Content Warning: This article contains racist and misogynistic statements, antisemitism, references to sexual assault and other acts of violence, and other objectionable language. We feel it is important to show examples of this person’s hateful ideology in his own words, rather than merely describing or characterizing it. In all cases where slurs or other offensive words have letters replaced by asterisks, or have been redacted or obscured in images, those redactions have been added by the authors of this article, not by the person who is being quoted/screencapped.

Meet Nima Cheraghi, convert to the LDS church, recent graduate of Utah State University, (where he was president of the International Studies Club) and inveterate troll. Although this Deseret nationalist has had multiple Twitter account IDs and numerous different handles, he tends to use the display name “Nim” or “Nima”; his friends also refer to him by this name, which helped us connect him to some of the alts he’s used.

An archived snapshot of his @BladezEdits Twitter account from 2016 (below, left) shows a young man in a suit and tie standing in front of a brick building – the same photo Nima Cheraghi used for his profile picture at academia.edu (right).

Born in Germany, Nima is of Persian (Iranian) ethnicity. He most often describes himself as “middle eastern” and “white,” although he sometimes claims otherwise when he thinks it will give him more credibility in an argument. He also gestures in the direction of understanding “race” as a more complicated concept than the false dichotomy of black/white, referring to it as “this modern abstraction of race and ethnicity”; however, this doesn’t keep him from saying lots of racist things on the internet.

sources: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Nima Cheraghi – Internet Troll

The point of internet “trolling” is to say something so outrageous or inflammatory that it provokes an emotional reply from the person being trolled. Some trolls do it simply to get attention, while others claim to do it for some larger purpose, such as satirizing an opponent’s argument or disrupting communication in a particular online forum or community. Regardless of motive, a troll must provoke a response in order to be considered “successful,” and in this respect Nima Cheraghi is not exactly batting a thousand. Archived tweets show him attempting to troll a variety of Twitter users, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, former President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, controversial Youtuber “Keemstar,” and the Twitter account for Ram trucks, without success (i.e., engagement from other users). Eventually, though, Nima gravitated toward the kinds of issues that allow even the most inept troll to get a hit once in a while – issues like immigration, race, and gender.

Nima Cheraghi – Anti-Immigration Racist

Nima Cheraghi opposes letting any more immigrants into the United States. To be clear, he doesn’t just want to prevent people from crossing the border illegally; he wants to stop all immigration, which he says is necessary in order to stop the “decay” of America. Or to put it another way, he believes that “America is a european country and can only function with europeans. When [demographics] flip itll [sic] just become an African sh**hole, already happening.” He also opposes “race mixing,” because he doesn’t want the US turning into “some coffee colored south american country.”

sources: [6, 7, 8]

From Cheraghi’s perspective, the problem with racism isn’t the fact that it exists, but rather that not enough white people are racist. In fact, he believes “racism from white people largely doesnt [sic] exist.” He sees this as a problem because he believes there is a systematic effort to eradicate white people; by “refusing” to be racist, Nima believes white people are enabling their own destruction.[9] He defines success in life as “not having to live near black people.”

sources: [10, 11, 12]

Nima Cheraghi – Holocaust Skeptic, Antisemite

In addition to believing that everyone else on the planet wants to exterminate white people, Nima Cheraghi flirts with other conspiracy theories, like Holocaust denial, and the idea that Jews secretly control the government of the United States. He brags that he got kicked out of his high school English class for wishing Adolf Hitler a happy birthday.

sources: [13, 14, 15]

He also tweets antisemitic memes, like the “happy merchant.” Created by Nick Bougas,[16] the version of the stereotype used by Nima is a caricature of a “scheming” Jew – a hunched figure with a large, hooked nose and crooked teeth, wearing a yarmulke and rubbing his hands together. The centuries-old stereotype of Jews having large noses and other grotesque features was used extensively by Hitler’s Nazi party to evoke disgust against Jews in the German population;[17] it is still used for the same reason by antisemites like Nima Cheraghi, frequently coupled with other antisemitic motifs involving conspiracy, blood, greed or money.

In the image below (left), the radar sweep shows the hands and nose of Bougas’s version of the “happy merchant” (center). On the right side of the image, Cheraghi can be seen using the antisemitic “echoes” meme, in which anything surrounded by three sets of parentheses is understood to be Jewish, or an element of the Jewish “conspiracy.” The “echoes” meme was created by neo-Nazi blogger and podcaster Mike “Enoch” Peinovich.[18]

sources: [19, 20]

Nima Cheraghi – Openly Misogynistic

Cheraghi’s ideas about women are just as bizarre and disturbing as his ideas about Jews and people of color. He says women are property, and that they “don’t want equal relationships,” but also thinks “Women don’t know what they want” and therefore men “shouldn’t care about what they want.”

sources: [21, 22, 23, 24]

He claims that being “openly misogynistic” has doubled the number of women who are interested in having romantic relationships with him, although he provides no evidence to support this claim.

sources: [25, 26, 27]

Cheraghi puts quite a bit of time and effort into harassing and insulting women online. In the Twitter thread pictured below, he tells a woman that cooking for a family isn’t a W (win), it’s the bare minimum; that she should get off the internet and make her husband some french fries; and that women “don’t have their own” Ws and can only share their husbands’ Ws.sources: [28, 29, 30]

In June of 2020, he pretended to be a law student[31, 32] so he could lecture a rape survivor about the US Constitution. Several times during the conversation, he accused her of making false allegations, including telling her point-blank, “Not sure I believe you.”
sources: [33, 34, 35]

Nima Cheraghi is Homophobic

Given his track record, it should come as no surprise that Nima Cheraghi also spreads harmful, false stereotypes about gay people. It was a bit of a surprise, however, to see him assert that Jesus was a homophobe. Cheraghi also suggests that he’d like to kill gay people by stoning them to death, but can’t, because “you people [won’t] let us do that.”

sources: [36, 37, 38, 39]

Nima Cheraghi Livestreamed the “March to the Capitol” on January 6

When he’s not following conspiracy theories or harassing people online, Nima Cheraghi occasionally exercises his first amendment rights by attending demonstrations and protests. In November 2020 he was spotted at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Salt Lake City, UT; and on January 6 of this year he was in Washington, DC, where he livestreamed part of the “march to the capital” on periscope.

Nima Cheraghi at a “Stop the Steal” rally November 6, 2020 in SLC (right, circled); screenshot from Cheraghi’s periscope stream on January 6, 2021 (inset).

Current Whereabouts and Activity

In May of 2021, Nima Cheraghi graduated from Utah State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science.[47] In February of this year, he joked on Twitter about needing recommendation letters, indicating that he may have been in the process of applying to graduate school. We don’t know where he applied, or whether he got accepted. What we do know is that we wouldn’t want to find ourselves in a lab or a carrel next to this guy.

Have more information on Nima Cheraghi or other DezNats? Send us an email: exposedeznat at riseup dot net.