Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 3: Could they be true?
Speaker 2: Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Steve Hasten. He's
Speaker 1: an author and an expert on the issue of cults.
Speaker 1: His latest book is called The Cult of Trump. He's
Speaker 1: a former member of the Unification Church, associated with the
Speaker 1: Reverend Moon and escape the church and then created a
Speaker 1: group to help people leave the church and since then
Speaker 1: become a real expert on cults and helping people leave cults.
Speaker 4: Welcome Steve, Thanks John, and I'm an admirer of yours
Speaker 4: and all you're speaking out of the many years since
Speaker 4: Trump's first election.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know how much good it does, but
Speaker 1: it's better than being complicit of.
Speaker 3: That's what I say.
Speaker 2: If you're an admirer of John, you've already sown some
Speaker 2: bad judgment here, Stave s.
Speaker 1: But let's go back and start from the beginning. Tell
Speaker 1: us about your experience with the Unification Church in the movies.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna just correct you and say, I don't think
Speaker 4: it's fair to call them the Unification Church, because when
Speaker 4: there was a Congressional subcommittee investigation into CACIA activities in
Speaker 4: the US, the investigation said, there are so many front
Speaker 4: groups of this group. Unification Church is one of hundreds.
Speaker 4: We think it's fairer to call them the moon Organization
Speaker 4: or the Moonees.
Speaker 1: And they own one of our newspapers in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: Washington Times, which the founding editor was from the Council
Speaker 4: for National Policy, was put into place. But back to
Speaker 4: my story. When I got recruited, it was actually the
Speaker 4: same month Patty Hurst got abducted by the Simonese Liberation Army.
Speaker 4: It was February of nineteen seventy four. No one had
Speaker 4: heard of the Moonies. I certainly didn't. I was a
Speaker 4: student at Queen's College and my situational vulnerability was my
Speaker 4: girlfriend dumped me abruptly and I was sitting in the
Speaker 4: cafeteria waiting for classes to start and three women started
Speaker 4: flirting with me. Later I learned it's called honey potting,
Speaker 4: but I was just naive. I asked them, are you students, yes,
Speaker 4: which was a lie.
Speaker 3: Are you part of a religious group?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 4: But within a few weeks, I was believing the Messiah
Speaker 4: was on the earth, that I was selected to help
Speaker 4: save the world from Satan. I was Jewish and I
Speaker 4: didn't believe in Satan a few weeks earlier, and I
Speaker 4: went in this rabbit hole of brainwashing. And I should
Speaker 4: say I came from a very stable, normal upbringing. My parents,
Speaker 4: ever divorced, didn't have affairs, they didn't drink, they didn't smoke.
Speaker 4: We lived in the same house. I was an extra
Speaker 4: honor student, and my vulnerability was I thought I was
Speaker 4: too smart to ever fall for a scam or for
Speaker 4: a cult. And for whatever reason, they selected me, Maybe
Speaker 4: because I'm six feet tall and I was smart, I
Speaker 4: don't know, but they selected me to be an American leader,
Speaker 4: which meant I had no power. But I was a
Speaker 4: front person who could recruit and indoctrinate people and be
Speaker 4: a good face for the cult. And I was in
Speaker 4: meetings with Moon personally, with the other leaders as he
Speaker 4: was saying, we're going to infiltrate the government, and God
Speaker 4: hates democracy. We're going to put a theocracy into place,
Speaker 4: and when we take power, we will amend the constitution
Speaker 4: and make it a capital offense if people don't accept
Speaker 4: our rules around the mass weddings and the sexual things. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I was a true believer, and I was sent to
Speaker 4: Washington to fast for three days for Richard Nixon during Watergate,
Speaker 4: and I hated Nixon beforehand, but I was like, but
Speaker 4: God wants him to be president.
Speaker 2: Dad.
Speaker 4: But my story is I fell asleep at the wheel
Speaker 4: of a Moonie van.
Speaker 3: I was sleeping three.
Speaker 4: To four hours a night, normally seven days a week,
Speaker 4: but this occasion I fell asleep and woke up as
Speaker 4: I drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck
Speaker 4: at eighty miles an hour. And after getting Pride out
Speaker 4: of the wreckage, having two weeks away from the cult,
Speaker 4: sleeping and eating and nursing my wounds, I didn't.
Speaker 3: Have any continuous indoctrination.
