It Could Happen Here - Assassination Week #4: How a Moonie Victim Killed Shinzo Abe

Episode Date: September 22, 2022

Mia talks with Alisa Mahjoub, a former member of the Unification Church, about the Moonies and the man who killed Shinzo Abe.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Prime Minister Abe was a champion of democracy and a firm believer that no economy, society, or country can achieve its full potential if women are left behind. I am shocked and devastated by his assassination, a loss for Japan and our world.

JK, this is Assassination Week. Who's assassinating my ex-former Prime Minister of Japan? It's Assassination Week. It is. It is. I would kind of, I would somewhat vaingloriously argue the capstone of Assassination Week. It is... I would somewhat vaingloriously argue the capstone of Assassination Week. It is

the episode about the assassination that started it all. And by that I mean we are here talking about the assassination of one Shinzo Abe. This is going to be a slightly different episode, both to the rest of the

assassination week episodes and to the other episode we did on the assassination of Shinzo Abe um partly because basically the day after within about two days of the our episode original episode about the Abe assassination dropping um there was confirmation that the reason abe was killed was because of his connection to an organization called the unification church which is i think better colloquially known as the moonies um people might have listened to the very very long episode i did about it but but yeah, there is an enormous amount going on there, and this is something that fortunately we have experts for. and sort of, I don't know, the sort of weirdness and the horror around everything that's been happening around this assassination is anti-fascist researcher Elisa Majub. Yeah, Elisa is an anti-fascist researcher specializing in cults who's working with Deprogramming Imperialism,

which is a collective of ex-Moonies who've been documenting just sort of all of the shit the Moonies have been getting up to and trying to get more awareness of really the just incredible array of awful stuff that they've been doing. Yeah. So, Elisa, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah.

And thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for this. I don't know why I'm saying us as if there's someone other than me on this episode and you, but, you know, old habits die hard. I guess I've inherited the royal we, which is not great. Oh, well, someone will have to assassinate me soon. That's fine. Sometimes it happens.

Hope it doesn't happen to you, though. You seem cool. That would not be the best assassination target, honestly. Yeah. So, okay. I guess the place I think we should start is talking about what we found police reports came out there was a bunch of very very murky stuff about basically the police were like this wasn't a political killing it was about some organization and i think me and you and every single other person who was like even

tangentially aware of japanese politics saw them say like an organization and was like oh no there's like a one in three chances at the booties. Yeah. That's yeah. I saw it. Like I, when they said something about like organization or religious organization, I was like,

yeah, I was like, Hmm. I know what that probably is. Yeah. Yeah. Wild. Yeah.

And, and it turns out that, okay. So the, the, the assassin is a man named Tetsuya Yamagami, who was a Navy veteran, yeah, made a series of unbelievably based and incredibly wild firearms with which he assassinated the former Prime Minister of Japan.

What we've learned since then is that the reason he did this was that his basically like his family and his like life were completely destroyed by his mom falling into this cult and by her i mean she she she gave this cult set like something like seven hundred thousand dollars yeah like roughly 720 000 us dollars yeah like literal like,000 US dollars yeah like literal like multiple fortunes like she gave them all of her money and then she sold the company that like she

had been running to give them more money and yeah what basically as best we can tell has happened was that he was looking at a way to like get back at the booties um and basically the problem was he okay so he didn't want to kill civilians which i think is admirable and he couldn't figure out a way to like get at any of

the like individual church leaders and so he's the thing he decided to do was go after Shinzo Abe, because as we're going to get to in a bit, Shinzo Abe, lots of connections with the Unification Church. A thing that all of the people writing glowing obituaries about him just incredibly don't want to mention. Yeah, it's been left out of a lot of shit. Yeah, it's been left out of a lot of shit. Yeah, and okay, so I guess to back up a little bit, for people who sort of don't know what this is, or for people who may have heard of Ibnidur Refresher, can you talk a bit about what the Unification Church actually is? And yeah, we can sort of go from there. Yeah, definitely. Okay, so the Unification Church are the Moonies.

They are a quote unquote, new religious movement or pretty much a cult. They're very culty. They're a cult. And they were started by Sun Myung Moon, who was originally from what is now North Korea. And so basically this guy, he claims he's the Messiah, has this, originally it started out as like a sex cult under a practice called, I think, Picarum, which is basically he was supposed to uh quote unquote cleanse a woman's like relationship to god by having sex with her so he assaulted a number of people doing this stuff

um and the church over the years has sort of like developed into more of a multinational corporation and political movement. And it has a lot of tools, I mean, a lot of ties and connections to various governments around the world, including Japan, and is basically, at the end of the day, a tool of United States imperialism. There's some pretty direct ties to the Korean CIAorean cia oh yeah like yeah as well as the us cia um so yeah it's like this big umbrella of like groups different ngos different like businesses uh a bunch it's just a whole conglomeration of things right um but very extremely virulently anti-communist uh and you know involved in some of uh some of the the greatest hits of the last century like iran contra uh like fascists yeah greatest hits for us and and when we say involved in iran contra like okay

