Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here.
Speaker 3: I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I'm joined today
Speaker 3: by a very special guest, Michael Edison Hayden.
Speaker 2: Hi, how's it going, Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3: You may know Mike from his work as an investigative
Speaker 3: journalist and an expert on far right extremism. He currently
Speaker 3: co hosts Posting Through It, a weekly news podcast with
Speaker 3: fellow veteran of the far right beat, Jared Holt. But
Speaker 3: today we're talking about his new book, Strange People on
Speaker 3: the Hill, How Extremism Tore apart a small American town.
Speaker 3: It comes out April seventh, twenty twenty six, but you
Speaker 3: can go ahead and pre order it now anywhere you
Speaker 3: buy books, and make sure you ask for it at
Speaker 3: your local library and your local independent bookstore.
Speaker 2: Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I'm excited to
Speaker 2: talk about this.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was worried that I wasn't gonna have time to
Speaker 3: read the whole book. I mean, you talk about this
Speaker 3: a lot in the book, right, the stresses of covering
Speaker 3: this beat.
Speaker 2: But I sat down to read it, and I read
Speaker 2: it in one sitting. It is very com.
Speaker 3: Wow, but it's not the book I thought it was,
Speaker 3: you know, So when your publicists sent this to me,
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, phenomenal. This is a book about Peter
Speaker 3: Brimlow and the Racism Castle in West Virginia. I would
Speaker 3: love to read a book about Peter Brimlow and the
Speaker 3: Racism Castle.
Speaker 2: And it's not really is it?
Speaker 3: Like the Brimlows are the strange people on the hill
Speaker 3: and they sort of stay on the hill, right. You
Speaker 3: have a couple of encounters with them in the book,
Speaker 3: but for the most part, it's a book about the town.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's about the town. And I'm glad that
Speaker 4: you mentioned that. I really didn't want to write a
Speaker 4: book that was about these villains that have been, you know,
Speaker 4: populating our culture for the last ten plus years that
Speaker 4: just seem to get unlimited traction on social media. There's
Speaker 4: nothing wrong with talking about them, and there's nothing on
Speaker 4: over certainly reporting on them, because I did my share
Speaker 4: of that, you know, day in and day out when
Speaker 4: I was with SBLC, for instance. I think that all
Speaker 4: that is important, and there's different ways to do it
Speaker 4: and do it effectively. But I think for a book.
Speaker 4: I wanted to focus more on what these people and
Speaker 4: this culture that is surrounding them is doing to everyday people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just I was so startled by what
Speaker 3: it wasn't and then so engrossed by what it was.
Speaker 3: But just quickly for the listeners, tell us what the
Speaker 3: book is not about. Tell us who Peter Brimlow is
Speaker 3: and v Dare and how they ended up with a castle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's not totally without him. I mean we
Speaker 4: do get a bit of information about it. Yeah, we
Speaker 4: meet him. Peter kind of came up as a financial reporter.
Speaker 4: That's the short way of understanding, you know, how he
Speaker 4: became America's most influential white nationalist. That's what SPOC labeled him,
Speaker 4: which has covered obviously in the book. And he became
Speaker 4: obsessed with immigration and in particular heart Seller, which brought
Speaker 4: in tons of people from the developing the world. My
Speaker 4: mother came to the country in sixty eight, for example.
Speaker 4: That was like a you know, three years after a
Speaker 4: heart Seller, and I wouldn't have been born if not.
Speaker 4: She married a white guy and etcetera, etcetera. She came
Speaker 4: from Egypt. So he became obsessed with this and kind
Speaker 4: of in the way that I know, you know a
Speaker 4: lot about these the way some of these minds work, Molly,
Speaker 4: but in the way that some people get obsessed with
Speaker 4: environmentalism and then they kind of expand that concern to
Speaker 4: sort of say, well, there's too many people, right, there's
Speaker 4: too many people. There's too many people. Well there's too
Speaker 4: many brown people. That's what's destroying the environment. And then
Speaker 4: they become you know, sort of white nationalists minded, or
Speaker 4: anti grand immigrant minded. In Brimlo's case, I really think
Speaker 4: it was like a financial thing, just like this is
Speaker 4: putting all these different strains or whatever. And then it
Speaker 4: became the financial became less of a concern and the
Speaker 4: actual anti immigrant thing became bigger and bigger for him.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety five, he publishes Alien Nation, which is
Speaker 4: a book that was actually praised to by people like
Speaker 4: David Frum, you know, the very same guy who's high
Speaker 4: hatting about Trump every day. It was considered socially acceptable,
Speaker 4: and then over time, I think people realized that the
Speaker 4: book had a very racist undercurrent, and it became beloved
Speaker 4: by Nazis, white nationalists, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I think if people like David Frum had been honest
Speaker 3: with themselves. It was there all along. It was not
Speaker 3: a subtle undercurrent.
Speaker 4: Fun A side about David Frum, which is that I
Speaker 4: did put it in the investigation into Stephen Miller's private emails.
Speaker 4: Miller shared posts by from on more than one occasion
Speaker 4: about like sort of anti Islam posts, which I think
Speaker 4: is interesting.
Speaker 3: And I think what these people disagree most about is
Speaker 3: how loud you're supposed to say the quiet part.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I really do think that that's true. So,
Speaker 4: you know, when Peter became more of a contentious figure,
Speaker 4: he founded Videir, which is a nonprofit that lasted for
Speaker 4: about quarter century. Recently died recently double that's covered in
Speaker 4: the book. It dies over the course of the narrative,
Speaker 4: and it was hugely influential, usually influential in changing the GOP.
Speaker 4: And at the time when W. Bush was president, Brimlow
Speaker 4: was railing against the GOP to change, to move in
Speaker 4: this nativist direction, and eventually they listened to him.
Speaker 3: And so the book sort of starts with you know,
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, right, and Peter and his wife, Lydia Brimlow
Speaker 3: have purchased this gigantic castle in the small town of
Speaker 3: Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Right. I guess it's not shakes,
Speaker 3: the medium sized castle. I don't know what the scale
Speaker 3: for castles is. And so you become interested in their
Speaker 3: purchase of this castle, and you go to this town
Speaker 3: and you meet the people of Berkeley Springs, the people
Speaker 3: who are indifferent to their presence, the people who are
Speaker 3: organizing against their presence, and it's this really sort of
Speaker 3: engrossing story of just small town drama, this interpersonal drama
Speaker 3: of these like small business owners. And the castle is
Speaker 3: always there in the background, right, the strange people are
Speaker 3: up on the hill. But it's a story about this
Speaker 3: small town struggle.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think we should just talk about the castle
Speaker 4: real quick, because it's beautiful, and I think that's a
Speaker 4: key thing. I hope when you read it you were like, oh,
Speaker 4: I want to go to Berkeley Springs now, which is
Speaker 4: I've had more than one person who read the book
Speaker 4: tell me.
Speaker 2: That I'm going to wait till they leave.
Speaker 4: I've also heard that too, But you know, I know
Speaker 4: the people who are there who despise the Brimlows and
Speaker 4: their ideology, and I wanted to make sure that they
Speaker 4: didn't feel let down by the book that they felt
Speaker 4: like at least honored to a degree because I really
Speaker 4: want them to be able to recover their business. Their
Speaker 4: business have suffered since Brimlos took over. But just a
Speaker 4: quick thing on this castle. It is absolutely beautiful. It
Speaker 4: should be like a national park or something. It has
Speaker 4: that feel. It was built in eighteen eighty by a
Speaker 4: guy named Samuel Taylor Suit who made it for a
Speaker 4: very very young young girl. I think she's like seventeen
Speaker 4: or something like that.