Speaker 4: This was way before cell phones got created, but led
Speaker 4: to me calling my sister, which led to her telling
Speaker 4: my parents, which led to a deprogramming which I was
Speaker 4: sure I wasn't brainwashed and I wasn't in a cult.
Speaker 4: But my father cried and said, how would you feel
Speaker 4: if it was your son who I met a controversial
Speaker 4: group and disappeared from your life. Wouldn't you be worried?
Speaker 4: And I could see he genuinely cared about me. I
Speaker 4: thought he was brainwashed by the Communist media. That was
Speaker 4: my mooney mind speaking, But I wanted to prove that
Speaker 4: I was thinking, so I agreed to talk to the
Speaker 4: ex members and learn about Chinese communist brainwashing, and it
Speaker 4: was that that started turning the lights back on in
Speaker 4: my mind. The following day was my wake up moment,
Speaker 4: where the ex members handed me one of Moon's speeches
Speaker 4: to congressmen and senators, and all they did was hand
Speaker 4: it to me and say, read this and tell us
Speaker 4: what you think. And that formed the basis for forty
Speaker 4: nine years of my professional career. That said, the way
Speaker 4: to get people out of these groups is not trying
Speaker 4: to persuade them they're wrong, ask them what they think,
Speaker 4: feed them questions in a respectful way that's strategic, that
Speaker 4: gets them back to who they were before the group.
Speaker 4: Everything I believe was based on the presupposition he was
Speaker 4: the Messiah and he was going to save the planet
Speaker 4: Earth from all the mess we're in. And once that
Speaker 4: bubble popped, I was like, what happened to my mind?
Speaker 4: So now you're meeting me having written four books.
Speaker 3: And I have a PhD.
Speaker 4: And how to use trafficking law to update and apply
Speaker 4: to the legal system because it's not a slippery slope.
Speaker 4: And my model that I did my dissertation on looks
Speaker 4: at behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
Speaker 4: I call it the Byte model of authoritarian control. I
Speaker 4: say you can control those four variables. You can control
Speaker 4: people's identities and make a pseudo identity that's dependent and
Speaker 4: obedient on any person or ideology.
Speaker 2: We use words like culton religion, and there's the old
Speaker 2: saw that the difference between the culton and religion is
Speaker 2: an IRS ruling. Could you give us a working definition
Speaker 2: that we can news for what is a cult or
Speaker 2: a sect?
Speaker 4: Say there are cults along the continuum from ethical religious groups,
Speaker 4: political groups, fan groups, whatever, all the way to authoritarian
Speaker 4: mind control cults. People laugh and say, I'm in a
Speaker 4: book called the Cult of Mac as a true believer,
Speaker 4: because I only have used Mac since nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 4: or I'm in the cult because I've done four teTeX talk,
Speaker 4: so I joke about that. But there are groups that
Speaker 4: are healthy and you can question them, you can leave
Speaker 4: without fear or harassment. They're not remaking your conscience and
Speaker 4: your identity. My definition is that it's a pyramid structured
Speaker 4: authoritarian regime that uses deceptive recruitment, so no informed consent.
Speaker 4: Does it have to be religious correct In my model,
Speaker 4: it can be a one on one controlling relationship to
Speaker 4: a bad therapist who's making the person dependent on them,
Speaker 4: to a large group awareness training program, or a multi
Speaker 4: level marketing. It applies to trafficking, sex trafficking, and labor trafficking,
Speaker 4: which I call commercial cults, political cults, as I refer
Speaker 4: to the cult of Trump, and I believe China is
Speaker 4: a mind control authoritarian cult, as is Russia.
Speaker 1: Does it require a charismatic leader.
Speaker 4: No, some of my colleagues say that it does, and
Speaker 4: that's not my experience. And there are many cults that
Speaker 4: are ideological cults. They're mimetic indoctrination things. And then there
Speaker 4: are cults that start with one person. They die and
Speaker 4: the group morphs and their beliefs change and their practices change,
Speaker 4: but you don't need a living leader. What I learned
Speaker 4: starting in nineteen eighty when I started studying hypnosis, and
Speaker 4: I should say during the MKO Trump days, I studied
Speaker 4: NLP and then I learned Eric Sonian hypnosis. And that's
Speaker 4: what I'm seeing everywhere on the internet, and I talk
Speaker 4: about it in the book The Cult of Trump that
Speaker 4: it appears Tony Robbins has taught Donald Trump some NLP.
