A Storm of Fire and Brimstone — Stephen Miller’s Charlie Kirk Memorial Speech (21 September 2025)
On Sunday, 21 September 2025, the memorial for Charlie Kirk was held at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. It was nearly five hours in length and covered in varying degrees by most major media outlets, including being streamed live on YouTube. Around 12 minutes in, the national anthem was performed, exceptionally poorly in my view, by some guy whose name I’m not going to bother looking up in front of a full military color guard. There were numerous speakers and tributes, as one might expect. One of those speakers was Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and homeland security advisor. I do not think that this speech received the attention it deserves. It has to be one of the most stunning, stark, and bleak examples of demagoguery I’ve ever seen on American soil.
You can read the transcript of this speech for yourself below. Miller has always shown a predilection for bombastic rhetoric; he’s very fiery and abrasive and I assume that’s the public persona he wishes to cultivate. Often, his efforts come across as comical, like a precocious little boy play-acting in his CEO father’s suit. This speech, full of imagery both soaring and apocalyptic, turns those characteristics up to a frightening maximum.
If you read this speech half-distracted by a reality show, two feral dogs fighting over the carcass of a woodchuck, and a half dozen toddlers destroying your living room, you will still come away with the very real sense that Miller firmly believes that we are in the midst of a war between Good and Evil, between light and dark. The Good: MAGA conservatism. The Evil: Apparently liberals in general, all of whom he seems to cast as directly responsible for Kirk’s murder in particular and the ills of the country in general. Anyone not an adherent to Miller’s brand of ideology is the enemy. Miller despises these people or, at least, he pretends to for political gain.
“They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.”
There are no allusions to national unity here. None. No calls for calm or for turning down the temperature in American political discourse. Quite the contrary, in fact. The enemy is The Enemy, and it has nothing to offer in Miller’s vision of America. “We” — Miller’s good — cannot be defeated. It is inexorable, virtuous. “We” are the builders. “We” are an army, whose “lineage…hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello,” that will “defeat the forces of darkness and evil.” Any American who reads this should be deeply concerned. This is a warning.
Early in this speech, Miller makes mention of “the storm.” First, using that silly motivational-poster-phrase about a warrior whispering back to a storm that he, the warrior, is in fact the storm. Then, Kirk’s widow is the storm. Then, ominously, “We are the storm.” Interestingly, the storm is a key part of QAnon’s conspiratorial belief structure, birthed after a 2017 statement President Trump made, “Maybe it’s the calm before the storm,” that QAnon followers took to mean was a coded massage about his plans, “The Plan,” to conduct mass arrests of the deep state cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and remain in office in 2021. Much like the recently predicted Rapture, this never happened. But given the religious imagery in both Miller’s speech and QAnon lore, one can’t help but wonder if this isn’t, among other things, an intentionally subtle dog whistle for those disillusioned followers.
The “storm” theme was also used by Joseph Goebbels, the German Propaganda Minister, at least twice in his own speeches (and was seemingly used by Hitler in his 1920 Hofbrauhaus speech: “Das Volk steht auf, der Sturm bricht los,” “The people rise up — the storm breaks loose.”). Once on 09 July 1932 just prior to the Reichstag election, and once in his most famous speech, the so-called Total War speech (18 February 1943) which took place after the Battle of Stalingrad ended in a catastrophic German defeat. In both speeches, Goebbels said, “Now, people, rise up, and let the storm break loose!”[i] In the first case, in a speech sometimes called “The Storm is Coming,” he was attempting to rally party members, hoping to win a majority in the Reichstag, while also trying to de-legitimize the opposition. That election, held on 31 July, resulted in significant gains, but not the hoped-for majority. In the second case, Goebbels was, obviously, attempting to stiffen the resolve of the German people, preparing them for a long, destructive war, the loss of which would, Goebbels believed, result in the complete destruction of Germany and Western civilization. He said:
“The goal of Bolshevism is Jewish world revolution. They want to bring chaos to the Reich and Europe, using the resulting hopelessness and desperation to establish their international, Bolshevist-concealed capitalist tyranny…We also know our historic responsibility. Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. One cannot overestimate the danger.”
Like Miller, Goebbels couched this as a battle between good and evil, “Us vs Them,” and references long history suggesting that the “good” is the defender of all that has been built over thousands of years. One might infer that Goebbels was attempting to “awaken the dragon,” a phrase used by Miller, by conveying to Germans the dire straits in which they then found themselves post-Stalingrad. Both men were issuing rallying cries, making clear distinctions between sides in very stark terms. In Miller’s case, the rhetoric is reaching cataclysmic levels: “You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic…”
I am suggesting neither that Miller was directly inspired by Geobbel’s speeches nor that he is some sort of Nazi. But the themes seem to be eerily similar. Americans should be concerned about this, especially considering the dehumanizing language that now pervades our political discourse. Perhaps it’s coincidental but, regardless, the ramifications seem obvious. This sort of rhetoric should be soundly denounced, mocked, and ridiculed. It should be fodder for those late-night jesters this administration is so desperate to silence.
[i] In all three of these speeches, the orators (Hitler and Goebbels) seem to be quoting the opening line of the 1813 poem “Männer und Buben” (“Men and Boys”) by Theodor Körner, a soldier of the Lützow Free Corps who died at 21 (March 1813) from wound suffered in battle. The poem is rousing, attempting to inspire Germans to national unity in the face of foreign aggression and invasion during the Napoleonic Wars.
— — — — — — — — — — — —
As promised, here is the transcript of Stephen Miller’s speech at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, held on 21 September 2025. Miller is, among other unofficial things, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and President Trump’s homeland security advisor.
Hello, Turning Point. Hello, patriots. Hello to our fearless president, Donald J. Trump. And hello to millions of Americans all across this land who are gathered in sadness and sorrow to mourn Charlie Kirk. But also to dedicate ourselves to finishing his mission and achieving victory in his name.
The day that Charlie died the angels wept. But those tears had been turned into fire in our hearts. And that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand. When I see Erika and her strength and her courage, I’m reminded of a famous expression. The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength and the warrior whispers back, I am the storm.
Erika is the storm. We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.
Erika stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up city, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves and the darkness into the light. The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened.
They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.
We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk. And now millions will carry on his legacy. And we will devote the rest of our lives to finishing the causes for which Charlie gave his last measure of devotion. You cannot defeat us. You cannot slow us. You cannot stop us. You cannot deter us.
We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save the civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong and our grandchildren will be strong. And our children’s children’s children will be strong.
And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation.
And we will defend this world. We will defend goodness. We will defend light. We will defend virtue. You cannot terrify us. You cannot frighten us. You cannot threaten us. Because we are on the side of goodness. We are on the side of God.
And to my friend Charlie, to my brother Charlie, I know you are looking at us right now. I know you are watching Erika right now. I know you’re watching your children right now. And I promise you, my friend, I promise you, my brother, we will prove worthy of your sacrifice. We will prove worthy of your time on earth. We will make you proud. We will finish the job.
We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil. And we will stand every day for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good. And we will achieve victory for our children, for our families, for our civilization, and for every patriot who stands with us. God bless you. God bless turning point. God bless Erika. God bless the Kirk family. God bless our heroes. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you.