Speaker 2: It's fitting that Brimlow bought it for his much younger wife.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's true. Yeah, there's a lot of like spiritual
Speaker 4: kind of woo woo stuff in in Berkeley Springs, and
Speaker 4: there's a lot of you know, superstition, and a lot
Speaker 4: of people really think that they are carrying on like
Speaker 4: some sort of ghost like thing would carry over from
Speaker 4: this relationship. But he made the castle for her, and
Speaker 4: he died and she took over and went bankrupt, and
Speaker 4: there was also allegedly a murder or something like that
Speaker 4: that took place there. And then there's like this kind
Speaker 4: of turnover from people one generation the next trying to
Speaker 4: keep the castle going. It's always more expensive than it's Worth.
Speaker 4: It's beautiful. It overlooks the entire town. The town is tiny, gorgeous,
Speaker 4: looks like a great place to go on vacation. And
Speaker 4: if you imagine like four Berkeley Springs, the Empire State Building,
Speaker 4: Statue of Liberty Times Square rolled into one, that's what
Speaker 4: the castle is. It's so tiny, and this is the
Speaker 4: main landmark. This is the thing that everybody goes to
Speaker 4: and they go hiking around there and all this stuff.
Speaker 4: So this is a tourist town that attracts a lot
Speaker 4: of LGBQ people from places like Washington, DC, Baltimore, a
Speaker 4: lot of liberals, and all of a sudden you have
Speaker 4: this again SPOC labeled white nationalist, anti immigrant, nativist, whatever
Speaker 4: you want to call them. Couple buys this castle, right,
Speaker 4: they decide to buy it. And the way they found
Speaker 4: it is because Lydia Brimlow, who is thirty seven years
Speaker 4: younger than Peter herself and started with him and when
Speaker 4: she was twenty or something like that and he was
Speaker 4: nearly sixty.
Speaker 3: Right, she was an intern at the Heritage Foundation when
Speaker 3: they met.
Speaker 4: Intriguing, Yeah, heritage and it's interesting, weird in any case,
Speaker 4: she finds it on Zillo and you remember this period
Speaker 4: very well, I know, But in twenty eighteen or so,
Speaker 4: it became very very difficult for these folks to stage
Speaker 4: events right.
Speaker 3: For you know, for unknown reasons, not because they kept
Speaker 3: killing people.
Speaker 4: I don't want to like derail this podcast by bringing
Speaker 4: up Jason Kessler, but Jason Kessler, who we both know
Speaker 4: very well, who is who secured the permit for the
Speaker 4: Unite the Right event, who has been at different times
Speaker 4: obsessed with both of us, I think were like in
Speaker 4: his top in his top op all list, Jason you know,
Speaker 4: was readily associated with Vidier because of his contributions to
Speaker 4: the site. And people knew that, and that may put
Speaker 4: even more pressure because theyre like, well, this Charlottesville guy, right,
Speaker 4: they Unite the Right guy is Assai. So Vidio couldn't
Speaker 4: stage any events. They were very worried about counter demonstrators.
Speaker 4: I think that the counter demonstrators from that first MAGA
Speaker 4: era really put the fear of God into some of
Speaker 4: these people. They didn't, they were they were scared shitless
Speaker 4: of anti racist, anti fascists, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: you got a castle on Zillow, a million point four
Speaker 4: and it's got stone walls all over it and hey,
Speaker 4: we can hold our conferences here, and so that's how
Speaker 4: they got it. They ended up getting it for that reason.
Speaker 4: And what happens to the town afterwards, I think is
Speaker 4: a minor tragedy in our culture that hasn't been paid
Speaker 4: attention to enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is this sort of microcosm of what happened
Speaker 3: to America. Right, we don't all have a racism castle
Speaker 3: in our town, but sort of the way this castle
Speaker 3: bears down on this little town kind of mirrors the
Speaker 3: way the influx of these extreme right wing ideas into
Speaker 3: the GOP, into the administration that governs all of us
Speaker 3: kind of is bearing down on us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's very smart. I think that's true. I think
Speaker 4: that is one of the reasons that the story spoke
Speaker 4: to me so much that I wanted to pursue it
Speaker 4: for so long. Is it really felt like what everybody
Speaker 4: was going through in the town. And readers will learn this.
Speaker 4: Imagine business owners who are catering to many liberals there
Speaker 4: and stuck in Morgan County, which is seventy five percent
Speaker 4: Trump and ninety percent white, and they're panicking because they
Speaker 4: need to keep people going. In the press goes a
Speaker 4: long way in Berkeley Springs. It's it's a little place.
Speaker 4: They don't know how to push back. Someone buys private property,
Speaker 4: what can you do? But they start to organize and
Speaker 4: try to figure out a way to urge Brimlow to
Speaker 4: leave or to make it so difficult for him that
Speaker 4: he leaves. And yes, it is absolutely a symbolism for
Speaker 4: what everybody's going through. And there are people all over
Speaker 4: the country in places Red states where you might find
Speaker 4: people who you wouldn't expect kind of protesting against TESLA
Speaker 4: or something like that, and it could be kind of corny,
Speaker 4: these type of people who like corny online and easily ignored.
Speaker 4: They're all over the country feeling that exact dread that
Speaker 4: you're talking about, where something very like above them is
Speaker 4: bearing down and pushing values that don't align with theirs.
Speaker 3: Right, it's such a specific story about Berkeley Springs, but
Speaker 3: at the same time, this could be almost any talent.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you followed the story of what happened to ed,
Speaker 3: Oklahoma when the identity of Europa Guy got on their
Speaker 3: city council and it was this very local, small town
Speaker 3: struggle with these very specific local personalities butting heads. But
Speaker 3: the story's playing out in small towns all over America
Speaker 3: because everyone has, you know, if not a racism castle,
Speaker 3: everyone has a local racist who's making life hard for everyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they're sending right now. To use claviculars
Speaker 4: phrase the Yeah, I mean think about North Idaho, for example.
Speaker 4: I get a story for them for about from other Jones,
Speaker 4: and you know, they they have a long history with
Speaker 4: white supremacy and it's certainly dead red far right part
Speaker 4: of the country. But you have like anti semites like
Speaker 4: Dave Riley, it's right, Rebecca Hargraves and those people encroaching
Speaker 4: on their everyday politics. Right, they're trying to change the politics.
Speaker 4: They're trying to integrate themselves, you know, coming from outside
Speaker 4: to take over, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the same thing, is what happened in
Speaker 2: West Virginia.
Speaker 3: It's that these white supremacists are moving to these places
Speaker 3: because they have a perception about what it will be
Speaker 3: like when they get there, that everyone who's there will
Speaker 3: agree with me because they're mostly white.
Speaker 2: That's why Dave Riley moved Idaho.
Speaker 4: Yeah. When Peter Brimlo first moved to the Castle, he
Speaker 4: would repeatedly I think he would do it when people
Speaker 4: reach out for comment and be like, you know, Morgan
Speaker 4: County is seventy five percent voted for Trump, It's ninety
Speaker 4: percent white. It's you who have the problem, not us.
Speaker 4: And if you're looking for a more optimistic thing here,
Speaker 4: I've gotten good reviews for the reviews that I've gotten,
Speaker 4: but they keep using like disturbing, like this is so scary,
Speaker 4: Like I think for us it's not as much because
Speaker 4: we've been living in it for in a more intimate way,
Speaker 4: right I.
Speaker 3: Found it encouraging, yes, because you met these people who
Speaker 3: were doing their best in this like bizarre, fucked up situation,
Speaker 3: Like they didn't ask for a weird old British Nazi
Speaker 3: to buy.
Speaker 4: The cat exactly.
