Interview with Elgen Strait on the Unification Church and the assassination of Shinzo Abe
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expertise, Chris' location, and the theme of the podcast.But that's not all!Also in this episode, you get a slightly out-of-date update on Alex Jone's trial (which will be good preparation for a forthcoming interview with Knowledge Fight's Dan Friesen) and a mini-decoding of Lex Fridman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 introductions, Matt.
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.
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've all awarded some of the damages today, the civil trial of Alex Jones from some of the Sandy Hook parents.
And that trial has been 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 not make it true 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.
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 think, 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 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, 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.
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 key is, the outcome was already clear.
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 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 Soros 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 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 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 in an obviously unbelievable claim.
But in any case, here's a scene that happened from the trial, which I think is quite...
phone is this taken from?
I don't know this phone's taken from.
I mean, I just, I turned the phone over and said, take the 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 instead you didn't.
Nice trick.
I said,
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, 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 Sandy Hook.
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, back, 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 they get to the police.
Yeah, just for the people who can't see Chris's face, he was grinning like a cheshier cat during that entire extension.
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 Infowars, which is just based on these conspiratorial lies.
So, 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 think this is important to highlight apart from just the schadenfreude of seeing such an outright conspiracy peddler and ideologue.
Getting some comeuppance for what they did.
Again, just a 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 being extremely brave in addressing him, talking about their kids.
I think 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.
One which was 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're actually...
Dig into his rhetoric rather than just allowing him to spout it uncritically.
He comes apart.
And obviously the documentary Alex's 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 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, Cory Bernardi, who is 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 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-padding...
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 there's 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'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 think, ultimately, I mean, 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 people like Kanye on, for example, and you had a great conversation with him.
I think you...
Yeah, but Kanye's 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, Matt?
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 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, what is the harm in just having an indulgent conversation with someone like Donald Trump to a massive audience?
And 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.
But he's right more than he's wrong.
And he'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 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.
No, he's definitely not.
And I also don't think he's fundamentally a good guy.
Joe's interest in Alex seems to be like, 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 an 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.
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 Infrawards 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 off-base here.
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, 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.
It's actually using some of this kind of sort of almost social justice-y 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 or 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 let's go back to hearing Lex try to puzzle through the ethics of this situation and see where he ends up.
Yeah, but sort of to push back, you had those conversations with Alex Jones.
Wouldn't you be able to have the same kind of conversation with...
Donald Trump.
That's the problem.
No, it's not the problem.
You revealed that Alex Jones is a human being.
He's fucked up.
He has demons in his head.
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 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 Wallace did.
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, I think you're really good at that.
Like, you pull them in.
I don't know if he would genuinely be there.
You know what I'm saying?
I think he'll be putting on a performance.
You don't think you 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.
And then you get the real Alex.
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 Lex's suggestion was, why 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 Pizzagate 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 Paggio, I called him out in the previous week about that video he did, like, dissecting the symbolism that Alex Jones is using and how he argued that actually it's, you know, he's got the wrong words, but 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, We're 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 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 it 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 Schwab 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 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' 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, you know, free speech is obviously a good thing.
But I increasingly see it being...
Taken to this ridiculous extreme, which is that the freer the speech is, the crazier the wisdom is, to refer to your thing before, then the betterer 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 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 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.
Very telling of Joe Rogan and also quite,
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.
He's such a polarizing figure that so many people felt like they could abandon their own ethics and morals and principles just to The first time I listened to that,
you know, when you're talking about Trump and you're talking about people abandoning morals and just being willing to do whatever they want to do, it's not Trump's critics that immediately spring the mind, right?
It's Trumpland and all of the dubious characters who opposed Trump as a candidate and then fell in the line with his conspiracies and his claims of electoral fraud and that.
But Joe was like...
The real issue here is the people who criticize Trump too much and were, you know, conspiratorially minded against him.
Yeah, this is the speed you saw 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 flaky.
He has a colorful personality.
But, gee, the way people respond to that, they've really gone over the top.
Yeah, that's not how I remember things, but...
And in contrast to that, Matt, again, there's still people that don't perceive Rogan as having their right-wing bias.
Here's him talking about Biden just shortly after that clip.
Yeah, I think it's going to get weirder.
He's going to 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.
I think he's seeing ghosts.
Did you see him on Jimmy Kimmel the other day?
No.
Well, he was just rambling.
I mean, 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 it.
Nobody is talking about it.
It's so unhinged because 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.
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 absurd.
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 noted that this kind of contradicts the image that he also likes to cultivate of a spontaneous...
I'm not 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.
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 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 Jaco 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, you know, InsideTracker 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 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.
