How The Media Misleads: Jared & Amanda Miller, its not guns or race, it’s the cops

Amanda Miller had no criminal history, but suffered as her husband Jared Miller was imprisoned and had his rights restricted due to a victimless, nonviolent marijuana conviction.

The Bare Facts

On Sunday at 11:00 officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo were having a snack at CiCi’s Pizza. Jared and Amanda Miller entered the restaurant and exited. Jared immediately returned. He shot Soldo in the back of the head. As Beck tried to respond, Jared and Amanda both opened fire on Soldo. Both officers died.

Jared and Amanda then draped a Gadsen flag over the body of Beck and Soldo, stripping them of weapons and badges and leaving a swastika on two of the bodies. The Millers also left a note: “This is the beginning of a revolution.”

Jared and Amanda walked out of CiCi’s Pizza to an adjacent Wal-Mart. Jared fired a warning shot into the air and ordered everyone to leave.

A concealed weapon holder, Joseph Wilcox, attempted to confront Jared. Amanda shot Wilcox in the ribs. Wilcox was the third casualty. At that moment a police response team arrived and exchanged gunfire with Jared and Amanda. Amanda was hit.

Jared and Amanda moved to a different area in the Wal-Mart and erected a barricade, preparing to face off with the two law enforcement response teams on site. As the teams closed in, Amanda, who was wounded, turned and shot her husband Jared. And then Amanda shot herself.

How The Media Misleads

The mainstream media immediately focused on the fact that a swastika was left on the bodies of the deceased officers. This was described as having “found paraphernalia associated with white supremacists” and, without a doubt, is intended to lead the reader to believe that Jared and Amanda were white supremacists. According to the Las Vegas Sun, unidentified residents of an apartment complex shared by Jared and Amanda said they “had a reputation for spouting racist, anti-government views.” A resident identified as Brandon Moore claimed the couple “were handing out white-power propaganda.”

Jared’s Facebook Tells A Different Story

Naturally, when I visited the Facebooks of Jared and Amanda Miller I expected it to be full of neo-Nazi, white supremacist propaganda. I was prepared to read the Fourteen Words, hear about racial purity and subject my mind, however briefly, to the racist tirades of two hate-filled psychopaths. Amanda’s Facebook was almost entirely personal, filled mostly with wedding photos of her and Jared.

Jared, on the other hand, was very political. But I found little racism.

Instead, I found a series of memes that could be described as anti-war, anti-government and anti-police. Memes that could be found on any libertarian website or even this blog. It wasn’t the words of Adolph Hitler or William Luther Pierce that had influenced the Millers. It was the words of Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr. and Benjamin Franklin.

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The quote from Martin Luther King Jr. sheds some light on the way Jared viewed the world. He was mad about the state. He was mad about the laws. And he compared the state to Nazi Germany, as well as to the political system of fascism. Nazis and fascism were, for Jared, dirty words. He did not identify as a fascist, a neo-Nazi, a white supremacist or a racist. He advocated multiculturalism and a classless, raceless society.

Additional excerpts from Jared’s Facebook show as much:

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Far from being a white supremacist, or a neo-Nazi, Jared viewed his own country as an equal opportunity oppressor. He bought trouble by calling a judge a fascist and a Nazi in a courtroom setting. (This would lead to a short jail sentence, home monitoring and probation.) He said he wished he could escape to Brazil or Argentina. And, contrary to the anti-immigration stance of racist platforms Jared endorsed an American revolution that included immigrants willing to fight for a better life. He was secular — he rejected the Bible and the Koran — but said that we could do without the bigotry and intolerance.

Jared and Amanda Miller may have been extremists. They were not racial extremists.

Could it be that, by design or accident, the police and media misinterpreted the act of decorating the bodies of the slain officers with a swastika? Was this an endorsement of Nazism (knowing what we know now, unlikely), or was it Jared’s way of calling the dead police officers Nazis just as he called the judge presiding over his marijuana trial a Nazi?

If you have not made up your mind yet, if you are not convinced, Jared also posted this:

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Jared embraced the almost stereotypical American idea of a raceless American melting pot. He openly supported a Reform Jew for Sheriff. He subscribed to and re-posted memes from a LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Facebook page. Was he, then, a closet racist? Well, he’s dead. We’ll never know. But the image he left in the form of his Facebook — his beliefs, causes and thoughts — don’t exactly shout out Stormfront.

It’s The Cops

If we can’t blame the blind hatred of the other, racism, Nazism and the supremacist we cannot relate to, who do we blame? Jared told us, unequivocally, who to blame. He blamed the police and the politicians. Must we still look for an even more sinister motive despite the fact Jared told us what his real motive was? For example, the idea that he might have wanted to shoot anybody he came across? Jared condemned indiscriminate school shootings on his page as well:

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At a first glance it seems ironic that the perpetrator of a shooting would condemn mass shootings. But in his mind the two were not alike. The revolutionary — and that is what Jared believed he was — has a target. Jared saw no contradiction in condemning the indiscriminate violence against children while endorsing violence against police officers. The police officers, in the mind of Jared, may have been akin to a soldier or military target. And there is a fundamental difference between the two. We must admit that regardless of what we think of Jared’s actions.

What triggered the Millers, then? The cops. The state:

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Now we know what Jared and Amanda Miller were really mad about. Jared faced a custodial sentence for a victimless crime. This hurt Jared’s financial, physical and mental well being. The Millers further felt repulsed by American empire-building and foreign military adventures. Jared posted his Facebook apology to the world on behalf of the United States.

The Millers shared a fear of tyranny. They saw the dangers of the TSA and the NSA as do, now, most Americans. This young couple lost faith in the United States, its politicians, its law enforcement and its criminal justice system. They witnessed police brutality, living in a particularly rough neighborhood, and also experienced first-hand the dysfunction of the legal system.

This is the perspective the media can’t report. Instead, headlines focus on how the couple dressed like comic book characters or that they were street performers. As if to illustrate some unconventional behavior. Unconventional behavior that by its inclusion in the story we are to assume is tangentially related to the attack that transpired.

The media refuses to discuss the fact that two people, more or less normal individuals, reached a point where they were willing to strike out at the state over the very same concerns shared by most Americans. We all hate the drug war, the NSA and police brutality. The only difference between you and the Millers is that you haven’t responded with violence.

Imagine these headlines:

“Two Police Officers Killed By Couple Angry At Police Brutality.”

“Officers Slain by Victim of Drug War.”

“American Citizens Feel Oppressed; Kill Police Officers.”

Do you see where I am going with this? Random, violent events are not the problem. They spring forth from the problem. They are an effect. The problem is how people feel toward the American state.

And nobody wants to talk about that problem.