Speaker 2: They're doing their best, and I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 4: I think I think if you try to tune out
Speaker 4: the reality that we're all going through right now and
Speaker 4: just focus on, you know, your own private world, it
Speaker 4: can be scary because you're letting in Peter Brimlow and
Speaker 4: your chair head while you read the book, and you're
Speaker 4: you're you're seeing neighbors kind of turning on one another,
Speaker 4: and you're seeing me go through a mental health crisis
Speaker 4: in the book. I mean, there's these are things that
Speaker 4: for for a normy that maybe a little bit you know,
Speaker 4: you may like the book, but you may be a
Speaker 4: final little disturbing. But for people like us who have
Speaker 4: kind of really been through stuff in this and seeing
Speaker 4: it up close on a regular basis, Look, what I
Speaker 4: like about the book is it's it's rare to like say,
Speaker 4: I'm going to praise some white people here, but like
Speaker 4: it's white people saying that they don't want to be
Speaker 4: represented by these values, right. And I think that for me,
Speaker 4: as somebody who comes on outsider, I like, look so
Speaker 4: normal in New York. I'm just I'm just swarthy. But
Speaker 4: they are there there, I look like Osama bin Laden
Speaker 4: And I was gonna.
Speaker 3: Say, environment, I don't think you pass as why as
Speaker 3: you do in New York.
Speaker 4: It's very different. Yeah. Yeah, And I say, like, you know,
Speaker 4: when you see them, I mean, they they have a
Speaker 4: choice to just kind of say like, actually, yeah, we're
Speaker 4: you know, Peter Brimlow is standing up for my rights.
Speaker 4: He's standing up for me, he's speaking for me there.
Speaker 4: But a lot of people are not saying.
Speaker 3: A guy who thinks a twenty eight hundred dollars political
Speaker 3: donation is a small amount. That's not the average West
Speaker 3: Virginian's idea of a small amount.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is a good thing to pull out. Yes,
Speaker 4: you know. The other thing is the people who ultimately
Speaker 4: in the book tend to defend Brimlow or align with him,
Speaker 4: because basically the town is becomes completely divided, maybe irrevocably,
Speaker 4: so hopefully they'll come together one day. And it's still
Speaker 4: I think the tensions are still quite bad. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: still happening. Even though Fidier dies at the end, the
Speaker 4: Brimo still live there. The people who do are not like, yes,
Speaker 4: we believe full throated in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
Speaker 4: We think that the Great Replacement that like, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about more extreme things that Brimlow has said.
Speaker 3: No, they're just people who see a nice white man
Speaker 3: and his nice white wife and they were nice to me.
Speaker 3: And I don't understand why you're making life so hard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Vvidier has published apologia about mass shooters'
Speaker 4: intentions basically right.
Speaker 3: But so many of these these Brimlow defenders are just
Speaker 3: they're not saying what he said is okay, or I
Speaker 3: believe what he said. They're saying he was nice to me.
Speaker 3: Why are you making such a big deal out of this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will clarify that. But they haven't said yes,
Speaker 4: mass shootings are good. They have condemned that, but they've
Speaker 4: also said that like this writing makes sense, right, and
Speaker 4: they're like when during the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty two, that's something I highlight in the book,
Speaker 4: Vder publishes something that's like, actually, like look what, look,
Speaker 4: how the Great Replacement has changed Buffalo. That was their
Speaker 4: response to ten black people getting shot.
Speaker 3: Right. So Peter Briddole is very litigious, so we do
Speaker 3: have to be very specific here and say Peter Briddlo
Speaker 3: did not say it is good that Peyton Dendron shot
Speaker 3: up that supermarket. What he did say is if the
Speaker 3: Great Replacement weren't happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's look, and I think that
Speaker 4: going back to the people in the town, I don't
Speaker 4: think that they at every point be like that is good,
Speaker 4: that what he's saying here is good the Great Replacements.
Speaker 4: I'm fully on board with it. What they buy into
Speaker 4: is this profound friend enemy distinction that now hovers over
Speaker 4: our entire country, right where it's just sort of people
Speaker 4: who are friends of Maga and Trump are on one side,
Speaker 4: and then anybody who's at is my enemy.
Speaker 3: And these more extreme talking points are sort of creeping
Speaker 3: into that space and they're not stopping it, you know.
Speaker 4: Of course it's two sided. Of course there's like that
Speaker 4: that comes from the liberal left or wherever you want
Speaker 4: to whatever you want to call it. But I think
Speaker 4: in the case of the Brimlows, it's not the specifics.
Speaker 4: I remember asking one guy in the book whose name
Speaker 4: is Charlie Currier, and he owns a you know, a
Speaker 4: sort of a craft's shop at the corner of Berkeley
Speaker 4: Springs Park and it's right next to another main character
Speaker 4: of the book, Trey Johansson, who is you know, kind
Speaker 4: of almost the most important person. And I asked Charlie.
Speaker 4: I was like, you know, so you met the Brimlows,
Speaker 4: you hung out with them. What was that like for
Speaker 4: Christmas and stuff like that? And I was like, well,
Speaker 4: how do you feel about the great replacement stuff? How
Speaker 4: do you feel about like the stuff he writes? And
Speaker 4: what he said was he's a writer. He's a writer
Speaker 4: like you. He's a journalist just like you. He's the
Speaker 4: same as you there's no difference, and he was very defensive.
Speaker 3: Yikes.
Speaker 4: You know, I think that framing is very useful for
Speaker 4: understanding why we can't seem to snap out of this
Speaker 4: current condition that we're in. When you're inside that bubble,
Speaker 4: that's the logic that works. It's like, this is the
Speaker 4: guy on our side. You know, we're defending the guy
Speaker 4: on our side. Right, that's a psychosis that kind of
Speaker 4: overshadows the entire narrative.
Speaker 3: Right, So this story in this town plays out against
Speaker 3: the backdrop of the wider world. Right, So you know,
Speaker 3: your first visit to Berkeley Springs was right as COVID
Speaker 3: is starting, Right, it's the last time you left your
Speaker 3: New York apartment before lockdown.
Speaker 2: You're in Berkeley Springs.
Speaker 3: And as the story progresses, we see the twenty twenty uprising,
Speaker 3: and there's like a little blm rally in this tiny town.
Speaker 3: And then there's j six, and there's October seventh, there's
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty four presidential campaign and these big events
Speaker 3: in the world, and then there's these smaller events in
Speaker 3: the town, but interwoven with this sort of personal memoir,
Speaker 3: right that the world is in turmoil and so is
Speaker 3: your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all these threads sort of weave together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true regarding the events in the world and
Speaker 4: in the town. I'm glad that you brought that up.
Speaker 4: One thing I wanted to do with the book that
Speaker 4: I don't see done and enough, is just to understand that,
Speaker 4: like everything that we see, all these like viral trends
Speaker 4: and all this stuff filters down into everyday life. And
Speaker 4: I think when news is breaking or trends are happening,
Speaker 4: we only look at the news and the trends like that,
Speaker 4: and we rarely look at the impacts on our neighborhood.
Speaker 4: Whereas you know, if you do a movie that's said
Speaker 4: in the eighties, you will see like the event a
Speaker 4: little bit more about like at the kitchen table, what
Speaker 4: the family is going through. As something happens nationally, right
Speaker 4: or so and so's it's almost like we need time
Speaker 4: to process. But this has a very clear time period,
Speaker 4: which is the period right before COVID to the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four election, And it's enough in the past now
Speaker 4: that I think we can look at how these things
Speaker 4: affected regular people in this in this town. Because every
Speaker 4: time you're seeing viral videos about black lives matter. That's
Speaker 4: impacting the way people act there. So you may have
Speaker 4: like five white people go stand on a street corner
Speaker 4: there with some signs after George Floyd's death, and that's
Speaker 4: like a huge deal in that town because it's like
Speaker 4: people are shocked by it or they want to they
Speaker 4: want to they want to harass those people after that.
Speaker 4: So that was one factor. And as yeah, and as
Speaker 4: for as for myself, it also overlaps like probably the
Speaker 4: darkest time in my life. And that's not totally unrelated
Speaker 4: to Berkeley Springs in the sense that, like, you know,
Speaker 4: stuff at SPLC was like really really bad at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the book. Then they're not there in the
Speaker 4: second half, and my mental health was was just not
Speaker 4: in a great place. I had spent, as you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of time with these guys, and I know
Speaker 4: you personally have dealt with a lot of threats and really,
Speaker 4: I mean as a woman, and I mean you're dealing
Speaker 4: with I imagine it's even scarier because.
