Stephen Miller Might Want To Read The Wikipedia Pages For Dean Martin And Frank Sinatra

Racism makes you stupid.

Stephen Miller is an unabashed, unrepentant racist. He is also incredibly stupid. There’s almost always an overlap. Last week, Miller spread some Christmas jeer with the following social media post:

“Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids,” Miller wrote. “Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.”

The Dean Martin And Frank Sinatra Family Christmas Show is a classic holiday special from 1967. It includes delightful versions of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Silent Night,” and one of my favorites, “A Marshmallow World.” It’s unusual entertainment for Miller, as there are no tunes about burning crosses. Sammy Davis Jr. even makes a special appearance as Santa Claus. This probably offended Megyn Kelly, who wasn’t even born yet. (Watch full special below.)

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I don’t want to wade too deep through the sewer that’s Miller’s mind, but I assume his point is that The Dean Martin And Frank Sinatra Family Christmas Show presented an America that was free of “migrants from the third world,” who Miller loathes on account of his overwhelming bigotry.

Here’s where Miller’s stupidity comes in. It’s a strange choice to offer The Dean Martin And Frank Sinatra Family Christmas Show as the benign product of an immigrant-free America when both Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra are the children of immigrants.

Some liberals online argue that Miller is making a distinction between “white” immigrants and “brown” immigrants. That is also historically inaccurate. Italians were hardly the late 19th Century version of the Swedish bikini team.

Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio. His father Gaetano Crocetti was an Italian barber who came to America from the city of Montesilvano. His mother Angela Crocetti was born in Fernwood, Ohio, but her own father had emigrated from Monasterolo, Bergamo. Martin grew up in a decidedly Italian home. He didn’t speak English until he was five years old. (Of course, it was not uncommon for performers with “foreign-sounding names” to change them to avoid offending the Stephen Millers of the world, who couldn’t tolerate any hint of difference.)

Many Italian immigrants made the United States their home in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. They worked the relatively low-skill, labor intensive jobs that fueled a booming industrial economy. Still, they weren’t welcomed with open arms and were regarded with suspicion for decades. Southern and Central Italians in particular were stereotyped as inherently violent and depicted in “racially suspect” terms — “dark,” “swarthy,” and “kinky haired.”

It was believed that Italian Americans, in the 1920s and 1930s, became U.S. citizens and registered to vote specifically to influence U.S. foreign policy on behalf of Benito Mussolini’s fascist aims. Consider this in the current context of how Republican politicians claim Muslim elected officials pose an active threat to democracy.

Italian immigrants were accused of bringing crime to their new communities. Residents blamed them for their own troubles finding jobs. Historians record at least 27 summary executions of Italian immigrants.

Growing up in Hoboken, New Jersey, Frank Sinatra experienced significant anti-Italian bigotry. Early into his career, singer Harry James suggested that Sinatra change his name to something “less threatening” like “Frank Satin.” Sinatra refused. “I said no way, baby. My name is Sinatra. Frank Fucking Sinatra.” Keeping his birth name professionally was his defiant stance against xenophobia.

A polar opposite to Stephen Miller, Frank Sinatra was a fervent anti-racist and an early activist during the Civil Rights movement. He refused to stay at hotels and play at clubs that did not admit Black people.

In 1945, a young Sinatra appeared in the 10-minute short film “The House I Live In,” which openly opposes anti-semitism specifically and xenophobia in general. Sinatra, playing himself, intervenes when he sees a mob of boys chasing another child who they fear for no good reason. “We don’t like him,” one tiny racist tells Sinatra. “We don't want him in our neighborhood or going to our school.” Sinatra sets them straight, informing them that we are all Americans and no one has less or more of a right to citizenship because of their heritage or how they worship. (Watch below.)

Look, fellas: Religion makes no difference. Except maybe to a Nazi -- or somebody as stupid. Why, people all over the world worship God in many different ways. God created everybody. He didn’t create one people better than another. Your blood’s the same as mine; mine’s the same as his [gesturing to bullied boy]. Do you know what this wonderful country is made of? It’s made up of a hundred different kind of people. And a hundred different ways of talking. And a hundred different ways of goin’ to church. But they’re all American ways. Wouldn’t we be silly if we went around hating people because they combed their hair different than ours? Wouldn’t we be a lot of dopes?

My dad came from Italy. But I’m an American. But should I hate your father because he came from Ireland or France or Russia? Wouldn’t that be a first class fathead?

Unfortunately, the message sort of devolves into post-World War II anti-Japanese bigotry. Xenophobia and prejudice can trap even the well-intentioned.

In 1890, New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy was assassinated. When asked who shot him, Hennessy reportedly whispered a derogatory slur for Italians before dying. His deathbed epithet inspired a racist backlash that fit a familiar pattern.

Sage Serraino wrote last year at The Oberlin Review:

Newspapers ran headlines such as “Vast Mafia in New Orleans,” and New Orleans mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare gave a speech that declared Hennessy a “victim of Sicilian Vengeance.” Associations of Sicilian and Italian immigrants with organized crime led to the arrests of over 45 people the day after Hennessy’s murder, and an estimated 250 Italian people were rounded up and questioned by authorities in the days following, though most were eventually released. The continued spread of misinformation and harmful stereotypes by newspapers and politicians soon led to a demonstration of extreme violence outside Parish Prison, where the 19 Sicilian and Italian men charged with the murder were being held. On March 14, 1891, an angry mob gathered outside the prison. They stormed the prison and dragged the Sicilian men outside. Several of the victims were repeatedly shot and several others were hanged, their bodies grossly put on display in the aftermath. Eleven men were lynched while the rest of the people in the prison managed to hide or escape. None of the men who were lynched were found guilty of being involved in Hennessy’s murder.

Yet, the sensationalistic press coverage promoted the unfounded narrative that the lynched men were all Mafia assassins who deserved their fates, even if it defied the law. This is the position Miller takes about the people the Trump administration has deported or outright tortured without due process.

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All this lynching put a strain on relations between the U.S. and Italian governments. Italy even removed its ambassador from Washington, D.C. Hoping to appease the Italian government and — perhaps remembering that Italian Americans could vote — President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed the first ever Columbus Day celebration on October 21, 1892. This paltry honor obviously didn’t bring back the lynched men but everyone got a parade out of it.

Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Stephen Miller would all insist that Italian Americans are “good” immigrants, even if they all would’ve resented and smeared them a century ago. Demagogues might sometimes change their victims but their tactics remain the same.