freedom festival moon
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NATOION MAG
Rev. Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon began the second day of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival with a sermon. Moon, 45, clutched a gold AR-15 and wore his signature crown of bullets. He stood underneath a big tent in a muddy field in Greeley, Pennsylvania, and told his audience, “In John Chapter 2, we see that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is an assault weapons manufacturer.”
His congregation, dressed in their Sunday best with red Make America Great Again hats, listened intently as Moon explained that Jesus told his disciples to break unconstitutional laws to save America from tyranny. The sermon was short, and Moon abruptly shifted from pastor to emcee. “Welcome to the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, folks. God bless you; may God save America using President Trump and every single one of you. God bless you. MAGA 2024, let’s go, baby!”
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In 2017, Rod of Iron Ministries splintered from the Unification Church, a Korean cult founded by Sean Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon. Adherents are called Moonies and believe that Sun Myung Moon is the messiah. Two of Sun Myung Moon’s sons, Sean and Kook-jin, or Justin, founded Rod of Iron Ministries. The church has many of the same core beliefs as the Unification Church—but it claims that AR-15s are the “rod of iron” that Jesus wields in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps not coincidentally, Justin Moon founded Kahr Arms, a firearms manufacturer that produces a commemorative Donald Trump AR-15.
The two-day festival was free and open to the public, but admission to Friday’s pre-event screening of Flynn, a film about the life of Michael T. Flynn, was $25. The retired lieutenant general and former national security adviser to Donald Trump has been touring to promote the movie. Flynn has partnered with Ivan Raiklin for Q&As across the country.
Raiklin is the man behind the “Pence card,” a legal theory that then–Vice President Mike Pence could have blocked the election certification on January 6, 2021, which led to Trump’s now-infamous tweet saying Pence lacked courage. Raiklin is also the self-appointed secretary of the so-called Department of Retribution, for which he maintains a “Deep State Target List” of journalists, politicians, and other foes. He wants to use sheriffs and local officials to arrest his enemies, and he has said that officials who crafted pro-vaccine Covid-19 policies should face “Public, Live-Streamed (in the interest of transparency) Capital punishment.”
After the first assassination attempt on Trump, Raiklin demanded that the former US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle be executed. In a social-media post captioned “capital punishment,” Raiklin told Mark Zuckerberg, “There is no lawyering up” to defend his “crime” of restricting some pandemic misinformation on Meta.
Raiklin was not an outlier at the festival. One audience member asked Flynn if, under a Trump presidency, he “would sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp, and on a few occasions, execute the swamp?”
Flynn said that accountability is needed, but “we have to win first.” The response was met with cheers. Given that members of the church were involved in the January 6 insurrection, this was not surprising.
Saturday featured a long lineup of speakers that included former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, Pizzagate hoaxer and current Trump Force 47 associate Jack Posobiec, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan, and Raiklin. The speeches were standard fare for right-wing events, which is to say alternately terrifying and bizarre. Homan promised to run the “biggest deportation operation ever in the United States” if Trump wins. Gorka told an over-the-top story about wearing a MAGA hat into a liberal coffee shop and finding secret Trump allies everywhere. The messages were clear: Americans are being replaced by immigrants, and only Donald Trump, who is beloved by most Americans no matter what the polls or voters say, can save us.
Something that was unusual, even for a right-wing event, was that a shooting range was open for four hours each day. Guests had the opportunity to shoot AR-15s and other rifles. It wasn’t long before Raiklin made his way down to the range, taking his turn with one of the guns.
Raiklin is not usually friendly to journalists, even to ones not yet on his list. But after hitting the target just two-thirds of the time, Raiklin offered a few of journalists a ride back to the stage on his golf cart, and we set off, listening to him describe his plans for the Department of Retribution. “I’m doing it with or without Trump,” Raiklin told us. “It’s easier with him.”
Another journalist asked how having Trump in the White House would make things easier. Raiklin responded, “It would help because the president would not be on the list to receive retribution.”
The Freedom Festival is in its sixth year, and it never ceases to render even hardened reporters of the far right speechless—not necessarily because moments are so outrageous but because they’re so creepy. On Saturday, Reverend Moon—apparently going by his rapper name, King Bullethead—walked on stage and sang some bars about the upcoming election (“Too big! To rig!”). The calmest mosh pit I’d ever seen broke out, and then young men lined up on the stage. They each dove into the crowd in an orderly fashion, one at a time.
The next day, a Japanese choir, which had been flown in, performed. They wore MAGA hats and carried Trump flags and banners, including an AI-generated one where Trump is holding an assault rifle with a magazine emerging from both the top and bottom of the gun. The show started off normal enough; they sang “God Bless America.”