there's lots of people who are like sort of involved in Iran-Contra, like, okay, there's lots of people who are, like, sort of involved in Iran-Contra. The Moonies, like, there is a decent, you can make the argument that if the Moonies had not been doing what they were doing in Nicaragua, Iran-Contra wouldn't have been able to happen because the Civil War would have ended. like when we say like like they were involved in the iran contra like they are like on the ground giving people guns and money and keeping like literally keeping guerrilla organizations and like terrorist groups like in the war who wouldn't have been able to otherwise yeah and then and then also and that's that's the thing like they did two iran contras right because they they they did they did the second iran contra with like with you know when the cia actually got money but they were also doing the same thing like before that when they in the sort of stop gap period where the cia wasn't able to fund the contras so yeah these guys are a nice back route for that money and all the other shit yeah so it's yeah they're very very heavily involved like

basically anywhere there is an anti-communist squad like in the world you you can find the connections yeah although okay i will say this weirdly the the only one i the only one i haven't directly been able to find is i haven't been able to directly find any evidence that they were like that like specifically they were helping pino like let me say helping pinochet okay they they were involved in operation condor and they were like doing shit with that i haven't found evidence they like directly had any conversations with pinochet but that's he's like the the only person you can say that about and they probably did at some point like but you know like a frail strassner yeah like they probably did like i mean again like they were they were there with

frail strassner they were there with um what's that guy's name uh klaus barbie the cocaine oh yeah yeah i can't i can't remember the name of the guy. Yeah, there was a guy in Bolivia who got installed for like a year that he got cooned. I can't remember his name right now. Yeah, no, I know who you're talking about, but I'm also forgetting his name at the moment. Yeah, no, it's funny because he's one of these guys where it's like, you know, I had a professor. I took a Syrian history class in college, right? you know i i i i had a professor i took i took a syrian history class in college right and um there i think it's i really should if i'm saying this i really should know the year but

there's a year in like the 50s in syria where there's like four coups in one year and there were like two guys who technically speaking had like had control of syria that he was like i'm just not even tell you these guys names because they get overthrown in like two months and like that's that's that's this guy yeah yeah but yeah this is a very sort of very serious and deeply scary like

death squad funding machine yeah yeah and that you know has continued to today pretty much so oof. like being in the church and what it's like sort of i don't know because i i i think i think a big part of of what's happening with this story is tetsuya yamagami like basically watching his family get sucked in and not being able to do anything about it and i was wondering if you could talk a bit about yeah i mean sort of like what what what what what it's like being in the church and then what it's like just sort of

watching it destroy people yeah so um i was born and raised in the church uh i left when i was around 17 it was not it was not nice um pretty much everybody i talked to who is also left uh feels the burden of this like horrific abuse that we had to endure um it was a bleak time for me uh you know there's just so much pressure put on members to follow leadership, to do outrageous amounts of fundraising. They have a bunch of these fundraising teams, right? And they'll go out and they'll sell things and live in a van, occasionally stopping at like different church centers um to like uh you know sleep for the night or whatever they don't eat well uh they don't get enough sleep you know like you're constantly around other people basically like all all of the methods of psychological torture you can do on a person

right um which was you know pretty standard throughout the whole movement. Um, now I was lucky enough not to go on any of these fundraising teams cause I left before, um, that could happen, but, um, I still, you know, definitely feel like the psychological, you know, fallout from that. And it's something I'll be healing with, uh, healing from for the rest of my life. Um, yeah. So like, there's, there's like no accountability for leadership. They can do whatever they want, but everybody else in the church, you know, has to follow what Moon and the regional or national leadership says, or the,

the 36 plus couples who are like some of Moon's original followers. There's, it's like extremely hierarchical uh there's a lot of racism within the group a huge amount of sexism that is like you know directly tied into their um their belief system because uh the the fall of man according to the moonies was eve having sex with sat Satan and then having sex with Adam and spreading that sin. So just like very inherently misogynistic, extremely homophobic and transphobic movement, just all around like so much sexual repression, like you're not supposed to hold hands, kiss, do anything before marriage, right? And then it's only that person. Well, of course,

Moon, you know, know didn't didn't like this didn't apply to him at all he could sleep with anybody's wife pretty much um so yeah it was just altogether a very intense environment uh just so much indoctrination uh going into the heads of the people who are part of it. Yeah, just altogether shitty group. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I went away to school in another state when I was 14. It got me like, you know, the physical distance as well as like the space and time to actually think and reflect on what was going on. And then I started doing some research online because I was like, well, maybe what people are saying about it is true. Maybe it is a cult. And I came across this,

the tragedy of the Six Marys, which was, you know, Moon, assaulting a bunch of women. And that sort of like, made me just, you know, it sort of brought it to a head because I had like, you know, seen for the longest time how leadership was treated versus how regular members had to live in like poverty um but they got like big mansions and like nice things nice cars expensive watches uh but everybody else had to like give all their money to the church and you know was were like terrorized um and, then eventually I, I was like, I think I have to go. I like, I had been through the process of like meeting the mystical or the, uh, the evil other, which, you know, like people outside of the church or, you know, they're fallen. They're like, you know, basically they have original sins. So they're kind of evil. Right. Um, to know more people, queer people who were just like a hugely demonized group of people within the UC.

