White supremacist featured in NYT profile loses job

An Ohio white supremacist who was the subject of a controversial profile in The New York Times last week says he’s lost his job as a result of the story.

Tony Hovater, the co-founder of a white supremacist group, told The Washington Post that he was fired from his job at a restaurant near his hometown of New Carlisle after the Times story ran.

He also claimed that he and his wife are moving from their home for safety reasons because their address was posted online.

“It’s not for the best to stay in a place that is now public information,” Hovater told the Post. “We live alone. No one else is there to watch the house while I’m away.”

{mosads}The owners of the restaurant where Hovater worked, 571 Grill and Draft House, issued a statement on the Times story Wednesday, saying it illustrated “some very disturbing images and thoughts” from Hovater.

“Since the release of this article, we have been swamped with phone calls and social media messages that are threatening and intimidating to both us and our employees,” the restaurant’s owners said.

“Due to these very disturbing threats, the employee who was featured in the article suggested that we release him from employment,” the statement continued. “We have done so and have also released his wife and her brother who also worked for us.

“We neither encourage nor support any forms of hate within our establishment.”

The Times profile portrayed Hovater as “the Nazi sympathizer next door” and earned criticism for portraying mundane details about Hovater’s life while not pushing back strongly enough against his ideas.

Hovater helped begin the Traditionalist Workers Party, a hate group that promotes white supremacy.

The Times issued an apology Sunday for offending readers with the profile, but defended its publication as shedding light “on the most extreme corners of American life and the people who inhabit them.”

The Times also said that the story didn’t intend to “normalize” white supremacist views by giving Hovater a platform, but to reveal how such hateful views have become “far more normal” in the U.S.