This excerpt is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. 

In late February 2020, residents of the small tourist town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, woke to learn that a mysterious right-wing group called VDARE had purchased a beautiful nineteenth-century castle overlooking their town. The castle meant everything to Berkeley Springs. Images of it appeared on town promotional materials, and the outsiders business and restaurants owners relied on for tourist revenue always noticed the gorgeous sandstone building as they drove past Berkeley Springs State Park on Route 522.

With fewer than a thousand residents, gossip reverberated quickly through Berkeley Springs, and Peter and Lydia Brimelow, the castle’s new proprietors, soon became its subject. The Brimelows had a great deal of money for Morgan County, West Virginia, as well as inscrutable benefactors and a fair share of infamy. My employer at the time, the Southern Poverty Law Center, labeled them “white nationalist[s],” and VDARE’s website wrote credulously about the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that mass shooters have used to justify their beliefs. There were other reasons for gossip, too, including the nearly four-decade age gap between Peter and Lydia.

My new book, Strange People on the Hill, covers a five-year period in Berkeley Springs — from the end of 2019 through the day after the 2024 election, when VDARE’s presence caused neighbors to turn on one another, taking sides across ideological divides. The following excerpt begins on the night of December 8, 2023, after my colleague Hannah Gais and I managed to gain entry to the castle for the first time. We did so by purchasing tickets to a local Christmas party. For years, I reported on the Brimelows, and they posted disparaging remarks about me and my family on their website. That night was the first — and last — time we met in person.

When Hannah and I entered the castle, a massive tree reached the high ceiling of the foyer beside it. White lights, translucent white ribbons, and a glowing angel adorned the tree. A matching wreath hung above the fireplace. Hidden speakers played Bing Crosby’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” 

I mentioned to Hannah the possibility that the Brimelows might not even show up. We grabbed champagne and appetizers from an adjoining room with a long, opulently laid table and then headed up a red carpeted staircase that split the big stone walls of the foyer.

On the next floor, we found a pristine phonograph next to a painting of green hills and a white sky. They also had a print of the Karl Ludwig Friedrich Becker painting Othello Tells His Story to Desdemona. It showed Othello in front of a row of columns, his Black skin draped in Renaissance garb, gesticulating as he speaks to an older white man and a young white woman who is demurely peering up at him.

We walked down the halls and found a few untouched bedrooms. They looked like part of a fancy hotel. Then we ducked into another room with a Christmas tree. It was empty and we hung out there for a minute to take a break. When we moved on to the next room, we found that it was a scullery.

There were no Christmas decorations in it, just framed pictures of Civil War generals. General Robert E. Lee was there. So was Stonewall Jackson. They also had a portrait of General Ulysses S. Grant. I wondered whether the........

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