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COMMENT: In numerous programs, we have noted that the Unification Church–founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon–may very well be an extension of the Japanese Patriotic and Nationalist Societies around the world and down through the decades.
” . . . . In the past Hyung Jin ‘Sean’ Moon, the son of the Moons, campaigned for Mr Trump and attended the US Capitol insurrection on 6 January. . . .”
Earlier in the year, former Vice-President Mike Pence and former CIA director and State Department chief Mike Pompeo gave talks to the same group.
” . . . . the theology pushed by the Moons and their devotees challenges the basic Christianity embraced by so many conservatives. The Moons’ claim to be the messiahs, of course, runs counter to mainstream Christianity. And one Unification tenet promoted by a senior person in the movement is that Christianity is essentially over. . . .”
Former president Donald Trump has appeared in a virtual address for a controversial religious movement that aired on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In the video, Mr Trump appears to float against a virtual backdrop of clouds as he praises the Unification Church, a movement that has long courted Republican officials as part of an apparent propaganda campaign, and been dubbed a cult.
The event was organised by Hak Ja Han Moon, widow of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, who claimed to be the messiah. Within the movement, the Moons are considered the “true father” and “truth mother” to humankind.
Followers are part of a sprawling business and political enterprise to promote its goals, which include the unification of North and South Korea into a single Christian state.
Mr Trump appeared at the “Rally of Hope Think Tank” event sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation, a group co-founded by the Moons in 2005 and aligned with the Unification movement.
In his remarks, the former president praised the movement and the late Moon.
“What they have achieved on the peninsula is just amazing,” Mr Trump said of the movement. “In just a few decades, the inspiration that they have caused for the entire planet is unbelievable, and I congratulate you again and again. … Their example reminds all of us who strive for peace and a better future, that we should never give up and never, ever lose hope.
In his remarks, he also appeared to take credit for peace on the Korean peninsula.
“Looking back today, it’s easy to forget how dangerous the situation was when I was elected,” he said. “Missiles were flying, nuclear weapons were being tested, and powerful threats were being issued every single day … Under my leadership, the United States adopted a policy of unprecedented strength.”
He also praised the Moons for creating the conservative news outlet The Washington Times, which Mr Trump called “an organization for which I have tremendous respect and admiration”.
The event, which coincided with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, aimed to “promote and facilitate peace, dialogue, mediation, and the strengthening of the ecosystem of peace in the Asia Pacific region,” according to organisers.
In her address, Ms Moon claimed that “a new culture of the Pacific Rim civilization will expand throughout Asia and around the world” following unification, which cannot be a “secular nation that can only focus on human interests.”
“It must become a nation that attends God as the heavenly parent,” she said. “Not just political leaders.”
The movement – which began in South Korea in 1954 before moving to the US in 1971 – is known for its mass wedding ceremonies and ties to right-wing groups.
Steve Hassan, a former member of the movement and author of The Cult of Trump, said the former president’s appearance is “pretty outrageous, even for Trump”.
The movement’s history and affiliations “are well documented,” he said. “There is no ambiguity here.”
Critic Jim Stewartson of the The Thinkin Project warned that the group’s apparent staging of a global peace event is “hard to overstate how deeply harmful and deceptive this is”.
“This is being pitched by a who’s who of establishment extremists as some sort of peace mission to unify Korea,” he said. “In reality it’s dangerous propaganda whitewashing a dangerous cult.”
Mr Trump is not the only GOP figure with ties to the movement.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich also appeared on video at the event. Former vice president Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also appeared at Universal Peace Federation events.
In May, Mr Pence claimed that Think Tank 2022 is “bringing the wisdom of leaders in government, business, religion, civil society, ” according to Mother Jones.
Mr Pompeo, who was introduced as a “devout Christian,” boasted about Mr Trump’s relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In the past Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, the son of the Moons, campaigned for Mr Trump and attended the US Capitol insurrection on 6 January.
Okay everyone.“Moonies,” the authoritarian CULT I was a part of, later escaped and have been speaking out against for the last 45+ years is trending.If you want a crash course on this cult & their ties to the modern GOP, read these blogs of mine. They will catch you up. ??— Steven Hassan, PhD (@CultExpert) September 12, 2021
…
Mr Trump did not appear at any formal 9/11 memorial services on Saturday.
He visited a New York Police Department precinct near his Manhattan building, Trump Tower, where he took photos with officers and hinted at a run for the White House in 2024.