Speaker 2: It's grosser anyway, is yeah, that's.
Speaker 4: Grosser for sure, And I mean you're dealing with I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't even imagine the mentality of some of the
Speaker 4: guys who are messaging you and what their their private
Speaker 4: lives are like. So yeah, so yeah, I mean I
Speaker 4: had gone through it for a while on my end.
Speaker 4: One example that is in twenty twenty one, I took
Speaker 4: my son to the batting cage and afterwards we went
Speaker 4: to seven to eleven and I got a call from
Speaker 4: a number in North Carolina and then it was an
Speaker 4: FBI agent and he's like, hey, I just want to
Speaker 4: you know, as a courtesy, you want to let you
Speaker 4: know that we have somebody who's like talking about assassinating you,
Speaker 4: and you know, do you have any questions like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I was like I do, but like my eight year
Speaker 4: old is like slurping on a you know, a cherry
Speaker 4: slurpee in the back seat.
Speaker 3: That duty to warn thing is kind of a double
Speaker 3: edged sword, right, because they do have this legal obligation
Speaker 3: to inform you that there's a credible threat on your life,
Speaker 3: but like they're not going to give you enough information
Speaker 3: to make you feel empowered by knowing this information.
Speaker 2: So it's like maybe I would.
Speaker 3: Rather just not know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, it was like literally, if there's something I can
Speaker 3: do to mitigate this, can.
Speaker 2: I just not know?
Speaker 4: Yeah? It was horrible. It was hard. That is I
Speaker 4: think one of the things that the normy person would
Speaker 4: find deeply disturbing in the book. But like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: was dealing with that stuff all the time. I would
Speaker 4: get like, you know, I'd get people sending me photos
Speaker 4: of Alan Berg's shooting in the driveway. I don't know
Speaker 4: if you're familiar with that, but like he was the
Speaker 4: talk radio host who was killed by the members of the.
Speaker 2: Order, killed by David Lane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I would get that all the time. I
Speaker 4: must spent like months of just getting that from like
Speaker 4: random numbers and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Sometimes like a group of guys will get very into
Speaker 3: a particular image, and I can imagine the kind of
Speaker 3: guy that is very into the image of Alan Berg's corpse.
Speaker 2: And it's not a nice guy.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's taboo. It has like a pornographic
Speaker 4: quality to it.
Speaker 2: But it harkens to a very specific era of the movement.
Speaker 3: Like I can imagine there's a particular man who gravitates
Speaker 3: to that specifically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean, like I remember getting threatened by Bowers,
Speaker 4: the guy who shot up like because I was on
Speaker 4: GAB all the time, as you know, to a fault,
Speaker 4: I think, but like you know, I mean, it got
Speaker 4: got a lot of stories out of it and sources.
Speaker 4: But yeah, because I was always dealing with those guys,
Speaker 4: and I was always posting on air and you know,
Speaker 4: trying to stir things up and see what it could
Speaker 4: shake loose for a story. And yeah, Bowers was just
Speaker 4: some kind of idle thing. And so when the Tree
Speaker 4: of Life shooting happened, when he went out and said,
Speaker 4: you know, screw your optics, I'm going in right right, yeah,
Speaker 4: and I was like, I know this guy, that one dingo. Hell,
Speaker 4: So this was this was very traumatic for me. I've
Speaker 4: been holding pretty firm on this. I had a lot
Speaker 4: of manic tendencies in the sense of like I could
Speaker 4: just work constantly, and you just work around the clock,
Speaker 4: work late at night, constantly doing investigative reporting. And I
Speaker 4: was on a mission because I was so angry about
Speaker 4: what had happened, you know, Unite the right. That's what
Speaker 4: that really triggered me. I had before then, I had
Speaker 4: been really open to pursuing a beat as a crime
Speaker 4: reporter or on climate change. These were the kind of
Speaker 4: things that were like I had I had written features
Speaker 4: of previously, but it was it was after you night
Speaker 4: the right I got folks, and I really was like,
Speaker 4: I'm going to put all all my abilities into trying
Speaker 4: to create trouble for these guys, and yeah I did.
Speaker 4: And then when they pushed back, I guess I I
Speaker 4: wasn't mentally prepared for how scary it could be. And
Speaker 4: it was lots of stuff. Then I went through a
Speaker 4: separation with my wife, which is fine, we're great friends,
Speaker 4: you know, but that was like another factor. And then
Speaker 4: also the SPLC thing, which we can talk about. But
Speaker 4: the main thing is that I reached a breaking point.
Speaker 4: I was I was happened to be in Berkeley Springs
Speaker 4: with some of the sources from the book when I
Speaker 4: had to go home and go to a psych ward
Speaker 4: and I went for three weeks, and like I diagnosed
Speaker 4: with bipolar there, which was a very useful diagnosis.
Speaker 3: It makes it makes a big difference because I mean,
Speaker 3: especially it's bipolar if you're just taking an I depressance,
Speaker 3: like you're gonna be up shit creek.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well the ANSWER's press is really screwed up
Speaker 4: my stomach and also made me like even more manic
Speaker 4: and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But the book is is a very frank, very very honest,
Speaker 3: very personal, and maybe this is why people found the
Speaker 3: book to be, you know, disturbing, because it is a
Speaker 3: very frank discussion of what it means to be the
Speaker 3: person who is for so many years in the thick
Speaker 3: of it, yeah, you know, not doing sort of objective
Speaker 3: detached reporting, but getting in there and mixing it up
Speaker 3: with these guys like really, you know, skin in the game,
Speaker 3: committed to the cause, doing investigative journalism in these spaces,
Speaker 3: and I mean, I think we both are guilty of this.
Speaker 3: Over the years on this beat, there is this tendency
Speaker 3: to sort of you know, exchange war stories like oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I got this terrible threat, I got this
Speaker 3: terrible threat. You laugh it off, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's this sort of fact of life that you
Speaker 3: brush off, and you know, everyone says, oh, you're so brave,
Speaker 3: I could never do that, and you say, it's not
Speaker 3: a big deal.
Speaker 2: I deal with it all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they say that for sure.
Speaker 3: But then you go home and it is a big
Speaker 3: deal and people are not, Yeah, is honest about that
Speaker 3: as they could be. I mean, in part because admitting
Speaker 3: that it hurts you makes them double down. If they
Speaker 3: know they got you, they're going to keep digging in
Speaker 3: that spot. But like, we don't talk enough about the
Speaker 3: fact that this destroys us. Yeah, for sure, it's a
Speaker 3: very honest look at what happens when you bought him
Speaker 3: out on that.
Speaker 4: And it's so much worse than just threats. I mean,
Speaker 4: you're constantly concerned that somebody is going to use law
Speaker 4: fair against you and try to.
Speaker 2: Hurt your family and you have children.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, you know, And I am extremely anal
Speaker 4: about legal stuff, Like I'm just like hyper, like I
Speaker 4: don't you know, I don't play games I like and
Speaker 4: so that's out just an example. It's like we published
Speaker 4: when I was with the SBOC, we published the identity
Speaker 4: of Matt Gebert, who is the state department official. I
Speaker 4: remember that guy.
Speaker 2: I was actually going to bring him up.
Speaker 3: I was going to bring up my gaber in terms
Speaker 3: of the number of guys who've moved to West Virginia
Speaker 3: because they think it's only white.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll get there in a second. But I just
Speaker 4: say it, like before I published that story, even though
Speaker 4: I'd been through a million lawyers and like every I mean,
Speaker 4: we just went through everything and stuff like that. I
Speaker 4: bought a pack of cigarettes, which I never do, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to get into my stomach thing too deeply.
