Stephen Miller, one of President Donald Trump’s longest-serving aides, was called a “sadist” by his biographer, Jean Guerrero, on MS NOW over the weekend following his appointment as White House chief of staff.
“What people need to understand about Stephen Miller is, he is, above all, a sadist,” said Guerrero, author of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda.” “He is somebody who takes pleasure in inflicting pain. And there’s one group of people he actually despises more than immigrants, and people aren’t really aware of this, but it’s the allies of immigrants — it’s citizens who use their privilege to stand up for immigrants and for the less powerful.”
Guerrero referred to Miller’s ties to the book, “The Camp of the Saints,” saying his views were “shaped by this white supremacist novel.” She also predicted that “in the next couple of years,” Miller would double down on “finding creative ways to terrorize, target and torture not only immigrants, but the American citizens who attempt to protect their neighbors.”
“Miller is one of the most troubled and one of the most dangerous individuals in this White House,” Guerrero continued. “Trump is choosing to double down, which is an instinct that he shares with Stephen Miller and which Stephen Miller enables him in — this instinct to choose cruelty over everything else.”
Miller declined to be interviewed for Guerrero’s biography before its 2020 publication and has not publicly commented on it. Neither the White House nor Guerrero responded to HuffPost’s request for comment as of publication.
Stephen Miller’s Relationship With This Novel
“The Camp of the Saints” is a racist, dystopian 1973 French fiction novel by Jean Raspail about Indian migrants overtaking a town in France that promotes white nationalist fears about immigration. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center released leaked emails Miller sent to the conservative site Breitbart News in 2015, in which he promoted the book.
“‘The Camp of the Saints’ is popular within extremist circles because of its dramatized depiction of ‘white genocide,’ also referred to as the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory and appears to have influenced Miller’s thinking on immigration,” Erin Wilson, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a statement shared with HuffPost.
Miller was working for Sen. Jeff Sessions at the time. Miller recommended Breitbart compare the book’s message to Pope Francis’s comments advocating for migrants and refugees. Julia Hahn published a story for Breitbart later that month, titled “Camp of the Saints’ Seen Mirrored in Pope’s Message.” (Hahn then served as a special assistant to President Donald Trump during his first term and was the assistant secretary for Public Affairs under Secretary Scott Bessent until July 2025.)
According to Guerrero, Miller’s focus on immigration “was never about going after criminals,” but “was about changing what America is and who is allowed to come here.”
“That is why, during this administration, they have focused on invading American cities to pursue operations that amount to ethnic cleansing,” Guerrero told MS NOW.
Others on the right have also publicly praised the book, including Breitbart founder Steve Bannon, along with former Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who said the story “should be imprinted into everyone’s brain.” The far-right French leader, Marine Le Pen, who plans to run for president next year, said reading the book when she was 18 “left a great mark on her.”
What ‘The Camp Of The Saints’ Argues
Chelsea Stieber, a director of graduate studies at Tulane University, who specializes in 19th-century Caribbean and French literature and culture, has analyzed the book and told HuffPost there are “no good guys” in it.
“The depiction of the immigrants in the novel is essentially a nameless, faceless horde, which is itself dehumanizing and very dangerous rhetorically,” Stieber said. The pro-immigration Catholics in the book are also portrayed as foolish.
Stieber said the book’s language is designed to make the reader feel overwhelmed. In a new afterword in the 1982 edition, Stieber said Raspail wrote that the situation was insoluble by present moral standards. She described this as a “zero-sum view” of immigration.
Stieber told HuffPost she doesn’t think it matters much whether Miller has read the whole book or believes it literally. She said it circulates as a reference point within a broader transatlantic far-right network.
Does Being A Fan Of ‘The Camp Of The Saints’ Make Miller A Sadist?
To understand how sadism is scientifically defined, HuffPost spoke to two researchers who have studied the trait. Neither is formally diagnosing Miller.
“Sadism is unique, and it’s obviously part of the larger dark tetrad traits,” Daniel Jones, who leads the interdisciplinary research group dedicated to studying interpersonal harm at the University of Nevada, Reno, said. The three other tetrad traits are narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, or a severe lack of empathy or remorse.
“What makes [sadism] unique is their motivation,” Jones said. “[For] sadistic individuals, the suffering and agitation of others and observing that, the arousal they get from those events, is their endgame.”
Erin Buckels, a psychology professor at the University of Winnipeg, told HuffPost that it is possible to see this trait through someone’s public record, such as their policy decisions and statements. However, there are some qualifiers.
“A set of indicators would need to be developed that are associated with sadistic tendencies, and then you could go on to code policy statements and decisions,” she said. “Without a valid set of cues, any inferences are just guessing.”
“You can never be entirely sure about the reasons behind what someone says or does,” Buckels added. “You can only say that there are trends.”