And here I am today. I'm super queer. But like that, like, hell yeah. But like getting to know people and actually seeing, you know, like, oh, my God, what they're saying, these people are not evil. They're normal. They're human. They are just different from straight people. I don't know. That to me also made like a huge difference. And then when I was 17, I went to another school and I was like, I want to get laid. I've had enough of this. So I went out and did that. And that felt like, you know, once I finally lost my virginity, it felt like sealing the deal. I'm like, if I have to go to hell now, OK. And it was cool because God didn't like immediately smite me where I where I was in bed at that point. Like I lived and I'm here to tell the tale.

So, yeah, that's how I left. That rules. I don't have any right like yeah it's like this is uh this is much more gay of a story of what i was expecting which is all which is always a good thing yeah it kind of it reminds me a lot of like the stories of sort of like of people leaving like the really right wing like evangelical music like a lot of it reminds stories of sort of like of people leaving like the really right wing like evangelical music like a lot of it reminds me of quiverful but like yeah more intense i think well it's like i think like like the the level of i don't know i guess the level of separation yeah it's a lot more isolated yeah they seem to be at least sort of like integrated into like other communities and stuff whereas the moonies i don't know like there's definitely like people have friends outside of it

but like generally like people kind of keep to the moonies because you know they're supposed to be like god's chosen people or whatever so they yeah and they like look down on everyone else because they're not moonies. Yeah. It is. It's also interesting to me that like literally the term is just the evil other, which is really. So I don't think that's a literal term, but like that's how I sort of phrase it or whatever. But yeah. Or just like fallen people would be or the fallen world, the outsiders is what they would say. So just this very, you know, like, very, like stigmatizing language that they use for people.

Lots of people are just called evil in the church, too. They just call people evil, like willy nilly. It's like, oh, you're satanic. Like, no, that's not it. That's not that. I don't know how to get a good transition into this yeah we're going to ads welcome I'm Danny Threl won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

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The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. you get your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Yeah, so I wanted to also talk about specifically one of the things that the church does and one of the things like the the sort of one of the specific things that tetsuya yamagami yamagami seems to have been suffering from and well particularly his mom but his sort of whole family is the financial abuse yeah and yeah i wanted to ask you a bit about what that looks like and also there's some stuff about the japanese context that i i think is slightly different than yeah sort of the american or the korean context i want to ask you a bit about that

yeah definitely so uh across the board uh unification Church members are expected to bring in a lot of money through fundraising, through tithing, providing free labor or, you know, low paid labor through church businesses and stuff. because of the rhetoric of the church, which is, you know, basically born out of, uh, you know, the, uh, environment, um, in Korea. Uh, so there's basically this thought in the church that they say, um, that Korea is the Adam nation, uh, because that's where, uh, you know, the Messiah came back, South Korea, and that Japan is the Eve nation supposed to submit to the Adam nation, and also sort of pay indemnity, which is a big word in the church, and for the atrocities committed during the Japanese occupation of Korea. is committed during the Japanese occupation of Korea. And so this means that Japanese members have to pay significantly more for pretty much everything. So there's, it's like just, you know, like, instead of like a type of reparations where it's like, you know, we'll give you money. It's like they make them suffer for that fact. And so like, you know, fundraising goals are very high. Let me see. I think I had a figure here somewhere.

Yeah, so Japanese membership, they bring in roughly like 70% of the church's income. Yeah, so Japanese membership, they bring in roughly like 70% of the church's income. So billion yen or around 210 million for that year, I believe. So they go out selling ancestor liberation is one thing. You're supposed to pay exorbitant fees for your ancestors to go to heaven. There was a book called the Chansung Gyeong, and that book was extremely expensive, and of course, much more expensive for members in Japan. I think I read a figure where, I think, I don't remember what year it was, and it was not very recent. I think it might have been like 1992 or something uh or 2002 or something i'm not sure but it costs like roughly like 200 000 american dollars to uh go to the marriage ceremony the one

of the mass weddings that the moonies they happen to, you know, have give them money, uh, into the coffers of the church and, you know, directly on up to like the Moon family who are billionaires. you know directly on up to like the moon family who are billionaires um another thing i would say here is that uh they often uh so for people who that they're trying to fundraise from uh they often will target like elderly widows and uh people who are you know in sort of precarious places and come to them and say, your family member who's passed away wants you to give this donation to the church. They also, like, at one point made up, like, a fake Buddhist sect in order to, like, specifically target people.

