But this “everyday life” approach to understanding why ordinary people turn to fascism isn’t new. Since the 1970s, scholars of the Third Reich have used Alltagsgeschichte, the history of everyday life, to document individuals’ experiences and attitudes at the grassroots level of society. Their work reveals how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated into everyday life and its practices. Today, there are many excellent books—such as Peter Fritzsche’s Life and Death in the Third Reich—that deepen our understanding of how and why ordinary Germans became Nazis.

Above all, Alltagsgeschichte exposes the complexity of human agency. To shed light on the choices people make—why one person might condone or participate in hateful acts, while another resists—historians consider the impact of specific social ties, institutions, and living and working environments. Although Fausset traveled to New Carlisle to encounter Hovater in his own milieu, it all seemed rather vague. There was little sense of the place itself, beyond the big-box stores and chain restaurants nearby. Except for his wife and a couple of friends, people around Hovater barely seemed to exist. Family members, former teachers, employers, and coworkers remained offstage. The social sphere that seemed most important to Hovater himself—the online world of hate groups—flitted in and out of the picture.

In light of the deep connections that Alltagsgeschichte has revealed between public and private spheres, we should be wary of any account that views domestic life as a “politics lite” zone or as otherwise straightforward. Fausset, having been given access to Hovater’s living room and bookshelves, was mystified that he was unable to read his subject’s “soul,” especially since he told us that Hovater had been “exceedingly candid” with him. But had he, really?

For an article that focused on white nationalists’ desire to appear normal to “normies,” Fausset, inexplicably, did not delve into what it means to perform normality. Was it just by chance that Hovater revealed to a Times reporter that he is “a big Seinfeld fan”? Or that he let him into his home in the first place in order to show that he was not all that different from us “normies”?

The Times has been caught in this trap before. In the 1930s, when Hitler needed to expand his political base in Germany and gain the trust of foreign leaders, he and his PR team invented an off-duty persona for the Führer that proved immensely successful in rebranding him as a relatable, even likeable, guy. This performance was decidedly domestic, playing out on the stages of Hitler’s three residences—the chancellery in Berlin, a luxury apartment in Munich, and his mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler, an engaged client, hired his friend and interior designer Gerdy Troost to gut-renovate all of them.