Strange People on the Hill feat. Michael Edison Hayden

Molly interviews Michael Edison Hayden about his new book, Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small Town. The book is an intimate portrait of what happened in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia after a white nationalist group moved into the castle on the hill.
Preorder the book now or buy it anywhere books are sold when it comes out on April 7, 2026

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/michael-edison-hayden/strange-people-on-the-hill/9781645030607/ 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey everyone, Molly here. If you're a regular listener to
it could happen here another show in the Cool Zone
Media family. You may have already heard this interview I
did with Michael Edison Hayden when it aired on that
feed the other day, but just in case you're not
subscribed over there, I wanted to drop it into the
Weird Little Guys feed because I think it's something listeners

(00:30):
to this show would enjoy. There's even a Weird Little
Guys tie in in the interview. I'm talking to Mike
about his new book, Strange People on the Hill. It's
about a small town in West Virginia where the guy
who runs a white nationalist blog bought a castle. And
it's a castle we've talked about on this show before.
In the final part of the three part series about

(00:51):
the American Third Position Party I did last fall in
an episode I apparently very elegantly titled American Fart Party,
the lightly rebranded American Freedom Party held their first big
party convention at the Racism Castle, so I thought you
might enjoy hearing a little bit more about the town
where occasionally Nazis get together. It was a great chat

(01:15):
with Mike, and I hope you enjoyed the episode, and
don't forget to ask your local library to add a
copy of his book to their shelves. Hello, and welcome
back to It could happen here.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I'm joined today
by a very special guest, Michael Edison Hayden.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
Hi, how's it going, Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
For being here.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
You may know Mike from his work as an investigative
journalist and an expert on far right extremism. He currently
co hosts Posting Through It, a weekly news podcast with
fellow veteran of the far right beat, Jared Holt. But
today we're talking about his new book, Strange People on
the Hill, How Extremism Tore apart a small American town.
It comes out April seventh, twenty twenty six, but you

(01:57):
can go ahead and pre order it now anywhere you
buy books, and make sure you ask for it at
your local library and your local independent bookstore.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I'm excited to
talk about this.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Thank you, and I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, I was worried that I wasn't going to have
time to like read the whole book. I mean to
talk about this a lot in the book, right, the
stresses of covering this beat. But I sat down to
read it and I read it in one sitting. It
is very compelling. Wow, But it's not the book I
thought it was, you know. So when your publicist sent
this to me, I thought, oh, phenomenal. This is a
book about Peter Brimlow and the Racism Castle in West Virginia.

(02:31):
I would love to read a book about Peter Brimlow
and the Racism Castle.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
And it's not really is it?

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Like the Brimlows are the strange people on the hill,
and they sort of stay on the hill.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
Right.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
You have a couple of encounters with them in the book,
but for the most part, it's a book about the town.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah. Yeah, it's about the town. And I'm glad that
you mentioned that. I really didn't want to write a
book that was about these villains that are and you know,
populating our culture for the last ten plus years that
just seem to get unlimited traction on social media. There's
nothing wrong with talking about them, and there's nothing over

(03:11):
certainly reporting on them, because I did my share of that,
you know, day in and day out, when I was
with SBOC for instance. I think that all that is important,
and there's different ways to do it and do it effectively.
But I think for a book, I wanted to focus
more on what these people and this culture that is
surrounding them is doing to everyday people. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
I was just I was so startled by what it
wasn't and then so engrossed by what it was. But
just quickly for the listeners, tell us what the book
is not about. Tell us who Peter Brimlow is and
v dare and how they ended up with a castle.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, well it's not totally without him. I mean, we
do get a bit of information about it. Yeah, we
meet him. Peter kind of came up as a financial reporter,
that's the short way of understanding. And you know how
he became America's most influential white nationalist. That's what SPOC
labeled him, which has covered obviously in the book. And

(04:10):
he became obsessed with immigration and in particular Heart Seller,
which brought in tons of people from the developing world.
My mother came to the country in sixty eight, for example,
that was like a you know, three years after Heart Seller,
and I wouldn't have been born if not, she married

(04:33):
a white guy and etcetera, etcetera. She came from Egypt.
So he became obsessed with this and kind of in
the way that I know, you know a lot about
these the way some of these minds work, Molly, but
in the way that some people get obsessed with environmentalism,
and then they kind of expand that concern to sort
of say, well, there's too many people, right, there's too

(04:53):
many people. There's too many people. Well, there's too many
brown people. That's what's destroying the environment. And then they
become you know, sort of of white nationalists minded or
anti grant immigrant minded. In Brimmle's case, I really think
it was like a financial thing, just like this is
putting all these different strains and whatever. And then it
became the financial became less of a concern and the
actual anti immigrant thing became bigger and bigger for him.

(05:16):
In nineteen ninety five, he publishes Alien Nation, which is
a book that was actually praised to buy people like
David Frum, you know, the very same guy who's high
hatting about Trump every day. It was considered socially acceptable,
and then over time I think people realized that the
book had a very racist undercurrent, and it became beloved

(05:36):
by neo Nazis, white nationalists, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I think if people like David Frum had been honest
with themselves, it was there all along.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
It was not a subtle undercurrent.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
Fun A side about David Frum, which is that I
did put it in the investigation into Stephen Miller's private emails.
Miller shared posts by from on more than one occasion
about like sort of anti Islam posts, which I think
is interesting. Now.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
I think what these people disagree most about is how
loud you're supposed to say the quiet part.

Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, no, I really do think that that's true. So,
you know, when Peter became more of a contentious figure,
he founded Videir, which is a nonprofit that lasted for
about a quarter century. Recently died recently double that's covered
in the book. It dies over the course of the narrative,
and it was hugely influential, usually influential in changing the GOP.

