Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom. By John Gorenfeld (Order here)
I had a chance to ask John a few questions and post his newest video report (King of America -- Broken in parts 1 and 2 below) on Daily Kos. John is available in comments, West Coast time permitting, to chat with you about the cult of Moon and its seemingly unending influence on the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
DarkSyde (DS): Given recent media interest in religious/political connections, or even before, how does the right-wing expect to get away with being so closely tied into someone as controversial as Moon without greater coverage or exposure to the public?
John Gorenfeld: You know, I would bet you that fewer than five percent of Americans know that the Washington Times, this newspaper that is constantly quoted in the conservative media sphere, is published by Sun Myung Moon. When I tell regular people—the ones old enough to remember Moon—they're horrified.
Washington journalists, though, are another story. They have a tin ear for hypocrisy, and working in D.C., they get so out of touch with reality they don't blink when Moon shows up at Washington Times dinner parties and raves about replacing Jesus Christ with himself. And they don't bother to inform the heartland.
There used to be plenty of Washington Post reports about the conservative/Moon alliance. But through sheer shamelessness, the Right just kept on keeping on until the media lost interest. Now everyone I talk to at big media outlets thinks Moon is a stale story, even though he's as significant a figure as Rupert Murdoch or George Soros in current American politics. "Oh, it's that '70s cult thing, we've covered it already."
But '70s Moon is not nearly as interesting as '00s Moon, who is touring the planet with the president's brother Neil. What does a cult leader have to do to get some coverage these days? It was like pulling teeth finding a media outlet that would report his coronation on Capitol Hill.
DS: When I was a kid, this guy was considered a frightening cult leader and his followers brainwashed victims in need of deprogramming. Next thing I know he's pals with some of the most powerful and mainstream conservative leaders, what happened in between?
John Gorenfeld: Moon is the kind of horror that only Richard Nixon could unleash.
To be a really great 1970s cult leader, you had to have a mad plan, but Moon's vision made the rest look like amateurs. He had his sights on befriending the president (through astroturf rallies—"God Forgives Richard Nixon!"), infiltrating Congress (by deploying pretty girls to warm up Hill staffers) and then somehow...becoming the leader of the United States.
Various conservatives, including a Nixon aide, began to see a useful ally. I even found a letter from a young Karl Rove to RNC head George Bush, gleefully mentioning Moon's Freedom Leadership Foundation, in a list of right-wing youth groups who were mobilizing to win the debate on campus.
But it wasn't until 1982 that Moon hit upon his best idea yet: create The Washington Times. Overnight he became the VIP who published Reagan's favorite newspaper.
And since then, the paper has lost $3 billion, more or less loyally pushing the conservative message into the mainstream. Most recently its journalism has been credited by the ACLU with virtually inventing the Minutemen by blowing up their numbers to ridiculous proportions; it has launched fabulous tales about Saddam's WMDs being spirited to Syria by Russian agents, and Iraqis who wanted the war to start so bad that they would "commit suicide if the bombing didn't start."
DS: How did you become interested in Rev Moon?
John Gorenfled: When I was seven, I saw Moon's 1982 mass wedding on TV. "Weird," my dad said, and I didn't understand why, so he explained about cults and how they prey on fragile people, separating them from their families. Growing up in NorCal, not far from Rev. Moon's training camp, and Jim Jones's old digs, you couldn't escape stories of the loony, power-hungry gurus who roamed the land of "misguided Marin County hot-tubbers," as George H.W. Bush calls us.
Imagine my surprise when, years later, I learned that Moon wasn't some Berkeley relic...but a billionaire in control of the Washington Times, the influential conservative newspaper...jet-setting around the world with the Bushes. Then I discovered an empire of government graft involving the Faith Based Initiative and Abstinence-Only Education, and millions of tax dollars headed Moon's way, an object lesson in why we need the separation of church and state.
Then I found this trove of mad Moon speeches, but what got me was how alarmingly practical-minded they were. The Moonies would boast about lobbying "key congressional leadership posts." Moon himself said, "in the Republican establishment, the only hope for them is to unite with Father [himself]." But the Moonies would also ridicule George Bush Sr.—despite all his help, including flying to Argentina and Japan with Moon!—as weak and obedient.
What sealed my interest was the 1980 book Gifts of Deceit. It's by a congressional investigator, Robert Boettcher, who unearthed a decade of influence-peddling during Koreagate, a 1976-1978 House corruption probe that nobody on earth remembers except Robert Parry. Gifts was critically acclaimed, but ignored. In congressional documents, people who would go on to become very important conservatives—like Richard Viguerie, the "founding funder" of the Reagan Revolution—show up taking money from this wealthy right-wing cult as early as 1965.
DS: So as soon as we talk about the close association between Moon and the GOP, there will be the inevitable "But democrats take his money and kiss up to him too." What's the real story on that?
John Gorenfeld: Listen, there's nothing liberal about the Unification Church. People often bring up progressive congressman Danny Davis's role in bringing Moon a golden crown on a pillow, during the 2004 scandal, and don't see what's so conservative about the Unification Church.
Well, first of all, the event was set up by a veteran Religious Right lobbyist, Gary Jarmin, one of Ralph Reed's friends, and the host committee included Charlie Black, John McCain's senior political adviser.
But even if it weren't...imagine that you were to peek into a congressional hearing room and spy Dennis Kucinich and Larry Craig, kneeling before a ruddy figure. With a shock, you realize it's Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire conservative financier of the Arkansas Project...and he's pretending to be the Emperor of the Cosmos...
This is sort of the best analogy to what happened on Capitol Hill in 2004. Moon has put billions into right-wing politics, and not just the Times—for example, during George H.W. Bush's re election in 1988, he put up $5 million to create a pro-Bush group, the American Family Coalition. He gave Jerry Falwell $3.5 million to keep Liberty University from going under.
His dollars overwhelmingly favor the Right and its politics. And on Oct. 15, 1989, the Washington Post reported on a Moon plan to protect its conservative friends by being sure to bring along a liberal or two, as window-dressing. "Inviting Democrats also helps protect our Conservative Republican friends at election time," wrote Gary Jarmin.
This isn't a group that lobbies for universal health care or raising the minimum wage. But this is a group that campaigns for creationism (see Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming), abolishing gay rights, "Wise Use" anti-environmentalism, Republican wars, you name it. It's easy to play Two Degrees Of Moon in almost any sector of conservatism.
DS: Moon is what, near 90 years-old now? Assuming he doesn't live forever, what happens to his empire when he dies?
John Gorenfeld: When L. Ron Hubbard died in 1986, Scientology was just getting started.
There are a few different figures who could assume power in this group, which is organized like a royal family, with plenty of heirs. The most obvious is Preston Moon, the slick Harvard MBA who is Sun Myung's son, and who will lend it a much more mainstream sheen. Everyone talks about the Unification Church crumbling when Moon dies, but the group has survived plenty of predictions of fading into the sunset. How are conservatives going to fund a newspaper without the Moons?