He later attended an Evangelical Christian concert in Washington DC. The two-day “Let Us Worship” concert is part of an ongoing protest of Covid health guidelines.
On Saturday night, the former president gave ringside commentary at a boxing event in Florida.
———–
On May 8, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo headlined a virtual rally organized by an offshoot of the Unification Church, a controversial religious movement known for holding mass weddings of its adherents and that has been accused of being a cult. Though American conservatives have long made common cause with the Unification Church, the head of the outfit that pulled together this event declared not too long ago that the “Christian era has ended”—which means Pence and Pompeo, whose self-professed religious devotion is a prominent part of their respective political profiles, were (knowingly or not) collaborating with and bolstering a group that says it is supplanting the Christianity they embrace.
The event—called the “Rally of Hope”—was hosted by Hak Ja Han Moon, the head of the Unification Church (whose members consider her and her late husband, Sun Myung Moon, the messiahs), and sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation, a group co-founded by the Moons in 2005 and affiliated with the Unification Church (which now refers to itself as the Unification movement). According to the UPF, the gathering, put on before a socially distanced audience and supposedly streamed to 1 million people in 194 nations, was held to launch a project called Think Tank 2022, which aims to reunify the Korean Peninsula.
The UPF says this new outfit is a “global multi-sector network of more than 2,000 experts” in business, academia, and other fields, though Think Tank 2022 does not yet have much (or any) online presence. Still, Hak Ja Han Moon was able to draw an impressive amount of star power for this kick-off, with the event featuring speeches from Pence, Pompeo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, past UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, former Republic of Korea Prime Minister Chung Sye-Kyun, and Zanzibar President Hussein Ali Mwinyi. Also among the speakers were Jonathan Falwell, a pastor at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Virginia and a son of Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority. Another featured participant was Hun Sen, the dictatorial, longtime leader of Cambodia, who has amassed a horrific human rights record.
The three-hour-long event was a celebration of both Moons, with Hak Ja Han Moon referred to as the “mother of Peace” and “Heavenly Parent.” During his videotaped speech, Pence claimed that Think Tank 2022 is “bringing the wisdom of leaders in government, business, religion, civil society” and that thanks to this new endeavor, “the dream of peaceful cooperation and unity will be closer to reality than ever before.” (Pence spoke at a previous and similar Rally of Hope in March.) Pompeo, who was introduced as a “devout Christian,” hailed former President Donald Trump’s assorted engagements with Kim Jong Un, the tyrannical and murderous leader of North Korea. “We tried something different,” Pompeo said. (Foreign policy specialists have tended to note Trump’s overly palsy overtures to Kim yielded no true progress.) Gingrich praised the Moons, the Universal Peace Federation, Think Tank 2022, and the Washington Times, the conservative paper Sun Myung Moon founded. Esper noted that Hak Ja Han Moon has been “working to help strengthen America’s role in the world.” He didn’t elaborate on what he meant by that.
The rally ended with a ceremony that was staged to look like an official act. A color guard brandishing the flags of nations from around the world marched about. Then Hak Ja Han Moon came out to “receive” the “historic resolution” establishing Think Tank 2022. She signed this document and then struck a gong to declare the project launched.
It’s unclear what Think Tank 2022 is actually doing. The group does not seem to have a website. A week after the rally, the project was not mentioned on the home page of the Universal Peace Federation. Mother Jones sent Larry Moffitt, a spokesperson for UPF, an email with a list of questions regarding Think Tank 2022—who are its 2,000 experts, who is running this operation, how much funding does it have? The email also asked if Pence, Pompeo, Esper, Gingrich, and the other speakers at the Rally for Hope were paid for their participation. Reached by phone, Moffitt said he would look at that email “and get back to you.” He did not.
…
The Unification movement has long sought to cultivate allies among Washington powerbrokers, particularly on the right. That was presumably one motivation for Sun Myung Moon in 1982 to establish the Washington Times, which has long been a mouthpiece for Republicans and conservatives. In 2004, he managed to hold a bizarre crowning ceremony for himself and his wife within a Senate office building, during which he declared in Korean that he was the Messiah. (Presidents and kings, he said, had ”declared to all heaven and earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”) Some members of Congress who attended the event—which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation—insisted they had been duped.
