New York Times regrets offending with story on ‘polite’ neo-Nazi

The New York Times on Monday responded to accusations that it was normalizing neo-Nazis in a Saturday article, saying it regretted the degree to which it caused offense.

A story published in the Gray Lady describing Dayton-area neo-Nazi Tony Hovater as “polite and low-key,” with “Midwestern manners [that] would please anyone’s mother,” kicked up an internet storm over the weekend, with even writer Richard Fausset admitting that his piece was lacking.

However, the Times’ response stopped short of an apology or a retraction.

“We regret the degree to which the piece offended so many readers,” national editor, Marc Lacey wrote. “We recognize that people can disagree on how best to tell a disagreeable story.”

Lacey said that the goal of the story was not to normalize neo-Nazis, but to “describe the degree to which hate and extremism have become far more normal in American life than many of us want to think.”

Amid the criticism, the paper insisted that there was value in such articles, while admitting that the report was not perfect.

“What we think is indisputable, though, is the need to shed more light, not less, on the most extreme corners of American life and the people who inhabit them,” Lacey wrote. “That’s what the story, however imperfectly, tried to do.”

In a tweet, Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt had chided the paper for “humanizing the inhumane.”

It's critical for the press, when covering professional hatemongers, to avoid treating the abnormal as normal or to humanize the inhumane. By that basic measure, I'd score this @NYTimes piece: #Nazis– 1, @Public– 0. https://t.co/ydUIv9b7G6

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 25, 2017

“You know who had nice manners? The Nazi who shaved my uncle Willie’s head before escorting him into a cement chamber where he locked eyes with children as their lungs filled with poison and they suffocated to death in agony. Too much? Exactly. That’s how you write about Nazis,” wrote Bess Kalb,  a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, in a Twitter rant.

You know who had nice manners? The Nazi who shaved my uncle Willie's head before escorting him into a cement chamber where he locked eyes with children as their lungs filled with poison and they suffocated to death in agony.

Too much? Exactly. That's how you write about Nazis.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 25, 2017

But as the Times pointed out, there were some who understood the value and message of the report and praised it.

https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/934531130954539009

“People mad about this article want to believe that Nazis are monsters we cannot relate to. White supremacists are normal ass white people and it’s been that way in America since 1776. We will continue to be in trouble till we understand that,” tweeted Shane Bauer, senior editor for the website Mother Jones.

Joshua Davidovich contributed to this report.