(06:31):
And at the time when W. Bush was president, Brimlow
was railing against the GOP to change, to move in
this nativist direction, and eventually they listened to him.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
And so the book sort of starts with twenty nineteen, right,
and Peter and his wife Lydia Brimlow have purchased this
gigantic castle in the small town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Right,
because it's not chicks, the medium sized castle. I do
this for castles is. And so you become interested in
their purchase of this castle, and you go to this

(07:05):
town and you meet the people of Berkeley Springs, the
people who are indifferent to their presence, the people who
are organizing against their presence.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
And it's this really sort of engrossing.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Story of just small town drama, this interpersonal drama of
these like small business owners. And the castle is always
there in the background, right, the strange people are up
on the hill. But it's a story about this small
town struggle.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah. I think we should just talk about the castle
real quick, because it's beautiful, and I think that's a
key thing. I hope when you read it you were like, oh,
I want to go to Berkeley Springs now, which is
I've had more than one person who read the book tell.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Me that I'm going to wait till they leave.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
I've also heard that too, but you know, I know
the people who are there who despise the Brimlows and
their ideology, and I wanted to make sure that they
didn't feel let down by the book that they felt like,
at least on or to a degree, because I really
want them to be able to recover their business. Their
business have suffered since Brimwows took over. But just a
quick thing on this castle. It is absolutely beautiful. It

(08:09):
should be like a national park or something. It has
that feel. It was built in eighteen eighty by a
guy named Samuel Taylor Suit who made it for a
very very young young girl. I think she's like seventeen
or something like that.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
It's fitting that Brimlow bought it for his much younger wife.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Yes, that's true. Yeah, there's a lot of like spiritual
kind of woo woo stuff in Berkeley Springs, and there's
a lot of you know, superstition, and a lot of
people really think that they are carrying on like some
sort of ghost like thing would carry over from this relationship.
But he made the castle for her, and he died
and she took over and went bankrupt. And there was

(08:49):
also allegedly a murder or something like that that took
place there and then there's like this kind of turnover
from people one generation the next trying to keep the
castle going. It's always it's more expensive than it's worth.
It's beautiful, it overlooks the entire town. The town is tiny, gorgeous,
looks like a great place to go on vacation. And
if you imagine like four Berkeley Springs, the Empire State Building,

(09:12):
Statue of Liberty Times Square rolled into one, that's what
the castle is. It's so tiny, and this is the
main landmark. This is the thing that everybody goes to
and they go hiking around there and all this stuff.
So this is a tourist town that attracts a lot
of LGBQ people from places like Washington, DC, Baltimore, a
lot of liberals, and all of a sudden you have

(09:33):
this again SPOC labeled white nationalist, anti immigrant, nativist, whatever
you want to call them. Couple buys this castle, right,
they decide to buy it. And the way they found
it is because Lydia Brimlow, who is thirty seven years
younger than Peter herself and started with him and when
she was twenty or something like that and he was

(09:55):
nearly sixty.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Right, she was an intern at the Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
I met intriguing, Yeah, Heritage and it's interesting, weird in
any case, she finds it on Zillow. And you remember
this period very well, I know. But in twenty eighteen
or so, it became very very difficult for these folks
to stage events right.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
For you know, for unknown reasons, not because they kept
killing people.

Speaker 4 (10:25):
I don't want to like derail this podcast by bringing
up Jason Kessler, but Jason Kessler, who we both know
very well, who is who secured the permit for the
Unite the Right event, who has been at different times
obsessed with both of us, I think were like in
his top in his top app all list, Jason you know,
was readily associated with Vidier because of his contributions to

(10:48):
the site. And people knew that, and that may put
even more pressure because they're like, well this Charlottesville guy, right,
they Unite the Right guy is essay. So Vidio couldn't
stage any events. They were very worried about counter demonstrators.
I think that the counterdemonstrators from that first MAGA era
really put the fear of God into some of these people.
They didn't. They were scared shitless of anti racist, anti fascists,

(11:09):
and all of a sudden, you've got a castle on
Zillo a million point four and it's got stone walls
all over it, and hey, we can hold our conferences here.
And so that's how they got it. They ended up
getting it for that reason. And what happens to the
town afterwards is, I think, is a minor tragedy in

(11:30):
our culture that hasn't been paid attention to enough.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah, it is this sort of microcosm of what happened
to America, right, Like, we don't all have a racism
castle in our town, but sort of the way this
castle bears down on this little town kind of mirrors
the way the influx of these extreme right wing ideas
into the GOP, into the administration that governs all of
us kind of is bearing down on us.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Yeah, it's very smart. I think that's true. I think
that is one of the reasons that the story spoke
to me so much that I wanted to pursue it
for so long. Is it really felt like what everybody
was going through in the town. And readers will learn this.
Imagine business owners who are catering to many liberals. They're
stuck in Morgan County, which is seventy five percent Trump

(12:18):
and ninety percent white, and they're panicking because they need
to keep people going in. The press goes a long
way in Berkeley Springs. It's so it's a little place.
They don't know how to push back. Someone buys private property.
What can you do? But they start to organize and
try to figure out a way to urge Brimlow to
leave or to make it so difficult for him that
he leaves. And yes, it is absolutely a symbolism for

(12:42):
what everybody's going through. And there are people all over
the country in places Red states where you might find
people who you wouldn't expect kind of protesting against TESLA
or something like that, and they could be kind of corny,
these type of people who like corny online and easily
nord They're all over the country feeling that exact dread

(13:03):
that you're talking about, where something very like above them
is bearing down and pushing values that don't align with theirs.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Right, it's such a specific story about Berkeley Springs, but
at the same time, this could be almost any town.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
I'm sure you followed the story of what happened in Enid, Oklahoma,
when the identity of Europa. Guy got on their city
council and it was this very local, small town struggle
with these very specific local personalities butting heads. But this
story is playing out in small towns all over America
because everyone has, you know, if not a racism castle,
everyone has a local racist who's making life hard for everyone.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Yeah, I mean they're sending right now. To use Clavicular's phrase,
the yeah, I mean think about North Idaho for example.
I get a story for them for about from Mother Jones,
and you know, they they have a long history with
white supremacy and certainly dead red right part of the country.

