Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Elgen Strait on the Unification Church and the assassination of Shinzo Abe

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

This episode is a little bit of this and a little bit of that.The main portion of the episode features an interview with returning guest, Elgen Strait, host of the Falling Out podcast. Previously we've had Elgen on to talk about his life growing up as a second-generation member of Reverend Moon's Unification Church (the Moonies) and also to help us decode some historical lectures of Moon. This time he is back to talk about the recent assassination of the former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and the role that the Unification church played in that event. Heavy stuff but it felt like an important topic to discuss given Elgen's expertise, Chris' location, and the theme of the podcast.But that's not all!Also in this episode, you get a slightly out-of-date update on Alex Jone's trial (which will be good preparation for a forthcoming interview with Knowledge Fight's Dan Friesen) and a mini-decoding of Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan's recent conversation. Consider this a coda to the techno monk episode, that perhaps gives a glimpse into the more sinister side of that somewhat endearing naivety. The next decoding episode we are back with the sensemakers and it's one you won't want to miss! LinksFalling Out PodcastElgen's YouTube video on the Unification Church & human traffickingElgen's YouTube video discussing the motivations of Testuya YamagamiJoe Rogan: Comedy, Controversy, Aliens, UFOs, Putin, CIA, and Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #300Our previous episode interviewing Elgen on DTGOur decoding episode with Elgen looking at Reverend Moon's speechesAlex Jone's trial highlightKnowledge Fight's post-trial review episode (712) with the parents' trial lawyers

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown and with me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh and we are going to be talking about a few things today and Chris is going to be interviewing someone and then we're going to do some other stuff. Is that an intro? This is why you're the master of introduction smart. Who wouldn't want to listen to a podcast after that stunning introduction?

That's like my generic introduction. It's my fallback introduction. Is it? Yeah, we're going to do a couple of things. Someone will talk to someone. You'll hear people make some jokes and comments and stuff. We can just copy this and paste it onto every subsequent episode. Save a lot of bother.

You've listened to a podcast. You know what goes on in these neck of the woods. Yes, yes. This neck of the woods. This neck of the woods. This neck of the woods. This neck of the woods. Anyway, so Chris, Chris, you've got a couple of items on your agenda you're wanting to get through. As many people tell me online, I have an agenda and a mile long and visible from space.

Now, there are a couple of events which have been happening recently in the guru sphere that i think are notable and one is the ongoing almost finished now i think they're in the they've all awarded some of the damages today the civil trial of a a little bit a source of online attention, various video clips coming out and amusing moments happening, as well as some genuine, heartfelt and emotional testimony from the parents. But have you been following this, Matt? I have been following it a little bit, not as closely as you, I think. But there has been a couple of notable incidents. Apart from the very general satisfaction I think a lot of people, including me, are getting by listening to Alex Jones get his comeuppance and actually being

forced to testify under oath and be cross-examined by a lawyer and not being able to just simply lie and get away with it that's been cathartic i think yes there are elements there's a clip where the judge explains to alex jones like he's a three-year-old that just because he believes something is true does does not make it true. And, and that like courts care more if you are saying something which is not true, regardless of whether you may personally want it to be true. You're already under oath to tell the truth. You've already violated that oath twice today. In just those two examples, it seems absurd to instruct you again

that you must tell the truth while you testify. Yet here I am. You must tell the truth while you testify. This is not your show. not your show. You need to slow down and not take what you see as opportunities to further the message you're wanting to further. And instead, only answer the specific and exact question you have been asked. Do you understand what I have said? Yes or no? Do you understand what I have said? Yes. I believe what I said was true.

Yes, you believe everything you say is true, but it isn't. Your beliefs do not make something true. That is what we're doing here. Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true it does not protect you it is not allowed you are under oath that means things must actually be true when you say them don't talk you understand what i have said i do understand you understand the instructions i have given you for your testimony in court? Yes.

So there are moments like that which have proved quite cathartic. But the interesting thing is, so Knowledge Fight is the podcast which documents Alex Jones week in, week out. They do maybe six to nine hours a week dissecting his content. And they have done for, I over five years 700 episodes so they really know his shtick and they've been present at the court case and producing episodes and one of the hosts jordan has been kind of live tweeting the trial but they covered the kind of earlier stages of this trial the depositions so alex j Jones actually already lost this trial in a way which is very rare. Basically, his lawyers and the Infowars side failed so utterly to comply with

the requests that they were default. They were like judged to be guilty without the actual trial because they simply refused to engage with the process in a malicious way. But there were multiple hour depositions where exactly what's happening now happened. InfoWars employees were questioned under oath and with reference to documents that were submitted. And if you go back and look at the Knowledge Fight coverage of that, there's tons of very similar discoveries about how terrible Infowars editorial standards are, how utterly amoral a lot of them are in their approach to things like the Sandy Hook parents. But this case, the outcome was already clear. Like there's no Alex Jones getting off the question is how much damages he needs to be assigned but he's continued throughout the trial to on his show like go on insult one of

the followers of the parents saying that he was on the spectrum and obviously slow being manipulated by others he's put pictures of the judge up burning in flames referred to the demon forces being manipulated by sauros and stuff to take him down and constantly these things are being played in the court to kind of show how unseriously he's taking the proceedings and yeah that's that's been a sight to behold yeah yeah just that constant contempt of court i mean just flagrant lying pretending that he doesn't have an email account and he didn't send any emails and he would just say these things because he didn't want to release them obviously yes and and so this led to one of the moments that i think has become the most memeable from the trial.

And I'm going to play a little clip about where it happens, where essentially, as you'll hear, Alex and his lawyers had for many years been claiming that there were no messages or emails they had where they mentioned the Sandy Hook case. hook case and an obviously unbelievable claim but in any case here's a scene that happened from the trial which i think is quite um telling whose phone is this taking from i don't know this one's taken from i mean i just i turned the phone over and said take take your stuff off. Can I have you look in the very bottom below the very bottom left corner? Is that your phone number? Yes. So you did get my text messages. And it said you didn't. Nice trick.

Yes, Mr. Jones. Indeed. You didn't give this text message to me. You don't know where this came from. Do you know where I got this? No. Mr. Jones. Indeed. You didn't give this text message to me. You don't know where this came from. Do you know where I got this? No. Mr. Jones, did you know that 12 days ago, 12 days ago, your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone with every text message you've sent for the past two years, and when informed, did not take any steps to identify it as privileged or protect it in any way.

And as of two days ago, it fell free and clear into my possession. And that is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn't have a text message about Samuel. Did you know that? See, I told you the truth. This is your Perry Mason moment. I gave them my phone. Mr. Jones, in discovery, you were asked, do you have Sandy Hook text messages on your phone?

And you said no, correct? You said that under oath, didn't you? I mean, if I was mistaken, I was mistaken. But you got the messages right there you know what perjury is right i just want to make sure you know before we go any further you know what it is yes i do i mean i'm not a tech guy i told you i gave in my testimony the phone to the lawyers before whatever and so you got my phone but we didn't give it to you yeah just for the people who can't see chris's face he's was grinning like a Cheshire cat during that entire exchange.

And, well, he might because Alex Jones is a piece of shit and it is an absolute pleasure to see, finally, him getting actually caught and pinned down on just flagrant lying that he's done throughout that court case and is obviously his modus operandi and it's obviously ironic because he's there because of his lying lying about sandy hook you know he's making close to a million dollars a day at some point with info wars which is just based on these conspiratorial lies so um, yeah, he's hoping that some pretty strong punitive damages gets awarded against him,

in addition to the compensatory damages that have already been decided on. There is a possibility, although, you know, probably won't pan out, but essentially it seems that he lied under oath. It's a civil trial, so it's only capable of assigning damages, but Alex might end up facing criminal charges because of his testimony so there's that and i i i think this is important

to highlight apart from just the schadenfreude of of seeing such an outright conspiracy peddler and ideologue getting some comeuppance for what they did again just to highlight to the parents of dead children this is what this trial is about he set his followers on those parents and they've testified very powerfully about their experience and i'm being extremely brave in addressing him talking about the kids i think it's it's really to their credit. But this comes on the heels of, if you'll recall, a documentary coming out that essentially presented Alex in a very positive light, or at least a fairly complex figure who's trying to do the right thing. promoted by Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald. And so that now is looking like an ever more naive take on Alex, right? When he's actually forced to answer hard questions, when you actually dig into his rhetoric, rather than just allowing him to spout it uncritically,

he comes apart. And obviously the documentary Alex's War, war which he helped promote did not do this there's these weird connections because there's this nexus of bullshit where the same names keep cropping up hey chris like like this guy glenn greenwald who we should probably cover at some point he came across my radar again just recently this stupid segment on Sky News Australia which is Murdoch's instrument over here which is presented by this Australian right-wing crazy person Corey Bernardi who was citing Glenn Greenwald in this pro-Russian hit piece on Zelensky. Like all of these things are connected like what is Ukraine and Glenn Greenwald and the conspiracy theories around Infowars?