So it goes deep. There's a lot to that. Yeah, like, one of the things I remember reading, though, is, like, yeah, they had, like, this whole network of, like, fake mediums. Yeah. Like, specifically to target people. Yeah, to target the sort of widows, which is, like, I don't know. So much of the stuff that they do is just so incredibly bleak, like, I think.

Yeah. sort of like like the the the the way in which they're sort of weaponizing like like japan's sort of war crimes in yeah in south korea and north korea as well and it's like it's like a on the one hand like yeah like all a all this money is just going to like a bunch of like two rich fascists and then yeah b like and i think it's something else we can sort of get into is like okay so the the church's main political allies in japan are the people who did all that shit yep yep so yeah no it's just a constant deflection pretty much yeah and i mean it's interesting too because like you get this like so some of the newspapers they fund will like openly say that like japan should rearm again

and like japan should like start retaking korea and then like you have the other arm of their business being like hey pay us money for all the people you guys killed and it's just i don't know it's yeah it's pretty fucked it's the worst it's honestly yeah yeah and i i guess i guess yeah well i i think i think this is as good a place as i need to go into like okay so the moody's like could not do the things that they do in japan without an incredibly large degree of institutional support um part of this is sort is with the yakuza because like you can't run like you you can't do organized crime stuff like attempt like running an entire network of people that are fraud widows like in in japan without the yakuza like you having some kind of deal with them yeah and yeah and and that that also bizarrely ties in

with sort of how how the unification church got integrated with the sort of mainstream well yeah you know i'm just gonna call them the mainstream like fuck it people people people will quibble about the different factions of the ldp uh i frankly don't care for reasons that we'll get to but yeah how how they got like in yeah i guess we talked about like the origins of how they got ingrained with japan's like perpetual ruling party liberal democratic party yeah um oh sorry were you were you oh yeah yeah yeah i mean i can also i can also go into it too but yeah no worries yeah okay yeah sorry i wasn't sure that was a question yeah sorry no it's okay um so yeah it goes all the way back to uh like so it goes it goes back pretty far. So Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's maternal grandfather.

So he initially became sort of embroiled with the UC kind of stuff, unification church stuff, in the early days of when the movement was in Japan. He collaborated on stuff like the Foundation for Victory Over Communism, spoke at the founding of the organization at a uc church which was i think uh next to kishi's estate or something like that yeah i i think i think i think i think he sold them their first building in japan i'm pretty sure if i'm remembering one point right yeah so um so yeah and then uh in 62 the uc was able to convert 50 leaders of the ultra-nationalist uh nichiren buddhist uh sect called sect called oh gosh i don't know how to pronounce this ryosho kosei kai uh and they had a lot of strong Yakuza connections.

And then Asami Kuboki was the first Yuzuki president in Japan. He was the Yakuza lieutenant and second in command of that group that I had just mentioned. Yeah, and the other thing we should mention about this, about the sort of how the Yakuza ties go is that, so, okay, so Nobusuke kishi is the guy who founds liberal democrat the liberal democratic party right like he the liberal democratic party is his creation it is like what that party is is all of japan's conservatives basically like basically ceding to his authority and being like okay fine we're gonna follow your lead um and his his party is like his base and his funding is basically

a combination of like he he like kishi himself is a like arch world war ii war criminal um his his base is basically in the old japanese fascists he yeah is funded by like well partially funded like funded directly by the cia um he's also funded – but the CIA in particular here is working through the Yakuza because that's one of the sort of the – like, Willoughby and the sort of like – well, Willoughby's technically not CIA, but yeah. Basically, American intelligence and the American army starts working through the Yakuza as, like, an anti-communist force. force and he he gets bankrolled by this these two guys named kodama and um sasakawa yeah sasakawa who are like kodama is like like the like milk basically like the guy who is in charge of the yakuza he's also a fascist um rayichi sasakawa is the self-disclosed like literally called himself the world's richest fascist and both of these guys are like huge bankrollers of of kishi they are also and you know and when kishi is like bringing in the church like this this is

how this this is how all these people have got have yakuza connections because yeah it's it's the the whole sort of japanese right-wing political machine is one happy family that is doing the worst stuff all together at the same time, funded by the CIA. Yep. level of cia involvement here like there are individual cia agents assigned to individual liberal democratic party candidates in the 50s to make sure they won their elections i did not know that bit that is it's wild yeah so specific, yeah, to this day, a lot of LDP candidates and politicians still have ties to the UC, get donations from it, uh, use like membership as like free labor, uh, even like having secretaries,

uh even like having secretaries uh from who were members of the uc and uh like you know sometimes they would you know see like some sort of like classified or you know uh information and stuff like that so there's yeah there's like apart from like that like just so interconnected yeah do you remember the story about the the ldp's like number two guy like getting getting moon to be able to visit japan ah sorry i don't oh god okay so the my memory of this story was okay so like japan has a series of really weird laws about like i mean okay japan has a series of really weird laws about like Japan has a series of really weird laws about many many things one of them has to do with it's something like if you've been convicted of a felony