Speaker 1: You mentioned mk ultra in the nineteen fifties when there
Speaker 1: was such concern that somehow the Soviets had mastered mind
Speaker 1: control because some soldiers were coming back from the Korean
Speaker 1: War and other places that were saying what we thought
Speaker 1: were crazy things and thought that they had been given
Speaker 1: drugs that controlled their minds. So the CIA got involved
Speaker 1: in experimenting with these things, looking to see if there
Speaker 1: was some sort of and it's actually a shameful period.
Speaker 1: You can understand why it happened, but so could involve
Speaker 1: potentially drugs or some sort of thing like this as well.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I'm a human rights guy, I'm a license mental
Speaker 4: health counselor. So my leane is just I want people
Speaker 4: to be healthy, I want them to control their own minds.
Speaker 4: I want them to understand that it doesn't just happen
Speaker 4: a week stupid, uneducated people, that bright people can have
Speaker 4: their minds acted, and that we are wired as human
Speaker 4: beings to follow who we think are legitimate leaders, and
Speaker 4: we're wired as human beings to conform to people we
Speaker 4: identify with. And we know this from the Ash Conformity Study,
Speaker 4: the Milgram obedient Study, the Zimbardo prison study. People are
Speaker 4: walking around thinking it can never happen to me. I'm
Speaker 4: too smart, and it happens to them. They're even more vulnerable.
Speaker 4: But on the other side of it is it's not permanent.
Speaker 4: And even people born in these authoritarian regimes realize they're
Speaker 4: being lied to, they're being exploited, and when they're given
Speaker 4: an opportunity to have access to non members and leave
Speaker 4: and go somewhere else, they want to come to the US.
Speaker 4: They want to leave totalitarian regimes are they're born into
Speaker 4: these extremist, authoritarian religious cults, and they realize, I don't
Speaker 4: have to believe this. There are phobias that have been
Speaker 4: put in my mind to make me dependent and obedience.
Speaker 4: But if you use their critical thinking, you can analyze
Speaker 4: this is a technique of emotional mind control.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back in a moment. John and I
Speaker 2: when we were serving in the Agency, we've served in
Speaker 2: authoritarian countries with authoritarian governments. So I was in Zimbabwe
Speaker 2: and you would think when you were there that Mugabi
Speaker 2: at the time was incredibly popular. They built a cult
Speaker 2: around him, his family, his picture, his photograph was everywhere,
Speaker 2: the legends that he was involved in during the war
Speaker 2: of Independence from Rhodesia. And yet when Mugabi was dethroned
Speaker 2: and eventually died, he was immediately forgotten about. And I
Speaker 2: were both in Eastern Europe when the Brillin Wall was
Speaker 2: starting to come down and people were leaving. So I
Speaker 2: was in West Berlin and we were looking at the
Speaker 2: East Germans and we would have sworn a month before
Speaker 2: the wall came down that the East Germans were loyal,
Speaker 2: that they believed in their leader. And yet really within
Speaker 2: days millions of people finally said, yeah, we've just been
Speaker 2: faking it this whole time. Talking to them afterwards, they
Speaker 2: were saying no. At the time, we were sort of
Speaker 2: hit two points of two notions at the same time.
Speaker 2: We were both loyal and believed, but deep down in
Speaker 2: our brain we didn't. So what's your sense of Trump beside?
Speaker 2: But of political cults and when they're genuine and when
Speaker 2: they're sort of enforced time people.
Speaker 4: You're describing the phenomenon that I have verified for forty
Speaker 4: nine years of practice with clients from all types of
Speaker 4: political and religious cults. And I should say my mentor
Speaker 4: who's helped me get out of the Moonies.
Speaker 3: Robert J.
Speaker 4: Lifton wrote a book called Thought Reform in the Psychology
Speaker 4: of Totalism in nineteen sixty one about his interviews with
Speaker 4: people coming out of mao's thought reform programs in the
Speaker 4: outlined eight criteria. He later wrote a book on the
Speaker 4: Nazi doctors, and he described what he called doubling. Before
Speaker 4: that book came out, I had described my subjective sense
Speaker 4: is that there were two Steves. There was the real Steve,
Speaker 4: who was born of Flushing Queens, New York, and then
Speaker 4: the Steve, the Mooney, whose parents were moon and his wife.
