Michael Edison Hayden [Tweet him], “investigative reporter” a.k.a. Cultural Marxist Enforcer for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s HateWatch, has been spying on VDARE.com’s recent purchase of Berkeley Springs Castle in Berkeley Springs WVA. He’s found and interviewed a few local Leftists (most of them, we’re told, are Washington D.C. interlopers) [West Virginia Tourist Hub Rejects VDARE’s ‘Negative’ Message, by Michael Edison Hayden, SPLC HateWatch, March 19, 2020]. And his Twitter followers have responded with terroristic threats.
Hayden tweeted:
The white nationalist non-profit VDARE bought a castle overlooking the small tourist town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Residents there have started to organize a response.
— Michael Edison Hayden (@MichaelEHayden) March 19, 2020
My latest for @Hatewatch: https://t.co/3oLsAo0N2l
Hayden mustn’t have noticed that we explicitly deny being “white nationalists.” And under the Fair Housing Act, you can be investigated by HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity or sued if you “organize a response” to a black or other protected organization moving into your town. [24 CFR § 100.65, (b) (7)]
VDARE purchased the castle for $1,400,000 without the help of a loan, according to records I reviewed. It's unclear where they got that money.
— Michael Edison Hayden (@MichaelEHayden) March 19, 2020
The castle gives them greater proximity to Washington DC and a place to hold conferences without fear of being shut down.
It is generally illegal to “shut down” conferences, even of American Renaissance, and it’s really illegal to use force, as Antifa has been doing for years, with minimal legal pushback.
Hayden writes in his polemic (perhaps I should call it a “screed”):
VDARE described their purchase of the castle in vague terms on their website, referring to it as a “meeting place.” VDARE has struggled to stage conferences in recent years due to public opposition to their agenda, and would likely benefit from owning a facility in which to hold large scale events. After the Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado declined to host VDARE’s 2018 conference, for example, the group filed a lawsuit against the city’s mayor. The residence in Berkeley Springs could theoretically help VDARE avoid such headaches. [Links in original]
The issue in Colorado Springs, evaded by Hayden, is that RINO Mayor John Suthers stated that he wouldn’t provide police protection to a conference threatened by protests i.e. Antifa, a clear violation of our civil rights. See the great Michelle Malkin’s July 20, 2019 summary Michelle Malkin On Colorado Springs: Freedom Of Assembly Under Fire.
Hayden goes:
The castle is also securely embedded on a hill and surrounded by iron gates, making it hard for antiracist demonstrators to access it should VDARE decide to host a conference there. Well-attended counterdemonstrations have had a deleterious impact on the racist right’s ability to organize in public in recent years, making secure locations appealing to white nationalists like those linked to VDARE. [Emphasis added, links in original].
By “access”, Hayden clearly means “disrupt and suppress” as in so many other recent cases, for example with Charles Murray’s March, 2017 talk at Middlebury College.
Hayden has personal connections to Antifa, as detailed by Tyler O’Neil in his recent book Making Hate Pay: The Corruption Of The Southern Poverty Law Center:
Extremism researcher Eoin Lenihan mapped the Twitter interactions of Antifa activists, finding strong connections to SPLC reporter Michael Hayden. Cathy Young independently investigated Hayden’s work, specifically more than a dozen Newsweek stories he wrote in 2017 and 2018. “These stories do, in fact, closely fit Lenihan’s description of the work of journalists he labels pro-Antifa: ‘downplaying Antifa violence while advancing Antifa talking points, and in some cases quoting Antifa extremists as if they were impartial experts.’” [Links added]
Cathy Young wrote in ArcDigital [Antifa, Quillette, and Media Bias | Who got smeared? July 3, 2019] that
For instance, a September 2017 article by Hayden sympathetically profiles a schoolteacher and Antifa activist who prides herself on “shutting down” right-wing speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos. (The piece mentions only toward the end that she faces assault and rioting charges stemming from a 2016 melee.) A December 2017 report on FBI’s investigation of Antifa as a violent extremist group suggests that the probe is driven by far-right conspiracies and cites [Antifascist Handbook author Mark] Bray] as an expert. A February 2018 story on Antifa’s disruption of a tour by a Norwegian heavy metal band accused of neo-Nazi and anti-Muslim sympathies (co-written with Zack Schonfeld) more or less acknowledges that the accusations are without substance, but praises Antifa’s tactics as “effective in derailing recruitment” by the alt-right. [Emphasis added, links in original.]
It’s significant of the current law enforcement climate that Hayden has no fear about associating with Antifa’s violent paramilitary activists.
And you can see this in the fact that his Twitter followers immediately responded with threats to storm or burn down VDARE.com’s castle.
Let’s hope some of them are jokes—although not jokes that any patriot would be allowed to make:
(For some reason, torches were evil when used in a parade on the eve of the Democrat-mugged 2017 Charlottesville Unite The Right Rally, but not here.)
And this, from a video game:
Can't load tweet https://twitter.com/JayneOnComputer/status/1240660289516974083: Sorry, you are not authorized to see this status.
But some of these tweets are unmistakable threats:
Any idea if they have the money for round the clock security? [Archive link]
That’s an unmistakable threat to do something to the castle at night—not a “protest” at all.
Aluminum powder mixed with iron oxide.
Or Gallium if you're trying to be sneaky. [Archive Link]
Aluminum powder mixed with iron oxide.
— Casting Creator (@Dedwrekka) March 19, 2020
Or Gallium if you're trying to be sneaky.
That’s what we must call a really serious threat. The first part (aluminum powder and iron oxide) is the recipe for thermite, as used in arson and sabotage. And gallium reacts with aluminum in peculiar ways.
I don’t know all the details, but I’m not trained in metallurgy, as “Dedwrekka” is. His Twitter profile reads “Questioning White Bio-male. He/Him/Yall. Veteran. Animation, Woodworking, Metalworking, Sculpting, Makeing".
It doesn’t take much in the way of internet sleuthing to establish that this guy threatening us with thermite is a college student in North Texas named Aaron, who is studying metalcrafts.
I don’t want to “doxx” him in the usual sense. But if the FBI or other law enforcement agencies are interested, I’ll forward them the details.
And they should be. This is a “terroristic threat” across state lines.
This is just one more instance of the danger of the SPLC, which as, Hayden notes in his article, has been targeting us specifically for almost twenty years.
Just one other example: after the SPLC labelled the Christian-oriented Family Research Council a “Hate Group” (just as with us), it was attacked in 2012 by a gunman who said specifically that the SPLC inspired him.
An alternative view of West Virginia’s view of VDARE.com can be seen in a Tweet replying to Hayden’s Twitter promotion of his column by someone calling himself NEETNationalist:
I'm sure the residents of a small mountain in West Virginia where the precincts all went for Trump (55%, 74%, 76%, 78%, 78%, and 79%) and live 40 minutes away from the nearest pro-Clinton precinct are just totally outraged at an anti-immigration group coming to their town.
James Fulford [Email him] is a writer and editor for VDARE.com.