in another country you can't enter Japan and I I don't know if it's a felony I don't know what the I'm forgetting what the legal bar is for what you have to be convicted of in order to not be able to enter the country but i like moon is a i like he he like he he was like convicted by the

u.s government of like perjury and a bunch of other shit because of the crimes that he did and so he like technically legally could not enter japan and then like the the the the the the the vice president of um and i'm not sure what my god i can't remember his title but basically like what like basically like the the the like the the like the the the second most powerful man in japanese politics in the 90s like very specifically did a whole bunch of visa bullshit so that specifically Moon could go to Japan legally not surprising not surprising but wow

yeah it's like um the lengths people will go to to collaborate with other fascists yeah and I think that's that's I don't know that's to me what makes this assassination really interesting is that like okay so if if you ask like and even even like in

japan if you had asked the average person what the connection between like shinzo abe and edification church was like most people have no idea like before this assassination those people had like no idea what that was yeah yeah after the assassination this the whole landscape has changed um yeah i mean it it's it's been really interesting to watch it's like this this really seems like an incredibly sort of politically effective assassination because yeah okay so you know you you had there was there was you know you had the very the initial right-wing backlash but the right-wing backlash kind of it got kind of muted when it when it became clear that it like wasn't a left-wing radical which i think would have actually been an enormous disaster

yeah but then yeah the guy was yamagami was pretty right wing himself yeah it's like he's a right wing guy and but also like his story is really sympathetic yeah like yeah i mean i feel for the guy like he had so much trauma in his life honestly and like it's obvious like and i think you know a lot of uh former members you know sort of understand how that feels. Now, most of us have been assassinated a prime minister, but. So far. So far. But yeah, like, I mean, we understand that pain of where he is coming from. And like, you know, why upon learning that abe had these ties he sort of like felt

like compelled to do something yeah and i think the i mean there's also this element at work here that's kind of weird which is like okay it's very very hard normally to get like right-wing japanese people to turn on their own party uh the one way that you can do it is by going hey look at these koreans so there's like weird dynamics going on here like there were some there were some like even further right parties who were like you know using this thing as a campaign thing if like ah this party is like a fake right-wing party like they're all being run by like koreans and it's like okay that's like not like the thing that is bad about the moonies is not that they are korean it's that it's all of the other shit yeah they do yeah and i think

that's complicated but also yeah like the the the political impact this has had has been like enormous yes like yeah do you want to talk about that a bit yeah so um so okay obviously it has shined a lot of light on sort of the connections that a lot of uh members of the government there have from the ldp um as well as other parties uh have with the uc getting donations etc um people are pissed about it you know as they should be um so i guess that uh prime minister kishida uh had said that they want to cut ties with the unification church at this point uh you know it sort of remains to be seen whether that actually happens or not because it could easily just be like lip service kind of

shit um but the uh politicians uh and i'm not sure if this is specifically for the ldp or sort of across the board um there's like a thing where they're supposed to self-report any ties or donations to the uc which is just you know like i don't know like i don't think everybody's going to come forward with that sort of thing if you're supposed to do it yourself that's like not how that should work but um so i mean like it it remains to be seen you know if those ties are actually going to be cut um so also like there has been sort of, like, a lot of support from, like, lawyer groups, like the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, who has, you know, worked with, you know, cult members, and, like, specifically, a lot of Unification Church members, or former

members or whatever, who have, you know, lost money through spiritual sales um and they've also just recently called for the dissolution of the uc in japan which is pretty cool and i hope that happens yeah how realistic it is uh given like all of the strong ties to the government but that would be cool um and then also i saw a thing a couple days ago uh that japanese consulates and embassies have a program that is offering advice or assistance uh to uc members who are japanese nationals and their children um and that ends on september 30th i think so if anybody needs that get in fast um but i think that also applies in america So if you are a Japanese national and a victim of the UC, or if your parents are, those that are open.

And I don't know exactly what the levels of support or resources they're offering are, but it's worth looking into for sure. But yeah, so there's been sort of this outpouring of support from various groups. And it's really shining a light on the issue of especially what it's like to be a second generation member of a cult and the trauma that people like us have gone through. gone through um you know there are definitely a lot of calls for like support and mental health care as well as like you know ways to sort of get people out of situations like that in the first place um yeah yeah i i don't know i i i i i hope this translates into actual resources and stuff more than, yeah, just sort of like the LDP's Ruho Redding's tanking.

