{"id":121045,"date":"2018-03-19T18:33:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T02:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=121045"},"modified":"2018-03-19T18:33:48","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T02:33:48","slug":"jason-jorjani-fancied-himself-an-intellectual-leader-of-a-white-supremacist-movement-then-it-came-crashing-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=121045","title":{"rendered":"Jason Jorjani Fancied Himself an Intellectual Leader of a White Supremacist Movement \u2014 Then It Came Crashing Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

From The Intercept<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A WEEK AND A HALF after Donald Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Jason Reza Jorjani took the stage at a white supremacist conference in Washington, D.C. Richard Spencer gave him an awkward hug and pat on the back before he shuffled to the podium and spoke into the microphone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn light of the outcome of the recent election, in which I think the rise of the \u2018alt-right\u2019 was the decisive factor,\u201d Jorjani said, \u201cit is especially meaningful for me to be here with you as the leader of what is frankly the most significant press in the \u2018alt-right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jorjani and Spencer had not met in person until that November weekend at the conference, hosted by the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist \u201cthink tank.\u201d The weekend was spiked with occasional Nazi salutes. Just the month before, Jorjani had become the editor-in-chief of Arktos Media, a publishing imprint for some of the most canonical texts of the far right. They soon combined forces in a shared office in a spacious loft in Alexandria, Virginia. To end any confusion over what the \u201calt-right\u201d movement stood for and who its leaders were, Spencer, Jorjani, and Arktos chief executive Daniel Friberg launched the AltRight Corporation.<\/p>\n

But as quickly as Jorjani rose within the far right\u2019s ranks, so too did he fall. A year ago, the \u201calt-right\u201d was in a campaign to rebrand white supremacy as an intellectually sophisticated movement, backed by a troll army. Yet in 2017, the far right saw its most publicly violent year full of street protests. Spencer himself seemed to have traded his glossy \u201cthink tank\u201d networking events, like the one Jorjani appeared at, for white supremacist rallies. Spencer\u2019s \u201ccollege tour\u201d began in 2016, according to Spencer, as a project of \u201cintellectual activity\u201d \u2014 but it frequently served to provide opportunity for his followers to publicly gather and shout \u201cwhite power,\u201d throw Nazi salutes into the air, and engage in violent battles with counterprotesters.<\/p>\n

In their earlier days, Jorjani and his business partners had tried to perfume their brownshirt musings as a style of opposition intellectualism worthy of fair debate in the public sphere. When I first met Jorjani in December 2016, at the height of his rise in the far right, he proudly told me, \u201cWhat happened is that a hyperintellectual, vanguardist movement used a U.S. presidential election to advance its agenda.\u201d Over a plate of fesenjan, an Iranian stewed meat dish, and jeweled rice, he added, \u201cThe \u2018alt-right\u2019 doesn\u2019t work for Donald Trump, it doesn\u2019t work for the Republican Party, it doesn\u2019t work for masses of Republican voters, and it certainly doesn\u2019t work for evangelical Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Intercept: A WEEK AND A HALF after Donald Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Jason Reza Jorjani took the stage at a white supremacist conference in Washington, D.C. Richard Spencer gave him an awkward hug and pat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121046,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121045\/revisions\/121046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}