(14:02):
But you have like anti semites like Dave Riley it's right,
Rebecca Hargraves and those people encroaching on their everyday politics. Right,
they're trying to change the politics. They're trying to integrate themselves,
you know, coming from outside basically to take over, right.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
I mean, it's the same thing is what happened in
West Virginia.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
It is that these white supremacists are moving to these
places because they have a perception about what it will
be like when they get there, that oh, everyone who's
there will agree with me, because they're mostly white that's
why Dave Riley moved Idaho.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, when Peter Brimlo first moved to the castle, he
would repeatedly I think he would do it when people
reach out for comment and be like, you know, Morgan
County is seventy five percent voted for Trump. It's ninety
percent white. It's you who have the problem, not us.
And if you're looking for a more optimistic thing here,
I've gotten good reviews for the reviews that I've gotten,

(14:59):
but there is they keep using like disturbing, like this
is so scary, Like I think for us it's not
as much because we've been living in it for in
a more intimate way, right.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
I found it that encouraging, Yes, because because you met
these people who were doing their best in this like bizarre,
fucked up situation, Like they didn't ask for a weird
old British Nazi to buy the castle exactly.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
They're doing their best, and I think that's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
I think I think if you try to tune out
the reality that we're all going through right now and
just focus on, you know, your own private world, it
can be scary because you're letting in Peter Brimlow and
chairhead while you read the book and you're you're you're
seeing neighbors kind of turning on one another, and you're
seeing me go through a mental health crisis in the book.

(15:45):
I mean, these are things that for for a normy
that maybe a little bit you know, you may like
the book, but you may be a final little disturbing.
But for people like us who have kind of really
been through stuff in this and seeing it up close
on a regular basis. Look, what I like about the
book is it's it's rare to like say, I'm going
to pray some white people here, but like it's white

(16:07):
people saying that they don't want to be represented by
these values, right. And I think that for me, as
somebody who comes on an outsider, I like, look so
normal in New York. I'm just I'm just swarthy. But
they are there there, I look like Osama bin Laden And.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
I was gonna say, a white environment. I don't think
you pass as white as you do in New York.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
It's very different. Yeah, yeah, And I say, like, you know,
when you see them there, I mean, they they have
a choice to just kind of say like, actually, yeah,
we're you know, Peter Brimlow is standing up for my rights.
He's standing up for me, he's speaking for me. But
there but a lot of people are not saying.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
A guy who thinks a twenty eight hundred dollars political
donation is a small amount, if that's not the average
West Virginian's idea of a small amount.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
Yes, that is a good thing to pull out. Yes,
you know. The other thing is the people who ultimately
in the book tend to defend Brimlow or align with him,
because basically the town has becomes completely divided, maybe irrevocably,
so hopefully they'll come together one day. And it's still

(17:15):
I think the tensions are still quite bad. Yeah, it's
still happening. Even though Fidier dies at the end, the
Brimo still live there. The people who do it are
not like, yes, we believe full throated in the Great
Replacement conspiracy theory. We think that the Great Replacement that like,
you know, I'm thinking about more extreme things that Brimlow

(17:35):
has said.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
No, they're just people who see a nice white man
and his nice white wife and they were nice to
me And I don't understand why you're making life so hard.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yeah, I mean, Vidier has published apologia about mass shooters'
intentions basically right.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
But so many of these these brimlow defenders are just
they're not saying what he said is okay, or I
believe what he said.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
They're saying he was nice to me. Why are you
making such a big deal out of this?

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Yeah, I will clarify that. But they haven't said, yes,
mass shootings are good. They have condemned that, but they've
also said that, like, this writing makes sense, right, and
they're like when during the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo
in twenty twenty two, that's something I highlight in the book,
Bedier publishes something that's like, actually, like, look, look how
the Great Replacement has changed Buffalo. That was their response

(18:24):
to ten black people getting shot. Right.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
So Peter Bridol is very litigious, So we do have
to be very specific here and say Peter Briddlo did
not say it is good that Peyton Gendron shot up
that supermarket.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
What he did say is if the Great Replacement weren't happening.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's look, and I think that
going back to the people in the town, I don't
think that they at every point be like that is good.
That what he's saying here is good, the great replacements.
I'm fully on board with it. What they buy into
is this profound friend enemy distinction that now hovers over

(19:04):
our entire country, right where it's just sort of people
who are friends of Maga and Trump are on one side,
and then anybody who's at is my enemy.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
And these more extreme talking points are sort of creeping
into that space and they're not stopping it, you know.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
Of course it's two sided. Of course there's like that
that comes from the liberal left or wherever you want
to whatever you want to call it. But I think
in the case of the Brimlows, it's not the specifics.
I remember asking one guy in the book whose name
is Charlie Curria, and he owns a you know, a
sort of a craft's shop at the corner of Berkeley

(19:44):
Springs Park and it is right next to another main
character of the book, Trey Johanson, who is you know,
kind of almost the most important person. And I asked Charlie.
I was like, you know, so you met the Brimlows,
you hung out with them, what was that life you
can say for Christmas and stuff like that. And I
was like, well, how do you feel about the great
replacement stuff. How do you feel about like the stuff

(20:06):
he writes? And what he said was he's a writer.
He's a writer like you. He's a journalist just like you.
He's the same as you. There's no difference. And he
was very defensively.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yikes.

Speaker 4 (20:16):
You know, I think that framing is very useful for
understanding why we can't seem to snap out of this
current condition that we're in. When you're inside that bubble,
that's the logic that works. It's like, this is the
guy on our side. You know, we're defending the guy
on our side. Right, that's a psychosis that kind of
overshadows the entire narrative.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right, So this, this story in this town plays out
against the backdrop of the wider world. Right, So you know,
your first visit to Berkeley Springs was right as COVID
is starting, Right, it's the last you left your New
York apartment before lockdown. You're in Berkeley Springs. And as
the story progresses, we see the twenty twenty uprising and
there's like a little BLM rally in this tiny town.

(21:09):
And then there's j six, and there's October seventh, there's
the twenty twenty four presidential campaign, and there's these big
events in the world, and then there's these smaller events
in the town, but interwoven with this sort of personal memoir,
right that the world is in turmoil and so is
your life.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah, and all these threads sort of weave together.

