It Could Happen Here - Strange People on the Hill: An Interview with Michael Edison Hayden

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

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.

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I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I'm joined today by a very special guest, Michael Edison Hayden. Hi, how's it going? Thanks for being here. 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 7th,

26, but you 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. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I'm excited to talk about this. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, I was worried that I wasn't going to have time to, like, read the whole book. I mean, you 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. Hmm. You know, so when your publicist sent this to me, I thought, oh, phenomenal. This is a book about Peter Brimlow in the Racism Castle in West Virginia. I would love to read a book about Peter Brimlow in the Racism Castle. And it's not really, is it? Like the brimlows are the strange people on the hill and they sort of stay on the hill, right? You have a couple of encounters with them in the book, but for the most part, it's a book about the town.

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 have been, you know, populating our culture for the last 10 plus years that just seem to get unlimited traction. on social media. There's nothing wrong with talking about them. And there's nothing wrong with certainly reporting on them because I did my share of that day in and day out

when I was with SPLC, for instance. I think 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, 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. Yeah. Well, it's not totally without him. I mean, we do get a bit of information about him. Yeah, we meet him. Peter kind of came up as a financial reporter. That's the short way of understanding, you know, how he became America's most influential white nationalist. That's what SPLC labeled him, which is covered obviously in the book. And he became obsessed with immigration and in particular, heartseller, which brought in tons of people from the developing world.

My mother came to the country in 68, for example. That was like three years after a heartseller. And I wouldn't have been born, if not, she married a white guy and et cetera, et cetera. how she came from Egypt. So you became obsessed with this and kind of in the way that, I know you know a lot about 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 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 white nationalist-minded or anti-immigrant-immigrant-minded. In Brimel's case, I really think it was like a

financial thing, just like this is putting all these different strains or whatever. And then it became, the financial became less of a concern and the actual anti-immigrant thing became bigger and bigger for him. In 1995, he publishes Alien Nation, which is a book that was actually praised by people like David From, you know, the very same guy who's high-hadding 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 by neo-Nazis, white nationalists, et cetera. I think people like David Frum had been honest with themselves. It was there all along. It was not a subtle undercurrent. Fun aside about David Frum, which is that I did put it in the

investigation into Stephen Miller's private emails. Miller shared posts by Frum on more than one occasion about like sort of anti-Islam posts, which I think is interesting. I think what these people disagree most about is how loud you're supposed to say the quiet part. Yeah. No, I think I really do think that that's true. So, you know, when Peter became more of a contentious figure, he founded Viter, which is a nonprofit that lasted for about a quarter century. Recently died. Recently died. Well, 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. And at the time when W. Bush was president, Brimlow was reeling against the GOP to change, to move in this nativist direction.

And eventually they listened to him. And so the book sort of starts with, you know, it's what 2019, right? And Peter and his wife, Lydia Brimlow, have purchased this gigantic castle in the small town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, right? I guess it's not gigantic. It's a medium-sized castle. I don't know what the scale for castles is. And so you become interested in their purchase of this castle and you go to this 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. And it's this really sort of engrossing 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. 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 me that. I'm going to wait until they leave. I've also heard that too. But, you know, I know the people who are there who despise the brimloes 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 honored to a degree because I really want them to be able to recover their business. Their business have suffered since the brimlows took over. But just a quick thing on this castle, it is absolutely beautiful. It should be like a national park or something.

It has that feel. It was built in 1880 by a guy named Samuel Taylor's suit who made it for a very, very young girl. I think she's like 17 or something like that. It's fitting that Brimlow bought it for his much younger wife. 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 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 of the next, trying to keep the castle going. It's always more expensive than it's worth. It's beautiful. It overlooks the entire town. The town is tiny. Gorgeous. It looks like a great place to go on vacation. And if you imagine like for Berkeley Springs, the Empire State Building, 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. this is a tourist town that attracts a lot of LGBTQ people from places like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, a lot of liberals. And all of a sudden you have this, again, SPLC labeled white nationalist, anti-immigrant, nativist, whatever you want to call them.

A couple buys this castle, right? They decide to buy it. And the way they found it is because Lydia Brimlow, who is 37 years younger than Peter herself and started with him when she was 12. or something like that. And he was nearly 60. Right. She was an intern at the Heritage Foundation when they met. Intriguing. Yeah, at 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 2018 or so, it became very, very difficult for these folks to stage events, right? For, you know, for unknown reasons. It's not because they kept killing people. 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 United the Wright event, who has been at different times obsessed with both of us, I think. We're like in his top in his top op-all list. Jason, you know, was readily associated with VDair because of his contributions to the site, and people knew that.

