Leaked emails obtained exclusively by the Guardian have exposed senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller's efforts to shape far-right website Breitbart News with white nationalist and conspiratorial ideas during the 2016 presidential campaign. The correspondence, provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), shows Miller promoting racist theories of demographic replacement and disseminating conspiracy theories about a United Nations-inspired plan to colonise America.
In one email dated 24 July 2015, Miller forwarded Breitbart writer Katie McHugh a link to a book titled The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America. The book argues that refugee resettlement is part of a plan to erase American sovereignty and culture, claiming it is a 'UN-inspired plan aimed at the West, especially America, to erase borders and dilute Western culture through mass immigration from the world's failed nations'.
Another email, sent on 1 July 2015 with the subject line 'some articles you may find useful', included a link to a Brookings Institution report on America's increasing diversity with the comment: 'White youth population disappearing.' McHugh, who was later fired by Breitbart over anti-Muslim tweets and has since renounced the far right, told the Guardian that the emails typified Miller's attitudes. 'They viewed immigration as a plot to undermine American sovereignty,' she said.
Miller also expressed hostility towards specific non-white immigrant communities. On 8 July 2015, he sent McHugh a local news video alleging the involvement of Somali refugees in an underage prostitution ring, remarking that it was 'good to have on hand'. He later linked to a piece arguing that stalled social mobility is related to 'importing millions of low skill immigrants' from Latin America.
The emails further reveal Miller's animosity towards Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to promote immigration reform through the lobbying group FWD.US. McHugh said that Facebook and other tech companies were the subject of special ire from Miller due to perceived 'anti-conservative bias' and support for liberal immigration policies.
