What Did the New York Times’ Five Fingers Say to Peter Brimelow’s Face?

He is getting sued by the paper via anti-SLAPP laws because he thought suing them over being called a White Nationalist was a good idea.

A since-dismissed lawsuit by Peter Brimelow, editor of the website VDARE, against the New York Times charging the newspaper with defamation for referring to him as a White Nationalist is coming back to haunt him. The Times is suing Brimelow for the costs of defending itself against his suit under New York’s “anti-SLAPP” law which has been recently expanded to protect critical speech. This is the first lawsuit of its kind under the expansion.

The acronym SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” which are lawsuits that are often not expected to end in a win for the plaintiff, but are intended to silence speech from critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. There are 31 states with anti-SLAPP laws including New York who expanded and strengthened its laws in November 2020.

VDARE was founded in 1999 by Brimelow, who himself is a contemporary of noted White Nationalists such as Jared Taylor and at one time Richard Spencer. He has spoken at Taylor’s American Renaissance Conferences, including the most recent one in November where he repeatedly implied his references to “America” only meant White America.  Brimelow had sued the Times over five articles published between January 2019 and May 2020 that described him as being “white nationalist” and his VDARE website as being “animated by race hatred.”

Brimelow’s suit was dismissed by a federal court in December 2020, prompting the Times’ lawsuit which was filed on Tuesday. Brimelow says the lawsuit is without merit, ironically saying it is meant to silence dissident voices, which is what the anti-SLAPP suit charges him with doing.