Speaker 3: And when I got out, it.
Speaker 4: Was like a flip happened, like a switch happens, like
Speaker 4: I was still indoctrinated, but the real me took executive control,
Speaker 4: or like malware takes over your computer and then you
Speaker 4: put software in it and get rid of the malware. Oh,
Speaker 4: my operating systems back their key points. And for me
Speaker 4: as a human being doing this where people had to survive.
Speaker 4: So they had a public face because they didn't want
Speaker 4: to be turned into the regime, they didn't want to
Speaker 4: get tortured, thrown into jail or worse. But then they
Speaker 4: had their private thoughts that was like this is bs
Speaker 4: or they said the opposite last week that they're saying today.
Speaker 4: And so there's what Lifton called the psychology of the
Speaker 4: pawn while you're still in the environment. But once the
Speaker 4: environment walls go away and you have access to non
Speaker 4: cult people, you start to realize, WHOA, there's a whole
Speaker 4: lot of colors. World is not black and white, and
Speaker 4: follow the regime or don't. It's oh, there were all
Speaker 4: these other options and choices. And so with political cults,
Speaker 4: one of my theses in the Cult of Trump is
Speaker 4: not only does Trump display the stereotypical cult leader and
Speaker 4: I used Eric Frohm's definition malignant narcissist in chapter three,
Speaker 4: and I compared Trump with Jim Jones of the People's
Speaker 4: Temple and Moon, my former cult leader and Hubbard of scientology.
Speaker 4: It is a cult of personality that he has had
Speaker 4: his whole life, with his business and people he's work with.
Speaker 4: And I should add Eric Frum came up with this
Speaker 4: trying to understand Hitler, so that this was not coming
Speaker 4: out of thin air. This was post World War two,
Speaker 4: and like, how could we describe the mindset of somebody
Speaker 4: like this?
Speaker 3: But then when I.
Speaker 4: Started researching it, I realized there were actual authoritarian cults
Speaker 4: that comprise the cult of Trump. I talk about a
Speaker 4: cult called the Family that's operated in DC for decades.
Speaker 4: They do the National Prayer breakfasts, and they like to
Speaker 4: recruit Democrats and Republicans to do their bidding. And then
Speaker 4: I talk about Opus Day and William Barr was a
Speaker 4: member of that. The Russians hacked our counter terrorist Anson
Speaker 4: I should add with Opus Day, he was an Opus
Speaker 4: Stay member. But there are bigger groups like what is
Speaker 4: called the New Apostolic Reformation MEGAS. And these are the
Speaker 4: people who say they're Christian, but in terms of their practices,
Speaker 4: they claim to be a prophet or an apostle who
Speaker 4: can speak directly to God and God told them. Trump
Speaker 4: won the twenty twenty election and this is thirty to
Speaker 4: forty million Americans who think, because their leader said so,
Speaker 4: that Trump is being used by God. He's a king
Speaker 4: Cyrus figure.
Speaker 1: I was just in Oklahoma and someone was telling me
Speaker 1: a story about a family member who saw a picture
Speaker 1: of Trump pulling someone from a flood, clearly a fake picture,
Speaker 1: and this person was saying, that's why we need to
Speaker 1: support him. He's such a good man and all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So there are real believers of this
Speaker 1: fake stuff. But clearly these politicians that support him in Washington,
Speaker 1: they go to Yale and Harvard and JD. Vance and
Speaker 1: all of these guys, they are now saying, oh, the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election was stolen. In January sixth was a
Speaker 1: day of love. They know that not to be true.
Speaker 1: Can you be part of a cult when in fact
Speaker 1: you know you're lying?
Speaker 4: The answer is, I'd have to study case by case,
Speaker 4: and most people in a mind control cult, or what
Speaker 4: I call fringe members, they really have no clue what
Speaker 4: is actually going on inside the group, much less at
Speaker 4: the leadership level. And so when people say, do you
Speaker 4: think everyone who voted for Trump isn't a cult?
Speaker 3: It's like, how can.
Speaker 4: I say that a lot of people just vote whatever
Speaker 4: party their parents voted, what they voted in the past.
Speaker 3: But you know better than most.
Speaker 4: You can turn someone ideologically, you can buy somebody off,
Speaker 4: you can blackmail somebody.