Yeah. Which, like, is good, and, like, it is very funny that Kishida's had to axe, like, half his cabinet because the ties are, like, too close. But, yeah, I don't know. I think it remains. Although he remains in power and he's got test but you see too interesting yeah so it's like you know clearly there's not a lot like even if people are like having a little bit of like the smallest level of transparency about this stuff like i i don't necessarily know how far it'll actually go into like you know making

amends or like protecting people from further abuse or you know getting people their money back i don't know i i think there's a there's something i think that's really sort of i don't know like really grim about the way that this worked out which said the japanese police knew what was going on and why the assassination had happened like immediately like they found his hard drive and he'd written out a whole thing about why he did it yeah and then they intentionally held the information and basically made were able to maintain a press embargo until after the election

happened yeah yeah you know now everyone fucking hates the ldp like the the the provincial approval rating is like 36 like it's really bad i mean it went from like 50 it went from like 52 to like 36 in like a couple of weeks but because the people who are people who are connected to the church are the people in charge they were able to like suppress this information long enough to like shape how the election was going to go. Yeah. Make sure that it was sort of like the right wing shock from, oh my God, this assassinated prime minister and not wait, they assassinated prime minister for a reason that's like incredibly justified and relatable to like, this is as relatable a motive of assassination as like I've ever seen. as relatable of a motive of assassination as like i've ever seen yeah i mean it's like as far as reasons for assassinating people go this is a pretty like solid reason like yeah there's stuff

there yeah and like and i think it's just like like it's it's interesting this like it's this rare assassination where the assassin is is a very empathetic figure to like i i i think a lot of the time when you get people doing stuff like this like it's there's a sort of like one-to-one correlation with like okay like how how how do you feel about sort of like like how do you feel about assassination in general is going to like determine your dictate like determine your sort of response to the actual action yeah whereas i think here it's different because you know like that yeah there's this this is someone who yeah i mean i keep saying that he's sort of like eminently relatable but it's like yeah this this is someone who i don't know has been through just an incredible amount of trauma in a way that's, like, very easily sort of digestible to, like, regular people.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, very obvious trauma. And, like, you know, yeah, I don't know. And I really hope that that really does actually translate into resources for mental health resources because... I do too. I feel like as well as mental health resources, I hope there are like, you know, financial resources and, you know, like all sorts of other resources as well. Because like dealing with the fallout of, you know, having been in like a cult is incredibly difficult and requires a lot of space and time. And a lot of people are, you know, left with like PTSD after that, and it'll last for your whole life. And that makes, you know,

for a lot of people that makes, you know, having getting money and doing job things extremely hard, especially, you know, if you're like getting like emotionally, like thrown back into that all of the time. So I hope there are more material resources that are also available in addition to mental health care and therapy things. Because that's something that I feel like is all too often just not there for people who have been through abuse.

not there for people who have been through abuse yeah and i think also there's there's this way in which like like a lot of this like insofar as there's any kind of like support network like in the u.s and this is also true of japan to i maybe a i don't know the japanese welfare state's not great but yeah like there's an extent to which like the sort of like last safety net you have is your family and you know like this is this is the kind of thing that can very easily cut you off from your family and that that has you know i mean that that has emotional consequences but like yeah that that has enormous financial consequences that yeah really don't like i don't know it i i when i was originally doing research on this like i read a lot of sort of like people arguing about like deprogramming stuff and it like they just

didn't talk about like that kind of stuff and it was always just sort of like i don't know struck me as really weird and a sort of like grotesque and detached way to think about it instead of like yeah so yeah it depends on like what type of care it is too because honestly deprogramming is another cult it is yeah another call it's like an anti-cult cult and um it just you know it it re-traumatizes those who are already traumatized and honestly like people who have been deprogrammed sometimes leave but a lot of the time it just increases their fervor for being part of whatever movement they're a part of already um because they're like oh if this is you know like what everybody's going to do to me if i leave like of course i gotta stick with this because you know then like it's like every what they've been saying

the whole time about you know being persecuted and like hurt and stuff then becomes true right yeah i guess that's the thing i would say about like uh that's my disclaimer about deprogramming uh and though the collective we are a part of is called deprogramming imperialism that is because the only thing that needs to be deprogrammed really is imperialism and not people, because that's not how that works. Yeah. Deradicalization requires a lot of trust,

a lot of time, a lot of space, a lot of reflection. It's not something that, you know, you can just like go and like lock somebody in a basement for two weeks and then like try to make them leave whatever movement they're part. Like that's's that's just

abuse yeah i i think like i i don't know i i think it's it's as an industry it's not as sort of like powerful as it used to be but i think like i don't know it it there's there's there's a sense in which it's sort of like i know it almost it almost has like civil war logic where it's like both sides need the other side as sort of their like reason to exist yeah and you know so like in both you know on both both both sides are traumatizing people and both sides need like like they're they're specifically fighting over the same like group of people and each of them can sort of like offer the other side as like oh hey this is why we need to exist thing but then it's like you know like like as with like most civil wars it's like the actual

people caught in it don't it's like no you don't actually need you don't want either side of the civil war you want out yeah yeah no it's definitely it's definitely one of those like oh you're stuck between a rock and a hard place kind of things it's like both options suck like yeah like the two-party system god stalin stalin said two good things in his entire two things that were like funny in his entire life one of them was the Pope how many divisions does he have and the second one

was they're both worse and they're I mean admittedly he was wrong about they're both worse but like yeah that's a that's a real thing that is the basis of all modern politics. Honestly.

