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Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda by Jean Guerrero; William Morrow; 275 pages.
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — A malcontent’s take on the Trump administration’s Stephen Miller: “(He) needs to be punished for crimes against humanity.”
That malcontent is no less than Patti Glosser, a cousin of Miller’s mother, who bolsters my feeling that the title Hatemonger understates the character of Miller, a Jewish Californian who is part President Trump’s braintrust behind the White House’s disgusting immigration policies
Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, is more than a hatemonger. Maybe the publisher, William Morrow, should have tried a more descriptive title, such as: “American Sadist,” “Don’s Demon Demonizes,” “Child-Abuser in-Chief,” “The anti-Allah” or “No Country for Brown Men (and Women).”
Author Jean Guerrero, a KPBS reporter who covered immigration confrontations in San Diego, has written a horror story depicting how sleazy characters with nearly unlimited power can cause dreadful misery for thousands and perhaps unnecessary losses of life. I wondered at times if Jean Guerrero is a pen name for horror-fiction master Stephen King.
Most nauseating is the recognition that Hatemonger is a true story tracking Stephen Miller’s life from birth to almost the present, offering strong clues as to why Miller co-authored policies that led to mass separations of thousands of Hispanic immigrant families and perhaps even deaths of desperate migrants.
Guerrero adroitly compiles in a fast-moving, soundly researched 275 pages a text that connects the dots between Miller’s own history, personal stories of Trump and Miller’s victims, backstage intrigue and shocking events thanks in part to Miller’s engineering. Miller, who predictably would not cooperate with Guerrero, is part of a hard-right network that has long sought the kinds of ultra-conservative policies the current White House is attempting to implement.
From the outset of Trump’s term, Guerrero writes, “The Domestic Policy Council (led by Miller) went to work brainstorming how to restrict legal and illegal border crossings from Mexico – anything the administration could do without Congress.” The White House swiftly issued three immigration-related executive orders, one of which urged construction of the wall; that directive “set the stage for taking migrant children from their parents…and laid the groundwork for a policy that would effectively end asylum at the US-Mexico border.”
Under a zero tolerance designed to deter asylum-seekers, Guerrero writes, “More than twenty-seven hundred children were taken from their parents. Nearly five hundred parents were deported to Central America without their children. The administration had no plan for reuniting them.
“No centralized database existed to match separated children in ORR custody with parents in DHS custody, let alone deported parents,” she continues. “ORR had been created for unaccompanied minors – not children separated from parents by US authorities.”
She adds that 100 children under age five were among those separated.
ORR is the Office of Refugee Resettlement and DHS is the Department of Homeland Security.
The separations triggered widespread outrage among Americans – not the least within Miller’s own family. Readers with a gallows sense of humor might chuckle over the dysfunctional discourse among Miller’s relatives, at least those on his mother’s side.
His late uncle Bill Glosser called him “an asshole” and “a pompous jerk.” When David Glosser compared his nephew’s tactics to Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels, his sister and Miller’s mom, Miriam, emailed: “I am extremely offended that you compare my son and by extension my entire family (and all the deplorables who voted Republican) to Nazis and reference Goebbels in particular…The value of having done so, beyond your 15 seconds of fame, is beyond my understanding.”
Frustration within the family was otherwise gravely serious, as Patti Glosser says, “We just can’t believe this is a person from our family that is doing this.”
Hatemonger also suggests that Miller influenced Trump to label nations with people of color “shithole countries.” Check pages 189 and 229.
The book has few downsides, one a major concern indirectly related to immigration and a few minor miscues. For those who have not read Sophie’s Choice or seen the movie, skip page 261. Guerrero gives away the ending. She also makes a few confusing references and it is sometimes hard to keep track of timelines.
Guerrero misrepresents the Middle East conflict in a few instances. She refers to “Palestine,” which does not exist as a sovereign country (page 249), and raps Trump for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel – because their “only crime was disagreeing with him.”
Omar and Tlaib’s idea of “disagreeing” is open hostility to Israel. Tlaib hung a map in her office – her congressional office in Washington, D.C. – that identifies “Palestine” in the space where Israel exists. Omar was caught in a lie, voicing doubt before the 2018 election that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel is helpful, and then telling a magazine reporter – after she was elected – that she supports BDS.
Israel is a sovereign country and has a right to decide which foreigners can enter. Why should Israel permit two powerful people with a long record of hostility toward it to wander around its interior? How can the Israelis be sure that Tlaib and Omar will not cause trouble, as other advocates for the Palestinians have done? Can Israel be blamed if it viewed them as a security risk?
Besides, Netanyahu subsequently offered Tlaib an opportunity to visit her relatives on the West Bank in a limited travel process, and she refused.
Talking about extremists, let’s return to a counterpart of theirs on the right. After reading “American Sadist”…er, Hatemonger, many Jewish readers may well demand that the tribe create its own excommunication process, starting with Stephen Miller.
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Bruce Ticker is a freelance columnist based in Philadelphia.