Speaker 1: It's also in their interest. Ted Cruises and the jdvange
Speaker 1: even if whether they believe it or not, they benefit
Speaker 1: from it because they're at the top of that pyramid.
Speaker 4: I was at the top of the pyramid. I didn't
Speaker 4: have power, but I was being promised my own mansions
Speaker 4: and security guards and all the rest. I was twenty
Speaker 4: years old, twenty one years old. It was crazy, but
Speaker 4: I really couldn't think negative thoughts. It was deemed evil
Speaker 4: spirits trying to invade me. So I was taught thought
Speaker 4: stopping techniques to shut down any negative thought. And is
Speaker 4: it possible that Elon Musk has been radicalized? I think
Speaker 4: it is possible. Is it possible JD Vance has been radicalized? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's possible.
Speaker 3: I don't know. But my solution is to.
Speaker 4: Teach everyone about the influence continuum, the bite model, let
Speaker 4: their family and friends who knew them before learn about it,
Speaker 4: and let them interact and ask questions in a respectful
Speaker 4: way to get at what's true and what's real.
Speaker 2: Whether it's true or not. There's also the punishment model
Speaker 2: as well, so you know, cults obviously involved shunning or exclusion. Right,
Speaker 2: So even if you know something's wrong, you still sit
Speaker 2: there and think, if I say this and this goes
Speaker 2: for religion, and yeah, I'll actually back this up with Trump,
Speaker 2: even if you don't believe that the election was stolen
Speaker 2: or you see no evidence for it. But the very
Speaker 2: fact of you saying that out loud glued you because
Speaker 2: it is totally in or totally up, which for a
Speaker 2: little bit of both sides. Rism isn't like that. On
Speaker 2: the other side, if you're a Democrat and you say, well,
Speaker 2: I don't think Biden did that greater job, it's not
Speaker 2: the end of you. But if you say I don't
Speaker 2: think Trump did a good job, or this is a failure,
Speaker 2: then you're out. It's an in or and out sort
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 4: It's a spot on and I interviewed David Weisman for
Speaker 4: the Cult of Trump, who is a self per first magatroll.
Speaker 4: He was an Army vet who would meet and be
Speaker 4: sent out to harass libtards and people who were in
Speaker 4: the Cult of sorrows, and he had an interaction with
Speaker 4: the comedian Sarah Silverman, who instead of just blocking him
Speaker 4: or calling him names, she said, I think it was
Speaker 4: on Twitter. Oh you are a veteran, thank you for
Speaker 4: your service. And he was like shocked that she even
Speaker 4: recognized he existed. And he had been harassing her around
Speaker 4: gun control stuff because of school shootings, and so she
Speaker 4: asked him. She said, so you're a serviceman, what's your
Speaker 4: solution to the gun problem where kids are being shot
Speaker 4: up at school? And he realized he had never thought.
Speaker 4: He doesn't have his own ideas about what would solve it,
Speaker 4: but it changed his life because he started questioning it.
Speaker 4: And the reason I'm sharing this is to confirm your point, Jerry.
Speaker 4: As soon as he started questioning it publicly, everybody turned
Speaker 4: on him in the Trump call, he was a pariah,
Speaker 4: he was evil, and that confirmed for him there was
Speaker 4: something wrong. Very recently, the humanist chaplain at MIT and Harvard,
Speaker 4: greb Epstein, just published a book called tech Agnostic, saying
Speaker 4: that big tech is now the new world religion and
Speaker 4: outing these billionaires' ideologies of transhumanism and long termism and
Speaker 4: accelerationism and crypto saying like they want to remake the world,
Speaker 4: and I'm an agnostic. I don't believe that's like real,
Speaker 4: That's what we should live our lives to go to
Speaker 4: Mars and sacrifice humans for future ai androids that will
Speaker 4: populate all the galaxies. And I'm with him on.
Speaker 1: That them on that job. So, based on your experience,
Speaker 1: what is the best way to help people who want
Speaker 1: to leave cults.
Speaker 4: I'm going to first say what you shouldn't do, and
Speaker 4: almost everybody does. They try to argue with the person
Speaker 4: with fact and persuade them, and they attack the leader
Speaker 4: the doctrine or the policy which is guaranteed to reinforce
Speaker 4: the cult identity and make them feel like you're persecuting them.
Speaker 4: So that's what you'd never want to do.