Speaker 4 (21:28):
Yeah, that's true regarding the events in the world and
in the town. I'm glad that you brought that up.
One thing I wanted to do with the book that
I don't see done and enough is just to understand that,
like everything that we see, all these like viral trends
and all this stuff filters down into everyday life. And
I think when news is breaking or trends are happening,

(21:52):
we only look at the news and the trends like that,
and we rarely look at the impacts on our neighborhood.
Whereas you know, if you do a movie that's said
in the eighties, you will see like the events a
little bit more about like at the kitchen table, what
the family is going through as something happens nationally, right
or so, and so it's it's almost like it we
need time to process. But this has a very clear

(22:13):
time period, which is the period right before COVID to
the twenty twenty four election, and it's enough in the
past now that I think we can look at how
these things affected regular people in this in this town,
because every time you're seeing viral videos about black Lives matter,
that's impacting the way people act there. So you may
have like five white people go stand on a street

(22:34):
corner there with some signs after George Floyd's death, and
that's like a huge deal in that town because it's
like people are shocked by it or they want to
they want to they want to harass those people after that.
So that was one factor. And as yeah, and as
for as for myself, it also overlaps like probably the
darkest time in my life. And that's not totally unrelated
to Berkeley Springs in the sense that, like, you know,

(22:59):
stuff at SPOC he was like really really bad at
the beginning of the book. Then they're not there in
the second half, and my mental health was was just
not in a great place. I had spent, as you know,
a lot of time with these guys and I know
you personally have dealt with a lot of threats and really,
I mean as a woman, I mean you're dealing with

(23:22):
I imagine it's even scarier because.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
It's a grosser anyway.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
Is Yeah, that's grosser for sure. And I mean you're
dealing with I mean, I can't even imagine the mentality
of some of the guys who are messaging you and
what their their private lives are like. So yeah, so yeah,
I mean I had gone through it for a while
on my end. One example that is, in twenty twenty one,
I took my son to the batting cage and afterwards

(23:48):
we went to seven eleven and I got a call
from a number in North Carolina and then it was
an FBI agent and he's like, hey, I just want
to you know, as a courtesy, you want to let
you know that we have somebody who's like talking about
assassinating you, and you know, do you have any questions? Yeah?
I was like I do, but like my eight year

(24:09):
old is like slurping on a you know, a cherry
slurpee in the back seat.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
That duty to warn thing is kind of a double
edged sword, right, because they do have this legal obligation
to inform you that there's a credible threat on your life,
but like they're not going to give you enough information
to make you feel empowered by knowing this information.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
So it's like maybe I would rather just not know.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
Yeah, oh it was If there's.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Something I can do to mitigate this, can I just
not know?

Speaker 4 (24:31):
Yeah? It was horrible. It was hard. That is I
think one of the things that the normy person would
find deeply disturbing in the book. But like, yeah, I
was dealing with that stuff all the time. I would
get like, you know, I'd get people sending me photos
of Alan Berg's shooting in the driveway. I don't know
if you're familiar with that, but like he was the
talk radio host who was killed by members of.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
The Order, killed by David Lane.

Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, and I would get that all the time. I'm
must spent like months of just getting that from like
random numbers and all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Sometimes, like a group of guys will get very into
a particular image, and I can imagine the kind of
guy that is very into the image of Alan Berg's corpse.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
And it's not a nice guy.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
I mean, it's it's taboo. It has like a pornographic
quality to it.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
But it harkens to a very specific era of the movement.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Like I can imagine there's a particular man who gravitates
towards that specifically.

Speaker 4 (25:21):
Yeah, And I mean, like I remember getting threatened by Bowers,
the guy who shot up, like because I was on
GAB all the time, as you know, to a fault,
I think, but like you know, I mean, it got
a lot of stories out of it and sources. But yeah,
because I was always dealing with those guys, and I
was always posting on air and you know, trying to
stir things up and see what it could shake loose

(25:42):
for a story. And yeah, Bowers was just some kind
of idle thing. And so when the Tree of Life
shooting happened, when he went out and said, you know,
screw your optics, I'm going in.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
Yeah, And I was like, I know this guy when
that one dingo. Hell, So this was this was very
traumatic for me. I've been holding pretty firm on this.
I had a lot of manic tendencies in the sense
of like I could just work constantly, and you just
work around the clock, work late at night, constantly doing
investigative reporting. And I was on a mission because I

(26:17):
was so angry about what had happened, and you know,
unite the right, that's what that really triggered me. I
had before then, I had been really open to pursuing
a beat as a crime reporter or on climate change.
These were the kind of things that were like I
had I had written features of previously, but it was
it was after night the right I got folks, and
I really was like, I'm going to put all all

(26:37):
my abilities into trying to create trouble for these guys.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
And you did.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
Yeah, I did. And then when they pushed back, I
guess I wasn't mentally prepared for how scary it could be,
and it was lots of stuff. Then I went through
a separation with my wife, which is fine, we're great friends,
you know, but that was like another factor. And then
also the SBLC thing, which we can talk about. But

(27:04):
the main thing is that I reached a breaking point.
I was I always happened to be in Berkeley Springs
with some of the sources from the book when I
had to go home and go to a site ward
and I went for three weeks and like got diagnosed
with bipolar there, which was a very useful diagnosis.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
It makes it makes a big difference because especially it's bipolar.
If you're just taking an I depressants, like you're going
to be up shit creek.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
Oh yeah, well, the anti's press is really screwed on
my stomach and also made me like even more manic
and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
But the book is is a very frank, very very honest,
very personal and maybe this is why people found the
book to be, you know, disturbing, because it is a
very frank discussion of what it means to be the
person who is for so many years in the thick
of it, yeah, you know, not doing sort of objective,
detached reporting, but getting in there and mixing it up

(27:54):
with these guys like really, you know, skin in the game,
committed to the cause, doing investigative journal in these spaces,
and I mean, I think we both are guilty of this.
Over the years on this beat, there is this tendency
to sort of you know, exchange war stories like oh,
you know, I got this terrible threat, I got this
terrible threat.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
You laugh it off, and it's.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Like, you know, it's this sort of fact of life
that you brush off, and you know, everyone says, oh,
you're so brave, I could never do that, and you say, oh,
it's not a big deal.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
I deal with it all the time.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
Yeah, they say that for sure, But then you.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Go home and it is a big deal and people
are not it is honest about that as they could be.
I mean, in part because admitting that it hurts you
makes them double down. If they know they got you,
they're going to keep digging in that spot. But like,
we don't talk enough about the fact that this destroys us.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, for sure, it's a very honest. Look at what
happens when you bought them out on that, and.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
It's so much worse than just threats. I mean, you're
constantly concerned that somebody is going to use law fair
against you and try.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
To hurt your family and you have children.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
Yeah, of course, you know. And I am extremely anal
about legal stuff, Like I'm just like hyper like I
don't you know, I don't play games I like And
so that's just an example. It's like we published when
I was with the BOC, we published the identity of
Matt Gebert, who was the state Department official. I remember

(29:17):
that guy.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
I was actually going to bring him up.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
I was going to bring up Matt Gibert in terms
of the number of guys who've moved to West Virginia
because they think it's only white.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
Yeah, we'll get there in a second. But I just
say it, like before I published that story, even though
I'd been through a million lawyers and like every I mean,
we just went through everything and stuff like that. I
bought a pack of cigarettes, which I never do, you know,
I don't want to get into my stomach thing too deeply.
But it was not working. It was not working at
all that day. It was August seventh, twenty nineteen, and
I was literally I was I was clammy, I was sweating.