Why do the same names keep cropping up? Why are they so interconnected? It's interesting to me. We're going to look now. The next thing, before we get to the interview, we have just one more segment. So, you know, just hold your horses. And you'll see again, Alex Jones figures in and other figures from the conspiracy worlds are hopping around. And this is really a coda to the Lex episode that we talked about doing.

Because, you know, overall, we weren't particularly, I mean, I think we were critical of Lex, but we weren't too harsh. And some people complained, others thought we were too harsh you know that's fine that's that's just the way it goes but shortly after we released the episode or were preparing to release the episode Lex interviewed Rogan it was a kind of episode that you would expect with Lex and Rogan, a very indulgent mutual back-patting for multiple hours. But there was a segment where Lex discussed the possibility about Joe Rogan interviewing Trump. And I think it illustrates why Lex's naivety

is not just necessarily like a quirky character trait, but is actually something which has the potential to do genuine harm. Let me play a clip of Lex raising the topic. And by the way, I'm not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form. I've had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I've said no every time. I don't want to help him. I'm not interested in helping him.

The night is still young. We'll see. If I have him on, the night is still young? You think I i have him on the night is still young yeah i think i'll have him on i think you'll have him on really why do you think that because you'll have putin on and you're competitive as fuck no i i think ultimately um i mean you had you've had a lot of people that I think you may otherwise be skeptical. Would I have a good conversation? Which I think is your metric. You don't care about politics.

So can I have a good conversation? And I think you had like people like Kanye on for example and you had a great conversation with him. I think you – I think – But Kanye is an artist. But Kanye doing well or not doing well, doesn't change the course of our country. Yeah. But you don't, do you really bear the responsibility of the course of our country based on a

conversation? I think you can revitalize and rehabilitate someone's image in a way that is pretty shocking. So that's the start. What did you think of that, Mark? Well, Lex Friedman is impressive there because he's really showing that Joe Rogan has a much better sense of journalistic ethics than he does in this respect. He seems to have absolutely no awareness that there's any consideration apart from having a good conversation. Yeah, as you said, it's such a naive point of view. And it's surprising, actually, how easily it kind of gets weaponized into just giving you a free pass to do whatever the hell you want. It reminds me of Jordan Hall talking about, you know, the important important thing is like can i have a conversation with a neo-nazi can the conversation

hold as if that that in itself is a valuable thing to do and lex seems to be like you know what is the harm in just having an indulgent conversation with someone like donald trump to a massive audience and you know he doesn't seem to care about the consequences. And Rogan, to his credit here, as you say, he shows some consideration. And Les, to his credit, he then goes on to talk about his potential power to rehabilitate people's image. And let's see the example that he references. Look at the way people look at alex jones now because alex jones has been on my podcast a few times yeah how do they which direction the people that have watched those podcasts think he's hilarious and they think that he definitely fucked up with that whole sandy hook

thing um but he's right more than he's wrong and he's's not an evil guy. He's just a guy who's had some psychotic breaks in his life. He's had some genuine mental health issues that he's addressed. He's had some serious bouts of alcoholism, some serious bouts of, you know, substance abuse. And they've contributed to some very poor thinking. But if you know the guy, if you get to know him like like i have i've known him for more than 20 years and if you know him on podcasts you realize like he is genuinely trying to unearth some things that are genuinely disturbing for most people joe rogan's famous blind spot when it comes to alex jones he's not right more than he's wrong like no he's definitely definitely not and

i also don't think he's he's fundamentally a good guy like joe's interest in alex seems to be like you know rogan is also a conspiracy theorist type and i think he liked and still likes the idea that he's able to be friends with such a eccentric figure this crazy guy that everyone else is afraid of but joe's just you know they're just friends and they just have conversations like i think he likes that image of being able to handle figures like alex but the thing is he doesn't handle alex has used Joe on multiple occasions before one of his last appearances he created a feud he started like you know making threats to release videos that edited video of Rogan making racist comments that was an InfoWars video that was

produced as part of Alex's feud with Rogan so he created a conflict and then got himself as a reward on to joe's podcast joe got massive downloads for it alex got access to a bigger audience and they both win with very minimum pushback like when alex appears with joe all he does is ask jamie to google something that alex has mentioned and if there is any document that appears or news story they basically say wow you're not completely yeah totally totally vindicated yeah if you can google some reference to the world economic forum or something like that the other thing that annoys me too because you seem to see it a lot which is those references to you know some degree of alcoholism or some degree of substance abuse or whatever.

And which is kind of used to give someone like Alex Jones a free pass for everything that they've done and flagrantly continue to do. And it is similar to that empathic weaponization that Friedman does as well. organization that Friedman does as well it's actually using some of this kind of sort of almost social justicey kind of interpersonal sympathy and stuff where you get a free pass because you can claim some kind of if you're a little bit neurologically divergent or you've got some problems in your life whatever then well you know all is forgiven and you don't bear any responsibility for anything you've done. And I just see people using that across the political spectrum now more and more as a way to avoid any kind of responsibility for anything you do. Yeah. And the other point that we make about this clip is Joe knows what he's doing. So he recognizes that he has the power to rehabilitate Alex's image. And

it's something that he wanted to do. And he made that clear in the podcast at the end of the podcast where he had alex on he says you know i wanted people to see the real you and i hope now they understand that you're you know a good guy and so on so he knows what he's doing but um let's go back to hearing lex try to puzzle through the ethics of this situation and and see where he ends up yeah but sort of uh to push back in you you had those conversations with alex jones wouldn't you be able to have the same kind of conversation with donald trump's the problem reveal no it's not the problem you revealed that alex jones is a human being yeah he's fucked up he has demons in his. He's obviously chaotic all over the place, but there's some wisdom to the perspective he takes on the world. Even though he is often full of shit,

he's able to predict certain things that very few people are willing to bring up. So isn't Trump the same way? Fucked up person, egomaniac, whatever personality things you can talk about isn't it's worthwhile to lay it out like who's going to if you listen to interviews of trump who has the balls to call him out on his bullshit chris wall stood uh no calling out somebody on their bullshit is easy when you're just being adversarial but as a person who is genuinely empathetically trying to understand yeah i think you're really good at that like you pull them i don't know if he would genuinely As a person who is genuinely, empathetically trying to understand, I think you're really good at that. You pull them in. I don't know if he would genuinely be there.

You know what I'm saying? I think he would be putting on a performance. You don't think he can break through that in like 30 minutes? I'd need more time than that. And he doesn't do any drugs. That's the thing about Alex. You can get Alex high, get him drunk, and he'll start

talking about interdimensional child molesters yeah you know and then you you get the real alex or maybe maybe you have somebody else on as well to introduce chaos like alex no no no no i would have to be just me and him so lexus suggestion was why not not throw Alex into the mix while you interview Trump? Yeah. It all dovetails, doesn't it, with this internet attention culture, which is, lol, nothing really matters. Where as long as there's a drama, as long as there's some interpersonal thing going on, you know, get Trump and Jones and everyone into the mix and see what happens.