Yep, yep, that's fine.
No comment from me.
Who can say?
Who can say?
Look at you trying to be the good guy.
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 a 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 who's...
Family members, 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-Unification Church member.
Has a podcast where he speaks with other ex-members.
And so...
I 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...
Second generation member and put the assassination into the context of the Unification Church and its actions there.
Well, have a good time.
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 Coding the Courage 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 the UK.
So our time difference coordination means that late night 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 worries.
He's gonna miss out, and 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, but...
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.
That's 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 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.
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 could come up, but maybe from your perspective, not as unforeseeable.
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 afield, and also the potential feelings of People who have had their lives disrupted,
destroyed by the church.
So I want to be 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.
I think, let me just start by saying, and I can understand the motivation.
As soon as I understood the connection, personally, I understood it.
I don't support taking the action that he did, but I understand the motivation and
And my show is...
Full of instances of people who are full of anger and rage at the destruction that the Unification Church has wrought upon their lives and the lives of their families.
I understand that rage.
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.
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 mini 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...
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 their 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 Trump's and the other folks who spoke at these events.
And then the Moonies turn around and say, hey, look, Abe's speaking at our events.
Look, this is evidence of God's providence working through us.
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, you know, 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, you know, 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
that would expose the manipulation, the abuse, and the hypocrisy of the organizations.
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.
Yeah, the thing which struck me about the event initially is that Tetsuya being very
and, you know,
Upset about this, the situation for his mother 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.
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 Abe was still involved.
But again, it did feel to me like the targeting of Abe just It 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, Abe is a nationalist figure.
He is associated with right wing Shinto groups in Japan as well.
But the Unification Church felt like that's low down on this list.
Of, you know, things that people would be protesting about him over.
So, yeah, I wondered about that.
Is there a feeling that amongst members or second generation members that 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?
No.
Personally, I think these people are culpable.
I can't speak 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 can kind of do it once and maybe you didn't know, but the second time around, and especially the people who are saying, oh, I praise Dr. Hak Jahan Moon 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.
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.
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.
And I think Abe was just sort of symbolic of being sort of the...
The top of that pyramid, effectively.
Again, I'm saying this without really knowing that much about Japanese politics, but he's probably the most famous out of that bunch that are currently living.
And then to go back to another point that you raised, so I don't 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 Jahan 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 know the specifics, but she was the first intended target and he couldn't get to her.
And then he then moved on to Abe as a target.
Oh, I see.
No, I'm not sure if it's been reported on or not, but I hadn't seen that information.
So that does explain.
It's 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 US,
there's...
Historical precedent and 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 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.
That happened, 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 Pam 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.
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 had happened.
But it does seem, and 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 there is coverage about, for the state funeral, some of the people involved having potential ties and discussion.
It does seem, and perhaps it's inevitable, that it would throw attention onto the Unification Church and its role in politics.
So, I don't know.
I'm not saying, therefore, that that was a good thing to do or successful, but it does seem like it at least was not counterproductive to the outcome if he wanted people to be aware of this connection.
I know.
And that's something that I've thought about as well.
Again, I've been sometimes for the last 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, the world is taking notice.
And we're having this conversation and other people are having conversations.
So it has brought attention to it.
I'm sad that it's taken this for people to take this problem seriously.
Like it or not, it feels like the world is taking it seriously now.
So I agree, you know, I don't condone the action, but it does feel like the goal was achieved.
Yeah, and I guess the conflicting, you know, 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 like 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, right?
I think you said.
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 frustration and the reaction I think is understandable, but inevitably conflicting because he's an assassin.
Yeah, I mean, I feel conflicted here, trust me.
I have max empathy for the guy, but I'm also extremely conflicted in...
In, you know, having that empathy.
Like, just for example, I have a weekly lunch with a colleague, a Japanese colleague at university, and, you know, obviously we talked about the event, and he's no fan of Abe's politics, but 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 had happened.
And the whole Unification Church angle, at least initially, seemed to just be a bit confusing.
Because, you know, Abe is a controversial figure primarily because of his right-wing politics and attempts to adjust the constitution in order to allow Japan to have a military again.
So that seemed like it would be the thing, which, you know, 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 Om, they had a public profile, but it was only with the gas attack that basically The attention completely shifted.
And in that case, it 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 foreign religions.
So, yeah.
It's a messy, messy quagmire.
And what else can you say about...
Yeah, I'm really curious.
What's the reaction in Japan to all this?
I mean, you addressed some of that, but I'm actually really fascinated by that.
And 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 merely interacting with students on 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 media.
But I also think it could be concerns that 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 hesitant culture in the media.