The relationship between the right and the Unification movement has long been curious. Much of it has likely been influenced by the Washington Times and its standing as a dependable conservative outlet. But the theology pushed by the Moons and their devotees challenges the basic Christianity embraced by so many conservatives. The Moons’ claim to be the messiahs, of course, runs counter to mainstream Christianity. And one Unification tenet promoted by a senior person in the movement is that Christianity is essentially over.
In a 2017 video, Michael Jenkins, a main player in the Unification movement’s cosmos of nonprofits and businesses, said, “The Christian era has ended.” Jenkins is the president of the Universal Peace Federation, which hosted the Rally for Hope and created Think Tank 2022. He is also president of the Washington Times Foundation. (According to its latest tax filing, that foundation raised $242,303 in 2019 and only handed out $2,595 in contributions. It spent $256,005 on salaries and other administrative expenses, including $93,400 in salary for Moffitt, the UPF spokesperson, who is also the vice president of the foundation.)
This video recorded Jenkins giving a talk at a Unification Church in Columbus, Ohio, in which he quoted “Mother”—Hak Ja Han Moon—saying “Christianity failed.” He noted that she had proclaimed, “the New Testament era is over. The Christian era has concluded.” He suggested that the Unification Church is in the process of replacing Christianity. Consequently, Pence and Pompeo contributed their celebrity to an effort mounted by a movement that appears to consider Christianity kaput. (The video was originally obtained by Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania who writes a blog that covers religious issues.)
…
Pence’s and Pompeo’s appearances at the rally were much appreciated by the Universal Peace Federation, which released a celebratory press release noting that “world-class leaders” had “affirmed and enhanced the concept of Think Tank 2022.” But if one goal was to garner media attention in the United States for this venture through the participation of Pence, Pompeo, Gingrich, and others, the Universal Peace Federation fell short. It seems the only major American media outlet that covered the event was the Washington Times.
————
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
It’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party. That’s long been obvious. But with Nikki Haley dropping out of the Republican primary following the ‘Super Tuesday’ primaries, the cult of Trump is official.
But Haley dropping out wasn’t the only sign of the party’s embrace of the cult of Trump. North Carolina’s Republican primary sealed the deal for the rising star in the state GOP: Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. Yes, the same Mark Robinson whose political rise appears to be intertwined with his open embrace of QAnon-style politics and who called for an end to the taboo on quoting Hitler at the 2023 Moms for Liberty Summit. That’s the guy who won the primary, thanks, in part, to an endorsement from Trump.
So with North Carolina’s GOP setting Robinson up as standard bearer for the state’s Republican Party as the age of Trump continue to shape the party, it’s worth keeping in mind that cult dynamics is like Coke Classic for the GOP. The party might have a new cult leader, but an open embrace of cults is nothing new. Just take the GOP’s decades-long long-standing alliance with the Unification Church. An alliance that’s demonstrably still going strong in the MAGA era. Recall how Trump spent the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks giving the keynote address at the “Rally of Hope Think Tank” event organized by Hak Ja Han Moon, widow of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon. Newt Gingrich also appeared on video at the event. This was all following a similar event months earlier that included appearances by both Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence.
And as we’re going to see, that GOP-Unification Church is an alliance Mark Robinson is well aware of since he’s in the alliance himself. Or at least is extremely Unification Church-friendly. That’s what we can reasonably infer from Robinson’s 2019 appearance on Rod of Iron Ministries podcast. Recall how the Rod of Iron Ministries is the Pennsylvania-based church, founded by Reverend Moon’s son, Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, which doesn’t just peddle “Satanic pedophile elite communists rule the world” narratives, but also worships AR-15 rifles as some sort of divine weapon. Moon is, as we should expect, extremely pro-MAGA and was at the Capitol along with a group of followers on January 6.
The interview with Robinson goes on for nearly hour, with Moon repeatedly expressing his QAnon-ish worldview and Robinson chiming in with complete agreement. For example, at 19 minutes, Moon talks about how figures like Hillary Clinton and George Soros become literal Satanists who are above the law. At 50 minutes, Moon explains Hitler’s rationale for the Holocaust as paying down Germany’s debt to pay back ‘the bankers’.
So while the nomination of Robinson is appropriately being reported on as a reflection of the ascendancy of the Cult of Trump as the defining element of today’s Republican party, it’s worth keeping in mind that the Republican Party’s adventures with cults isn’t a recent phenomena. There may be a new cult leader, but the same old cynical worship of power at any cost:
“Robinson is a bombastic and engaging orator who has often drawn comparisons to Trump — for their rapid rises in politics, the devotion they command from the GOP base and the laundry lists of scandals that have trailed both men. Robinson’s public controversies range from agreeing with antisemitic remarks about the global economy to comparing women who get abortions to murderers.”
