What does the term alt-right mean to anyone?
I mean its the most amorphous, chaotic, political term that there is.
I hereby resign,
effective immediately, from the AltRight Corporation that I cofounded.
What's it like at the top levels of the so called alt-right?
That catchall group that blends racism, white nationalism, and
an obsession with white identity.
[MUSIC]
I've known about Jason Jorjani for a while.
He used to be the editor-in-chief of Arktos:
a publishing house based in Europe that publishes alt-right and far-right books.
Jorjani founded this thing called the AltRight Corporation.
Just basically what it sounds like, a corporation legally registered
in the State of Virginia, that brings together global factions of the alt-right.
His co-founder was Richard Spencer,
who is probably the face of white nationalism in America.
Most people know about him as a leader of the Unite the Right Rally in
Charlottesville.
So in January,
Jason announces the launch of a corporation at this alt-right get together
in Sweden.
I'm referring to a development that was catalyzed by the rise of Trump.
Jorjani and Spencer meet up.
Richard had altright.com. We had some pretty intense lunch meetings.
They get some press coverage, they take a celebratory selfie.
Yes we were trying to develop a more global movement.
And link it up to the wave of populist energy in the United States.
What were your bigger goals?
To use a corporate structure in order to develop a new sociopolitical order.
He's always been a kind of behind the scenes guy, but
in August I found out that he was resigning from the AltRight Corporation,
so I got in touch, and
asked if he would speak to me.
Really, I wanted to know about what the AltRight Corporation became,
or didn't become, in its first year.
You launched in January, the AltRight Corporation, there was this kind of hype
about it, there was talk about it online and what it was gonna be.
I'm just wondering if anything actually came of that.
It's been reduced, basically to a platform for
organizing alt-right rallies attended by some very
questionable individuals who I want not very much to do with.
Do you feel like the AltRight Corporation has been a success?
No. I'd call the AltRight
Corporation a miscarriage.
Mm-hmm.
Why?
It's not what it was supposed to be.
I'm not sure that it ever appealed to anyone mainstream.
Mm-hm.
And in terms of its major goal, which was to
create a new sociopolitical structure by corporate means,
it's been a total failure. And the reason for
that is that its a start up capital never arrived.
The thing that's really clear is that Jorjani is not offering
a mea culpa. He hasn't had "a come to Jesus" moment or
even renounced his alt-rightness. He just says that
increasingly Richard Spencer's vision of white nationalism for white Americans
differed from his vision, which is for a global aryan world order.
If I had known that this is where things would wind up,
I would never have gotten involved in the first place.
The vision of the Indo-European world that I had is one where there's a new Persian empire.
Is where greater Iran is reconstituted and
encompasses a lot of what we now call the core of the Islamic world.
In September,
a British anti-extremism group called "Hope Not Hate," released some footage of Jorjani.
It comes from an undercover researcher who spent a year infiltrating the alt-right.
It isn't flattering.
We will have Europe, in 2050 where the banknotes have
Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great.
And Hitler will be seen like that.
Like Napoleon, like Alexander.
Not like some weird monster, who is unique, who
unique in his own category.
No, he's going to be seen as a great European leader.
Jason says the video is taken out of context, edited to make him look bad.
He says he was describing a dystopia, a worst case scenario.
"Hope not Hate," the British group wouldn't show me the unedited footage but
But it says this excerpt was not taken out of context.
What strikes me about your resignation letter is that actually,
you don't really disavow Richard Spencer's politics or his ideology?
Certainly, I reject white nationalism.
I thinks it's a bankrupt ideology and extremely destructive.
After many hours with Jason our conversation took a turn.
We started talking about magic, and
the supernatural, and how those things impact his politics.
So mysticism is real?
Telepathy is real?
The supernatural is only mysterious because it's not comprehended by our
current scientific paradigm.
I'd say it's atrophied in us.
Because we've become so reliant on technology.
Would you talk about these subjects with Richard Spencer
when you were hashing out your political views?
Yes.
I found Richard actually quite open to the paranormal.
I'd like to invite Jason Jorjani to the stage.
So I began researching his work, and
I went down into the most amazing rabbit hole I had been for some time,
of Psychological theories and spectral theories and telekinesis and it was wild.
When he say he shared my views, he was open to them though.
In September Richard Spencer published an article on altright.com about the resignation.
He basically says that Jorjani had a minimal influence on the corporation,
that he was probably delusional.
As a reporter, I'm left wondering how amidst all of this alt-right
internet chatter, it's possible to sort fact from fiction and
hype from real world influence.
Over the next few years, we'll be watching with a hawk's eye
to identify the true friends and enemies of our archeo futurist Iran.
With best wishes and highest hopes, Jason Reza Jorjani.