Haha, let's talk about interdimensional child molesters. I mean, it's that kind of talk that leads to parents of Sandy Hook getting harassed. It's that kind of talk that leads people down some crazy pizza gate conspiracy theory and into madness. And there's just absolutely no idea that there's anything wrong with any of that. It's all fun. It'll be good airtime. It'll get a lot of clicks. I mean, you and I have stayed away from Alex Jones because these are so obviously

insane and doesn't really fit with the more polished gurus that we tend to focus on. But I'm surprised by the degree to which so many figures from Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Lex Friedman, Joe Rogan, the way that he's become normalized, that they are quite willing to launder his reputation in all these different ways. I didn't expect them to be that scurrilous. Well, they present them as having like a crazy wisdom you know jonathan pageau i called him in the previous week about that video he did like dissecting the symbolism that alex jones is using and and how he argued that actually it's you know he's got the wrong words but he's he's fundamentally got great insight into the world and they all argue that and the example they usually go to is like the epstein case but as far as i've looked the mainstream media were covering the epstein

case like if you go back and look set your google thing and go back and look you will see coverage of the epstein case in the guardian on cnn You don't find articles on Infowars until after that, until after it is publicly known. And yes, there are lenient sentences and there is hesitance in some mainstream circles to focus on it. But actually, they are the ones who did the actual reporting. There's lots of critical articles. There's things in

pink vanity fair did this big in-depth article talking about the leniency of the punishment and and all of the evidence against epstein but it's presented as if no one was willing to talk about that except alex whereas the reality is alex didn't focus on it until mainstream investigative journalists covered it and he only became strongly focused on that whenever epstein became a big deal so he's not light years ahead he just goes back and makes a compilation video suggesting that he's been talking about epstein a lot for years but it isn't just like he never mentioned klaus swab until very recently if you go back and listen to his old content it's just not a figure because he's largely reactionary

to whatever narratives are in the far-right conspiracy ecosystem. Yeah, well, this goes to the more general point, which is that even if you concede or agree that conspiracy theories are real and real conspiracies are going on and it's important to uncover them, then that kind of conspiratorial going on and it's important to uncover them, then that kind of

conspiratorial ideation and irresponsible speculation is not the best way to uncover them. Just normal investigative journalism and normal critical thinking is the way to dig into those things. So there are people, quite a lot of people online who will defend Alex Jones's right to free speech and would see this kind of trial as being a worrying sign, like having a chilling effect. Even if they don't agree with or don't like Alex Jones, they would still see it as having a chilling effect on free speech. But free speech is obviously a good thing. But I increasingly see it being taken to this ridiculous extreme which is that like the freer the speech is the crazier the wisdom is to to refer to your thing before then the better it is and that just ain't so that ain't so yeah there should be consequences when you unleash hell on the parents of murdered

children who then are like harassed in their homes and need to move. And there needs to be consequences for those kind of actions if you want to live in this society. And, you know, I think we probably have highlighted that Rogan, although he's better than Lex in this segment and surprisingly takes a pretty decent perspective on why he shouldn't interview Trump on this show. But I do want to play this clip from the same interview where he's talking about, you know, the atmosphere that the Trump years created. And it takes a hard right turn at the very end from where you expect it's going to go. It's very telling of Joe Rogan and also quite funny.

It's already a weird time, you know, post-Trump. Like the Trump era is also going to be one of the weirder times when people look back historically about the division in this country. felt like they could abandon their own ethics and morals and principles just to to do whatever they want to do it's not trump's critics that immediately spring to mind right like it's it's trump land and all of the dubious character who opposed trump as a candidate and then fell in the line with his conspiracies and his claims of electoral fraud and that but but joe was like the real issue here is the the people who criticized trump too much and were you know conspiratorially minded against him yeah this is the spinozaur at the time which is that it's trump derangement syndrome that's the real problem here yeah yeah oh sure trump is a bit

quirky he's a bit he's a bit flaky he's a colorful personality but gee the way people respond to that they've really gone over the top uh yeah that's it's not how i remember things but and in contrast to that matt again there's still people that don't don't perceive rogan as having the right wing bias here's him talking about biden just shortly after that clip yeah i think it's gonna get weirder he's gonna run again you think he wins well he's running against a dead man you know i mean biden shakes hands with people that aren't even there when he gets off stage yeah i think he's seeing ghosts yeah you see him on jimmy kimmel the other day no well he was just rambling i mean he's if he was anyone else, if he was a Republican, if that was Donald Trump

doing that, every fucking talk show would be screaming for him to be off the air. So there you have it as usual. So you have the constant, constant undermining of anything that the Democratic Party does. You always see that with rogan and the minimization of trump and figures on the right and also the constant refrains to you know there's this terrible shit going down amongst progressive circles and democratic politicians but the mainstream media won't cover nobody is talking about it i think it's so unhinged because like the notion that Biden's mental decline is not a topic that receives coverage in the media is absolutely insane. It's wall to wall coverage as on in the right wing media system. It's every day and it has been since the start of his campaign but even in liberal circles there's a lot

of people that are very critical about biden and his capacity and the effects of age so the notion that this is something that nobody will dare touch such bullshit and contrast to his claim that if this was trump everybody would be leaping over it trump was the president trump did stuff like this all the time and people like joe rogan said it's not a big deal like people are exaggerating it's just this transparent double standards in play and it's yeah it's upsetting yeah i just want joe rogan and people like him to just admit that they're right-wing partisans like right-wing partisans don't intrinsically upset me any more than left-wing partisans. But the whole while, he pretends that he's a real liberal.

He's got no lean. Yeah, he's got no lean whatsoever. It's just annoying. Okay, Matt, the last little clip for this segment. Now, our episode on Lex, you know, we kind of portrayed him as a techno monk who was micromanaging every second and every calorie that entered his body. And I know that this kind of contradicts the image that he also likes to call it the rate of a spontaneous free spirit up for adventures and that kind of thing. I'm not sure sure this is from a very recent episode he did

with john carmack it's five hours long but i think that's the kind of episode which would be better for lex to focus on with programmer types or these kind of people but this is during the ad reads when lex's most inner feelings come out and i couldn't help but wonder had he listened to our episode because there's a note of defensiveness that you might detect. Okay. I use to track biological data from my body to make decisions about my life. By the way, I'm not one of those people that tries to optimize every single aspect of my life. There are certain personalities that are attracted to tech, are also attracted to this kind of rigorous optimization with like a spreadsheet tracking every single aspects of your life.

And you have this notion that it's possible to live an optimal life. Optimal defined by some kind of metrics that are measurable. You know, it's like a, you know, you have a smart home that have lights automatically turned on, in the same way have like a smart body that can control every single aspect of your life, including relationships, diet, exercise, productivity, all that kind of stuff. I am not one of those people. I barely make plans. I don't really I am not one of those people. I barely make plans.

I don't really want to ruin the romance of life by over-planning, over-strategizing, over-controlling every single aspect of my life. I do try to have discipline as part of my life because it is true. I think that Jocko talks about discipline is freedom. When you have this kind of base of daily activity you can improvise on top of that you can break the rules but you need to have the rules in order to break them

so Insight Tracker collects data from your body that can help you make decisions about your body but it doesn't force you to have a kind of very strict very perfect life, you should very perfect life you should still live life you should still do stupid stuff yeah maybe maybe i don't know but you know the notion that lex is not somebody who plans out his days rigorously and is concerned with the amount

of calories and stuff kind of contradicted by the content that we looked at last time but you know people contain multitudes yeah yeah that's fine no comment from me who can say who can say look at you trying to be the good guy um so so matt the time has come it's time to bid you adieu because you were unable to be there for the interview this time. And it's with our previous guest, Elgin Strait. We wanted to have Elgin back on because of the recent assassination of the ex-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe because he was assassinated by a young man whose family member is Muller was a member of the Unification Church in Japan and this was he explained the motivation for why he targeted Abe because Abe had some connections to the group and had spoken at their events. And so Elgin is a second generation now ex-Eudification Church member, has a podcast where he speaks with other ex-members. And so wanted to discuss the event with him and some of the insights that he might have,

not to justify the actions that were taken but more to understand the feelings of a second generation member and and put the assassination into the context of the unification church and its actions there so well have a good time uh enjoy yourselves i'll go and sit in the corner for an hour, an hour and a half, however long it takes. And I'll see you again for the outro. Yes. Okay.