And that may put even more pressure because they're like, well, this Charlottesville guy, right? the unite the right guy is is a safe so vdier couldn't stage any events they were very worried about counter demonstrators i think that the counter demonstrators from that first mega era really put the fear of god into some of these people they didn't they were they were scared shitless of anti-racist anti-fascist and all of a sudden you got a castle on zillow 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 and up getting it for that reason. And what happens to the town afterwards is, I think is a minor tragedy in our culture that hasn't been paid attention to enough. 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. Yeah, that'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 there and stuck in in Morgan County, which is 75% Trump and 90% white. And they're panicking because, they need to keep people going and the press goes a long way in Berkeley Springs. 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 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 are like corny online and easily ignored. They're all over the country feeling that exact dread that you're talking about where something very like above them is bearing down and pushing values that don't align with theirs. Right. It's such a specific story about Berkeley Springs, but at the same time, this could be almost any town. I'm sure you're You followed the story of what happened in Enid, Oklahoma when the Identity Europa guy got on their city council. And it was this very local small town struggle with these very specific local personalities, budding 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. Yeah. I mean, they're ascending right now to use clavicular's phrase. The, yeah, I mean, think about North Idaho, for example. I did a story for them from Mother Jones. And, you know, they have a long history with white supremacy and certainly dead, red, far right part of the country. But you have, like, anti-Semites, like Dave Riley. That's right.

Rebecca Hargraves and those type of 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. I mean, it's the same thing as what happened in West Virginia, right? It's 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.

Yeah. That's why Dave Riley moved to Idaho. Yeah. When Peter Brimlow first moved to the castle, he would repeatedly, I think he would do it when people would reach out for comment and be like, you know, Morgan County is 75% voted for Trump. It's 90% 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, but 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. I found it encouraging. Yes.

You know, because you met these people who were doing their best in this, like, bizarre, a fucked up situation. Like they didn't ask for a weird old British Nazi to buy the castle. Exactly. They're doing their best. And I think that's beautiful. 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 into your chairhead while you read the book. And you're seeing neighbors kind of turning on one another. And you're seeing me go through a mental health crisis to the book. I mean, these are things that for a normie that may be a little bit, you know, you may like the book, but you may be a final disturbing.

But for people like us who have kind of really been through stuff in this and seen it up close on a regular basis, look, what I like about the book is it's rare to like say, well, I'm going to praise some white people here. But like, it's white 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, I'm sort of an outsider. I, like, look so normal in New York. I'm just, I'm just swarthy. But there, there, there I look like Osama bin Laden in, uh, in, in West Virginia. I don't think you pass as white as you do in New York. Exactly.

It's very different. Yeah. Yeah. And I say, like, you know, when you see them, 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 a lot of people are not saying. A guy who thinks a $2,800 political donation is a small amount.

That's not the average West Virginian's idea of a small amount of money. 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 becomes completely divided, maybe irrevocably so. that will come together one day. I mean, it's still, I think the tensions are still quite bad. Yeah, it's still happening. Even though VDR dies at the end, the Brimlow 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 the more extreme things that Brimlow has said.

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. Yeah. I mean, Vedar has published Apologia about mass shooters intentions, basically. Right. But so many of these brimlow defenders are just, they're not saying what he said is okay or I believe what he said. They're saying, he was nice to me.

Why are you making such a big deal out of this? 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 top. supermarket shooting in Buffalo in 2022. That's something I highlight in the book. BDR publishes something that's like,

actually, like, look what, look how the great replacement has changed Buffalo. That was their response to 10 black people getting shot. Right. So Peter Brimel is very litigious. So we do have to be very specific here and say, Peter Brimelow did not say it is good that Peyton Gendron shot up that supermarket.

