has (at the very minimum) judeo-skepticism as a core principle.

      • “radioactive to mainstream conservatives.”

        Yeah, but why? Because leftists SAY he is? Fuck them, the right should stop disavowing people on the right. The other side never does it, and ignore any attempts to call them out on it.

        • because mainstream conservatives are just another form of liberal

          sadly Trump needs them to vote for his stuff

      • To be clear, Miller gained less than nothing from lying.

        Had he told the truth, he would have been a confirmed “former close associate of international thought criminal Richard Spencer.”

        Now, with the testimony of Richard and other former Duke colleagues of Miller’s, not only is Miller a confirmed “former close associate of international thought criminal Richard Spencer”, he’s also a confirmed liar and a confirmed pussy.

        As mike points out, leftists pretty much never punch left. Why play by a set of rules if your enemies are playing by a different set?

        • It would be nice for us if Miller said something more honest, and chose not to gratuitously “punch right”.

          I just think you’re expecting too much from these people.

          And the left right spectrum can be misleading here.

          The left benefits from punching both civic and white nationalists.

          The Trumpers benefit from punching the left, but to a lesser extent also benefits from punching us, or at least suppressing us, and keeping us from a) embarrassing them, or b) rivaling them or (maybe) c) becoming independent of them. They also earn points with their base from punching us, although they don’t earn points with the left.

          We benefit from (verbally, legally, non-violently) “punching” the left and the mainstream cons, but we don’t really benefit from verbally attacking the Trumpers yet, although someday we’ll hopefully need to serve as a “right-opposition”.

          So it’s a one way relationship, they have reasons to shit on us, but we don’t yet have reasons to shit on them.

          • There would no issue if Miller said he worked with Spencer 10 years ago. The Alt Right didn’t exist in 2007. Spencer was a Paleocon back then.

            There is now a huge issue because there is a paper trail proving Miller lied about working with Spencer. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump fires Miller. Trump does not like people who aren’t straight with him.

            https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/email-2007-ties-trump-adviser-stephen-miller-neo-nazi-richard-spencer

          • Rather than see Miller fired, I’d far rather see a Trumpean inner circle validation of the real dissident right. But I don’t expect a forced choice either way. First, this story is not a big enough deal for it to grow legs only twelve days into Trump’s blitzkrieg. He is bombarding his opponents with so much ordnance they haven’t even time to dig a trench. Second, just because Miller fibbed to Mother Jones doesn’t mean he lied to Trump. Who is to say Trump hasn’t known of Miller’s intellectual connections to Spencer, Sailer and Brimelow all along? Wouldn’t that be something?

          • I don’t know if I really buy that.

            Regardless, we are all in this boat together. Most leftists don’t see any difference between Trump and Spencer in terms of ideology.

            Trump and his people have nothing to gain from punching right. Nothing.

            Every time the jews try to link Trump and his people to “white supremacists”, the response shpuld be the same: “Politics always involves working with people you don’t agree with 100%, and sometimes it involves working with people with whom you have profound philosophical and tactical disagreements. I’m not going to play this disavowel game when you dishonest media hacks never ever ask Democrats to disavow extreme or criminal leftists.”

  • O/T Time for the alt-right to unveil its best kept secret – Jonathon Bowden.
    The NPI is the perfect platform to raise his profile (on the coattails of
    Richard). We need to weave Jonathon into the mythology of the alt-right. I
    see him as a teacher/guru archetype.
    All the NPI gatherings should conclude the meetings with a few words from him.
    A ritual 10 minutes or so of his best speeches, “We’re not sorry” is one of my favorites.
    A slick, state of the art presentation, with a good sized screen, excellent audio and
    carefully chosen JB words. Then all the attendees could raise their first post-
    conference glass in JBs honour. This is how one makes tradition.
    It wouldn’t be long before the chattering classes and nay-sayers were
    asking ‘who IS this Jonothan Bowden’.

    • What about William Pierce? I haven’t listened to as much of his stuff as Bowden though, and I agree, we underuse him. So unfortunate he hasn’t survived, I’m sure he’d have loved our current world.

  • Very good clarifying of the connection for anyone who is just hearing of it via the “Stephen Miller’s mentor” meme. I’ve been hearing/reading the meme being bandied about lately, but I’d read the Harkinson article whenever it was first published, so I was thus able to discern that the “mentor” business was Luegenpresse embellishments.

Leave a Reply