Author sues NY Times after it calls him a ‘white nationalist’

Anti-immigrant author and activist Peter Brimelow is suing The New York Times for $5 million for dubbing him an “open white nationalist” in an article last year. 

Brimelow, who runs a website that has published pieces from white supremacists, is suing the Times over a Jan. 15, 2019 article that detailed the chronology of racist comments from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). The story briefly mentioned Brimelow and noted that he and the lawmaker had appeared on a panel together at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference. 

Brimelow accused the Times of performing a “stealth edit” to the initial version of the story, changing its description of him from an “open white nationalist” to a “white nationalist.” He maintains he is a “civic nationalist.”

Brimelow says in the suit he has been “injured in his good name, fame, credit, profession, and reputation as a man, and in his various public and private positions, callings, and lines of endeavor, and has been held up to public ridicule before his acquaintances and the public, and to suffer the loss of prestige and standing in his community and elsewhere.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, says the Times never printed a correction or clarification in the online or print version of the paper and declined to publish his letters disputing the description. 

“We stand by our story and will defend against the claim vigorously,” Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades said in a statement to The Hill.

Brimelow, who was born in the United Kingdom and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, oversees the anti-immigration website VDare.com and formerly served as an editor for Forbes magazine and a columnist for National Review. While he acknowledges that his website published pieces written by “those who aim to defend the interests of whites,” he notes that the site also published posts from an array of authors who support immigration restrictions.