'This is American fascism': A disturbing event will bring together gun nuts, Trumpians and 'End Times' Moonies
Freedom Festival is a far-right event held in Greenley, Pennsylvania and organized by a combination of Moonies and gun manufacturers. The speakers at this year's event will include former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and according to Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, their presence at Freedom Festival underscores the ever-increasing radicalization of the Republican Party.
"Few Americans are even aware that the gun company Kahr and a rural Pennsylvania doomsday church — both run by the same ultra-rich Korean family — hold an annual 'Freedom Festival' that attracts gun enthusiasts and the type of people who attach 'Don't Tread on Me' flags to the back of their trucks," Pagliery explains in an article published on October 8. "But in the wake of the failed January 6 insurrection, the event's amalgamation of sovereign citizens and alt-truthers has taken on a new meaning. And now, it's even got an all-star lineup."
Ryan Busse, a former gun industry executive, warns that the presence of a former NRA spokesperson at Freedom Festival is "legitimizing" extremism.
Busse told the Beast, "It's going to send a message across the country that this is normal, that this is OK. This is American fascism being developed right before our eyes. This is like 1936 Germany in a symposium."
Busse went on to say, "The one that concerns me the most is Dana Loesch. She's treated by gun consumers like royalty, and here she is legitimizing this insanity. That scares me."
Pagliery notes that Kahr Firearms Group, which manufactures semi-automatic weapons, is run by a family of Moonies. Founded by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon during the 1950s, the Moonies are a Christianist cult known for conspiracy theories, End Times themes and a far-right ideology.
"While Sun Myung Moon became a prominent figure in the American conservative movement — founding the Washington Times newspaper — one of his sons, Justin Moon, founded the Kahr gun company in 1995," Pagliery explains. "And another son, Hyung Jin Sean Moon, inherited an offshoot of the church that goes by the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary and warns about 'the End of Times.' With the patriarch now deceased, his sons have largely merged their worlds."
Pagliery continues, "The reverend son now refers to his church with a more militant name — Rod of Iron Ministries — an allusion to his unification of disparate ideas: faith and guns. And churchgoers wear metal crowns on their heads, signifying individuals' ultimate sovereign authority over themselves. They also carry semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s and AK-47s, fashioning their guns like pious medieval knights would a sword."
The Moonies are not white supremacists; Rev. Sun Myung Moon was Korean. But according to J.J. MacNab of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, that doesn't make them any less dangerous.
MacNab told the Beast, "They've never really gotten the attention I think they should, because they're not a White supremacy group. Anybody that's pushing such a hearty mix of guns and religion are problematic to me. And the doomsday element is there. It's effectively talking about death."
Busse finds Freedom Festival's combination of religious extremism, guns, conspiracy theories and Trumpism to be incredibly toxic.
The former NRA member told the Beast, "It's what I fear: anything that will gin up people to buy more guns, hate people more, and vote for people like Trump. It's all of that on steroids. Doesn't the Klan meet in the dark out back behind uncle's barn? This is right out in the open."
'This is American fascism': A disturbing event will bring together gun nuts, Trumpians and 'End Times' Moonies - Alternet.org
