We Went to a Christmas Party at an Infamous White Nationalist Castle

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? What about building a white country through the mass deportation of non-white immigrants?

VDARE, a pro-Trump white nationalist group that has repeatedly published propaganda about the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, didn’t put its name on “It’s Time to Sparkle!”—the Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, Christmas event we attended on Friday at a historic 19th century castle—but the group displayed its logo prominently in a conference room where guests mingled, sipping champagne.

The Bath Christmas Project, which hosted the $65-per-head Christmas party, allowed guests to hang out in that room. Though the project is an ostensibly non-political operation intended to enrich Berkeley Springs with Christmas cheer, Peter and Lydia Brimelow, the married couple who run VDARE, have involved themselves in the project since 2021—much to the chagrin of some locals. (Peter Brimelow, a former National Review columnist, founded VDARE in 1999. His wife, Lydia Brimelow, describes herself as the publisher of VDARE.com and the president of its eponymous foundation. The Bath Christmas Project did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.)

Just a few months ago, white nationalist Kevin DeAnna gave a speech at the castle accusing nongovernmental organizations of profiting from “the destruction of existing countries” by providing aid to migrants. Radical right figures come and go from the property regularly for conferences, gatherings of VDARE’s members-only 1620 Society, and other business, according to various social media posts, livestreams, and announcements on VDARE’s website.

VDARE purchased the beautiful sandstone-laden structure where we attended “It’s Time to Sparkle!” in February 2020 for $1.4 million, without the use of a loan. It brought the group closer to the seat of power.

In a November 2022 transcript of a video that VDARE posted to its website and social media, Peter Brimelow asserted that the two-hour drive from Berkeley Springs to Washington, D.C., could allow the racist group “to develop greater influence over people inside the Beltway and allies there in Congress and congressional staffers.” His nearly-40-years-younger wife has also referred to the castle as a potential “hub where people can meet and develop their ideas”—in other words, a gathering place for white nationalists and their friends.

“[W]e have our little catacomb here that we continue to feed and it continues to develop and we’re developing wonderful friendships and networks with people which are growing every time we get together,” Lydia Brimelow added in the same clip in which her husband spoke.

We found the castle both imposing and festive. Positioned on a hill, adorned with layers of Christmas decor, including an over-90-inch inflatable dragon named Jubal, VDARE’s reputation also gave the place an unnerving, slightly hallucinatory energy that you can’t find anywhere else this holiday season.

For those who don’t keep up with the minutiae of radical right activism: VDARE has published apologias about the manifestos authored by racist mass shooters. It has published blogs authored by Jason Kessler, the white supremacist who secured the permit for what became the deadly August 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia. It has published fundraising appeals that emphasize their role in popularizing the “great replacement,” an idea which has motivated racist terror attacks. The group’s name is derived from “Virginia Dare,” believed to be the first English child born in the “New World” in 1587.

Blending that backstory with Bing Crosby’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and glowing yellow lights is certainly a uniquely American experience, even if it’s not exactly representative of Clark Griswold’s Americana.

Despite our names repeatedly appearing on VDARE’s website in the context of derision—due to our reporting and activism focused on the radical right—we were allowed into the event on Friday night. One of us, Hannah Gais, purchased the tickets through her middle name, Hannah Johnson, and no one apparently gave consideration to the possibility that we might use the Christmas party as an opportunity to inspect VDARE’s offices.

When we got inside, the Brimelows hadn’t arrived yet, which gave us time to absorb the place, with its high ceilings and labyrinthine interior that conjured Dracula movies or the board game Clue.

We also took in VDARE’s conference area, centered with a fireplace and a podium bearing the group’s logo, a white doe. That conference area housed a modest seating arrangement of only about two dozen seats, suggesting that VDARE’s events are likely intimate.

Someone set up a small scullery just beneath the conference area. There, they hung a large portrait of Andrew Jackson, a president Trump enthusiasts admire. In the same nook, someone also hung portraits of Civil War Confederate generals like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, alongside the Union hero Ulysses S. Grant.

Multiple guests said that the castle boasts a dungeon, although we unfortunately never saw it.

Lydia Brimelow has worked closely with the Bath Christmas Project since joining its board in 2021. Both Brimelows are listed as donors on the Bath Christmas Project’s website and, as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch reported in 2022, residents allege that the family gave $2,500 to fund the project in 2021.

Some locals have criticized the Christmas project as an effort to mainstream the racist group and make them seem more benign to their neighbors. In 2022, multiple residents told SPLC’s’s Hatewatch that they had ceased collaborating with the project as a result of the Brimelows’ involvement. One could easily look at “It’s Time to Sparkle!” in the context of the Brimelows trying to seem like normal conservatives, celebrating the holidays.

The Bath Christmas Project, which sold tickets to the event, did not disclose VDARE’s involvement in it when advertising on social media. Based on conversations we had, many of the 30 or so people who attended the event seemed unaware that they were munching smoked salmon and baked brie in the offices of a group that worries aloud about “white genocide.”

No one said anything racist at the event that we heard, while speaking with roughly a dozen guests, and no one seemed to know about the Brimelows’ involvement in extreme radical right activism.

We suspect that many people, particularly people of color, would be interested in learning that their community Christmas party took place in the offices of a white nationalist group. (We also saw no people of color at the event, save for one of the authors of this piece being a relatively light-skinned Egyptian-American.)

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Peter and Lydia Brimelow arrived with their family around 30 minutes after the start of the event, cutting a striking appearance. Lydia is, in heels, a full head taller than her septuagenarian husband, giving the couple a distinct “Boris and Natasha” energy. Within two minutes of walking through the door, Peter Brimelow crossed directly past one of the authors of this piece, Michael Edison Hayden, without recognizing him, despite VDARE writing about him roughly a half-dozen times over the last few years.

“I need to turn the heat on,” Brimelow muttered in a gravelly English accent.

Over an hour later, Lydia Brimelow recognized us as we were coming down the red-carpeted stairs into the castle’s foyer. Her face dropped and then recoiled, and she gathered her husband and a woman who admitted us into the party. They engaged in what looked like a heated discussion. We then went over to speak with them. Hayden complimented the Brimelows on their lovely home and Lydia Brimelow corrected him.

“It’s not our home. It’s our office,” she said. “That’s a very important distinction. It is not our home. We do not live here. We have a house with our family, which is not this house.” (The New York attorney general’s office is currently scrutinizing VDARE’s business practices, and in court documents, state attorneys alleged that the group used charitable funds to purchase the castle and then proceeded to use it as a residence.)

Peter Brimelow then suggested we leave the guests out of whatever work we were doing at the castle.

“These are normies,” Peter Brimelow said.

White nationalists, and others with radical politics, use “normies” to describe those who do not engage in such activities. We left on our own volition and wished them a “Merry Christmas.” When we did, a bald man in a black fleece followed us to the exit and told us not to come back.

“You’re not welcome here,” he barked.

We then waited for five minutes for someone to open the automated gate, which felt more like half an hour given the context.

Twenty-four hours later, Brimelow attended a holiday-themed annual event hosted by the New York Young Republican Club in lower Manhattan, according to a post he made on social media. There, Donald Trump gave a speech to white nationalists and other Republicans in the crowd.

“You wanna know why I wanted to be a dictator?” Trump asked, referring to his recent comments celebrating authoritarianism. “Because I want a wall and I want to drill, drill, drill!”

Although Hannah Gais and Michael Edison Hayden work for Southern Poverty Law Center, they do not speak on behalf of that organization here.