That is... Honestly. We hate to see. Hate to see it. Yeah. Yep. On the other hand, though, I don't know, like... I am kind of hopeful about this.

I am too. It genuinely seems to have like changed. Like at the very least, it's changed the way that the Japanese public like sees and understands this whole thing. And like, this is the first time I think ever that there, I mean like,

you know, like the communist party and stuff have been trying for like years to get people to care about this. Just no one has really cared since like, I don't know, like basically since the Japanese left collapse in like the 70s, like nobody's really cared about this. And I don't know, it really seems like something like it really seems like this assassination has actually changed something about just sort of like the like just the the way that the japanese politics is being structured right now yeah and i don't know i'm moderately hopeful i would say i am too i mean like the more light that is shed on this i think the better and like unfortunately weird things happened but uh i feel like if there's any chance for some sort of um some sort of you know across the board or even in certain areas just specifically any sort of like uh justice

that the amount of public attention on this now is you know potentially something that could help bring something like that about so i i don't it's been it's been like sort of a weird ride for for us ex-members um with all of that just sort of like re-traumatizing to see everything happen um but at the end of the day i think a lot of us are hopeful that things can change now that people know about it because you know before that it wasn't something that was ever really talked about welcome i'm the end thrill would you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

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Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Groups like this thrive on this sort of weird combination of like operating in the shadows and also when they show up it's through their own pr stuff yeah yep and you know sometimes the best

way to break that apparently is you shoot someone who was like you you you shoot a guy who they who was working for them and yeah i don't know i mean yeah i feel like yamagami sort of managed to at least you know he he did what he he did a thing and it has had sort of probably some of the impact that he uh imagined it would so i don't know yeah like honestly like i from from what i've read of his stuff like i i think this went better than he expected it like it could possibly have gone yeah like he he seemed like really really sort of just like had abandoned all hope yeah and i don't know i mean i like i guess the the other thing that i i really hope out of this comes out of this is that like you don't have to have people like destroying their lives a second time in sort of like just out of the incredible desperation of what they've been

through right yeah preventing any of that would be optimal yeah yeah because the you know the more that the longer the unification church operates the more people will be abused and the more violence will come out of it like maybe this is the most high profile like recent bit of violence that's come out of the movement um but it's not unprecedented in any way so you know it's like that's what happens when people are abused yeah and i'm and i think it's also worth just sort of like reminding people that one of the sort of so the church is sort of splintered into various factions um yeah a lot of the people well okay a trump trump gave a speech at like the at an event of the mainline church uh a bunch of like so one

of the other guys like what what are the other splinter factions had a bunch of people at january 6th so rod of iron ministries or yeah uh sanctuaryuary Church. And those are the guys who had the AR-15 gun blessing ceremony a few years ago that made the, where they're basically preparing people for war with what Sean Moon has described as something akin to the globalist deep state Marxists. I don't know if those are his exact words, but it was something like that. So they're, you know, like they're, they have an active militia. They're preparing for war. That is what the rod of iron is for them that is the gun um yeah and these these if i remember my my stuff on this right this is the fashion that owns car arms right yes they do yeah yeah so they have a gun manufacturer now okay like if robert were here

robert would probably start quibbling with me about how good like the quibbling with me about the actual quality of the weapons they produce but like okay they have them they have they they they they have a weapons manufacturing base which is terrifying yeah and they make the trump gun because of course they're all super pro-trump yeah very like patriot uh a lot of q anon overlap there. And actually Rod of Iron Ministries in Japan has been helping organize QAnon events. And yeah, so like there was also, and so basically the relationship between Rod of Iron and the mainline you see is super tense. Sean Moon and a couple of his other brothers basically want their mother dead and who is she's the you know the head of the mainline church right now um and not just dead but like

specifically beheaded um so there was a an event uh recently over the summer i think it was like the end of june where uh sean was oh gosh i forget i forget where he was in japan um but basically he was sort of like railing at the audience for supporting his mother hak jahan uh and then when people spoke up in defense of her they were literally like physically thrown out of the room um it was super intense yeah there's there's footage of it it is yeah yeah it's it's a really fucking intense moment um yeah and he's like they're saying she had like sex with a demon or something like that and had fallen and all this you know got like i don't know sometimes i i watch a bit of the guy's speeches just because i'm like i want to know what the fuck they're up

to yeah um and at first of all it seems like he might do a lot of cocaine, which would not be unprecedented given the Moonies and all of their drug smuggling and shit. Well, I mean, we have, like, what was his name? Oh, God, I'm blanking on the name of... One of his other sons was, like, was, like, literally spending like a shell corporation's like net income amount like per month on cocaine at one point like was that hyojin