Speaker 4: But it was not working. It was not working at
Speaker 4: all that day. It was August seventh, twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 4: I was like, literally I was I was clammy. I
Speaker 4: was sweating. I had never seen his face. He kept
Speaker 4: all of his pictures offline. But I had the goods.
Speaker 4: I knew I had everything. But yet at the same
Speaker 4: this is one doubt. It's like, what if it's not
Speaker 4: him because I don't have the face match forget threats,
Speaker 4: that level of stress of just you know, it's just
Speaker 4: like I checked everything, right. I Like you think, think
Speaker 4: about the you're trying to leave the house for a
Speaker 4: long trip or something like that, and it's like, you
Speaker 4: know that thought, Oh yeah, like should I leave the
Speaker 4: gas stove on when I was you know, when I
Speaker 4: was boiling something for my kids or whatever. Like that's
Speaker 4: the way it, right. It's like a sort of you
Speaker 4: like you memorize the entire investigative feature and you're like
Speaker 4: going through it and there's like, oh, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: is that that right? Did I check that? And I'm like, yes,
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know, I know that.
Speaker 3: I know that feeling exacty drives my husband crazy when
Speaker 3: I say things like I'd rather get shot than be
Speaker 3: wrong in public.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's true. It's it's true, Like I don't
Speaker 4: I don't want to. Yeah, you don't want to be wrong.
Speaker 4: And also you don't want to give these people a
Speaker 4: chance for anything. And you mentioned Brimlow is very litigious.
Speaker 5: Not usually very successfully. No, no, but that doesn't matter, No,
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. Yeah, but it's stressful to report on
Speaker 5: him because of that, because he just he will use
Speaker 5: it as a tactic and stuff like that. And I
Speaker 5: gave I also gave the brimlos I should point out many,
Speaker 5: many opportunities to talk to me and more detail about everything,
Speaker 5: and they didn't want to.
Speaker 2: But you do speak to him several times in the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do, I do much to his displeasure. Well,
Speaker 4: I was just to say, like, yeah, I mean all
Speaker 4: that really led up to me going to the psych
Speaker 4: word and that and the the SBOC thing, which is
Speaker 4: bas my relationship with SBOC is like I was probably
Speaker 4: the most well known person there apology because I've had
Speaker 4: a social media presence and I was doing a lot
Speaker 4: of spokesperson work, So I was like on TV a
Speaker 4: bunch and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So whenever someone's mad at the organization, they're going to
Speaker 3: take it out on you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And really, for a good part of the early
Speaker 4: years there after Heidi left, we didn't even have a
Speaker 4: director of the intelligence project, so you know, I would
Speaker 4: just get thrown into a lot of TV radio stuff
Speaker 4: like that. And you know, they treated me great. I
Speaker 4: mean they had got my pay raise multiple times and
Speaker 4: promoted and stuff like that. And I kept breaking investigative stories.
Speaker 4: And then when we started to have problems where we were,
Speaker 4: they started to limit our ability to publish stories. They
Speaker 4: really became very risk averse.
Speaker 3: Which is so contrary to my image of what this
Speaker 3: institution is for. Yeah, both like functionally and morally.
Speaker 4: Yeh. Yeah.
Speaker 3: As a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Los Center,
Speaker 3: you didn't have mental health coverage. You couldn't a real therapist. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's horrific. That's a human rights abuse to make you
Speaker 3: look at gabble. They had not get you a therapists.
Speaker 4: They were giving us like the app stuff, which is
Speaker 4: not going to cut it.
Speaker 2: No, but you need like a five hundred dollars an hour. Yeah,
Speaker 2: New York analyst.
Speaker 4: Was a psychiatrist. You know, it's okay, like you know, somebody.
Speaker 2: Good, but they should be covering that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, they were not. And there's just a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of stuff. There were a bunch of safety issues,
Speaker 4: no doubt, Anna case, my dear colleagues, still my colleague,
Speaker 4: even though I'm not there anymore. You know, she went
Speaker 4: to go Carver, Ameron and Tennessee and like a bunch
Speaker 4: of proud boys like basically chased her down right. There
Speaker 4: was no security plan. There was a woman named Susan
Speaker 4: Cork was the intelligence project director at that time, and
Speaker 4: she was just you know, how to lunch. You just
Speaker 4: didn't do anything. As far as I could tell.
Speaker 2: Things like what happened to Hannah, Like stuff like that
Speaker 2: happens to me.
Speaker 3: I expected. I'm out there by myself.
Speaker 2: I have no plan. It's just me, I have no plan.
Speaker 3: It was so startling to me to hear that, like
Speaker 3: Hannah is out there operating without a net too.
Speaker 2: There was no plan for her safety.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was nothing. And so one of the first
Speaker 4: things I did was I helped shepherd a grievance about this,
Speaker 4: and it was effective because I think that got Cork
Speaker 4: put on like a performance improvement plan. And then after
Speaker 4: that everything changed at work. I went from betting the
Speaker 4: favored person to being repeatedly at target of what did
Speaker 4: you do? Why did you do this? Like it was
Speaker 4: really I mean to add on the already stressful situation
Speaker 4: that I was in. It was just like your tone
Speaker 4: in a meeting. And then there was the thing about
Speaker 4: that was there was like a verbal warning or something
Speaker 4: that was they actually bothered to write out, which was
Speaker 4: quite stupid. If you're doing a verbal warning, you shouldn't
Speaker 4: put it in print. And sure enough we found in
Speaker 4: there that, like all of the dialogue that was in there,
Speaker 4: was completely fabricated and made up.
Speaker 2: And so for the listener.
Speaker 3: So discussed in the book a little bit is the
Speaker 3: fact that the Southern Poverty Lossoner was engaging in unionvesting. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's right, so you know you were dealing with retaliation
Speaker 3: for union activity in the workplace.
Speaker 4: Retaliation for union activity. It was really bad. It happened
Speaker 4: a second time after that, when I was covering the
Speaker 4: trial Doug Mackie character we can save for another day,
Speaker 4: for another day, and it was really bad and the
Speaker 4: stress was really getting to me, and I had a
Speaker 4: panic attack which I've never had before, while I was
Speaker 4: in the shower, and I told them about that, and
Speaker 4: Susan Cork and the person above her, his name is
Speaker 4: An Beeson. I told him about that, and then they
Speaker 4: responded by turning around and disciplining me again, almost like
Speaker 4: to say, like, we've got them on the ropes now,
Speaker 4: let's really like make them quit.
Speaker 2: Say eighty a violation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And every time we do this, we'd summon the
Speaker 4: union and we'd make it as hairy for them as
Speaker 4: possible to do what they're doing. But there's limits to
Speaker 4: what you can do. Really, when they want to try
Speaker 4: to do these sort of things, they pushed it as
Speaker 4: far as they wanted to go, which is after the
Speaker 4: summer of twenty twenty three, there was a Hamas attack
Speaker 4: on Israel, and you know, I have Arabs in my family,
Speaker 4: I have my mother's side, including Palestinians. You know, I
Speaker 4: was distraught about this whole situation. Was it was adding
Speaker 4: another thing on top of it, and watching the retaliation,
Speaker 4: which became a genocide very quickly, did not improve my mood. Obviously,
Speaker 4: It was very stressful to see that stuff, and Hannah
Speaker 4: invited me to sign a thing about you know, it
Speaker 4: was just sort of like asking writers to sign on
Speaker 4: Israel's and apartheid state, you know, calling for a ceasefire.
Speaker 2: Writers for the seasfire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember, and.
Speaker 4: Free Beacon familiar with that wonderful politician.
Speaker 3: It still comes up in the first few pages of
Speaker 3: your Google results.
Speaker 4: Thank you for nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, but this the book should push it back.
Speaker 4: The book Free Beacon like came out with this thing
Speaker 4: and it was like SBLC spokesperson you know, blames Israel
Speaker 4: for Hermas violence or something like that.
