The powers behind Trump have a plan powered by a very old prejudice
Stephen Miller. He’s one of the brains behind the Project 2025-Trump regime and Trump’s speechwriter. Yes, I know brains and Trump’s speeches don’t go together, but focus with me for a moment.
I’ve been saying for months that the problem and issue we need to deal with isn’t Trump but what lies behind Trump. The face of that is Project 2025. Guess who’s with Project 2025?
Specifically, Stephen Miller is the wormtongue whispering in Trump’s ear about immigrants and ethnic purity. Miller is one of the architects of the mass deportation plan that has sent storm troopers across the US in search of brown people.
On the one hand, we should be honest that those who break the law should face the appropriate consequences. That’s justice. That includes people who enter a country illegally, people who take illegal employment, and companies that employ people without legal authorization. (Yes, I know that companies are seldom prosecuted for breaking employment laws — it’s a double standard.)
On the other hand, we should be honest that governments that break the law should face the appropriate consequences. That’s justice. That includes the Project 2025-Trump regime that breaks the law and violates the Constitution in its zeal to persecute people they deem undesirable. From the beginning, the ICE storm troopers have indiscriminately rounded up and detained brown people regardless of whether they are legally or illegally in the US.
Arnaud Amalric
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. The current ethnic purge in the US has many precedents. Miller has spearheaded the regime’s connivance to send troops against US citizens, with little to no discernment as to which people they snatch and imprison. This has been Miller’s long-time dream, and not just because he could be profiting from it.
In ideology, Miller rhymes with Amalric. Concentrations of power always do. One notorious incident defined 13th-century warrior monk Arnaud Amalric’s legacy and he offered up a quote for the ages that continues to rhyme with history.
Amalric was the papal legate representing Pope Innocent III’s interests in Simon de Montfort of France’s military conquest of the Languedoc region beginning in 1209. That conquest, seldom taught in English-language history, was one of the most consequential events in French history, and it is too complex and lengthy to relate here, but look up the Albigensian Crusade — it’s a fascinating story. In short, Innocent wanted to eliminate the Cathars, a branch of Christianity at odds with Rome, and de Montfort wanted land. It was a marriage of political convenience.
In the first major battle of the war, prior to de Montfort’s arrival at the front, Amalric led the crusader army to the city of Béziers. Only lightly defended, the city fell almost immediately.
The purported purpose of the crusade being to root out alleged heretics, as Béziers fell, soldiers of the conquering crusader army asked Amalric how to distinguish between the good Catholics and the heretical Cathars. According to Catholic records of the time, Béziers had about 20,000 baptized Catholics and about 300 baptized Cathars. (Source)
Amalric’s reply was, “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” “Kill them, for the Lord knows those that are His.”
In his report to the Pope, Amalric wrote, “Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt.” (Source)
Between 200,000 and 1,000,000 people were killed in the Albigensian Crusade. It was genocide in its deliberate destruction of lives and culture.
Miller’s crusade is not genocide, and hopefully will never rise to that level, but in his zeal to expel undesirables, he has ordered the ICE storm troopers to round up people without much regard to distinguishing whether those people are legal or illegal residents. Miller makes no appeal to God’s judgment, only to his own prejudice.
Miller’s crusade, like Amalric’s crusade, is the tangible implementation of a very old prejudice, an agenda at the core of the right wing throughout history. That right-wing core is the desire for a segregated society, separating the “good” people from the “bad” people.
It doesn’t matter what criteria is used for the separation and segregation — what matters is the hierarchical power structure that results from and enforces the prejudices that demand segregation. Such power structures intentionally deny human rights to undesirables, inflicting discrimination and death. That was the right-wing desire then as it is now, religious zealotry optional.
Canadian Citizen Dies at ICE Detention Center in Florida
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P.S. — de Montfort was killed in battle in 1218. Amalric was appointed Archbishop of Narbonne. King Philip II of France, who entered the war after de Montfort was killed, took over much of the war ravaged Languedoc region, incorporating it into the Kingdom of France. Miller’s eventual fate is as yet undecided.