"Are We the Strangies?"
A former SPLC enforcer writes a book about how he inflicted Brimelow Derangement Syndrome upon his own fragile mental health.
Here is an interview in The Guardian:
J Oliver Conroy
In his new book, Michael Edison Hayden captures the bitter saga between the founders of far-right publication VDare and the residents of a West Virginia town
Sat 11 Apr 2026 11.00 EDT
In 2020, residents of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, learned that a mysterious couple from New York had bought a historic local building known as “the castle”, which the newcomers planned to use as a headquarters and conference space for their non-profit organization. A bitter saga followed – one that the journalist Michael Edison Hayden writes about in his new book, Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town.
The couple in question were Peter and Lydia Brimelow, whose online publication VDare was named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas. Critics have accused the anti-immigration publication of being the genteel face of a constellation of white nationalist groups and figures that Hayden refers to simply as “the movement”. (VDare and the Brimelows dispute that characterization; Brimelow has described himself as a “civic nationalist”.) Stephen Miller, the adviser to Donald Trump, is reportedly a fan of VDare’s writing.
Some residents of Berkeley Springs
How many?
were alarmed that their town might become publicly associated with the far right, and they invited Hayden, then a researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), to come speak to them and report on what was happening. He befriended residents and documented what became a multiyear unraveling – of the town, where neighbor turned against neighbor; of VDare, whose existence came under increasing financial and legal pressure; and of the SPLC, where internal divisions about strategy and labor practices were boiling over. In the course of what became this book, Hayden also suffered a mental health crisis compounded by the strain of years of reporting on the far right.
Okay!
In other words, most of the unraveling happened inside the author’s head.
From Hayden’s book:
From The Hill:
The SPLC is biased — and extraordinarily wealthy
by Robert Stilson, opinion contributor - 09/04/25 3:00 PM ET
The Southern Poverty Law Center is perhaps most notorious for its “hate map,” which not only neglects to track extremist groups on the left, but also lumps mainstream conservative and religious organizations right alongside some of the most reprehensible neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the country.
For this, it has been regularly and rightly criticized.
The controversial activist group has also become phenomenally wealthy, with an endowment rivaling prominent universities and annual revenues exceeding some of the most well-known charities in the country …
Paywall here.