Speaker 3: And just the audacity to accuse you of anti Semitism
Speaker 3: for a signing this letter, you know, supporting a ceasefire.
Speaker 3: I've read that letter. It's it's it's not an anti
Speaker 3: Semitic letter. It is calling it what it is and
Speaker 3: just asking for a ceasefire. Right, And you have spent
Speaker 3: a decade writing about anti Semitic violence.
Speaker 4: Well, there's there's tons of there's there's tons of anti
Speaker 4: Zionist Jews on there. I mean, there's probably more than
Speaker 4: anything else. But you know, when this, when this came out,
Speaker 4: I was really pissed. Obviously it had a racist undertone.
Speaker 4: I mean, Hannah was mentioned, but it was mostly about me.
Speaker 4: And then there instead of a picture of me they
Speaker 4: used they used like one of those pictures of Moss
Speaker 4: looking like Cobra from CI Joe and with like a
Speaker 4: rocket launcher and.
Speaker 3: Write implying that you, as as a man of Arab descent,
Speaker 3: are an anti Semitic terrorist. Yeah, basically and good faith stuff.
Speaker 4: Adding to I would say, this is also complex because
Speaker 4: you know, my family basically fled because of threats from
Speaker 4: Islamic terrorism, right, so this is even more like, you know,
Speaker 4: to align me with that necessarily is not my not ideal,
Speaker 4: even though I'm in like, you know, I'm sure I
Speaker 4: have a very more more nuanced idea of what HOMAS
Speaker 4: is than that author. The point is it's just, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just basically to do that and then rather than
Speaker 4: SBOC like cares so much about social justice and racism.
Speaker 3: Rather than seize the opportunity to differentiate themselves from the
Speaker 3: psychosis that the ADL has descended into. As you know,
Speaker 3: because those two organizations sort of exist in the same space,
Speaker 3: they're often used in the same sentence, and the ADL
Speaker 3: has really lost a lot of credibility in the last
Speaker 3: few years.
Speaker 4: I don't think they have any credibility because of those.
Speaker 3: So instead of differentiating themselves from that, they chose to
Speaker 3: discipline you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they did. And it was that was when I,
Speaker 4: like I said, mental health was like all the factors
Speaker 4: that we've just discussed mentioned And then I was happened
Speaker 4: to be in Berkeley Springs when I reached a point
Speaker 4: where I was like, you know, I was, I was
Speaker 4: suicidal and trigger warning for people. I apologize, but that's
Speaker 4: the truth, and came back and I had to spend
Speaker 4: this sort of Christmas break period there where I lost
Speaker 4: you know, they ultimately terminated me. It was a Title
Speaker 4: seven violation in terms of discrimination. Well we'll get into
Speaker 4: what happened effort. And then when people found out what happened,
Speaker 4: the union started to write things, you know, to management.
Speaker 4: There was all this internal dialogue happening while I was
Speaker 4: in a psych word with like no access to anything,
Speaker 4: and almost everybody in my line of managers was pushed
Speaker 4: out and given buyouts allegedly Quirk this woman and Beeson
Speaker 4: and now the CEO.
Speaker 2: Is they exposed themselves to some serious liability there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they got off easy in many ways. Yeah, they
Speaker 4: disposed of me, but I threatened suit with a lawyer,
Speaker 4: wonderful lawyer who she was great Jewish woman from New
Speaker 4: York and was as tough as nails, and yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean I got a good settlement out of it, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, I would have preferred just to be able
Speaker 4: to just continue doing my job.
Speaker 2: Though it's heartbreaking to remember that.
Speaker 3: You know, even these progressive nonprofits that are fighting for
Speaker 3: what we believe, they're using you up and spitting you
Speaker 3: out to Yeah, oh sure, they're doing union busting. They're
Speaker 3: firing you for having a mental health crisis. They're opposed
Speaker 3: to you exercising your free speech off the clock, the
Speaker 3: kinds of things you just you don't want to see
Speaker 3: from an organization like the SPLC.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they had to retract my termination and assign into
Speaker 4: a layoff. And then you know, I had to retract
Speaker 4: labor claims I had made, which would have gone nowhere
Speaker 4: as soon as the Trump administration took over. Anyway, that's heartbreaking,
Speaker 4: which I saw coming in twenty twenty four to a degree.
Speaker 4: So yeah, like that happened. And then bringing it back
Speaker 4: to Berkeley Springs. I was told not to go anywhere,
Speaker 4: but I needed to keep working on the book. So
Speaker 4: it was like a week after I got out of
Speaker 4: the hospital, I came back down there, and then the
Speaker 4: folks who I had been working with since twenty twenty
Speaker 4: when the Brimlas first arrived, they kind of took me
Speaker 4: in and nurse me back to health. So that's why
Speaker 4: it's I feel like unified in the narrative, and we're
Speaker 4: able to explore what happened to me psychologically and what
Speaker 4: happens is and them psychologically as this other stuff is happening. See.
Speaker 3: I guess I understand why some of the reviewers call
Speaker 3: it disturbing. But that sort of full circle, that sort
Speaker 3: of personal closure. You know, obviously things weren't ideal, right,
Speaker 3: you lost your job, but I don't know, things came
Speaker 3: full circle and the people that you went there to
Speaker 3: write about took care of you, and you, I don't know,
Speaker 3: you all.
Speaker 2: Continue along your way as the world falls apart.
Speaker 4: I don't think that they come all cross as like
Speaker 4: perfect either. I mean, like that's what I'm really hopeful for.
Speaker 2: No, I mean they're all complicated people.
Speaker 4: You know, I wanted to avoid like the sort of
Speaker 4: wishy washy utopian like I'm an ally you know, and
Speaker 4: it's like, yeah, actually, the people who are allies have
Speaker 4: all kinds of issue that marital problems. Maybe some of
Speaker 4: them are like behave badly in one thing or whatever.
Speaker 4: We're all people trying to live. It's really a question
Speaker 4: of what this particular ideology that has been foisted upon
Speaker 4: us very rapidly by the likes of Steve Bannon and
Speaker 4: Brimlow and others right it was a it was a
Speaker 4: collective push to take the existing right wing monstar and
Speaker 4: set it in this direction. What this is doing to us.
Speaker 3: It's a very intimate look at what that is like
Speaker 3: for individual people. You know, we were all experiencing having
Speaker 3: right wing violence foisted upon us from above, but this
Speaker 3: is I don't know. There were these like small moments
Speaker 3: of like physical intimacy, like when you're you're at the
Speaker 3: castle for the party and you know, you and Peter
Speaker 3: Brimlow are exchanging like this lighthearted moment and you reach
Speaker 3: out and you put your hand on his shoulder. Instinctively,
Speaker 3: when you're sharing laughter with someone, you put out, you
Speaker 3: put your hand on his shoulder, and like you know
Speaker 3: recoiled immediately and didn't know why you had done that
Speaker 3: with this like tiny moment of physical intimacy that you
Speaker 3: know this was a person, sure, or the transgender mushroom
Speaker 3: farmer Lisa Marie who sought out Lydia Brimlow at church
Speaker 3: and shook her hand during the rite of peace, like
Speaker 3: I would have loved to have seen that.
Speaker 4: She's so cool by the way, you should have her on.
Speaker 3: She's awesome, she sounds amazing.
Speaker 2: I would love to meet Lisa Marie.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you about her in a second. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I mean Brimlo is behaving in a
Speaker 4: very I mean he has like an infuncular kind of
Speaker 4: vibe like in person when he's not angry with you.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure that for people who know him in
Speaker 4: a friendly way in the movement that he's he's fun.
Speaker 3: You know, he likes to drink room temperature Vanka.