Speaker 1: Which is what we do on that Pope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, but this we can certainly tell you
Speaker 2: it is ineffective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's effective for your base who want to listen
Speaker 4: to you, but it's not going to help the people
Speaker 4: that we're trying to rescue. And what we and what
Speaker 4: most people have done with their family and friends who've
Speaker 4: gotten into Mega world is block them. Er say, I
Speaker 4: never want to talk to you about politics, like we
Speaker 4: can meet for Thanksgiving, but we'll talk about sports or whatever.
Speaker 4: And for me, that's the biggest thing we could be
Speaker 4: doing is training people how to talk with people in
Speaker 4: mind control cult respectfully, with curiosity, with active listening. But
Speaker 4: the most powerful technique is what was done with me,
Speaker 4: is to ask their a question that makes the think
Speaker 4: and then follow up with another question, but not from
Speaker 4: a I'm right, you're wrong, but I'm just curious how
Speaker 4: you make sense of this. Then you can ask them
Speaker 4: to go back in time to their first memory of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump and they'll say, Oh, I saw him on
Speaker 4: the Apprentice. What do you think I thought he was
Speaker 4: an asshole. Oh that's interesting, you thought he was an asshole.
Speaker 4: So tell me walk me through slowly how you came
Speaker 4: to believe he should be president. Help identify in your journey,
Speaker 4: because I'd like to step into your shoes and understand it.
Speaker 4: But by asking it in a non threatening, non judgmental way,
Speaker 4: people feel like you care about them. And I felt
Speaker 4: like my father genuinely cared about me as much as
Speaker 4: I didn't think he knew anything. That's what helped me
Speaker 4: reality tests my own experience because I can tell you
Speaker 4: Nobody wants to be in a cult. Nobody wants to
Speaker 4: be lied to, exploited, made to do things that are
Speaker 4: going to regret for the rest of their lives. And
Speaker 4: here's the other technique, talking about other groups, not the group,
Speaker 4: you're talking to the person. And what works best for
Speaker 4: MAGA is Chinese communist brainwashing and pimps and traffickers. They'll
Speaker 4: listen to that.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times when we're dealing with people
Speaker 2: from authoritarian governments, the people who eventually end up working
Speaker 2: with us as agents. These are people who want to
Speaker 2: deprogram themselves from the societies that they're in. Is an
Speaker 2: example in North Korean who doesn't buy what everyone else is.
Speaker 2: You know, he's desperate for somebody to talk to who
Speaker 2: doesn't do that. Quit the opposite, we're often looking for
Speaker 2: people who in austhoritarian governments who secretly don't buy into
Speaker 2: this and are desperate to get out.
Speaker 1: They want to get out of their cult that they're
Speaker 1: already in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I'm more like recognizing their proxy groups.
Speaker 4: The one that comes to mind, and I wrote about
Speaker 4: it in Combat and Cult Mind Control was an Iranian
Speaker 4: terrorist group called m e K that was based in
Speaker 4: Iraq and they were anti Iran, and.
Speaker 1: We don't work with them. In fact, I think the
Speaker 1: Israelis do.
Speaker 4: Though, you know, we get into this world of where
Speaker 4: the Rand Corporation said, yep, they're a mind control called
Speaker 4: but now we're not going to declassify them as a
Speaker 4: terrorist group because they're working helps a lot.
Speaker 1: Of actually right wing Republicans like Rudy Giuliani and others
Speaker 1: paid by these guys to speak and things like that.
Speaker 1: The US government always said they were nuts and mind
Speaker 1: control and dangerous. However, some people with political ties, mostly Republicans, frankly,
Speaker 1: wish the government to take them off the list. Now
Speaker 1: they probably did, but the national security part of the
Speaker 1: government are the ones dead.
Speaker 4: More of this after a quick break. What we want
Speaker 4: is for people to be invested in a system of
Speaker 4: government where they show up the vote and they learn
Speaker 4: what the issues are and they aren't just responding to
Speaker 4: a social media channel or Sinclair Media because they bought
Speaker 4: up the local free presses and such. Anyone who says
Speaker 4: you create your own reality, or if it's true for you,
Speaker 4: then it's true, it's like no, that's called the delusion
Speaker 4: in mental health worlds. If you think you're Jesus. That
Speaker 4: doesn't make you Jesus.