But then they began yelling, “We love Trump! We love Trump! We need Trump!” and wildly cheered when someone waved a cardboard cutout of Trump around the center of the stage. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the choir yelled. Then they took off their red hats, bowed, and walked off stage.
A choir from Japan performs at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in in Greeley, Pennsylvania, on October 13.(Amanda Moore)
The final event is a bonfire meant to symbolize the burning of Babylon. (Sean Moon refers to his mother, who now leads the Unification Church, as the “whore of Babylon.”) Last year, the group lit the bonfire with a burning
while singing and listening to a sermon. I was readying myself for a similar experience this year, but what happened was even more disturbing. There was firewood stacked at the top of a small hill, and a yellow rope for crowd control was set up to keep people from getting too close. A few of us journalists gathered in between the designated viewing space and the base of the hill, giving us a view of the crowd and the burning pyre.
The fire started quickly, without any preamble. The crowd sang “Amazing Grace,” and then stood in silence. Only the cackling of the fire and the occasional cries of a baby pierced the air. The silence seemed more sinister than the cheering and singing from last year. Standing in front of the rope, I started to feel like we were part of the show, too. The red-hatted crowd was staring at us, or maybe through us—the media—their expressionless faces illuminated by the fire.
“Was it like this last year? Were they this quiet?” I asked a videographer who had attended previous Rod of Iron festivals. He shook his head. “I was actually going to ask if you guys wanted to leave.”
Relieved that I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable, we slipped into the audience and began making our way to the back. Before we left, everyone in the audience raised their arms above their heads and yelled, “MAGA 2024!”
But true to form, the event balanced its terror with absurdity. As we returned to the car, a young man ran up to us and asked if we were the journalists. When we confirmed, he enthusiastically shared his message with us: Talk therapy should be illegal. He called it “spiritual prostitution” and handed us each a flyer. “I am a proud Christian Patriot determined to stand up to Big Therapy,” the flyer read. “I want to expose the damage done to conservatives by the people they have been misguided into trusting with their inner thoughts.”
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splc oct 2021
a broad range of Christian Right, antigovernment and other far-right extremists will appear at the gun-toting, anti-LGBTQ Sanctuary Church’s Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Greeley, Pennsylvania, from Oct. 8-10.
The event showcases a widening coalition intent on destabilizing democracy, with Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, who in 2013 founded the Sanctuary Church, playing a prominent role, experts tell Hatewatch. Steve Bannon, Joey Gibson of the far-right Patriot Prayer group, former Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone and pastors Dan Fisher and Gary Haskell, who want to revive a “Black Robed Regiment” of clergy to fight for “liberty,” are scheduled to speak.
People attend the “Rod of Iron Freedom Festival” on Oct. 12, 2019, in Greeley, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
John Lott, a discredited researcher who briefly served in the Justice Department and uses dubious research to claim undocumented immigrants commit more crime, and Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association – a group that claims sheriffs have more power than the federal government – will also speak.
Steve Bannon, former political strategist for the Trump administration, departs from federal court in New York in August 2020. (Photo by Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
According to local news reports, thousands attended last year’s festival.
Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at social justice think tank Political Research Associates (PRA), told Hatewatch the Rod of Iron festival shows Moon’s influence, in spite of the spectacle of his church and concerns about it being a cult.
But the festival speakers list shows “it’s an organization with clout and influence,” Clarkson said.
‘Spiritual battle’
Rev. Hyung Jin "Sean" Moon poses with his gold AR-15 "rod of iron" at his home in Matamoras, Pennsylvania, in 2018. (Photo by Bryan Anselm/Redux for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Moon made inroads with the antigovernment movement and the far right thanks to his pro-Trump rhetoric and stance on firearms.
Rod of Iron is a staunchly pro-Second Amendment group. Moon made headlines in 2018 when he oversaw a blessing ceremony for Sanctuary Church members and their assault rifles, which Moon views as Biblical “rods of iron” to rule the coming heavenly kingdom built by his followers on earth.
Moon wears camouflage suits and a crown of bullets. During a 2018 interview, Moon told VICE News his appearance was “a little wacky” but “a fun way to talk about serious issues.”
These issues include calling left-wing politics “political Satanism,” telling his followers godly people “have to fight” communism, focusing on the “spiritual nature of the battle" to re-elect former President Donald Trump and claiming Capitol police and antifa made a deal to “instigate and try to make the Trumpers look bad” on Jan. 6.
Saccone will speak at the festival, but his topic is not stated on the festival’s website. Both Moon and Saccone attended the Jan. 6 protest that became an insurrection.
