Stephen Miller has always fancied himself a dark sorcerer of words, the evil brain behind Trump’s ugliest policies. But watching him speak at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last month was less sorcery and more karaoke. He didn’t write a eulogy; he performed a second-rate Goebbels cover act. Only, instead of a German uniform, he wore his trademark vampire-in-daylight pallor and spoke with the charisma of a DMV clerk explaining license renewals. Goebbels was vile, but he was dangerous because he could captivate a crowd. Miller? He’s flatulence in human form. The fact that people applauded shows how low the bar has sunk.
THE STORM THAT NEVER COMES
Goebbels once promised, “The storm is coming.” Miller’s line—“We are the storm”—was meant to sound terrifying. Instead, it landed like a middle-schooler’s attempt at slam poetry. Imagine being so desperate to sound menacing that you plagiarize a Nazi and still end up sounding like the kid who brings a thesaurus to recess. Miller didn’t unleash a storm; he coughed up a drizzle of clichés. If Goebbels had been alive to hear it, he’d have demanded royalties.
THE NOTHING BURGER PHILOSOPHER
Miller’s pièce de résistance was declaring the opposition “nothing” over and over, as though repeating it would make it profound. But when Stephen Miller calls someone “nothing,” it’s rich coming from a man whose entire public persona is indistinguishable from an unclaimed coat check ticket. He tried to erase millions of Americans with two words, but all he erased was any illusion that he’s an original thinker. Watching him declare “You are nothing” felt like performance art—like the void itself had hired a spokesman.
CHARLIE KIRK, MADE IMMORTAL
Miller’s attempt to canonize Kirk—“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal.”—was supposed to be solemn. Instead, it came off like the melodramatic villain in a CW series, the kind of line screamed right before the commercial break. He wanted to crown Kirk a martyr; he succeeded only in making Kirk sound like the newest Marvel reboot. Goebbels would have staged the moment with torches, banners, and swelling music. Miller gave us theater camp fascism: overacted and underwritten.
ANCESTORS ON SPEED DIAL
By rattling off “Athens, Rome, Philadelphia, Monticello,” Miller was trying to anchor his rhetoric in civilization itself. Instead, it sounded like the random-word generator in a high school debate club. Goebbels invoked Teutonic bloodlines; Miller invoked a tourist brochure. The difference? Goebbels could at least keep his lies coherent. Miller sounded like a GPS with bad reception: “Turn left at Athens, make a U-turn at Rome, recalculating… destination: fascism.”
THE MAN WHO WANTED TO BE GOEBBELS, BUT ENDED UP AS STEPHEN MILLER
Here’s the cruel irony: Miller wants to be remembered as a grand ideologue, the iron-fisted architect of history. Instead, he’s the guy who plagiarized a Nazi and still managed to make it sound boring. Goebbels seduced a nation into barbarism. Miller couldn’t sell a used car. He’s the equivalent of a bad cologne—pungent, overapplied, and impossible to take seriously once you’ve identified the source.
CONCLUSION: FASCIST KARAOKE NIGHT
Stephen Miller’s speech on that day wasn’t original, it wasn’t stirring, and it wasn’t even scary. It was fascist karaoke—a pale imitation of Goebbels that revealed Miller as both derivative and pathetic. Yes, the rhetoric is dangerous, but it’s also humiliating: a grown man playing dress-up with Nazi catchphrases, hoping no one notices how small he looks under the borrowed thunder. The storm he promised? It’s just Stephen Miller, stomping around in his daddy’s jackboots, hoping the echo will hide his squeak.
Stephen Miller plagiarized Goebbels at a memorial service — and the crowd cheered. That’s not politics anymore. That’s theater for the damned. And that’s why Closer to the Edge exists.
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Because when fascists start quoting Nazis, someone needs to quote the receipts.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.