Speaker 1: What organizations that we don't normally consider cults nonetheless exhibit
Speaker 1: cult like practices. I know you got a list of
Speaker 1: what are things that are like, but perhaps maybe not
Speaker 1: all the way.
Speaker 2: But let's not mention the Buffalo Bills fan clubs though
Speaker 2: those are Oh it.
Speaker 5: Hurts today to the things sports fans are fanatical, but
Speaker 5: they are not being lied to, and they're not being
Speaker 5: forced to buy tickets or watch games.
Speaker 3: And as they.
Speaker 2: Are being lied to, I mean, we're the best team.
Speaker 3: We're going to win the super Bowl. That's so funny.
Speaker 4: Anyway, A lot of people are in Jehovah's Witnesses and
Speaker 4: they don't think of it as an authoritarian mind control cult.
Speaker 4: But my books have helped countless people exit and gratefully
Speaker 4: from that where they're told that they can't salute the
Speaker 4: flag and they can't go into another church because it's evil,
Speaker 4: or they can't get a blood transfusion, or they're told
Speaker 4: that they can't talk to their own children or family members.
Speaker 4: You were saying before, Jerry about shunning, it's more extreme.
Speaker 4: I've done a lot of work with the Mormons and
Speaker 4: the Latter day Saints with John Delynn, who is excommunicated
Speaker 4: for speaking up for gay rights. He's a former sixth
Speaker 4: generation Mormon, and I understand that the Mormons are overrepresented
Speaker 4: in our intelligence agency, yes, very much, which is concerning
Speaker 4: for me because I would like everyone to learn about
Speaker 4: brainwashing and cults, and when you have a living profit,
Speaker 4: you may have a dual commitment of loyalty to your
Speaker 4: profit and not necessarily to the Constitution. I would like
Speaker 4: people to learn more about Chinese communists, brainwashing and pimps
Speaker 4: and traffickers, sex trafficking and labor trafficking, because it's so
Speaker 4: present and people understand that it's wrong and that it's slavery,
Speaker 4: because the whole concept of brainwashing is you're creating slaves.
Speaker 4: But they say they're happy and they did it on
Speaker 4: their own when they didn't. Stevie is the next Mooney.
Speaker 4: I found it really interesting how this church is split,
Speaker 4: and especially this one element of the church now the
Speaker 4: Rod of Iron Church.
Speaker 2: These are guys with gold ear and crowns of bullets
Speaker 2: and violence, and yet they're also very much involved in politics.
Speaker 2: So I was wondering, can you bring us in and
Speaker 2: give us a sense of the Ander relationship or the
Speaker 2: overlap of the ven diagram between and then let's just
Speaker 2: run with the Rod of Iron group, which of course
Speaker 2: Mike Flynn is associated with, not in it, but he's.
Speaker 4: They did this Rod of Iron Freedom Festival that Mike
Speaker 4: Flynn was a featured speaker at and some of his people.
Speaker 2: Moon and tell us what the Rod of Iron Church is,
Speaker 2: and then how it interacts with Trump World.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I kind of choke when you use the word church.
Speaker 4: But so the Moon organization has hundreds of different entities.
Speaker 4: When Onia mun died, the two sons who now live
Speaker 4: in Pennsylvania, Sean and Justin Moon, co opted I think
Speaker 4: a billion or two billion dollars from their mother who
Speaker 4: had the main organization, and she was the figure had
Speaker 4: taking it over. They battled it out in court and
Speaker 4: I guess they lost.
Speaker 3: But there are these two brothers.
Speaker 4: One as a gun factory making ear fifteens and car arms, pistols,
Speaker 4: et cetera. That's their company. And the other one, Sean Moon,
Speaker 4: has the Rod of Ironministries dot Org. He's called the
Speaker 4: King and he has on his website the new Constitution
Speaker 4: when they take over the United State, as if the
Speaker 4: Christian nationalists are going to let them. And they have
Speaker 4: two training compounds, one in Tennessee one near Waco, Texas,
Speaker 4: using veterans to train people how to use assault rifles
Speaker 4: because they were expecting civil warn.
Speaker 1: What's the connection with right wing political groups. Is it
Speaker 1: just this former anti communism thing right?
Speaker 4: Oh, though the Moonies have been right wing anti communist
Speaker 4: major players for decades. They were involved with Irancontra and
Speaker 4: Colonel North. I should also say The Washington Times has
Speaker 4: been outed as the biggest purveyor of climate science denial.