(29:50):
I had never seen his face. He kept all of
his pictures offline. But I had the goods. I knew
I had everything. But yet at the same this is
one doubt. It's like what if it's not him because
I don't have the face match forget threats. That level
of stress of just you know, it's like I checked everything, right.
I Like you think, think about the you're trying to
leave the house for a long trip or something like that,

(30:11):
and it's like, you know that thought, Oh, I know,
like did I leave the gas stove on when I
was you know, when I was boiling something for my
kids or whatever. Like that's the way it feels, right,
it's like sort of you like you memorize the entire
investigative feature and you're like going through it and there's like, oh,
oh you know, is that was that right? Did I
check that? And I'm like, yes, I did.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Oh, I know, I know that. I know that.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Feeling exacty drives my husband crazy when I say things
like I'd rather get shot than be wrong in public.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
Yeah, No, it's true. It's it's true. Like I don't
I don't want to. Yeah, you don't want to be wrong.
And also you don't want to give these people a
chance for anything. And you mentioned Brimlow is very litigious.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Not usually very successful.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
No, no, ease. But that doesn't matter, No, it doesn't matter. Yeah,
but it's stressful to report on him because of that,
because he just he will use it as a tactic
and stuff like that. And I gave I also gave
the Brimlos point out many opportunities to talk to me
and more detail about everything, and they didn't want to.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
But you do speak to him several times in the book.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
Yeah, I do, I do, much to his displeasure. Well,
I was just to say like, yeah, I mean all
that really led up to me going to the psych
word and that and the SBLC thing, which is basically
my relationship with SBLC is like I was probably the
most well known person there apology because I've had a
social media presence and I was doing a lot of

(31:28):
spokesperson work, so I was like on TV a bunch
and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
So whenever someone's mad at the organization, they're going to
take it out on you.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
Yeah, And really, for a good part of the early
years there after Heidi left, we didn't even have a
director of the intelligence project, so you know, I would
just get thrown into a lot of TV radio stuff
like that. And you know, they treated me great. I
mean they got my pay raise multiple times and promoted
and stuff like that. And I kept breaking investigative stories.

(31:57):
And then when we started to have problems where we were,
they start to limit our ability to publish stories. They
really became very risk averse.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Which is so contrary to my image of what this
institution is for. Yeah, both like functionally and morally. Yeah,
as a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Lossoner,
you didn't have mental health coverage. You couldn't see a
real therapist. Yeah, that's horrific. That's a human rights abuse
to make you look at gabble. They had not get

(32:27):
you a therapists.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
They were giving us like the app stuff which is
not going to cut it.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
No, but you need like a five hundred dollars an hour. Yeah,
New York analyst was a.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
Psychiatrist, you know. And it's okay, like you know, somebody good.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
But they should be covering that.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
Yeah, no they were not. And there's just a whole
bunch of stuff. There were a bunch of safety issues,
no doubt, and a case my dear colleagues still my
colleague even through I'm not there anymore. You know, she
went to go cover Ameran and Tennessee and like a
bunch of proud boys like basically chased her down right.
There was no security plan. There was a woman named
Susan Work was the intelligence project director at that time,

(33:02):
and she was just you know, how to launch. She
just didn't do anything. As far as I could tell.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Things like what happened to Hannah, Like stuff like that
happens to me. I expect that I'm out there by myself.
I have no plan.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
It's just me. I have no plan.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
It was so startling to me to hear that, like
Hannah is out there operating without a net too, there
was no plan for her safety.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
Yeah, there was nothing. And so one of the first
things I did was I helped Shepherd a grievance about this,
and it was effective because I think that got Cork
put on like a performance improvement plan. And then after
that everything changed at work. I went from being the
favorite person to being repeatedly at target of what did

(33:44):
you do? Why did you do this? Like it was really,
I mean to add on the already stressful situation that
I was in. It was just like your tone in
a meeting. And then there was the thing about that
was there was like a verbal warning or something that
was they actually bothered to write out, which was quite stupid.
If you're doing a verbal warning, you shouldn't put it
in print. And sure enough we found in there that,

(34:06):
like all the dialogue that was in there, was completely
fabricated and made up.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
And so for the listener.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
So discussed in the book a little bit is the
fact that at the Southern Poverty Lossoner was.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Engaging in unionvesting.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yes, that's right, so you know you were dealing with
retaliation for union activity in the workplace.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Retaliation for union activity. It was really bad. It happened
a second time after that when I was covering the trial.
Doug Mackie character we can save for another day.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
For another day, And it was really bad.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
And the stress was really getting to me, and I
had a panic attack which I've never had before while
I was in the shower. And I told them about that,
and Susan Cork and the person above her, his name
is Ann Beeson. I told him about that, and then
they responded by turning around and disciplining me again, almost
like to say, like, we've got them on the ropes now,

(35:00):
let's really like make them quit.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Say eighty a violation.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Yeah, And every time we do this, we'd summon the
union and we'd make it as hairy for them as
possible to do what they're doing. But there's limits to
what you can do. Really, when they want to try
to do these sort of things, they pushed it as
far as they wanted to go, which is after the
summer of twenty twenty three, there was a Hamas attack
on Israel. And you know, I have Arabs in my family.