And I did see then that foreign media was more quick.
To highlight the connections to the Unification Church.
But 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.
I couldn't tell what was the motivating factor.
I did see people presenting that it was because of the potential influence of the Moonies, 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.
I just don't have the context to know what's normal or not, and I was just hearing this.
I can also say, incidentally, I think a couple days after it happened, I spoke to a 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.
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, and 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.
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 are being reported are very large.
And you were, in our previous discussion, at pains to emphasize that a lot of this revolves around money.
And getting donations or front organizations and also potential involvement in businesses, the sushi business and this kind of thing.
So I wanted to ask Elgin, for people like the family involved here, what is likely to be the kind of...
The pattern for donations, and it might be different in Japan, but is there tithes that people are supposed to provide, or is it specific holy goods that they purchase?
How is that amount of money being funneled in by an individual?
Yeah, it's a good question.
And there's multi-layered.
To start with, there's a monthly tithe that's expected of members.
For context, In the West, so I grew up in the US, so my parents were expected every month to donate 10% of their pre-tax income to the Unification Church.
That was in America.
In Japan, it's 30%.
So 30% of every paycheck, which is probably about 50% after tax.
So yeah, 30% before tax.
You're expected to tithe to the organization, just to start with.
So that's every month, every paycheck you're given at.
And 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 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,
more or less.
And as a result, more is demanded from them financially.
And that 3x multiplier on the tithing is just kind of like 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.
I've seen priceless for like, we're having some special ceremony.
For Western members, it costs $100.
For Japanese, it costs $300.
And it's just like there, 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 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.
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 and South Korea.
But in Japan, like aligning with the far right actually would please you in kind of conflict.
Which means dream political opinion inside 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 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 that the politicians are not being asked to sign on to that.
They just need to show up.
Yeah, this is the thing.
Abe didn't believe any of this shit, or 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 it's very interesting.
So you were describing the income streams and tithing?
Yeah.
So first it starts with the tithing, right?
That's just 30% just every month.
And then on top of that, there are multiple expectations that are placed on you and they can take multiple forms.
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 will 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 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 or 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 children that might have been aborted or that kind of thing.
There's a very common pattern.
And even in the mainstream religions in Japan and Buddhism, there's a thing which is criticized and labeled funerary Buddhism, whereby Buddhist temples are paid What seem like exorbitant amounts to give posthumous names to the deceased,
which enable them to be reborn in better circumstances.
And so it feels like what you're describing, you know, like fits into a cosmology or and 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.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
Focused on.
And it seems to be psychologically very effective at encouraging people to donate their time and money.
So, yeah.
And are those mostly Eastern, new religious movements that are relying on it?
I don't study this stuff, so I don't really know.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I hadn't thought about it too much, like, you know, whether it applies across.
But 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.
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 they do that.
I'd be curious to hear if you hear about this in other religions, but they do this ceremony called I don't know.
And it generates this kind of like group, I don't know, this sort of group high of all these people, 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 beat the person in front of them in various places on their body.
And by beating, and then you beat yourself too.
I've been to this place, by the way.
I've done this.
And when you beat in principle, when 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 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 Unification Church.
If someone was homosexual, they would send them to this place to try to beat 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, 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.
So the interesting 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 in particular, I will say that in various events in Japan, in mainstream religious events, or some people refer to them as cultural events, but like festivals, there are These kind of group spiritual exercises performed collectively and I've done them together with people 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 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 those events.
But 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 that it's a dangerous practice and the potential for abuse and the actuality of the abuse is massive.
Stories of people who talk about people with severe mental illnesses being taken to this place.
And the parents are basically told, look, if you leave your kid here for six months or a year, then he's going to be cured of whatever illness.
And so this poor kid is in this environment, probably doesn't even know what's going on, and is just getting beaten day in and day out.
It's a really scary.
It's a really fucking scary thing.
If you take any random member of Scientology, for example, and especially second generation members, of course, given the nature of Scientology, there might be experiences that are troubling.
But there will be a lot of people for whom it functions just in a similar manner to an established religion.
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 members that are held against their will or are treated very badly for mental illness or for disbehaving with the group.
And these are the kind 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 there.
I was Catholic.
I didn't experience that.
But the prevalence of it and the possibility of it means that it's a systematic issue that you have to contend with.
And what you're describing sounds the same way that 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 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...
I don't know what it was, but it wasn't that far off for my parents, I would say.
And this does seem like something that marks out a lot of new religious movements from more established ones.
Because like, for example, in the Catholic Church, people donate money, right?
At least on Sunday services, you know, they pass around the offering.
But that was people donating, you know, a couple of pounds or five pounds.