Speaker 4: He is always talking like this. He sounds like he's
Speaker 4: always had her for your drinks. Probably, Yes, he has
Speaker 4: that British way of just some kind of dry remark
Speaker 4: about things going to pot like you know, I'm sure
Speaker 4: it's fun for people who know him, and you know,
Speaker 4: you're in that space and any kind of party thing
Speaker 4: or whatever you can let go for a second. And
Speaker 4: for a second I felt not that, like I felt like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is my friend, or it is more than I'm.
Speaker 2: Just talking exactly.
Speaker 3: You know, people really bristle it that you know you're
Speaker 3: humanizing him. Well, yeah, because he's human. Humanizing doesn't mean
Speaker 3: excusing or you know, coming to appreciate it in any way.
Speaker 2: It just means like he's human. So for most of
Speaker 2: the book, the strange people on the.
Speaker 3: Hill are removed on the hill, but when you encounter them,
Speaker 3: there is this very human intimacy to these encounters.
Speaker 4: And not only that, everybody has a rough go in
Speaker 4: this book, including that.
Speaker 3: Getting raked over the coals by Letitia James well over the.
Speaker 4: Course of this that there if you follow their their
Speaker 4: arc and their arcs throughout the book, but one particular arc,
Speaker 4: it starts with them really thinking they've got it, like
Speaker 4: this is like this is like high point of Vider's existence.
Speaker 4: They have a castle, they have a home base that
Speaker 4: they can use in perpetuity. After Brimla leaves, the movement
Speaker 4: can flourish and grow. This is like this is it.
Speaker 4: They got a Castle.
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be the perfect place for white
Speaker 3: nationalists meet up. They haven't really used it that way
Speaker 3: that much, like every now and again, but like.
Speaker 4: This is the best situation they've ever had, Like they're great,
Speaker 4: and they've also just coming off of getting a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of dark money donations from two people we don't
Speaker 4: know who they are, but it's like, you know, four
Speaker 4: point five mil in like one year through donors Trust,
Speaker 4: and they're writing really high. And then by the end
Speaker 4: from the Letitia James investigation, it had not turned into
Speaker 4: a lawsuit yet by that point, under the pressure of
Speaker 4: that and just under the pressure of just everybody around them,
Speaker 4: you know, not wanting them to be there, they decided
Speaker 4: to dial down VideA altogether. And it still exists in
Speaker 4: the sense of, like the Twitter accounts still exists, and
Speaker 4: Brimlo is still writing on substack. Some of it is
Speaker 4: a legal thing to try to, you know, get them
Speaker 4: out of the way of Letitia j Ames. But you know,
Speaker 4: they're really broken down. I mean, the videos that they
Speaker 4: published about their closing, I mean, it's just a laundry
Speaker 4: list of things that add up to a defeat. I
Speaker 4: don't think they would disagree with that that they felt
Speaker 4: defeated by the end, and the people who were in
Speaker 4: the town who are so nice and sweet and wonderful
Speaker 4: and all this, they're laughing as you would, right as
Speaker 4: everybody talked about like when Trump dies, and everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do this when Trump dies and all
Speaker 4: that stuff. Right, it's just liberation from that thing. But
Speaker 4: ultimately it's a really like if you just look at
Speaker 4: the Brimlows, it is, you know, it is a brutal
Speaker 4: fall by the end of the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean ten years ago they were poised to
Speaker 3: be on top of the world and their ideas remain ascendant,
Speaker 3: but he himself has really fallen. Now he just has
Speaker 3: the flooded basement of his little racism castle.
Speaker 4: Well, there's no solidarity on their side. I just oh god,
Speaker 4: that's what I saying.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's one thing they will never happen.
Speaker 4: I Mean, you get somebody who annoys me, who is
Speaker 4: a sort of anti fascion anti racists, who like annoys
Speaker 4: the shit out of me, but they they wind up like,
Speaker 4: you know, being targeted by somebody. I'm like, okay, well.
Speaker 2: You're not going to gloat about their downfhones.
Speaker 4: But not only that, but it's like now it's time
Speaker 4: to like, you know, support them. You know, that's the
Speaker 4: way I feel.
Speaker 3: And they just don't do that. They don't do that
Speaker 3: for each other. They hate each other.
Speaker 4: They're always malignant narcissists because it's always about cloying to
Speaker 4: the top, right, it's always trying to get power over
Speaker 4: other people.
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody wants to be the crab at the
Speaker 3: top of the bucket, but you're still crabbing a goddamn bucket.
Speaker 4: There's two strains of maga. I know, mega is a
Speaker 4: very broad term, and like one of them is really
Speaker 4: this kind of grift focused kind of cryptoweb three aligned aspect.
Speaker 4: We're just AI and this, and like a small number
Speaker 4: of people, like fifteen percent will go hoard a bunch
Speaker 4: of like fake coins or whatever things polymarket, like odds
Speaker 4: or whatever. They're all hoarding information to kind of beat
Speaker 4: people in polymarket. And then the suckers they you know whatever,
Speaker 4: the o the rest of it, the bigger percentage of
Speaker 4: seventy five percent followers, they're taking their money and that's baga.
Speaker 4: That's a big part of bag. And then the other
Speaker 4: part is less concerned with money, although money is a
Speaker 4: part of it. Is just ascending and pushing down from
Speaker 4: a power space, right, Like you just like to be
Speaker 4: in a place where they can have power over other people,
Speaker 4: and usually other people being designated by not looking like them,
Speaker 4: or not behaving like them, or not having the same
Speaker 4: kind of boyfriend's girlfriends whatever than them.
Speaker 3: It's like, I mean, I couldn't be happier that Peter
Speaker 3: Brimlow is going to end his career on the bottom
Speaker 3: of the heap he was trying to climb.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, yeah, and they'll be the I guarantee
Speaker 4: you there'll be more of an effort from us to
Speaker 4: define his legacy than from them, because they don't care.
Speaker 4: They don't care.
Speaker 2: No, they will, they'll use you up and forget you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they don't care. We will. We will spend more
Speaker 4: time on him than so we I mean, we're talking
Speaker 4: about him right now. We have I have a host
Speaker 4: a podcast where we talk about these guys all the
Speaker 4: time time, right, so it's a girl. He's bringing up
Speaker 4: new guys. I think we're doing We're doing a full
Speaker 4: BIOEP on Stephen Miller soon. You know, they don't do that.
Speaker 4: They don't care. They're not like, here's the reason Stephen's great.
Speaker 3: Like no, I mean Jason Kesslo disappeared from the internet
Speaker 3: a year ago and they don't talk about him anymore. Oh,
Speaker 3: It's it's like he never existed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, but you know what, I hope he
Speaker 4: stays off that, you know what I mean. I try
Speaker 4: to find some forgiveness in my heart. You know, maybe
Speaker 4: it's the Catholic upbringing, whatever, but I try to find
Speaker 4: some even though he literally who knows what he did
Speaker 4: that was related to the threats I received because he
Speaker 4: wrote stuff about me.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that that series he put on
Speaker 3: vdare that included information about you and your family certainly
Speaker 3: didn't help.
Speaker 4: Yeah for sure. But you know, if he stays offline
Speaker 4: and he stays like this, like, I hope that he's
Speaker 4: getting some help.
Speaker 2: That's all anyone ever asked.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's all I was ever asking for from
Speaker 3: these guys. I'm not even holding out hope that you
Speaker 3: change your heart.
Speaker 2: I just want you to stop doing.
Speaker 3: Stuff about it, yeah, I mean, just stop trying to
Speaker 3: make everything worse.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, really, Like I mean, but if he's out
Speaker 4: there and he's like I'm just gonna, like, you know,
Speaker 4: keep it quiet. And I have a hard time imagining
Speaker 4: that guy like finding any kind of change of heart.
Speaker 4: But it would be great if he just stayed, just
Speaker 4: stayed at everything and just lived his life. And you know, privately,
Speaker 4: I would I would feel some tiny crumb of respect for.
Speaker 3: That God willing, God willing, and maybe, uh maybe Peter
Speaker 3: Rimo will log off forever eventually too.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean based upon the age that that's yeah.