Speaker 4: But the movies are very much involved with politics and
Speaker 4: wanting to make a theocracy, a one world, hierarchical authoritarian
Speaker 4: regime where people are either part of it or they're killed, basically.
Speaker 4: And what was so crazy is in the room with
Speaker 4: moon when he talked about amending the Constitution and making
Speaker 4: it a capital offense, and I thought it made all
Speaker 4: the sense in the world because we would be taking
Speaker 4: people's physical bodies away from them, sending them to the
Speaker 4: spirit world, and we would save them later. Was the
Speaker 4: moony mindset.
Speaker 1: My body's not is falling apart from me, So that
Speaker 1: might be appealing.
Speaker 4: But it's I don't want your listeners to be just afraid.
Speaker 4: I want them to understand. I believe as actually actions
Speaker 4: we could be taking today to organize a resistance. But
Speaker 4: as soun Su said, know yourself and know your enemy
Speaker 4: and understand who's doing what. And we need to create
Speaker 4: a strategy that's going to be more than one election
Speaker 4: cycle or two or three one that's going to take
Speaker 4: decades to rebuild what we want to rebuild and hopefully
Speaker 4: make a system where power is has checks and balances
Speaker 4: and where human rights and rule of law and the
Speaker 4: constitution matters.
Speaker 2: Well. It's almost like biological organisms want to survive and
Speaker 2: continue right, they don't want to die out. And one
Speaker 2: way that they do that is they take over almost
Speaker 2: like pers sites, they take over political organizations. So in
Speaker 2: the eighties when I first came into the agency, there
Speaker 2: was this organization called the LaRouche Organization.
Speaker 4: Lynday was behind the Cult of Suro saw the disinformation
Speaker 4: about it, and Roger Stone was involved with LaRue.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. And Laruche at the time was
Speaker 2: I think he raised over two hundred million dollars, which
Speaker 2: is a lot of money, and he was involved in
Speaker 2: four thousand political races mostly as a Democrat, but also
Speaker 2: as Republicans trying to take it over from the inside.
Speaker 2: But another thing they were doing was they were trying
Speaker 2: to get their followers into CIA so that they could
Speaker 2: generally but that their followers would then acquire information to
Speaker 2: give to Lyndon LaRouche to build him up. I'm really
Speaker 2: concerned about trump Ism taking over, like the leadership of
Speaker 2: the US military, the cultish elements of it, and inside
Speaker 2: of CIA and FBI and Justice Department and some of
Speaker 2: those things. You say, well, you're not allowed to say
Speaker 2: what you think.
Speaker 4: I was literally in the room and Moon said, we
Speaker 4: have to infiltrate the US government. We're going to send
Speaker 4: people to volunteer for congressmen and senators.
Speaker 3: We're going to run our.
Speaker 4: Own people for me. This is a fifty year playbook
Speaker 4: that I'm seeing implemented.
Speaker 2: And we certainly have Tulsea Gibbert who's been involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was going to bring up. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about her Science of Identity foundation this, Hari
Speaker 1: krishna O, Yes.
Speaker 4: So my understanding is that her family grew up with
Speaker 4: Chris Butler, who had a cult, who then became subservient
Speaker 4: to Propo pod who started Ari Krishnas and then they left.
Speaker 2: So you're saying the most important thing is people need
Speaker 2: to listen to this podcast and read your book and
Speaker 2: understand that there are tens of millions of ex cult
Speaker 2: members who are not sharing.
Speaker 4: Their story because there's a stigma that people think you're
Speaker 4: stupid if you are in a cult. But I'm saying,
Speaker 4: share your story. I know there's a lot of very
Speaker 4: highly educated, successful people running businesses who have PhDs. Share
Speaker 4: your story. Let's normalize this and let's teach people how
Speaker 4: to tell the difference, how to ask questions, how to
Speaker 4: reality tests. It's not disinformation or critical thinking, it's teaching
Speaker 4: people how to reality test.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Stephen for spending time with us
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff and obviously not just fascinating but critically important
Speaker 1: right now in our LISO show. Yeah, great to have
Speaker 1: you on.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher,
Speaker 6: and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 6: Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
Speaker 6: for iHeart podcasts
Speaker 5: OO