But what he did say is if the great replacement weren't happening. 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 replacement, so I'm fully on board with it. What they buy into is this profound friend-enemy distinction that now hovers over our entire country, right, where it's just sort of people who are friends of MAGA and try. Trump are on one side and then anybody who's at is my enemy. And these more extreme talking points are sort of creeping into that space and they're

not stopping it. You know, 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 Bremlows, it's not the specifics. I remember asking one guy in the book whose name is Charlie Curia and he owns a, you know, sort of a crafts shop at the corner of Berkeley Springs Park. And it's right next to another main character of the book,

Trey Johansson, who is 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 like? It was like, 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 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 defensive. Yikes. 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 the psychosis that kind of overshadows the entire narrative. I'm Iris Palmer. And my new podcast is called Against All Odds, and that's exactly what the show is about,

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Frontiers of Marketing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, leap with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after. administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential

administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Right. So 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. starting, right? It's the last time you left your New York apartment before lockdown. You're in Berkeley Springs. And as the story progresses, we see the 2020 uprising. And there's like a little BLM rally in this tiny town. And then there's J6 and there's October 7th. There's the 2024 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. Yeah. And all these threads sort of weave together. 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 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, 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 set in the 80s, 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 almost like we need time to process. But this has a very clear time period, which is the period right before COVID to the 2024 election. And it's enough in the past now that I think we can look at how these things affected regular people. 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 get have like five white people go stand on a street 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 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, stuff at SPLC was like really, really bad at the beginning of the book, and they're not there in the second half. And my mental health was, was just not 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, I imagine it's even scarier because it's a gross. or anyway. 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 2021. I took my son to the batting cage and afterwards, we went to 7-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 is, like, talking about assassinating you. And, you know, do you have any questions? Several. Yeah. I was like, I do. But like my eight-year-old is like slurping on a, you know, a cherry slurpy in the back seat. 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. for me. So it's like maybe I would rather just not know. Yeah. Oh, it was... Like, if there's something I can do to mitigate this, can I just not know? Yeah, it was horrible. It was hard. That is, I think, one of the things that a normie 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 Allen 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 the order.

Killed by David Lane. Yeah. And I would get that all the time. I must have been like months of just getting that from like random numbers and all this stuff. 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 Allenberg's corpse. And it's not a nice guy. I mean, it's, it's taboo.

It has like a pornographic quality to it. But it harkens to a very specific era of the movement. Like I can imagine there is a particular man who gravitates towards that specifically. Yeah. And I mean, like I remember getting threatened by a. Bowers, the guy who shot up, 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 there and, you know, trying to stir things up and see what it could shake loose 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, just screw your optics, I'm going in. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I was like, I know this guy, that one dingo. So 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 was so angry about what had happened. You know, you're right the right. That's what that really triggered me. 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 written features about previously.

But it was after United to write, I got focused on. I really was like, I'm going to put all my abilities into trying to create trouble for these guys. And you did. 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. 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 SPLC thing, which we can talk about. But the main thing is that I reached a breaking point. I was, I was having to be in Berkeley Springs with some of the sources from the book when I had to go home and go to a psych ward. And I went for three weeks and I got diagnosed with bipolar there, which was a very useful diagnosis. It makes a big difference because, I mean, especially with bipolar, if you're just taking antidepressants, like, you're going to be up shit creek. Oh, yeah. Well, the antidepressants really screwed up my stomach and also made me like even more manic and stuff like that. But the book is a very frank, very honest, very personal. And I 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 with these guys. Like really, you know, skin in the game, committed to the cause, doing investigative journalism 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. You'd laugh it off.

And it's 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. I deal with it all the time. Yeah, they say that for sure. But then you go home and it, it is a big deal. And people are not as 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. Yeah, for sure. It's a very honest look at what happens when you bottom out on that. And it's so much worse than just threats. I mean, you're constantly concerned that somebody is going to use lawfare against you and try to hurt your family. And you have children. 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 SBLC. We published the identity of Matt Gebert, who is the State Department official. I remember that guy.

I was actually going to bring him up. I was going to bring up Matt Giebert in terms of the number of guys who've moved to West Virginia because they think it's only white. Yeah, we'll get there in a second. But I just say, 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 7th, 2019.

And I was like literally, I was, I was, I was, I was clamming. I was sweating. 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, there's this 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, I checked everything, right? Like, you think about the, you're trying to leave the house for a long trip or something like that. And it's like, you know, that thought. Oh, yeah. 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're like, 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.

Oh, I know that. I know that feeling excited. It drives my husband crazy when I say things like, I'd rather get shot than be wrong in public. Yeah. No, it's true. 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 for anything. As you mentioned, Brimblow is very litigious. Not usually very successfully. No, no, he's. 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 brimals, I should point out, many, many opportunities to talk to me and more detail about everything. And they didn't want to. But you do speak to him several times in the book.