Okay. So welcome back Elgin street, the host of the falling out podcast and previous guest decoder. When we looked at the content of Reverend Moon with your help. And for anybody listening or watching, you will notice that there is 50% of the decoding decoder's theme missing. Some would say the better half is missing. And that's primarily because we are recording at a late hour and matt is very old

and needs his beauty sleep but elgin is based in uk so our our time difference coordination means that late night is a is a good fit so thanks for coming elgin it's good to see you again and sorry matt isn't here no worries no. He's going to miss out. I'm doing an admirable job in his absence. But yeah, thanks for the invite. It's a pleasure to be here. I guess I didn't, never quite expected to be back under these circumstances, I don't think.

Yeah. And so for anybody that hasn't listened to the episodes with you in them, you were a second generation member of the Unification Church, referred to as the Moonies. And I'd advise people to go back and listen to the episode, the interview that we did with you and the Reverend Moon Decoding, or they can go and listen to your podcast where

you are having discussions with other former members of the church. So the recent event, which led to me contacting you or both, both of us contacting each other is that the former prime minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was assassinated recently in quite a shocking event, especially in the case in Japan, because guns are so rare and, you know, political assassinations also tend not to happen that often in developed democracies. So his death was a big, I think a big event the world over, but also a particularly shocking event for Japan. but also a particularly shocking event for Japan. And then what emerged subsequently is that the motivation for the shooting seems to be connected to the Unification Church.

And Shinzo Abe's involvement with the church marked him out as a legitimate target in the rhetoric of the shooter. So obviously that was, I think, unexpected from the possible range of motivations that, that could come up. But maybe from your perspective, not as unforeseeable. Um, and, and so I thought it would be good to have a talk with you about that whole event and the relationship with the unification church and

politicians and high profile figures in Japan and further field, and also and further afield, and also the potential feelings of people who have had their lives disrupted, destroyed by the church. So I want to make clear that none of what we say is intended to justify the actions of assassinating Abbe, because regardless of the level of resentment or justification for what he's done in supporting the church, the appropriate reaction is not to shoot him dead. It probably goes without saying, but nonetheless, I want to make it clear. But I think understanding the context around it is important and you seem very well-placed to do that.

Well, yeah, I guess let me just thank you for laying that out. the context around it is important and you seem very well pleased to do that well yeah i guess let me just thank you for for laying that out and i think yeah let me just start by saying and i i can understand the motivation as soon as i understood the connection personally i i understood it i don't support taking the action that he did, but I understand the motivation. And ultimately, it's driven of anger and rage at the destruction that the Unification Church has wrought upon their lives and the lives of their families. So I understand that rage deeply. And I think my show is sort of a litany of witness testimonies effectively to the abuses of the organization. So yeah, it kind of goes without question that the Unification Church is a destructive organization.

And then I think Abe himself, he's emblematic. He's symbolic of all of the corrupt institutions that one might go to if a family member fell prey to this predatory organization. And this is what's kind of coming to light more and more now. But I explained this. I talked about this when I was on your show last. First of all, we talked about the predatory financial nature of the group. So the amount of donations that are demanded from people, which is higher in Japan than it is anywhere else.

And Japan is known throughout the organization as being the money center because they just force people harder. They coerce them harder to donate more. So it's very well known that most of the money comes from Japan through coercion to start with. But that's just the beginning. So we talked about the money, but then we also talked about this litany of front groups. And so Abe, as recently as 2021, was speaking at an event hosted by a Mooney front group called the Universal Peace Federation. Again, has this sort of innocuous name, who's going to quibble with the idea of world peace. But at this event, it was one of the speakers. He's quoted in that event praising Hak-Jahan Moon, the leader of the Moonies now. And he is one of many, many politicians.

I did it on a recent episode and in a video I dropped recently on YouTube. I spent about five minutes just reading the list names of retired politicians who have spoken at recent events. Stephen Harper, the former PM from Canada, but also the former European Council Chairman, current Chairman at Goldman Sachs, former politicians from Cambodia, Guatemala, the Philippines, Spain, like prime ministers and PMs. Donald Trump. Donald Trump as well, Mike Pence. All of these people, these are highly influential people that

are paid to speak at these events and that money comes from the coercion. So Tetsuo Yamagami's mother, so the killer's name is Tetsuo Yamagami, the money that his mother was coerced into giving to this organization went into the pockets of the Abe's and the Trumps and the other folks who spoke at these events. And then the Moonies turn around and say, hey, look, Abbey speaking at our events, look, this is evidence of God's providence working through us. So their mere presence is also furthering the cycle of abuse. And I mean, that's highly problematic, but it gets more problematic because if you're Tetsuyo, he wasn't born into this. He was born outside of it, and his mother was recruited into it.

I think when he was about 10 years old. And so he grew up within it from the age of 10. And if you were faced with those circumstances and you saw the devastation that this organization wrought upon your mother and your family. Where would you want to go with that? What sort of recourse would you have? You might think, oh, I could talk to my local MP, my local minister of parliament or whatever the political setup is in your town or city or country. But if Abe's in on the gig and it looks like a lot of other Japanese members of parliament are in on the gig, then where do you go? You have nowhere to turn. That institution is corrupted. And it

goes further than that because the Unification Church, number one, they have their own media outlets, but they also invite journalists to events hosted by front groups with names like the International Media Association for Peace. Again, very innocuous sounding names. They invite them to speak at these events, and then they may or may not know the Mooney connection before speaking there, but afterwards, those people are tainted by the corruption. So they're much less likely to write articles that would expose the manipulation, the abuse, and the hypoxia of the organization. So they've intentionally corrupted the media as well. So again, if you're Tetsuya Yamagami, where do you go?

There's nowhere that you can go to find any sort of recourse for this. works for this. Yeah. The thing which struck me about the event initially is that Tetsuya being very frustrated and, you know, upset about this, the situation for his Mueller, and I think his uncle is reported that it was a hundred million yen, like $720,000 around that was donated. So a huge amount. I don't know if that's externally validated, but that's a figure that's been cited.

And I can understand the grievance, but the part that like kind of didn't initially make a huge amount of sense to me was Abby is a speaker at the unification church. Yes. Abhi is a speaker at the Unification Church, yes. But like you know, so many politicians and elite figures are. So by targeting him, it felt like, you know, if your grudge is with the organization, why would you not target the organization directly, like one of the leaders of the group or that kind of thing? So I, I would be interested in your opinion on that, but I did see in some reporting that he mentioned that he believed that Abe's grandfather was the person responsible for inviting the unification church to Japan.

So it may have been that he thought there was a personal familial responsibility and Abbe was still involved. But again, it just, it did feel to me like the targeting of Abbe just meant that initially when it was reported, whenever they said the Japanese media referred to it as kind of saying some group initially, and then it said some religious group and then eventually the unification church, but that confused a lot of people like, well, why. You know, Abby is a nationalist figure.

He is associated with right wing Shinto groups in Japan as well. But the unification church felt like that's that's low down on this list of you know things that that people would be protesting about him over so okay so yeah i i wondered about that like is there a feeling that amongst members or or second generation members that the the outside figures who are enabling the church that they are particularly culpable because they're not members and they don't really endorse the theological beliefs or that kind of thing or is that just a specific this case thing um no so personally i think these people are culpable i don't know i can't speak for for the rest of the community but many of them i think are culpable particularly people

who speak at multiple events hosted by the moonies you know you can kind of do it once and maybe you didn't know but the second time around uh and especially the people who are saying oh i praise dr hak jahan moon like in their remarks at these events, which is something that Abe said, they know. And I do think they're culpable. So, yeah, it doesn't surprise me. And in terms of there's a couple of things I want to address there. So in terms of Abe and the historical relationship you mentioned with his grandfather, I believe that is the case. And my understanding is that the Unification Church and the right wing in Japan have been

very closely linked for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Similar to America. And this is actually something that I wasn't really aware of until this Abe thing happened, just because I grew up in America and I just don't know Japan that well, but they've been courting the right wing in Japan for a long time. And their connections go far beyond Abe. There are a lot more politicians that have been in on this for a long time. I know at least one current sitting member of parliament, his name escapes me, but there's another Japanese MP who spoke at the same event that Abe did last year. There's another Japanese MP who spoke at the same event that Abe did last year. And I mean, he hasn't been assassinated.

