# Jonathan Keeperman **Jonathan Keeperman** is the founder and chief executive of [[Passage Press]], the main book publisher of the online New Right and of [[Curtis Yarvin]]. For years he was better known as **"Lomez,"** a pseudonymous X account with tens of thousands of followers, while he taught writing in the English department at the University of California, Irvine. *The Guardian* identified him in May 2024. Since then he has stepped into the open: a *New York Times* interview, a talk at the National Conservatism Conference, and, since November 2025, a show on [[Blaze TV]] with [[Christopher Rufo]]. His path from anonymous poster to publisher to network host is one of the clearest examples of how the online right has built its own institutions. ## At a glance | | | |---|---| | **Also known as** | Lomez, L0m3z, Mr Lomez | | **Education** | MFA in writing, University of California, Irvine | | **Academic career** | Lecturer in UC Irvine's English department until 2022 | | **Company** | Founder and CEO of [[Passage Press]] (also called Passage Publishing) | | **Media** | Co-host of *Rufo & Lomez* on [[Blaze TV]], launched November 7, 2025 | | **Favorite author** | [[Ernst Jünger]], whose *The Forest Passage* gave the press its name | ## Becoming "Lomez" Keeperman blogged as "Mr Lomez" as early as 2006 and built the Lomez persona into a prominent account on X, with about 64,000 followers by the time he was identified. He also wrote under the name for right-wing outlets on the pandemic, politics and feminism. The account's posts are the main source of criticism of him. Reporting on the account cites slurs against gay people and Asian people, support for [[Kyle Rittenhouse]], hostility to the 2020 racial-justice protests, and posts suggesting that journalists be lynched or executed. ## From a prize to a publishing house Around 2020 Keeperman put up $10,000 of his own money for the Passage Prize, an online art and writing contest that drew more than 2,000 entries. It grew into [[Passage Press]], which publishes Yarvin, [[Nick Land]] and [[Steve Sailer]], reissues Jünger and other out-of-print writers, and sells leather-bound "patrician" editions. In a 2023 podcast, as reported by *The Guardian*, he described the goal as building "alternative infrastructures and institutions" for the right. ## Unmasked (May 2024) On May 14, 2024, *The Guardian*'s Jason Wilson identified Keeperman as the person behind Lomez and Passage, using public records and matching online activity. Reactions split along predictable lines: - **Keeperman** told Blaze Media the story added little beyond what was already public, called the coverage "hysterical," and said it brought him more than 20,000 new followers. - **Wilson** told Blaze the article was "straightforward coverage," not [[Doxxing]]. - **Defenders**, including *The Post Millennial*, called it a doxxing by a hostile reporter. ## In the open (2025–2026) - **The Coronation Ball (January 2025).** Passage threw a party at the Watergate Hotel on the eve of Donald Trump's second inauguration. Guests included [[Steve Bannon]] and [[Jack Posobiec]]. - **The Douthat interview (May 1, 2025).** [[Ross Douthat]] interviewed him for the *New York Times* podcast *Interesting Times* in an episode titled "The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Intentionally Offensive." Douthat opened by saying America had "a real right-wing counterculture" for the first time in his lifetime. Keeperman described his aim as an "enduring and meaningful counterweight to a dominant left." Talking about Douthat's own pseudonymous columns from 2020, Keeperman joked that "we all are trafficking in certain kinds of multi identities." Later segments covered vitalism, masculinity, Trump as a mythic hero, and whether the movement's racism is "transgressive or just racist." - **The Harvard debate (May 5, 2025).** Passage organized Yarvin's debate with [[Danielle Allen]] at the Harvard Faculty Club. See [[CEO Monarchy]]. - **The National Conservatism Conference (2025).** He spoke at the fifth NatCon, the main gathering of [[National Conservatism]], on "The Myth-Maker as Nation-Builder." - ***Rufo & Lomez* (November 2025).** Blaze launched the show on November 7, 2025, billing Keeperman as an "ex-academic renegade" and promising to examine news and culture "through an anthropological lens." - **Blaze bookstore deal (October 2026).** Blaze Media began selling a selection of Passage books through its online store. The publishing business has had trouble along the way. In April 2026 *The Bulwark* reported unpaid authors at an imprint Passage had bought and a magazine handed back to its founder. Details are on the [[Passage Press]] page. ## In his own words - **On labels:** He rejects "far-right" and "New Right," calls his outlook "pre-political," and says of his politics, "I think I was just born this way" (Blaze Media, 2024). - **On culture:** He says "culture is stuck" because certain art and voices are shut out, and calls the mainstream literary world "mind-numbingly boring" (Blaze Media, 2024). - **On conservative art:** He faults earlier conservative art as moralizing and nostalgic, and wants a confident right-wing culture instead (*New York Times*, 2025). ## Criticism and defense Critics see him as a respectable front for ugly politics. Writing in *Liberal Currents* the day after the Douthat interview aired, Chance Phillips argued that the *Times* had "laundered" a fascist. By Phillips's account, Keeperman called [[Bronze Age Pervert]]'s *[[Bronze Age Mindset]]* "one of the great texts of the 21st century" and asked whether "we [are] allowed to look at the actual causes" of racial disparities. Phillips read the second line as a nod toward genetic explanations, the territory of [[Human Biodiversity]]. Critics also point to Passage's catalog, including Sailer's *Noticing*. Defenders say he is a publisher and cultural entrepreneur being punished for his opinions. They say the *Guardian* story was a doxxing, and that Passage reissues classics the mainstream industry ignores. Keeperman himself describes Passage simply as a plan to "keep publishing good, important work." ## Why it's on the map **1. He is the template for going from anonymous account to institution.** Lomez to Passage to Blaze is the online right's parallel-institutions strategy carried out by one person, in about five years. **2. He connects the dissident right to the conservative mainstream.** He publishes Yarvin and Bronze Age Pervert, co-hosts with Rufo, and speaks at NatCon. Few people link the anonymous fringe and established conservatism as directly. **3. He bets on culture first.** His project rests on the idea that politics follows culture: books, art, fashion and parties first, then policy. ## Connections - [[Passage Press]] — the company he founded and runs - [[Curtis Yarvin]] · [[CEO Monarchy]] — his best-known author and that author's central idea - [[Christopher Rufo]] · [[Blaze TV]] — his co-host and network - [[Ross Douthat]] — the 2025 *New York Times* interview - [[Bronze Age Pervert]] · [[Vitalism (New Right)]] — the vitalist scene around Passage - [[Steve Sailer]] · [[Nick Land]] — other authors he publishes - [[Ernst Jünger]] — his favorite author and the source of his press's name - [[National Conservatism]] — the movement whose 2025 conference he addressed - [[Dissident Right]] · [[The New Right Ecosystem]] — the wider movement - [[Doxxing]] — the fight over how he was identified