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 collection plate.
So 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 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 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.
I don't know exactly, but that's how it worked back then.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about the event and just more details about your experience and how the church functions.
Is there anything before we wrap up that you wanted 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've 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 first-person experience with.
So that, I think, is quite interesting.
That's coming up soon.
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 in the show notes.
So I made a video that explains my understanding of the motivation of Abe's killer.
I've also got another video coming up soon, which looked at the Unification Church and makes a very, I think, compelling point that 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 I appreciate if you can put that in the show notes.
Follow me on Twitter at fallingoutpod where I tweet about this stuff and hopefully spur some action, 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.
But so I'm sorry to speak to you again under these circumstances, Elgin, but I really appreciate your insight and being willing to Go for the issues again.
So keep up the good work.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And likewise, appreciate the invite.
All right.
Well, that was that.
And 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 two sets in, but...
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.
I'm sorry I couldn't be there for it.
Yeah, object permanence, that old chestnut.
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 moved to character assassinations directed at us.
Maybe I'll cut that.
I might 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.
Favourite segment.
Favourite 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.
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 though.
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?
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 on us.
That's not fair.
Like the three laws of robotics, but for podcasts, yep.
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 a critique of capitalism in there, Matt.
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 it.
Still, it's a great show.
Keep up the good work, Matt and Chris.
Now, Matt, one thing here.
I think you took the wrong lesson if the notion is that...
Great and powerful people of the world are mostly doing their best.
That's never been something I want to suggest.
That's not the message.
Just wanted to caveat that.
No, that's right.
Our message is be critical of the great and the good, but do it in a non-conspiratorial, non-fantasy-based way, please.
Yeah, just accept that the organizations are imperfect and that people are terrible and inconsistent and start from there, then move on.
Yeah, then everything makes sense.
Things aren't so surprising.
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 review.
I feel it kind of, actually, in some senses.
What's that word?
Like when you're proven correct after being slandered.
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 of what it's harder.
We're in a couple of 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.
Yeah, 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.
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 feigned 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's pretense of academic neutrality.
That's actually a well-written one-star hit job, isn't it?
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 they contradict themselves.
That's right.
They meander around.
They have grammatical mistakes.
The word choice is a suboptimal.
But that was well-written.
That was good.
Yeah, this has a consistent theme.
It's, you know, hypocrites pretending to be objective, but really they're just as bad as everyone else, and they're branding everybody they dislike as uniquely evil and stuff.
So, like, he's got a point.
He's got a thesis.
He rhetorically hits it.
He develops it with several sub-points, and he returns to it at the end.
No, you're right.
It is good.
It's wrong, obviously.
So very, very wrong.
We're not culture warriors.
It's just unfortunate.
He's wrong.
You know, it's fine.
You know, you can put together a very strong...
Reality contradicts him.
That's the unfortunate part.
But, you know, it's a well-constructed wrong opinion.
That's what I'm saying about that.
We're not culture warriors.
We're not hitting a drum.
We're not partisans.
Surely not.
Not that much, anyway.
We've got a few prejudices, sure.
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 Sasal.
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.
Ah, he's onto 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, look, that's a fantastic 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 it's a very nice review.
I'll cut it there because that's the only parts that are like kind of dingy nose.
But I just, 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, "Oh, Chris, I'm 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, Luke.
Yeah, thank you, Lou.
You've made Chris very happy.
This is something he's complained about a great deal of fear that I seem to get away scot-free because people pay attention to the tone instead of what is actually being said.
And 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.
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 would be important too.
So if you have editing skills, particularly if you're familiar with a piece of software called Descript and are 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.
Timothy Rabin or Robin Martin Dina Krosta Hola Gatito Helen
Nathan Nathan Nathan Fralick Alia Susan
Amy Bauer J.M.
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 Amir Patel, Nick Boyle, Alan Coogan, Adrian Barrett, Oh,
Helen Moffat, Nolan Mason, Gaddy Epstein, and Bill Crovers.
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 brilliant gurus, the shining stars in the Patreon sky.
And they are, this week, Gareth Lee, Melissa Renzi, Frasier Macmillan, and Heidi Packard.
Packard.
Heidi Packard.
Wow.
Thank you, Galaxy Brained Gurus.
Not the best here, but certainly a very significant here indeed.
There is no best, there is no worst.
That is the best here, Matt.
The opposite it is.
It's the highest here.
Yep, they're better people.
Thank you.
Matt's an anti-capitalist, so he hates people who donate the most money.
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.
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 end?
Yeah, 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 disc, accord the gin, live your life, and get ready to fight those Nazis.