I don't know what he's doing these days or if he's still a member of parliament, but it's at least one there. But I think that there are, as far as I understand, there are a lot of connections between right-wing politics in Japan and the Unification Church. They go very deep. They're very historical. In the Unification Church, they go very deep. They're very historical. And I think Abe was just sort of symbolic of being sort of the top of that pyramid, effectively. Again, I know if this is being widely reported on over there, but it's been reported on in a few places over here in the UK and the US that Yamagami's first intended target was not Abe. And it was, in fact, Hak Chahan Moon, the current leader of the Moonies. So Reverend Moon's widow. Yamagami intended to kill her first, and he wasn't able

to. He wasn't able to attend an event that she was at or something like that I don't I don't know the specifics but she was the first intended target and he couldn't get to her um and then he he then moved on to Abe as a target oh I see no I I'm not sure if it's been reported on or not, but I hadn't seen that information. So that does explain it. Still, I mean, the thing which makes all of this a little bit harder to grasp is like, you know, as sharky as it would be in the US or even more so in the UK, right, if a politician was assassinated, especially in the U S there's historical

precedent and it's, it's a distinct possibility, right? Because of the prevalence of guns. But in this case, the thought that somebody would construct their own gun in order to assassinate someone that like that combination, it means that Yamagami is also an outlier just because he used a gun. And of course, like a gun, you know, it's the most effective way for it to happen. But a homemade gun is a kind of, the whole situation, I think there had only been under 10 shootings in Japan this year.

And that's the case every year. I think three. And so it kind of marks him out as unhinged because of that, doing that. I mean, assassinating anybody kind of requires a particular mindset, but it feels like that's not a step that almost anyone in Japan would plan to take. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like that the, the motive for this is that it's almost anyone in Japan would plan to take. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like that the, the motive is understandable, but the solution feels like it's not really there.

Although I will say that I suspected, and I saw other people have this take that initially that if his goal had been to kind of discourage people from following abe's path like that's a bad thing to do because you've created a martyr and now there will be public support for kind of abe's political position because of sympathy over what what had happened but it does seem and i'm'm not, I'm not saying this in any way to endorse the tactic, but it has brought a lot of attention. That was not there on the unification church in Japan and the connections to politicians.

So I noticed just today that the Japanese communist party, which is admittedly a relatively fringe party in Japan, but they are launching a probe into connections with the unification church in the LDP. And, and there is coverage about for the state funeral, some of the people involved having potential ties and discussion. So it, it does seem, and they, perhaps it's inevitable that it would throw attention onto the Unification Church and its role in politics. So I don't know, like, I'm not saying therefore that, you know, that, that,

that was a good thing to do or successful, but it does seem like it at least was not kind of productive to the outcome if you wanted people to be aware of this yeah connection i know and that's something that i've thought about as well again like i mean i've been sometimes for the last you know two-ish years of doing this podcast i feel like i've been screaming into the void and some people have listened some people haven't now all of a sudden after this killing like the world is the world is taking notice and you know we're having this conversation and other people are having conversations so it has brought attention to it i mean i'm sad that it's taken this for for people to take this problem seriously but like it or not, it feels like the world is taking it seriously now.

So I agree. I don't condone the action, but it does feel like the goal was achieved. Yeah. And I guess the conflicting... I got the sense when I watched your video responding to the event that like, there's a level of empathy for the situation that Tetsuya was in that is, I think, inevitably lacking from people like myself, right? Because we can like intellectually understand the situation, but haven't seen that kind of thing happening firsthand.

And so when you and I talked about, for example, and you mentioned that there are people in Japan who are paying extortionate amount of money for trinkets, I think you said on the episode, like it registers, right? But you just kind of glide on to the next point. And if you are the people being directly impacted by that, it's your whole life. It can be your whole family or generations of your family that are destroyed by it.

So I guess I'm just saying that members and ex-members having a stronger degree of empathy for the, the frustration and the reaction i think is understandable but it but inevitably conflicting because he's an assassin so yeah i mean i feel conflicted here trust me like i have like max max empathy for the guy, but I'm, the whole mood in Japan in general was just kind of one of collective shock and, you know, a very somber attitude towards it. And it felt like people were just processing what, what had happened and the whole unification church angle, at least initially seemed to just be a bit confusing. This is because, you know, Abbe is a controversial figure primarily because

of his like right-wing politics and attempts to adjust the constitution in the, in order to allow Japan to have a military again. So, so that seemed like it would be the thing, which, you know, would, would have motivated such extreme reactions. So, yeah, I think over here, it caught people a little bit off guard and maybe in a similar way to the om Shinrikyo gas attack where like people have been aware of, um, they, they, they had a public profile, but it was only with the gas attack that, that the, basically the, the attention completely shifted and in that case it was the organization doing the attack.

So that was understandable. was the organization doing the attack. So that was understandable, but yeah, here again, I think this is going to reinforce a lot of Japanese attitudes towards religion as a potentially dangerous area, particularly new religions and, um, and foreign religions. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a messy messy messy quagmire yeah and what else can you say about yeah i'm really curious like what is what's the what's the reaction in japan to all this i mean you address some of that but i'm actually really fascinated by by that and and can you i've heard that the japanese press is not is not doing a great job of covering this,

or at least for a while that they weren't. And some people are kind of insinuating that it's because they're sort of corrupted in the same way that the politicians are. Yes. So, I mean, I have to preface my comments by saying I'm coming from a very partial perspective, right? Because I'm only mainly interacting with students and my family and, you know, like follow the media to some extent, but not in detail. So my perspective is very subjective. But I think, like I said, that the predominant reaction was one of shock and disbelief that that kind of event would occur. And then in terms of the media coverage, so like a lot of people picked up that the wording initially was unclear. In Japanese, the phrase was very unspecific, right?

It was basically just saying a certain group was involved. And I think over here as well, that struck people as unusual not to name, but it's not that unusual for the Japanese press to be deferential and hesitant, especially, I think, in this case, it could be because of unification church connections and pressure in like media. But I also think it could be concerns that, you know, this event is potentially extremely volatile and for them to name an organization without it being confirmed like in america i think the press would very much more at least a lot of press organizations would be willing to mention rumors whereas in japan i think they are less willing to do so especially

when it has potential political consequences. So it could have been pressure. It could have been just a more deferential or more like hesitant culture in the media. And I did see then that foreign media was more quick to highlight the connections to the Unification Church. to highlight the connections to the unification church but it was only it was only a couple of days at least in some of the media over here till those connections started being mentioned so yeah that struck me as odd initially but i i couldn't tell you know what was the motivating factor and i i did see people presenting that it was because of the potential influence of the

Minis, but I don't know if that is the case. It could be, but it could also just be that the Japanese media is like that. Okay. All right. Yeah. I just don't have the context to know what's normal or not. And I would just hear this. I can also say, incidentally,

I think a couple of days after it happened, I spoke to a former church member who's Japanese, but living in Korea. And at the time, they said that all of the newspapers in Korea were reporting the name of the Unification Church with the exception of one paper. The paper was the Sege Ilbo, which is owned by the Moonies. So there's a connection there, you know? Yeah, and I have seen criticism in media in Japan over some of the statements made by the Unification Church since. Like some things about them saying that they didn't have any problems with their members.