Mark Robinson isn’t Donald Trump. But he’s unambiguously Trumpian, including the devoted following he’s gained from all his bombastic rhetoric. As Trump put it with his endorsement of Robinson, he’s “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Robinson once called the Civil Rights movement a “communist plot to subvert capitalism,” while lamenting how “so many freedoms were lost during the Civil Rights movement.” Or as Jonathan Felts, a longtime GOP operative who is helping lead a pro-Robinson super PAC, put it, “If you were crafting a script and trying to design a character that would be the perfect character for the moment where politics are in 2024, you’d be hard pressed to find much different than what you have with Mark Robinson.”
And yet it’s that same Trumpian persona that has Democrats salivating over a run against Robinson. Mark Robinson’s big primary victory is a political ‘microcosm in the macrocosm’ moment. It’s a demented moment, but it’s in keeping with a political zeitgeist that has both Republicans and Democrats betting their hopes on the notion that the public’s response to distilled MAGA-style politics will work to their favor:
So with Robinson serving as Trump’s surrogate in the North Carolina governor’s race, it’s worth taking a look at one of the more notable areas where Trump’s and Robinson’s politics align: a willingness to embrace the Unification Church. As we’ve seen, Trump actually spent the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks giving the keynote address at the “Rally of Hope Think Tank” event organized by Hak Ja Han Moon, widow of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon. Trump wasn’t the only Republican standard bearer to attend the event. Newt Gingrich also appeared on video at the event. This was all following a similar event months earlier that included appearances by both Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence. And while Trump’s (and Gingrich’s) decision to attend that rally on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 may have been a particularly tasteless display of the GOP’s long-standing deep ties to the Unification Church, it’s not like this is a Trumpian-era development. These ties go back decades. Which is a reminder that the overtly cultish nature of the modern day GOP isn’t some new development. Trump is simply a much more prominent cult leader than we’ve seen before.
And that alliance of cults brings us to the following report on a 2019 appearance by Mark Robinson on the Rod of Iron Ministries podcast. That would be the same Pennsylvania-based Rod of Iron Ministries founded by Reverend Moon’s son, Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon. As we saw, the Rod of Iron Ministries doesn’t just peddle “Satanic pedophile elite communists rule the world” narratives, but also seemingly worships AR-15 rifles as some sort of divine gift to god’s chosen people. As we can see in the nearly hour long interview of Robinson, all of that worldview was fully on display. For example, at 19 minutes, Moon talks about how figures like Hillary Clinton and George Soros become literal Satanists who are above the law. At 50 minutes, Moon explains Hitler’s rationale for the Holocaust as paying down Germany’s debt to pay back ‘the bankers’. With Robinson completely agreeing with Moon the whole time, despite his campaign’s later denials:
“Sean Moon’s Pennsylvania-based church believes that the American government will collapse and that he will ultimately become king of the United States, according to a 2018 Washington Post profile. ”
An interview with the future “King of the United States”. Robinson sure has interesting political pals. And as he made completely clear during the interview, Robinson’s theology, which can’t be separated from his political ideology, is completely in line with Moon’s. Including all the QAnon-style anti-Semitic tropes about wealthy Jewish bankers:
And while we can see Robinson’s campaign backing away from the content of this interview after the media reported on it, don’t forget the entire thing is up on Youtube. It’s an hour-long love fest between the two:
Will Mark Robinson have to defend his ties to this dangerous MAGA-centric cult as part of his race for the governorship? We’ll see. But, again, it’s not like the GOP’s ties to the Unification Church, or its offshoots, are anything new. If the GOP’s Moonie ties weren’t an issue for the past four decades, what are the odds they’ll become an issue today? It’s old news. Still relevant old news, sure, but it’s hard to imagine the public will really care. And as we also saw, both parties are expecting the race of North Carolina’s governor will be extreme close.
So try not to be surprised if Mark Robinson ends up as the state’s next governor. And while a Governor Robinson will obviously operate as an acolyte of the Cult of Trump while serving on the job, keep in mind that the GOP’s ultimately cult is the ‘power at all costs’ cult, and that’s a very large cult with a lot of members. Including one notable member with a crown of bullets and dreams of being America’s next king.