“We are storming the capitol,” Saccone said in a now-deleted Facebook post. “Our vanguard has broken through the barricades. We will save this nation. Are u with me?”
Former Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone (left) waves to the crowd as former President Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters in 2018 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Saccone also posted a Jan. 6 photo with Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, who has also appeared at Rod of Iron events, according to VICE.
None of the men face charges for attending the Jan. 6 protest.
Mastriano signed a letter in December 2020 asking the delegation to object to the state’s Electoral College votes cast in favor of President Joe Biden. Mastriano also traveled to Arizona to observe the Republican-controlled state Senate’s audit of ballots in the 2020 presidential election.
“Politics makes strange bedfellows sometimes,” Clarkson continued. “They need allies to go forward with undermining and seeking to discredit the validity of democratic institutions, making people lose confidence.”
Pro-Trump members of the Oath Keepers militia and Three Percenters also attended the insurrection. PRA said before the insurrection that militias’ “near lockstep support for Trump” could fashion them into a pro-Trump, anti-democratic paramilitary.
Moon leads his own group known as the Peace Police Peace Militia and trains followers in deadly force. Its political positions – including Patriot movement talking points about smaller government and local sovereignty – align with the broader antigovernment movement.
“They are organization with connections and significant power and able to play a pivotal role as an armed faction in the ongoing effort to destabilize democracy,” Clarkson said.
Cults and Christians
The speakers list also shows Rod of Iron’s reach into the Christian Right, in spite of its theological foundation.
The Sanctuary church is an offshoot of the Unification Church, which Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon, founded in 1954. That church is based on unorthodox interpretations of Biblical texts. Sun Myung believed Christ did not complete his role as the Messiah because he died without starting a family, a necessary part of humanity’s path to salvation.
Sun Myung said Jesus passed him the role of savior. He married his second wife, Hak Ja Han, in 1960. Unification Church members refer to them as the “True Parents” who will redeem humanity.
Many consider the Unification Church a cult due to its control over members’ lifestyles**. Teddy Hose and Lisa Kohn, both former Unification Church members who grew up close to the Moon family, told Hatewatch they consider it a cult.
Sun Myung chose Sean as his successor in 2010, two years before his death. Moon separated from the main church in 2012 over disagreements with his mother, Hak Ja Han, who took leadership of the Unification Church. However, Moon still holds his father as a returned Messiah.
Janja Lalich, a cult expert and professor emeritus of California State University, Chico, told Hatewatch she considers the Sanctuary Church “a cult” and Rod of Iron Ministries a “troublesome movement.”
That has not stopped conservative Christian pastors from associating with Moon. Fisher and Haskell are both pastors at churches that hold Christ as the Messiah.
They call for a revival of the “Black Robed Regiment,” a group of New England pastors who fought the British in the American Revolution. The calls mirror present-day antigovernment extremist remarks about tyrannical government.
Fisher’s biography on the Rod of Iron website calls the original Black Robed Regiment “Patriot Pastors … who preached the biblical principles of liberty and government.”
Moon supports the regiment and wears a Black Robed Regiment patch on his vest.
Haskell’s biography says, “Our American Revolution would have never happened if it were not for the pastors in New England.”
The mixture of Christian pastors and far-right, antigovernment groups under the Rod of Iron banner “is disturbing,” said Jonathan Den Hartog, a scholar who specializes in American political and religious history and serves as chair of the history department at Samford University, a private Christian university in Birmingham, Alabama.
Further, stories about the Black Robed Regiment have little grounding in reality, according to Den Hartog.
“There was no such thing as an official ‘Black Robe Regiment’ in the revolution. … There were individual pastors who were involved in various ways,” he told Hatewatch.
There were some who preached in favor of war, Den Hartog said. Still, pastors of the revolutionary era gave few sermons in direct opposition to the British, and apart from those, “There aren’t any other calls for violence,” Den Hartog explained. “In fact, it’s the exact opposite, that the solidarity in opposition should remain relatively peaceful.”
Former Oath Keepers chaplain and Black Robed Regiment supporter Pastor Chuck Baldwin delivered a sermon to antigovernment forces at the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. Cliven Bundy and hundreds of armed antigovernment extremists held off federal agents who attempted to collect over $1 million in owed fees.
A federal grand jury indicted Bundy on 16 counts related to the 41-day standoff in 2016, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States. A jury found him not guilty on all counts on Oct. 27, 2016. The jury’s decision shocked court watchers.
At least one group scheduled to appear at the festival regularly participates in violence. Patriot Prayer – which considers itself a Christian group – regularly planned protests in the Pacific Northwest that devolved into clashes with left-wing counterprotesters.