(35:25):
I have my on my mother's side, including Palestinians. You know,
I was distraught about this whole situation was it was
adding another thing on top of it, and watching the retaliation,
which became a genocide very quickly, did not improve my mood. Obviously.
It was very stressful to see that stuff. And Hannah

(35:46):
invited me to sign a thing about you know, it
was just sort of like asking writers to sign on
Israel's and apartheid state calling for a ceasefire.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Writers for the seasefire.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah, I remember, and uh, Free Beacon, I'm familiar with
that wonderful Paulician.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
It still comes up in the first few pages of
your Google results.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
Thank you for noting.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, I know, but this the book should push it back.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
The Free Beacon like came out with this thing, and
it was like SBLC spokesperson, uh, you know, blames Israel
for Hamas violence or something like.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
That, and just that the audacity to accuse you of
anti Semitism for assigning this letter, you know, supporting a ceasefire.
But I've read that letter. It's it's it's not an
anti Semitic letters. It is calling it what it is
and just asking for a ceasefire. Right, And you have
spent a decade writing about anti Semitic violence.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Well, there's there's tons of there's there's tons of anti
Zionist Jews on there. I mean, there's probably more than
anything else. But you know, when this, when this came out,
I was really pissed. Obviously it had a racist undertone.
I mean, Hannah was mentioned, but it was mostly about me.
And then there instead of a picture of me, they
used they used like the one of those pictures of

(37:00):
Moss looking like Cobra from CI Joe and like a
rocket launcher and.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Right, implying that you, as a man of Arab descent,
are an anti Semitic terrorist.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, basically and good faith stuff.

Speaker 4 (37:11):
Adding to I would say this is also complex because
you know, my family basically fled because of threats from
Islamic terrorism, right, so this is even more like, you know,
to align me with that necessarily is not my not ideal,
even though I'm in like, you know, I'm sure I
have a very more and more nuanced idea of what
Homas is than that author. The point is it's just,
i mean, just basically to do that and then rather

(37:33):
than SBOC like cares so much about social justice and racism.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Rather than sees the opportunity to differentiate themselves from the
psychosis that the ADL has descended into. As you know,
because those two organizations sort of exist in the same space,
they're often used in the same sentence, and the ADL
has really lost a lot of credibility in the last
few years.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
I mean, I don't think they have any credibility because of.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Those So instead of differentiating themselves from that, they chose
to discipline you.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
Yeah, they did. And it was that was when I,
like I said, mental health was like all the factors
that we've just discussed mentioned and then I was happened
to be in Berkeley Springs when I reached a point
where I was like, you know, I was, I was
suicidal and trigger warning for people. I apologize, but that's
the truth, and came back and had to spend the

(38:21):
sort of Christmas break period there where I lost you know,
they ultimately terminated me. It was a Title seven violation
in terms of discrimination. Well we'll get into what happened effort.
But and then when people found out what happened, the
union started to write things to you know, to management.
There was all this internal dialogue happening while I was

(38:42):
in a psych word with like no access to anything,
and almost everybody in my line of managers was pushed
out and given buyouts allegedly Quirk this woman and bees
In and now the CEO is.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
They exposed themselves to some serious liability there.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
They got off easy in many ways. Yeah, they disposed
of me, but I threatened suit with a lawyer, wonderful
lawyer who she was, great Jewish woman from New York
and she's tough as nails. And yeah, I mean I
got a good settlement out of it, which is you know,
I would have preferred just to be able to just
continue doing my job.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Though it's heartbreaking to remember that.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
You know, even these progressive nonprofits that are fighting for
what we believe, they're using.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
You up and spitting you out.

Speaker 4 (39:28):
To Yeah, oh sure, they're.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Doing union busting. They're firing you for having a mental
health crisis. They're opposed to you exercising your free speech
off the clock, the kinds of things you just you don't.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Want to see from an organization like the SPLC.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah, they had to retract my termination and assign it
to a layoff. And then you know, I had to
retract labor claims I had made, which would have gone
nowhere as soon as the Trump administration took over. Anyway,
that's heartbreaking, which I saw coming in twenty twenty four
to a new to a degree, So yeah, like that happened.

(40:02):
And then bringing it back to Berkeley Springs, I was
told not to go anywhere, but I needed to keep
working on the book. So it was like a week
after I got out of the hospital, I came back
down there, and then the folks who I had been
working with since twenty twenty when the Brimlas first arrived,
they kind of took me in and nursed me back
to health. So that's why it's I feel unified in

(40:24):
the narrative and we're able to explore what happened to
me psychologically and what happened to and them psychologically as
this other stuff is happening.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
See, I guess I understand why some of the reviewers
call it disturbing, But that sort of full circle, that
sort of personal closure. You know, obviously things weren't ideal, right,
you lost your job, but I don't know, things came
full circle and the people that you went there to
write about took care of you, and you I don't know,
you all continue a long your way as the world
falls apart.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
I don't think that they come all cross as like
perfect either. I mean, like that's what I'm really hopeful for. No.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
I mean they're all complicated people.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
You know. I wanted to avoid like the sort of
wishy washy utopian like I'm an ally you know, and
I'm it's like, yeah, actually the people who are allies
have all kinds of issue that have marital problems. Maybe
some of them are like behave badly in one thing
or whatever, all people trying to live. It's really a
question of what this particular ideology that has been foisted

(41:33):
upon us very rapidly by the likes of Steve Bannon
and Brimlow and others right it was a collective push
to take the existing right wing mom star and set
it in this direction. What this is doing to us.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
It's a very intimate look at what that is like
for individual people. You know, we're all experiencing having right
wing violence foisted upon us from a but this is
I don't know. There were these like small moments of
like physical intimacy, like when you're you're at the castle
for the party and you know you and Peter Brimlow
are exchanging like this lighthearted moment and you reach out

(42:12):
and you put your hand on his shoulder. Instinctively, when
you're sharing laughter with someone, you put out, you put
your hand on his shoulder and like, you know, recoiled
immediately and didn't know why you had done that, but
this like tiny moment of physical intimacy that you know
this was a person, or the transgender mushroom farmer Lisa
Marie who sought out Lydia Brimlow at church and shook
her hand during the Right of Peace, Like I would

(42:33):
have loved to have seen that.