Speaker 2: Well he's gonna he's gonna do a permanent log.
Speaker 4: Off eventually, permanent log off eventually. I've heard all kinds
Speaker 4: of gossip about from people in Berkeley Springs that Lydia
Speaker 4: really doesn't want to be associated with the white nationalist
Speaker 4: movement and really doesn't want us to be associated with
Speaker 4: the movement in general, if you want to give it
Speaker 4: another term that they might use, like dissit and write
Speaker 4: or whatever. She's I think I don't know this for
Speaker 4: a fact that she would never tell me directly. Think
Speaker 4: about Lydia Bremlo. You're twenty years old. This very rich
Speaker 4: white husband comes by his old for you. He's like
Speaker 4: fifty seven, and he's recently lost his wife, Bremolo lost
Speaker 4: his first wife to cancer, and you're in the kind
Speaker 4: of heritage seeing you're kind of conservative yourself, and.
Speaker 3: This guy conservative.
Speaker 4: This is this is happening around a time in which
Speaker 4: alienation is still kind of acceptable.
Speaker 2: I mean, at least in the heritage front set.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, on the right it was kind of acceptable.
Speaker 4: But even you know, even if it's acceptable, the worst
Speaker 4: you could say about it. He's kind of a bad boy,
Speaker 4: like a bad you know, he's got right So it's
Speaker 4: sort of like, oh, edgy, he's like an edgy bad boy,
Speaker 4: and you kind of get indoctrinated into the movement that way.
Speaker 4: And you're in a marriage like I don't know, Like
Speaker 4: when I was like twenty something, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: didn't know what the hell was going on. So you're
Speaker 4: in this marriage with this dude, and you have kids now,
Speaker 4: and you've seen the other side of it, the hell
Speaker 4: of it up close all the time, people shutting down
Speaker 4: the website. People there were hackers, there's all kinds of
Speaker 4: things that they're dealing with constantly. Everyone is telling you,
Speaker 4: everyone other than people in the movement are finding ways
Speaker 4: whenever they get a chance to speak to you. They're
Speaker 4: telling you, you know, go fuck yourself. We hate this, right,
Speaker 4: we hate you. We don't like this stuff.
Speaker 2: It's got to be discouraging.
Speaker 4: I mean for years and then now all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: you're turning forty and you've got kids and you're looking
Speaker 4: at this. I mean, I personally would want to like
Speaker 4: just get as far away from it as possible. I mean,
Speaker 4: it just seems like it's just a depressing just you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I said, that's all I want for these
Speaker 3: people is that they stop doing harm in the world.
Speaker 3: And you know, if they have a change of heart,
Speaker 3: that's wonderful. Don't tell us about it. Yeah, just log off,
Speaker 3: just go be normal, go get a real job, stop
Speaker 3: being a Nazi. Just just go just go be a
Speaker 3: guy in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would really like that. I think they're kind
Speaker 4: of entering now a sort of post Nazi phase.
Speaker 3: M I mean, because they don't they don't have to
Speaker 3: be edgy anymore. They're the mainstream Republican politics.
Speaker 4: Now you can be just you can just be a
Speaker 4: gracist Nazi at all the time. And that's why it's
Speaker 4: starting to mutate into like these like whole looks maxing
Speaker 4: and like, you know, which is like in cell but
Speaker 4: like we're not insuls anymore. We hammer our face whatever,
Speaker 4: you know. I just think that they're now so they
Speaker 4: think they're such part of the culture, and it would
Speaker 4: be it'll be very interesting for me to see if
Speaker 4: there is a huge change after this, if we see
Speaker 4: sort of the Trump regime kind of fall, have a
Speaker 4: really hard fall, and some of this really starts to
Speaker 4: break up, what will happen and when people like look
Speaker 4: back at some of the stuff that's happening over the
Speaker 4: past like a few years, even as there's been this
Speaker 4: tremendous explosion. If you look at the time from when
Speaker 4: the book ended, which is again on the election day,
Speaker 4: the day after the election, I'm twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: I mean, what a moment to end things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but if you look at that from there to now,
Speaker 4: you see like that was almost like an endpoint before
Speaker 4: this new culture that we're in now where you have
Speaker 4: the shootings in Minneapolis and it's just the outright violence,
Speaker 4: the blown up boats, all this stuff. I'm very curious
Speaker 4: to see our culture, if our culture can heal a
Speaker 4: little bit, how this stuff will be viewed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it is, like you said, it ends
Speaker 3: before the story is over. But I think, you know,
Speaker 3: as a portrait of that four year period in that town.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3: It is I think applicable to the world outside of
Speaker 3: Berkeley Springs, but it is a very intimate look at
Speaker 3: what it means for a weird, old racist blogger to
Speaker 3: move into the castle that looms above your coffee shop. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: I don't want to keep you forever, but I just
Speaker 3: want to remind the listener strange people on the Hill,
Speaker 3: how extremism for a part a Small American Town by
Speaker 3: Michael Edison Hayden comes out April.
Speaker 4: Seventh, Yeah, April seventh.
Speaker 2: April seventh.
Speaker 3: You can pre order it now wherever books are sold,
Speaker 3: or you could just go to a bookstore on April
Speaker 3: seventh and pick a copy up. I'm going to go
Speaker 3: ahead and contact my local anarchists bookstore to make sure
Speaker 3: they have an order in for it, and I recommend
Speaker 3: you do the.
Speaker 4: Same anarchist bookstore.
Speaker 2: Better don't buy.
Speaker 3: It on Amazon. I mean you can, but don't. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and tell your local library that you want them to
Speaker 3: buy a copy, because that matters too, and that gets
Speaker 3: this book into more people's hands, because not everybody can
Speaker 3: afford to buy a book, So yeah, requested at your
Speaker 3: local independent bookstore and your library if you can.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I heard from friends that like at random places
Speaker 4: in Illinois and whatever, that they can find the book
Speaker 4: at their local library. They we'll be able to get it.
Speaker 4: So that's great. Please ask for it and yeah, and
Speaker 4: enjoy it. I think it'll have. My hope is it
Speaker 4: has long tail. There's some word of mouth about the era.
Speaker 4: So something to read, something to read not just now
Speaker 4: but also in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating pick, sure of a particular moment
Speaker 3: in time that has broader lessons I think. But Mike,
Speaker 3: thanks so much for coming on. Where can people find
Speaker 3: you online?
Speaker 4: Thank you? You're so you're even cooler in person.
Speaker 3: I just want to thank you.
Speaker 4: Where can find me online? I'm in Blue Sky? What
Speaker 4: the hell is? What's I hate the Blue Sky handles?
Speaker 4: That was the one thing that you know, people complain
Speaker 4: about Blue Sky and it's like for me, it's like,
Speaker 4: what do you even want? Dude? Like you know, all
Speaker 4: this stuff is so bad, right, Like, what what do
Speaker 4: you even want? It's Michael E. Hayden dot b s
Speaker 4: k Y dot social s O c I A L.
Speaker 4: I'm still technically on Twitter at Michael E. Hayden, where
Speaker 4: I've always been. You know, when I was writing the
Speaker 4: book and I was recovering from the mental health thing,
Speaker 4: I wasn't online at all for all twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: and so myke nice that like createred my my ex engagement.
Speaker 4: In any case, I don't like being on there too much,
Speaker 4: just for for anything other than research.
Speaker 2: And people can find you every week on posting through
Speaker 2: Jared Hall.
Speaker 4: Oh that's true. Yeah, just you know, just do that.
Speaker 4: You can listen to us talk about all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: We're talking about cospital, We're talking about the AI fruits
Speaker 4: that we keep finding on our feeds.
Speaker 3: Now, all kinds of topics, the AI fruits. Oh my,
Speaker 3: thank you so much. And again by the book, You're
Speaker 3: gonna love it. Thanks Mallia, thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
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