Joey Gibson, leader of Patriot Prayer, leads a group of "alt-right" demonstrators in August 2019 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Gibson, the group’s leader, has said, “Everyone should be carrying around guns at all times.” Reggie Axtell, a Patriot Prayer associate, threatened Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, saying, “I promise you this, Ted Wheeler: I’m coming for you, you little punk.” Skylor Jernigan, an attendee of several Patriot Prayer events, made threats toward antifa on a Facebook video: “You’re gonna be getting knives put into your throat. You’re going to be getting bullets put into your head.”
Moon claims his militia and arms are only for self-defense.
But Den Hartog expressed concern over Rod of Iron’s armed training, along with the other speakers at the festival, given their antigovernment beliefs.
He concluded: “Are they talking about violence, are they talking about armed resistance? If you begin to see those types of discussion, that’s where I would be very concerned.”
Hatewatch sent a request for comment to the Sanctuary Church. Regis Hanna, media coordinator for the Freedom Festival, responded.
Hanna said festival speakers were “PRO-democracy.” Regarding concerns about Moon and attendees attending the Jan. 6 protest, Hanna said the actions of thousands of rioters “should not reflect poorly on those who attended and behaved in a respectful, peaceful and honorable manner.”
Hanna declined to comment on accusations that the Sanctuary Church is a cult.
Pastors Fisher and Haskell did not respond to Hatewatch’s request for comment, sent via email and through the website of the church where Haskell preaches.
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same one as cspan booktv?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/this-is-american-fascism-a-disturbing-event-will-bring-together-gun-nuts-trumpians-and-doomsday-christianists-report/
AH
Freedom Festival is a far-right event held in Greenley, Pennsylvania and organized by a combination of Moonies and gun manufacturers. The speakers at this year's event will include former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and according to Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, their presence at Freedom Festival underscores the ever-increasing radicalization of the Republican Party.
"Few Americans are even aware that the gun company Kahr and a rural Pennsylvania doomsday church — both run by the same ultra-rich Korean family — hold an annual 'Freedom Festival'that attracts gun enthusiasts and the type of people who attach 'Don't Tread on Me' flags to the back of their trucks," Pagliery explains in an article published on October 8. "But in the wake of the failed January 6 insurrection, the event'samalgamation of sovereign citizens and alt-truthers has taken on a new meaning. And now, it's even got an all-star lineup."
Ryan Busse, a former gun industry executive, warns that the presence of a former NRA spokesperson at Freedom Festival is "legitimizing" extremism.
Busse told the Beast, "It's going to send a message across the country that this is normal, that this is OK. This is American fascism being developed right before our eyes. This is like 1936 Germany in a symposium."
Busse went on to say, "The one that concerns me the most is Dana Loesch. She's treated by gun consumers like royalty, and here she is legitimizing this insanity. That scares me."
Pagliery notes thatKahr Firearms Group,which manufactures semi-automatic weapons, is run by a family of Moonies. Founded by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon during the 1950s, the Moonies are a Christianist cult known for conspiracy theories, End Times themes and a far-right ideology.
"While Sun Myung Moon became a prominent figure in the American conservative movement — founding the Washington Times newspaper — one of his sons, Justin Moon, founded the Kahr gun company in 1995," Pagliery explains. "And another son, Hyung Jin Sean Moon, inherited an offshoot of the church that goes by the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary and warns about 'the End of Times.' With the patriarch now deceased, his sons have largely merged their worlds."
Pagliery continues,"The reverend son now refers to his church with a more militant name — Rod of Iron Ministries— an allusion to his unification of disparate ideas: faith and guns. And churchgoers wear metal crowns on their heads, signifying individuals' ultimate sovereign authority over themselves. They also carry semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s and AK-47s, fashioning their guns like pious medieval knights would a sword."
The Moonies are not white supremacists; Rev. Sun Myung Moon was Korean. But according to J.J. MacNab of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, that doesn't make them any less dangerous.
MacNab told the Beast, "They've never really gotten the attention I think they should, because they're not a White supremacy group. Anybody that's pushing such a hearty mix of guns and religion are problematic to me. And the doomsday element is there. It's effectively talking about death."
Busse finds Freedom Festival's combination of religious extremism, guns, conspiracy theories and Trumpism to be incredibly toxic.
The former NRA member told the Beast, "It's what I fear: anything that will gin up people to buy more guns, hate people more, and vote for people like Trump. It's all of that on steroids. Doesn't the Klan meet in the dark out back behind uncle's barn? This is right out in the open."
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