Speaker 4 (42:35):
She's so cool, by the way, you should have her
on She's.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Awesome, she sounds amazing. I would love to meet Lisa Marie.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Well, I'll tell you about her in a second. But yeah,
I mean, yeah, I mean Brimlow was behaving in a
very I mean he has like an infuncular kind of
vibe like in person when he's not angry with you.
And I'm sure that for people who know him in
a friendly way in the movement that he's he's fun.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
You know, he likes to drink room temperature vodka.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
He is always talking like this just sounds like he's
always had a for your drinks. Probably, yes, he has
that British way of just some kind of dry remark
about things going to pot. Like, you know, I'm sure
it's fun for people who know him, and you know
you're in that space and any kind of party thing
or whatever you can let go for a second. And

(43:26):
for a second I felt not that, like I felt like, oh,
this is my friend or anything. It is more than
I'm just talking exactly.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
You know, people really bristle at that. You know you're
humanizing him. Well, yeah, because he's human. Humanizing doesn't mean
excusing or you know, coming to appreciate it anyway.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
It just means like he's human. So for most of
the book, the strange people.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
On the hill are removed on the hill, but when
you encounter them, there is this very human intimacy to
these encounters.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
And not only that, everybody has a rough go in
this book, including that getting.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Raked over the coals by to James Well over the.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
Course of this that there if you follow their their
arc and their arcs throughout the book, but one particular arc,
it starts with them really thinking they've got it, like
this is like this is like high point of vider's existence.
They have a castle. They have a home base that
they can use in perpetuity. After Brimla leaves, the movement

(44:22):
can flourish and grow. This is like, this is it.
They got a castle.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
I mean, it would be the perfect place for white
nationalists meetup.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
They haven't really used it that way that much, like
every now and again, but like.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
This is the best situation they've ever had. Like they're great,
and they've also just coming off of getting a whole
bunch of dark money donations from two people we don't
know who they are, but it's like, you know, four
point five milli in like one year through donors Trust,
and they're riding really high. And then by the end
from the Ltitia James investigation, it had not turned into

(44:55):
a lawsuit yet. By that point, under the pressure of
that and just under the pressure of just everybody around them,
you know, not wanting them to be there, they decided
to dial down VideA altogether. And it still exists in
the sense of like the Twitter account still exists and
Brimlo is still writing on substack. Some of it is

(45:15):
a legal thing to try to, you know, get them
out of the way of Letitia James. But you know
they're really broken down. I mean the videos that they
published about their closing, I mean it's just a laundry
list of things that add up to a defeat. I
don't think they would disagree with that that they felt
defeated by the end, and the people who were in

(45:36):
the town, who are so nice and sweet and wonderful
and all this, they're laughing as you would, right as
everybody talked about like when Trump dies, and everybody's like, oh,
I'm going to do this when Trump dies and all
that stuff. Right, it's just liberation from that thing. But
ultimately it's a really like if you just look at
the Brimlows, it is, you know, it is a brutal
fall by the end of the book.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, I mean ten years ago they were poised to
be on top of the world and their ideas remain ascendant.
But he himself has really fallen. Now he just has
the flooded basement of his little racism castle.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
Well, there's no there's no solidarity on their side. I
just oh god, that's what I saying.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Oh, that's one thing they will never happen.

Speaker 4 (46:14):
I mean, you get somebody who annoys me, who is
a sort of anti fascist, anti racist who like annoys
the shit out of me. But they they wind up like,
you know, being targeted by somebody. I'm like, okay, well.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
You're not going to gloat about their down phone.

Speaker 4 (46:29):
But not only that, but it's like now it's time
to like, you know, support them. You know, that's the
way I feel.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
And they just don't do that. They don't do it
for each other. They hate each other.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
They're always malignant narcissists because it's always about cloying to
the top, right, it's always trying to get power over
other people.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
I mean, everybody wants to be the crab at the
top of the bucket, but you're still a crab and
a goddamn bucket.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
There's two strains of maga, I know, mega is a
very broad term, and like one of them is really
this kind of grift focused kind of crypto web three
aligned aspect. We're just AI and this, and like a
small number of people, like fifteen percent will go hoard
a bunch of like fake coins or whatever things polymarket

(47:11):
like odds or whatever. They're all hoarding information to kind
of beat people in polymarket and then the suckers they
you know whatever, the rest of it, the bigger percentage
of seventy five percent followers, they're taking their money and
that's baga. That's a big part of bag. And then
the other part is less concerned with money, although money
is a part of it. Is just ascending and pushing

(47:35):
down from a power space, right, Like you just like
to be in a place where they can have power
over other people, and usually other people being designated by
not looking like them, or not behaving like them, or
not having the same kind of boyfriend's girlfriends whatever than them.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
It's like, I mean, I couldn't be happier that Peter
Brimlow is going to end his career on the bottom
of the heap he was trying to climb.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
Yeah, you know, yeah, and they'll be I guarantee you
there'll be more of an effort from us to define
his legacy than from them, because they don't care. They
don't care.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
No, they they will, they'll use you up and forget you.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Yeah, they don't care. We will. We will spend more
time on him than so I mean, we're talking about
him right now. I mean we have I have I
host a podcast where we talk about these guys all
the time, right, so it's a grow he's bringing up
new guys. I think we're doing we're doing a full
BIOEP on Steven Miller soon. You know, they don't do that.
They don't care, They're not like, here's the reason Steven's great.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
Like no, I mean, Jason Kesslo disappeared from the Internet
a year ago, and they don't talk about him anymore.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Oh, It's it's like he never existed.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
Yeah, I mean, but you know what, I hope he
stays off that, you know what I mean. I try
to find some forgiveness in my heart. You know, maybe
it's the Catholic upbringing, whatever, but I try to find
some even though he literally who knows what he did
that was related to the threats I received because he
wrote stuff about me.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
I mean, I think that that series he put on
v Dare that included information about you and your family
certainly didn't help.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
Yeah, for sure. But you know, if he stays offline
and he stays like this, like, I hope that he's
getting some help.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
That's all anyone ever asked. I mean, that's all I
was ever asking for from these guys. I'm not even
holding out hope that you change your heart.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
I just want you to stop doing.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Stuff about it, Yeah, I mean, just stop trying to
make everything worse.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Yes, yeah, really, like I mean, but if he's out
there and he's like, no, I'm just gonna, like, you know,
keep it quiet. And I have a hard time imagining
that guy like finding any kind of change of heart.
But it would be great if he just stayed, just
stayed at everything and just lived his life. And you know, privately,

(49:43):
I would I would feel some tiny crumb of respect for.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
That God willing, God willing, and maybe, uh maybe Peter
Brimo will log off forever eventually too.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
Well yeah, I mean based upon the age that's.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, well he's going to He's going to do a
permanent log off eventually.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
Permanent logoff eventually. I've heard all kinds of gossip about
from people in Berkeley Springs that Lydia really doesn't want
to be associated with the white nationalist movement and really
doesn't want us to be associated with the movement in general.
Just if you want to give it another term that
they might use, like dissit and write or whatever. She's

(50:24):
I think, I don't know this for a fact that
she would never tell me directly. Think about Lydia Bremlo.
You're twenty years old. This very rich white husband comes
by his old for you. He's like fifty seven, and
he's recently lost his wife Bremola lost his first wife
to cancer. And you're in the kind of heritage seeing

(50:47):
your kind of conservative yourself, and this guy's pretty conservative.
This is this is happening around a time in which
alien nation is still kind of acceptable.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
I mean, at least in the heritage front set.