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 ward. And that and the, the SPLC thing, which is basically my relationship with SPLC is like I was probably the most well-known person there, largely because I had a social media presence and I was doing a lot of spokesperson work. So I was like on TV a bunch and stuff like that. So whenever someone's mad at the organization, they're going to take it out on you. 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, I got my pay raise multiple times and promoted and stuff like that. And I kept breaking investigative stories. And then when we started to have problems where they started to limit our ability to publish stories, they really became very risk averse. 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 Law Center, you didn't have mental health coverage. You couldn't see a real therapist? Yeah. That's horrific. That's like human rights abuse to make you look at Gab all day and not get you with therapist. They were giving us like the app stuff, which is not going to cut it. No, but you need like a $500 an hour like New York analyst. A psychiatrist, you know, in some case, like, you know, somebody good.

But they should be covering that. Yeah, no, they were not. there's just a whole bunch of stuff. There were a bunch of safety issues. No doubt. Hannah Gase, my dear colleagues, still my colleague, even if I'm not there anymore. You know, she went to go cover Amran in 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 Cork was the Intelligence Project Director at that time. And she was just, you know, out to lunch. She just didn't do anything as far as I could tell. Things like what happened to Hannah. Like stuff like that happens to me, I expect it. I'm out there by myself.

I have no plan. It's just me. I have no plan. 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. Yeah, there was nothing. And so one of the first things I did was I helped Shepard 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 favored person to being. repeatedly a target of what did 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 like all the dialogue that was in there

was completely fabricated and made up. And so for the listener, so discussed in the book a little bit, is the fact that at the Southern Poverty Law Center was engaging in union busting? Yes, that's right. So, you know, you were, you were dealing with retaliation for union activity in the workplace. Retaliation for union activity. It was really bad. It happened a second time after that when I was covering the trial Doug Mackey. With character we can save for another day. For another day. And it was really bad. 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 Anne Beas,

and I told them 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. Let's really, like, make them quit. That's an ADA violation. 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 thing. They pushed it as far as they wanted to go, which is after the summer of 2023, there was a Hamas attack on Israel. And, you know, I have Arabs and my family. I have my mother's side, including Palestinians. You know, I was distraught about this whole situation. It was adding another thing on top of it. And watching the retaliation, which became a genocide very quickly, did not. improved my mood, obviously. It was very stressful to see that stuff. And Hannah invited me to sign a

thing about, you know, they was just sort of like asking writers to sign on Israel's an apartheid state, calling for a ceasefire. Writers for the ceasefire. Yeah, I remember. And free beacon. I don't familiar with that. Wonderful politician. It still comes up in the first few pages of your Google results. Thank you for notice. Yeah, I know. The book should push it back. The book will push it out. I'm waiting for that. Free Beacon, like, came out with this thing and it was like,

SPLC spokesperson, you know, blames Israel for Hamas violence or something like that. And just the audacity to accuse you of anti-Semitism for signing this letter, you know, supporting a ceasefire. I mean, I've read that letter. It's not an anti-Semitic letter. 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.

Well, there's tons of, 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 they're, instead of a picture of me, they used, they used, like, one of those pictures of Hamas looking like cobra from Chi I Joe and with like a rocket launcher. And like, right, implying that you, as a man of Arab descent are an anti-Semitic terrorist. Yeah, basically. Good faith stuff. 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, a more nuanced idea of what Hamas is than that author.

The point is, it's just, I mean, just basically to do that. And then rather than SPLC, like, care so much about social justice and racism. Rather than seize the opportunity to differ. 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. I don't think they have any credibility because of this stuff. And so instead of differentiating themselves from that, they chose to discipline you. Yeah, they did. And that was when I, like, like, I said, mental health was like all the factors

that we've just discussed mentioned. And then I was happy. 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 I had to spend the sort of Christmas break period there where I lost, you know, they ultimately terminated me. It was a Title VII 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 in a psych ward with like no access to anything. And almost everybody in my line of managers was pushed out and given buyouts

allegedly, cork, this woman, Anne Beeson, and now the CEO is- They exposed themselves to some serious liability there. Yeah, they got off easy in many ways. Yeah. They disposed of me, but I threatened suit with a lawyer, a wonderful lawyer, who should. She was great. Jewish woman from New York. And she was 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, though. I mean, it's heartbreaking to remember that, you know, even these progressive nonprofits that are fighting for what we believe, they're using you up and spitting you out to. Yeah. Oh, sure. They're 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 want to see from an organization like the SPLC. Yeah, they had to retract my termination and assign into 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, which I saw coming in 2024 to a degree. So yeah, like, that happened. And then 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 2020, when the brimoles

first arrived, they kind of took me in and nursed me back to health. So that's why it's, I feel unified in the narrative. And we're able to explore what happened to me psychologically and what happened to them psychologically as this other stuff is happening. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Odds. And that's exactly what the show is doing whatever it takes to be thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria.