possibly i think i think it was yeah yeah i think it was hyojin yeah and he's also an enormous abusive piece of shit uh yeah yeah uh it sucks huh yeah people are all well okay that's not true the people who are still actively involved in the church and who didn't break themselves out and flee like the first opportunity they got are like enormous pieces of shit yeah i mean because like even at the end of the day if they're not specifically doing anything that like directly harms somebody they're giving money to these institutions that do and to people who do and giving them support and you know reinforcing all of that shit and then you know yeah i mean i most of them are just shitty in general too yeah like i i also like specifically also about like yeah there were a couple of people

who like got forcibly married into the family who like left and I do not want people to get the impression that I think they're bad because they're not like they got yeah really horrible stuff happened to them they were able to escape and that's good

but also Jesusesus christ like oh yeah yeah and that's the thing that it's like sometimes hard to talk to like you know childhood friends or my family who's still involved um because i feel like it's like you know if you're supporting this group you're implicitly supporting fascism and murder and death squads and rape and all of these awful things. And, you know, a lot of members don't know that those bits of history about the church. But if anyone who is listening is in the UC, I would definitely say to look those things up because they are all over the place yeah okay so specifically yeah a read inside the league by scott and lee anderson okay i i i i i will say this yeah they're Yeah, they're... It is kind of hard to read because these people are journalists. They're not normally book authors.

And the idea of starting at the beginning of a story and then moving through to the end of it is like an entirely foreign concept to them. So it is constantly jumping around between 16 million things. But yeah, there is a lot of, there's a lot of very good stuff in there. Yeah. It's an incredible resource. I would also suggest reading the, there's like a,

a bunch of articles that Robert Parry did from his consortium news about the UC and like stuff back in the day on it. I would also say, check out how well do you know your moon uh yeah that's another great resource has a lot of uh you know like links and direct uh citations of a bunch of documents and shit uh all good stuff uh also i would plug uh john gorenfeld's book um oh, it's called Bad Moon Rising. Bad Moon Rising. Yes, yes.

Yeah. John is great. Yeah. It's another really good book on that. Yeah. I think a new edition came out like very recently. Yeah. So I think he has it actually a PDF of it or something for free on his website.

Yeah. And then another book I would suggest is uh gifts of deceit about the tongson park scandal and koreagate another good one god yeah the thing about the mood is like there's just like entire like there's entire genres of like crime that they do that like doesn't even like make most accounts of them because they're doing too much other crime yeah literally there's just so much crime to for there's they've just done so much that it's hard to keep track of everything yeah and they literally have a million shell corporations and they literally do things under different names and in different places and then different types of atrocities that it's like how are you supposed to keep up with all

this that's why they do it that way because you're not supposed to but yeah i mean it is i don't know like i i figuring out how intelligence operations work is like easier than like trying to untangle this shit. Yeah. Honestly, like that, that stuff was, you know, a little more on the nose.

It's like, Oh yeah, clearly this is like a joint psychological operation and other like, you know, back channels for money and trafficking things and people and stuff. But then it's like, Oh God, what company owns what and how much do they make and like where do they move

their money around it's just like yeah i don't know that's that side is like how do i navigate this yeah i i am extremely fortunate to be a part of a group of people who's working on this stuff now um you know we're gonna what we're going to try to do is sort of make like a unification church wikipedia kind of thing uh so that we have like all of it in one place and then you know potentially down the line maybe do like a people's history of the unification church or something like that yeah but in the meantime we're just compiling a bunch of information yeah are there ways people can support support you and also can support deprogramming imperialism in this, the work you all have been doing?

Yeah. So I have a Patreon. It's Elisa Majub, A-L-I-S-A-M-A-H-J-O-U-B. You can follow me on Twitter at Elisa underscore Majub, same spelling. Deprogramming imperialism has a Twitter. It is, since Deprogramming Imperialism was not,

was too long to put in as a username. The one we are using is no more cults, which is no underscore more underscore cults. And then we have a Instagram as well under deprogramming imperialism i believe let me double check and we will we will put uh links to all this stuff in the show notes yeah awesome cool cool cool cool cool yeah it's do programming imperialism just just together together words i'm sorry the words are smashed together there's no space that's that's there we go i did it yeah well i i think i think i think that's going to be all for us today um thank you so so much

for joining us thank you for having me i really appreciate this and hopefully you know this will just have help more people to sort of like understand what's going on there and sort of the history of the uc and uh as well as you know maybe shine some light on the abe assassination and uh you know the more people who know about this, the better, I think. So I really appreciate being on here because you guys have a pretty big platform. So that means a lot to me. Yeah. And I'm really, really glad that you came on for this because I don't know like it's it's really like it's really easy to like cover stuff

like this and just never actually sort of like get to the human like the actual human impact of it yeah yeah and so yeah i'm really glad i was able to talk to you thank you i yeah i'm glad i was able to talk to you because that it was fun It was fun. It was informative. And we're getting the word out. We're doing it. We're doing the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Feels good.

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