Speaker 4 (51:00):
Yeah, on the right it was a kind of acceptable.
But you know, even if it's acceptable, the worst you
could say about it. He's kind of a bad boy,
like a bad you know, he's got right so it's
sort of like, ooh, edgy. He's like an edgy bad boy,
and you kind of get indoctrinated into the movement that way.
And you're in a marriage you like, I don't know,
Like when I was like twenty something, I don't know,

(51:22):
I didn't know what the hell was going on. So
you're in this marriage with this dude, and you have
kids now and you've seen the other side of it,
the hell of it up close. All the time. People
shutting down the website. People there were hackers. There's all
kinds of things that they're dealing with constantly. Everyone is
telling you, everyone other than people in the movement are

(51:43):
finding ways. Whenever they get a chance to speak to you,
they're telling you, you know, go fuck yourself. We hate this, right,
we hate you. We don't like this stuff.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
It's got to be discouraging.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
I mean for years and then now all of a sudden,
you're turning forty and you've got kids and you're looking
at this. I mean, I personally would want to like
just get as far away from it as possible. I mean,
it just seems like it's just a depressing just you know.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Yeah, Like I said, that's all I want for these
people is that they stop doing harm in the world.
And you know, if they have a change of heart,
that's wonderful. Don't tell us about it. Yeah, just just
log off, Just go be normal, go get a real job,
stop being a Nazi. Just just go just go be
a guy in the world.

Speaker 4 (52:24):
Yeah, I would really like that. I think they're kind
of entering now a sort of post Nazi phase.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
M I mean, because they don't they don't have to
be edgy anymore. They're the mainstream Republican politics.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
Now you can be just you can just be a
gracist nazi at all the time. And that's why starting
to mutate into like these like whole looks maxing and
like you know, which is like in cel but like
we're not insuls anymore, we hammer our face whatever, you know.
I just think that they're now so they think they're
such part of the culture, and it would be it'll
be very interesting for me to see if there is

(52:59):
a huge change after this, if we see sort of
the Trump regime kind of fall, have a really hard fall,
and some of this really starts to break up. What
will happen and when people like look back at some
of the stuff that's happening over the past like a
few years, even as there's been this tremendous explosion. If
you look at the time from when the book ended,

(53:19):
which is again on the election day, the day after
the election, I'm twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
I mean, what a moment to end things.

Speaker 4 (53:25):
Yeah, but if you look at that from there to now,
you see like that was almost like an endpoint before
this new culture that we're in now where you have
the shootings in Minneapolis, and it's just the outright violence,
the blown up boats, to all this stuff. I'm very
curious to see our culture, if our culture can heal

(53:45):
a little bit, how this stuff will be viewed.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Yeah, I mean it is, like you said, it ends
before the story is over. But I think you know,
as as a portrait of that four year period in
that town.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
I mean, it's fascinating.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
It is i think, applicable to the world outside of
Berkeley Springs, but it is a very intimate look at
what it means for a weird old racist blogger to
move into the castle that looms above.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Your coffee shop.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Absolutely, I don't want to keep you forever, but I
just want to remind the listener Strange people on the Hill,
how extremism tore a part of small American town by
Michael Edison Hayden comes out April.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
Seventh, Yeah, April seventh.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
April seventh.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
You can pre order it now wherever books are sold,
or you could just go to a bookstore on April
seventh and pick a copy up. I'm going to go
ahead and contact my local anarchist bookstore to make sure
they have an order in for it, and I recommend
you do the.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
Same anarchist bookstore.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Better don't buy it on Amazon. I mean you can,
but don't. Yeah, and tell your local library that you
want them to buy a copy, because that matters too,
And that gets this book into more people's hands, because
not everybody can afford to buy a book. So yeah,
request it at your local independent bookstore and your library.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
If you can.

Speaker 4 (54:56):
Yeah. I heard from friends that like at random places
in Illinois and whatever that they can find the book
at their local library. They we'll be able to get it.
So that's great. Please ask for it and uh yeah,
and enjoy it. I think it'll have. My hope is
it has long tail. There's some word of mouth about
the era. So something to read, something to read not
just now but also in the future. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
It is a fascinating picture of a particular moment in
time that has broader lessons I think. But Mike, thanks
so much for coming on. Where can people find you online?

Speaker 4 (55:28):
Thank you? You're so you're even cooler in person.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
I just want to thank you.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Where can find me online? I'm in blue Sky? What
the hell is? What? I hate? The Blue Sky handles.
That was the one thing that you know, people complain
about Blue Sky, and it's like for me, it's like,
what do you even want? Dude, Like, you know, all
this stuff is so bad, right, like, what do you
even want? It's Michael E. Hayden dot b s K
Y dot social s O C I A L. I'm

(55:54):
still technically on Twitter at Michael E. Hayden, where I've
always been. You know, when I was writing the book
and I was recovering from the mental health thing, I
wasn't online at all for all twenty twenty four and
so my nice that greatered my ex engagement. In any case,
I don't like being on there too much, just for
anything other than research.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
And people can find you every week on posting through it.

Speaker 4 (56:15):
Jared Hall, Oh, that's true. Yeah, just yeah, just do that.
You can listen to us talk about all kinds of things.
We're talking about cashpital, we're talking about the ai fruits
that we keep finding on our feeds now, all kinds.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Of topics, the fruits. Oh my, thank you so much.
And again by the book, You're gonna love it.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
Thanks Mollia, thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Byte but.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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now find sources for it to happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.