Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast
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.)