And then obviously they do. Yeah. Their claim is that, oh, no one's forced to do anything. Everyone is giving these donations voluntarily. They're completely leaving out the fact that as a member, you're basically taught that if you want to get to heaven, you have to give as much as possible. And if you don't, your ancestors in the spirit world will hate you for all of eternity. And they will ridicule you in the spirit world if you don't give enough money to save them, to save their souls in the

spirit world, basically. That's just kind of foundational to the theology. So they say, oh, we don't force anything, but it's massive coercion, massive, massive coercion. And they're completely dodging accountability for that. So that actually highlights something that I wanted to make sure I asked you about, which was, so the amounts of money that that are being reported are are very large and you were in our previous discussion at pains to emphasize that like a lot of this revolves around money and and getting donations or or front organizations and also potential

involvement in like businesses right the sushi business and this kind of thing. But so I wanted to ask Elgin, like for people like the family involved here, what is likely to be the kind of the pattern for donations? And I, it might be different in japan but like is there tithes that people are supposed to provide or is it specific holy goods that they purchase or what how is that amount of money being funneled in by an individual yeah it's a good question so and there's multi-layered so the to start with, there's a monthly tithe that's expected of members. For context, in the West, so I grew up in theapan it's 30 so 30 of every paycheck which is probably about 50 after tax so yeah 30 before tax uh you're expected to tithe to the organization just just to

start with so that's just that's every month every paycheck you're and you're given that and just just for clarification is the 30 because of the kind of hierarchy, like ethnic hierarchy or potential discrimination? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm glad you're asking that. So the church has this idea that effectively certain people sort of bear the sins of their ancestors and sort of bear the sins of their people effectively, more or less. And so particularly because, and this is where you can start reading into the psychology of Moon when he started this thing, but because of the atrocities committed historically by the Japanese against the Koreans in Moon's worldview, the Japanese need to pay more for their sins, worldview, the Japanese need to pay more for their sins, more or less. And as a result, more is demanded from them financially. And that 3X multiplier on the tithing is just the tip of the iceberg. At every other stage of their coercion, as far as I have seen, they are always

asked to contribute more than people from other countries. And it's like, you'll see it. I've seen priceless for like, we're having some special ceremony for Western members. It costs a hundred dollars for Japanese. It costs $300. And it's just like, they're just in writing plain as day, this mechanism for them to so-called pay for their sins effectively. So yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. And it's kind of, it's a hard concept to explain. And I don't know if that's something that people really appreciate in this circumstance, but also because of that, once you bought into that, you've also kind of bought in just conceptually to the idea that it's your historical providential duty as a Japanese person to pay.

That's part of being it. It's just buying into that mentality of like, okay, if I believe in this faith, then it's my job as a Japanese person to pay whatever they ask me to do. So that's a foundational belief just to be part of it, right? Yeah. There's an interesting, just an aside, and I want you to continue, Elgin, but the kind of weird aspect of that a little bit for me is that the right wing in Japan, obviously, is connected with the history of World War II and minimizing things like, you know, Abe is on record as downplaying the issue of comfort women in World War II. And so that's an odd angle to it,

because, you know, the right wing in America obviously has a position which is more aligned because of opposition to North Korea, right? And South Korea. But in Japan, like aligning with the far right actually would place you in kind of conflict with mainstream political opinion in South Korea. So it's an interesting wrinkle. Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately Moon was just an opportunist. At the end of the day, there was no real consistency and he would team up with whoever he thought could further his aims.

But yeah, I agree with you that Japanese nationalism would appear to go directly contradictorily towards the ideas that I've just described of Japanese owing the Koreans for their sins, basically. But somehow these people are able to hold both of those ideas in their head at the same time. I guess the point is the politicians are not being asked to sign on to that, right? They just need to show up. Yeah, this is the thing. Abe didn't believe any of this shit, or at least as far as I know, he didn't believe any of it. He doesn't really think that Moon is the Messiah. He doesn't believe in the blood lineage. He doesn't believe in the providence of restoration, all this sort of crap that the church is talking about.

All he's doing is showing up and getting paid and whatever other political stuff is happening. I'm sure there is other stuff happening behind the scenes, but he's showing up lending his face getting paid it doesn't mean he believes in any of it but he's getting paid so he doesn't care yeah yeah so sorry for sidetracking but that it's very interesting but so you were describing the like income streams and yeah yeah so first hiding so yeah so first it starts with the tithing right that's just 30 just every month um and then on on top of that there are multiple expectations that are placed on you and they can take multiple forms when I was growing up, what I saw was, okay, the moons are doing a speaking tour in all 50 states in the US and every member has to donate another $3,000 this month to help with

this, to help with this. And then three months later, oh, they're doing another speaking tour. Everyone needs to donate another $3,000. There's always another tour or another layer to the so-called providence that requires people to donate money. So this can easily be probably tens of thousands of dollars per year that people would be paying on these additional burdens to support the providence here, there, or wherever. And then they add layers on top of that. So they have this concept of liberating your ancestors from their suffering in the spirit world. And guess what?

You have to pay to liberate them. You have to pay. And to do that, so first of all, you have to pay to go to a workshop at their workshop center in Korea. You pay to go there. There are workshop fees to go there. And this is probably like a couple thousand dollars to spend a week or two there.

But then you have to pay to liberate your ancestors. And it's done on a per generation basis. So you can easily spend thousands more liberating generations of ancestors. And then guess what? In six months time, they can come back and be like, you know what? Fantastic. You've just liberated your last 10 generations of ancestors. Guess what? Due to the heavenly great grace of God and true parents, you can now liberate the next 10 generations. And guess what? That's going to cost you another 10 or 20 grand. So that's an infinite well that never runs dry. Effectively, these layers of so-called providential graces are blessings that you can receive and every single one of them costs money.

So they're effectively always moving the goalposts and always demanding more and more money every step of the way. Yeah. So there's the history of, I don't know if you're familiar or not, Elgin, with indulgences in the medieval Catholic Church, right? That were part of the instigation for the Reformation, where people could pay to get people out of purgatory. But the interesting thing for me is because of my familiarity with East Asian religions and also new religious movements in Japan, that emphasis on liberating ancestors or disgruntled spirits, including like children that might have been aborted or that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. There's a very common pattern. Yeah. Yeah. There's a very common pattern. And, and even in the mainstream religions in,

in Japan and Buddhism, there's a thing which is criticized and labeled funerary Buddhism, whereby Buddhist temples are paid what seemed like exorbitant amounts to give a posthumous names, Buddhist names to the deceased, which will enable them to be reborn in better circumstances. And so it feels like what you're describing fits into a cosmology or a religious type of practice, which is quite prevalent, and it can be found in mainstream religions, and it can be found in new religious movements. But I have noticed that new religious movements seem to have that particular well about unsatisfied ancestors and the need to properly respect them or kind of pacify them is is something that like a whole bunch of new religious movements focused on and it seems to be psychologically very effective at you know encouraging people to donate their time and money so yeah and are those mostly mostly eastern new

religious movements that are relying on it i don't study this stuff so i don't really know yeah i i mean i i guess i i hadn't thought about it too much like you know weller it applies across but i i think that is in general in east asian religions the kind of focus on ancestors and properly displaying respect for the ancestors is a common motif. But there's also a tied in notion that your misfortune in this life, like if you are not as successful as you would like to be, you're having relationship difficulties, that that can be.

So actually, pacifying your ancestors or properly displaying the respect can be the way that you solve your problems in this life. Yeah, that's a huge part of it as well. And that's a huge part of the Unification Church's theology as well. And it goes deeper into even things like sickness or illness. So they believe that if you have some sort of misfortune in this life, including sicknesses, they can be cured by liberating your ancestors. And part of that is the payment, which we've discussed, but part of it is also, I'd be curious to hear if you hear

about this in other religions, but they do this ceremony called An-su, that's its Korean name. And it's basically going, so that the workshop center that i mentioned to you earlier in korea you go there and you go in a room full of a couple thousand people and they they beat this this big drum like a really big sort of korean folk drum on the stage and you start singing these songs all in unison and it generates this kind of like group i don't know this sort of group group high of all these people like like singing thousands of people singing in unison. And then while you're doing this, you start beating the person in front of you. So someone is guiding people to like, to beat the person in front of them, uh, and various places on their body and by beating, and then you, but you beat yourself too.

I've been to this place, by the way, I've done this. Uh, and when you beat in principle and you're beating the other person or beating yourself, you're beating the evil spirits out of you. So that's a whole thing. And that's, this is actually a really horrible place. And I mean, to give you a sense, like, you know, homosexuality is a big no-no in the, in the unification church. If someone was homosexual, they would send them to this place to try to beat the the sinful ancestors out of them to you know cure them of homosexuality so is the degree to which like you're kind of striking the other person is it is it like i'm trying to imagine the level of force like is it you know kind of more symbolic or is it the case that like afterwards people would have bruises and welts? Some people would have bruises and welts depending on who you sat in front of. It would just, it would, it would depend.