I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month and we all could not afford. I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him. I said, hi, dad. And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the... kitchen. And she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is a badass convict. Right. Just finished five years. I'm going to have cookies and milk at them all. Yeah. On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor,

cultural icon, Danny Trail, talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to bench, featuring powerful conversations with the guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more. I'm an alcoholic. And without this trouble, I'm going to die. Open your free IHAR radio app. Search the CETO show. And listen now. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of IHR Media, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic,

stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between. This seasonal math and magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take two interactive CEO Strauss Elning. If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business. Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.

Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top. Listen to math and magic, stories from the Frontiers and Marketing on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Anna Navarro and on my new podcast, leap with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your country. community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after

administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the Mycultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So 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 it, 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 along your way as the world falls apart. I don't think that they come across as like perfect either. I mean, like, that's what

I'm really hopeful for. No. I mean, they're all complicated people. You know, I wanted to avoid like this sort of wishy-washy utopian, like, I'm an ally, you know, and I'm a, it's like, yeah, actually the people who are allies have all kinds of issues. They have marital problems. They Some of them are, like, behaved badly in one thing or whatever. We're all people, like, trying to live. It's really a question of what this particular ideology that has been foisted 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 monster and set it in this direction. what this is doing to us.

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 above. But this is, I don't know, there were these, like, small moments of, like, physical intimacy. Like, when 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 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. Sure.

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 have loved to have seen that. She's so cool, by the way. You should have her on. She's awesome. She sounds amazing. I would love to meet Lisa Marie. Well, I'll tell you about her in a second.

But, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, Brimlow's behavior. 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. You know, he likes to drink. Room temperature vodka. He is always talking like this. He sounds like he's always had a few drinks. He probably has.

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 you, any kind of party thing or whatever, you can let go for a second. And for a second, I felt, not that like I felt like, oh, this is my friend or anything. It's just more that I'm just talking. Exactly. 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 in any way. It just means like he's human. So for most of the book, the strange people on the hill are. moved on the hill, but when you encounter them, there is this very human intimacy to these encounters. And not only that, everybody has a rough go in this book, including them. Getting raked over the coals by Letitia James. Well, over the course of this, that there, if you follow, they are, 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 Viterer's existence. They have a castle, they have a

home base that they can use in perpetuity after Brimlow leaves, the movement can flourish and grow. This is like, this is it. They got a castle. I mean, it would be the perfect place for a white nationalist meetup. They haven't really used it that way that much. Like, every now and again, but like... 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, 4.5 million in like one year. through donor's trust, and they're writing really high. And then by the end from the Letitia James investigation, it had not turned into 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 decide to dial down VDAR altogether. And it still exists in the sense of like the Twitter account still exists and Brimel is still writing on substack. God help us. Some of it is 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 had 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 the town who are so nice and sweet and wonderful and all of it. They're laughing as you would, right? As everybody talks about, like, when Trump dies and everybody's. He's like, 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 brimelows, it is a, you know, it is a brutal fall by the end of the book. Yeah, I mean, 10 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. Well, there's no, there's no solidarity on their side. I just. Oh, God.

That's what I say. No, that's one thing they will never have. 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 wind up, like, you know, being targeted by somebody. I'm like, okay, well. You're not going to gloat about their downfall.

No, but it's 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. And they just don't do that. They don't do that for each other. They hate each other. They're always malignant narcissists, because it's always about cloying to the top.

It's always trying to get power over other people. I mean... Everybody wants to be the crab at the top of the bucket, but you're still a crab in a goddamn bucket. There's two strains of MAGA. I know MAGA 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 15% will go hoard a bunch of like fake coins or whatever thing, polymarket, like odds or whatever. they're all hoarding information to kind of beat people in polymarket, and then the suckers, the, you know, whatever, the rest of it, the bigger percentage of 75% followers, they're taking their money, and that's MAGA. That's a big part of MAGA.

Then the other part is less concerned with money, although money is a part of it, is just ascending and pushing 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 boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever, than them. 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. 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. No, they will use you up and forget you. Yeah. They don't care.

We will spend more time on him than it. And so we, look, I mean, we're talking about them right now. I host a podcast where we talk about these guys all the time, right? So we're always bringing up new guys. I think we're doing a, we're doing a full bio-up on Stephen Miller soon. Oh. You know, they don't do that. They don't care.

They're not like, here's some of reason Stephen's great. I mean, Jason Kessler disappeared from the internet a year ago, and they don't talk about him anymore. Oh, yes. It's like he never existed. 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 threats I received because he wrote stuff about me. I mean, I think that that series he put on V-Dare that included information about you and your family certainly didn't help. Yeah, for sure. But, you know, if he stays offline and he stays like this, like, I hope that he's getting some help.

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. I just want you to stop doing stuff about it. Yeah. I mean, just stop trying to make everything worse. Yes. Yeah, really.

Like, I mean, but if he's out there and he's like, I'm just going to 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 out of everything and just lived his life. and, oh, you know, privately. I would, I would feel some tiny crumb of respect for that. God willing. God willing. And maybe, uh, maybe Peter Rimlo will log off forever eventually, too.

Well, I mean, based upon the age, uh, that, that's. Yeah, well, he's going to, he's going to do a permanent log off eventually. He's going to do a permanent log off eventually. I've heard all kinds of gossip about, um, from people in Berkeley Springs that, Lydia really doesn't want to be associated with the white nationalist movement and really doesn't want to be associated with the movement in general, just if you want to give it another term that they might use like dissident right or whatever. She's, I think I don't know this for a fact that she would never tell me directly. Think about Lydia Bremlow. You're 20 years old.

This very rich white husband comes by his old for you. He's like 57 and he's recently lost his wife. Brimlow lost his first wife to cancer. And you're in the kind of heritage scene. You're kind of conservative yourself. And this guy is pretty conservative. This is happening around a time in which alien nation is still kind of acceptable. I mean, at least in the heritage front set, sure.

Yeah, on the right, it was kind of acceptable. But even if it's acceptable, the worst you could say about it, he's kind of a bad boy. me 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. Like, I don't know, like when I was like 20 something, I don't know. 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 are 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 finding ways, whenever they had 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. It's got to be discouraging. I mean, for years. And then now all of a sudden you're turning 40 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 just seems like it just, just a depressing, you know? 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 log off, just go be normal. Go get a real job. Stop being a Nazi. Just go, just go, just go be a guy in the world. Yeah. I would really like that. I think they're kind of entering now a sort of post-Nazi phase. I mean, because they don't, they don't have to be edgy anymore. They're the mainstream Republican politics now. You can be just, you can just be a racist Nazi at all time. And that's why it's starting to mutate into like this like whole looks maxing and like, you know, it's just like in cell, but like we're not insoles anymore. We hammer our face, whatever. You know, I just think that they're now. So they, they think they're such part of the

culture. And it'll be, it'll be very interesting for me to see if there is 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, which is again on the election day, the day after the election on 2024. I mean, what a moment to end things. Yeah.

But if you look at that from there to now, you see like that was almost like an end point before this new culture that we're in now, where you have the shootings in Minneapolis and just the outright violence, the blown up boats, all this stuff. I'm very curious to see our culture, if our culture can heal a little bit, how this stuff will be viewed. 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, I mean, it's fascinating. 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 your coffee shop.

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 Part of Small American Town by Michael Edison Hayden, comes out April 7th? Yeah, April 7th. April 7th. You can pre-order it now, wherever books are sold, or you can just go to a bookstore on April 7th 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 same. Anarchist bookstore 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, if you can. 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 will be able to get it. So that's great. Please ask for it. And yeah, and enjoy it. I think it'll have, my hope is it has a long tail. Some word of mouth about the era. So something to read, something to read not just now, but also in the future. Yeah, it is a fascinating picture of a particular moment in time that has broader lessons, I think.

But my, thanks so much for coming on. Where can people find you online? Thank you. You're so, you're even cooler in person. I just want to see. Where can find me online? I'm in blue sky. What the hell is?

What's the hell is? 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 still technically on Twitter at Michael E-Haden, 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 2024. And so my, that like cratered my, my ex-engagement. In any case, I don't like being on there too much just for anything other than research. And people can find you every week on posting through it, Jared Halt. 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 Kosh Patel. We're talking about the AI fruits that we keep finding on our. On our feeds now, all kinds of topics. Yeah, my fruits. Oh, Mike, thank you so much. And again, buy the book. You're going to love it.

Thanks, Molly. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Bye. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of IHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. Coming up this seasonal math and magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Sessario. People think that creative ideas are like

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