And yeah, how, I guess what mood that person was in. Yeah. thing and again like i'm always aware i kind of like have a academic mindset about you know adding in disclaimers that i'm sure there are groups that i don't know about that do x y and z and so on but i think the synchronized performance of movements and chanting is common religious organizations the world over but but but in particular i will say that in various events in Japan, in mainstream religious events, or, you know, some people refer to them as cultural events, but like festivals, there, there are these kind of group spiritual exercises performed collectively, and I've done them together with people.

And, and they do instigate a feeling of connection with the other people there, but in those cases, you know, there's no physical contact with the other people and there are isolated festivals and stuff in Japan where there is, you know, fighting each other with sticks and that kind of thing. But I, I don't think what you're describing would be common except in the context of certain new religious movements. And even then I haven't heard this specifically what you're describing,

but I do know about mass purification rituals where, you know, like for example, there's a giant pyre built and thousands of votive kind of wooden blocks that people write things on, burned collectively, and then people would be chanting together at those events. But that sounds like less directly physiologically stimulating than getting hit by the person next to you. Yeah, it's an intense experience. I've done it a few times in my life. I'm glad that was many years ago. But I also just want to point out, it's a dangerous practice, and the potential for abuse and the actuality of the abuse is massive. Like I've heard stories, stories of people who talk about

people with like severe mental illnesses being taken to this place. And the parents are basically told, look, if you leave your kid here for like six months or a year, then he's going to be cured of, you know, whatever illness. And so this poor kid is in this environment, like probably doesn't even know what's going on and is just getting beaten day in and day out like it's a really scary it's a really fucking scary thing it sounds similar to you know like if you take any random member of scientology for example and especially second generation members of course the given the nature ofology, there might be experiences that are troubling, but there will be a lot of people for whom it's, it functions just in a similar manner

to an established religion. You know, they believe in some things and they attend some ceremonies and whatnot, but it doesn't have a massive impact on them. And they might be upset about how vilified it is. But then there are the cases where there are, you know, members that are held against their will or are treated very badly for mental illness or for disbelieving with the group. And these are the kinds of things that, although they do happen in

mainstream religions as well, they tend to be either less common or cause huge controversies. In the same way, you know, like child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church or that kind of thing. It's not everyone that happened to. I was Catholic. I didn't experience that. But the prevalence of it and the possibility of it means that like it's a it's a systematic issue that you have to contend with and that what you're describing sounds the same way that like a lot of the institutions that are set up in the unification church enable abuse and exploitation

absolutely absolutely even if it doesn't happen that all members will be donating $720,000 or that kind of thing. I agree. Yeah. The whole system is set up to enable abuse. And yeah, I don't think every member has, you know, donated $720,000. I don't know how much my parents have donated, but actually if I think about the course over the course of their church membership, it's not unreasonable for that number to be hit over the course of 40 or 50 years. I never actually thought about that, but holy fuck, that's probably not impossible. It's not that far. I don't know what what it was but it wasn't that far off for my parents i would i would say that and this does seem like something

that marks out a lot of new religious movements from more established ones because like for example in in the catholic church people donate money right at least on on sunday services you know they pass around the offering but that was, you know, a couple of pints or five pints. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a big difference between that over the course of a lifetime. Of course, that adds up as well, right? But it does not add up in the same way. And yeah, so you know what?

You know, in catholic church they send around the the collection plate uh yeah so what they what they would do i remember my dad would every sunday he'd go to church and he'd pull out his checkbook and he would write his like month whatever 10 was i don't know what the number was he would just write that down in the checkbook and then just put it in the in in the collection plate. So that's. Wow. Yeah. That would,

if you put that in the Catholic church, I've got a feeling that the person would be like, what the hell is this? And I don't know. I mean, I'm sure they've probably moved on. I'm sure it's electronic now or something or something. I don't know exactly,

but that's that's how it worked back then um yeah well listen i really appreciate you coming on and and talking about the event and and just more details about your experience and how the church functions is there anything before we wrap up that you want to mention and or resources that you would point people towards that are good? Your podcast, obviously. Yeah, I would say, well, yeah, so my podcast kind of paints a mosaic picture of all of these abuses, not necessarily from Japan. In fact, I have yet to interview someone from Japan, although I have an upcoming guest, an American woman who was married to a Japanese man and saw a lot of this type of abuse just in a different country. But still, that sentiment we had of Japanese people owing more was something that she had a first-person experience with.

So that I think is quite interesting. That's coming up soon. So definitely check out my show, Falling Out, if you're interested in that. chris if you wouldn't mind putting a link to that youtube video oh yeah in the show notes um so i made a video that explains my understanding of the motivation of abby's killer i've also got another video coming up soon which um uh looked at the unification church and makes a very i think compelling point that it is it meets all the definitions of a human trafficking organization and should be treated as such. And it calls out two people who work for two prominent companies. One of them is Goldman Sachs and one of them is AstraZeneca. These companies both have anti-human trafficking charters. And at the end of this video, there's a call to action where I'm basically asking these people to make good on the fact that they've taken money from

human traffickers. So appreciate if you can put that in the show notes. And yeah, follow me on Twitter at FallingOutPod where I tweet about this stuff and hopefully spur some action and some change and some greater visibility on these issues. Yeah, definitely. All of the material you mentioned, I'll link and I'll also put the links. A lot of people should be able to find it to the previous episodes. So I'm sorry to speak to you again under these circumstances, Elgin, but I really appreciate your insight and being willing to go through the issues again. So keep up the good work. Thank you.

Thank you. And likewise, appreciate the invite. All right. Well, that was that. Did you learn much from that, Matt? Have you had valuable insights now? You understand the situation a lot better? Yes.

Yes, it was very good. I had to bite my tongue the whole time. I really wanted to put my tongue the whole time i really wanted to put my two cents in but uh due to the constraints of time and space that was physically not possible but yeah no good stuff chris always good to catch up with elgin it's i'm sorry i couldn't be there for it yeah object permanence that old chestnut um and so matt now from the heavy subject of cults and assassinations, we move to... I shouldn't use this segue.

I was going to say we move to character assassinations directed at us. Maybe I'll cut that. It's a bit on the nose. A bit on the nose. Yeah. It's a bit on the nose. I'll say we'll move now to lighter fare. Just podcast feedback.

Substantially lighter concerns for anyone in the world with our review of reviews. Favorite segment. Favorite segment. But this is a segment that depends entirely on you, the audience, the haters and the lovers, to put those feelings down, express them in written form on the Apple whatever, iTunes review website thingy. Chris, do you have someone who loves us? Somebody who hates us?

So there's some interesting ones this week. And there's a five star one, which is actually quite critical. So I thought this was quite good. It's by Residue Blue. The title is, hmm, five stars or so. Then they say, this is an interesting one. Really interesting show. These guys are smart,

and I've learned a lot about critical thinking. Enough to see that at times they are committing the faux pas they are criticizing. Chris, we've trained him too well. We've been so good at instructing in critical thinking. He's turned that weapon upon us. What have we done? This is, yeah, we should have, like, you know, RoboCop has those lines of code, like, do not attack OCP members.

So we need to instill in our listeners like do not turn our critical lens like it's not fair like the three laws of robotics but for podcasts yep yeah yeah for those who don't know robocop references sorry some people weren't born in the 80s yeah some people read classic sci-fi instead of watching trash movies but you know trash movie how dare you there's there's a critique of capitalism in there i'll have you know i'd buy that for a dollar sometimes they make straw men out of the arguments they disagree with they take a relatively nuanced claim and then they mock it with the least charitable and extreme interpretation. Despite grinding my teeth quite a lot through some

of these episodes, they also weirdly put my mind at ease. If you want to be reassured the world isn't crazy, powerful people are mostly doing the best they can, and any self-promotion is shameful and unearned, you'll get plenty of'll get plenty still it's a great show keep up the good work matt and chris now matt one thing here that i think you took the wrong lesson if the the notion is that the great and powerful people of the world are mostly doing their best that's never been something i want to suggest like that's that's not the message but um yeah yeah just just wanted to caveat that no that's right our message is if you be critical of the great and the good but do it in a non-conspiratorial non-fantasy based way please yeah yeah just accept that

the organizations are imperfect and the people are terrible and inconsistent and start from there, then move on. Then everything makes sense. It's not, things aren't so surprising. Yeah. But that doesn't mean Elon Musk is just doing his best. Are we all doing our best, Chris, in a way? We're all trying. But there's a PS, Matt.

There's a PS, sort of a stinger to this uh review and i think i feel it kind of actually in some senses what's that word it like when you're proven correct after being slandered um vindicated vindicated vindicated yeah i felt vindicated by this so a ps came i'm writing this after listening to a bunch more episodes i'm starting to really appreciate how susceptible i must be to the gurus especially with brett weinstein i never took any of his advice i still wear sunscreen but it all seems so tentative and reluctant yet grandiose i still feel like these idw figures are worth listening to though even if it's just for entertainment yeah there you go that does feel like vindication yeah think we're just

like you know burning down straw men now no think about it we're in a couple months you know grind your teeth take the bad medicine swirl it around and then slowly you'll start to feel better. And you'll notice maybe the medicine wasn't the problem. Like Darth Vader says, if you look at your heart, you'll know what we say to be true. Yeah. Now, with that indulgent little waddle through feeling vindicated, let's turn to William Knapp's review. One star.

Boring culture war drivel. Oh dear, oh dear. Are you a milquetoast liberal whose politics have been utterly discredited? Do you like branding everyone who disagrees with you as a conspiracy theorist? Then you'll love this culture war podcast and its fiend objectivity remember the people who disagree with you are not only wrong

but so wrong that it constitutes a social phenomenon worthy of academic study so tune in and play along with the host pretense of academic neutrality. One star. That's actually a well-written one-star hit job, isn't it? Like, that's well put together. I do. Yeah, I have to give him credit. Like, often our critical reviews, they get lost at the point where we can be

They meander around. They have grammatical mistakes. The word choice is suboptimal. But that was well written that was good yeah yeah this has a consistent theme it's you know the hypocrites pretending to be objective but really they're just as bad as everyone else and they're they're branding everybody they dislike as uniquely evil and stuff so like he's got he's got a point he's got a thesis rhetorically headset he develops it with several

sub points yeah and he returns to it at the end no you're right it's it is good um it's wrong obviously so very very wrong we're not culture warriors just unfortunate yeah he's wrong you know it's that's fine you know you could you could put together a very strong reality reality contradicts him that's the unfortunate part but you know it's a well-constructed wrong opinion that's what i say about that we're not come on we're not cultural warriors we're not hitting a drum we're not we're not partisans surely not not that much anyway we got a prejudice we got a few prejudices sure but oh do we have time for one more match good can we do one more yeah go for it a little bit of a long one i'll just i'll just read a little bit of it because Do we have time for one more, Matt? Can we do one more?

Yeah, go for it. It's a little bit of a long one. I'll just read a little bit of it because it's a long one. But I thought it was funny. Lou Sassal. The title is The Bert and Ernie of Podcasting. Five stars. Chris and Matt are eminently reasonable guys who have a preternatural ability to deconstruct

the psychological rhetorical manipulations of these gurus. Bam. Chris has quite the Belfast accent and often does violence to various pronunciations but his biting wit and self-deprecating flourishes make him an effective communicator matt pretends to sit in stark relief to chris's viciousness but he often delivers some of the harshest blows he's onto he's on to me. Yeah, their dynamic is a highly entertaining one, and Chris's jarringly chaotic version of English becomes easy to listen to, even as it sits in staggering juxtaposition to Matt's melodious and charming Australian accent. Ah, that's a fantastical review.

Now, look, I want to point out before you comment chris is that yes that previous one star very critical review was well written well constructed the grammar was excellent but this five star very positive review if anything was even better written the expression yeah it is it's very well written it's better written than i could write and there's more there's like you know i've read 50 of it but, but it's a very nice review. I'll cut it there because that's the only parts that are kind of dingy. But I liked it, Matt, apart from their digs at my accent and pronunciation, which is fine.

That's fine. But they correctly pegged, Matt. They got you, didn't they? That you say, you know you know oh chris don't so mean to lex he's just like every other 14 year old boy that i know right did people not notice that someone did thank you yes yeah thank you lou you make chris very happy this is something he's complained about a great deal of air that i seem to get away scot-free because people pay attention to the tone instead of what is actually being said and uh yeah you

have got 10 out of 10 you got me yeah so the last thing matt to do after those reviews is to turn to our patrons and to thank people. And we should also thank the various people that help us out with the podcast, the people who manage the Instagram and Facebook feeds for us. Yeah, they do a fantastic job without much input or direction from us. And I want to say we genuinely really do appreciate that. So thanks for that. Yeah, yeah. We would not have a presence on these platforms otherwise. And they do their job so seamlessly, so professionally

that it could almost go away unnoticed. But notice it, we do. Thank you. So it's not us. We don't deserve the credit for it. That's the point to make here. And actually, one thing to note is that we are in the market for an editor for the podcast. We do need an editor and one that we are willing to compensate, but ideally someone that understands

the podcast and the content that that would be important too so if you have editing skills particularly if you're familiar with a piece of software called descript and they're capable of using that because that's the software that we use to edit drop us an email and let us know and we'll talk about if it would be suitable or not and how we can compensate people appropriately. So if you're interested, drop us an email at decodingthegurus at gmail.com. And now, my patrons. Patrons, patrons, patrons. So let me mention some conspiracy hypothesizers to thank for this week.

And they are Timothy Rabin Martin Dina Krosta Hola Gatito Helen Moffat

Nathan Nathan Fralick, Alia Susan, Evan Emebauer, JM and Jeffrey Zhang. That is our conspiracy hypothesizers to thank for this week. Thank you, conspiracy hypothesizers. Very good. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Okay. And for our revolutionary thinkers, we have Amar Patel, Nick Boyle, Alan Coogan, Adrian Barrett, Helen Moffat, Nolan Mason, Gaddy Epstein, and Bill Crothers.

Thank you to all of those revolutionary thinkers. Revolutionary thinkers, one and all. Thanks, guys. Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking. What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know. And lastly, Matt, the galaxy brain gurus, the shining stars in the Patreon sky. And they are, this week,

Gareth Lee, Melissa Renzi, Fraser McMillan, and Heidi Packard. Packard. Heidi Packard. Wow. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Galaxy Brain Gurus. Galaxy Brained. Not the best tier, but certainly a very significant tier indeed. packard heidi packard wow thank you guys thank you galaxy brain gurus galaxy brained not the best here but certainly a very significant two indeed um there is no best there is no worst

that is the best here matt oh yeah it's the highest here yep they're better people thank you matt's a matt's an anti-capitalist so he hates people who donate the most money. So I appreciate you. You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so polite. And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? I kind of am.

Yeah. I don't trust people at all. Okay, so that's it for this week. Next up, we will have potentially a sense-making freeway between a bunch of galaxy brain sense-makers that are slightly connected to the tech sphere, so you'll see how we wedge them into the tech season. And we'll also soon enough have an episode

looking at InfoWars, Dark Horse, crossover aspects. So things to come. Long overdue episode. And more tech gurus, more other gurus. Gurus everywhere, Matt. It's raining gurus. Yeah, yeah. Three at once.

That's going to be heavy going. If that's the episode I think it is, then listening to the entire thing is going to be a bit of a challenge. It's like the Tide Pod challenge, but for audio. Sense makers. Yeah, sense makers. Consuming sense makers. I really do want to put it out to our listeners when we reveal what that episode is, to just give yourself a challenge.

See if you can listen to the whole thing. See how far you get. Let us know. Do you get 10 minutes in? Do you get 20 minutes? Do you stick it out for a whole hour? Do you get all the way to the whole thing. See how far you get. Let us know. Do you get 10 minutes in? Do you get 20 minutes? Do you stick it out for a whole hour? Do you get all the way to the end? How strong are you?

It'll be an interesting adventure. How much sense can you make? So there we have it. Sense making about sense making about sense making. Sense making cubed. Well, Matt, note the desk,

accord the gin, live your life and get ready to fight those Nazis Okay, will do Ciao all, have a good week See ya Bye bye Thank you.