Hello, I'm Adrian Dahl.

And I'm Weir Dhan again.

Whether we like it or not, we're in bed with the right.

So, Adrian, today we are diving into a group that I think is really fascinating,

even though they are in some ways eerily normal

and in some ways, like, true freaks.

So I'm going to ask you, just to start off,

what do you know about the Mooneys?

So when you proposed this topic,

it made immediate sense, because I mean, they're most famous for like mass weddings, which let's say is somewhat more right wing coded in our public discourse.

So I was like, yeah, it seems like if we got in bed with the moonies, we'd be getting in bed with the right.

I remember hearing a lot more about them in the 80s and I kind of feel like I heard about them in the 80s and the way I would hear about things that were actually 70s phenomena. In a way, that made me think, oh, Morris going back to her favorite decade, am I right to think that the moonies are, like, it feels like a throwback. I'm sure they're still around. These things always kick around still, but I haven't heard about the Moonies at a long, long time. But there was a time when they were really quite present and it seemed also quite well connected in especially U.S. politics. Given that it's like, I know it comes from Korea. It's started by, it's named after, San Mian Moon, it would stand to reason that part of the reason why

people got in bed with the Moonies was anti-communism. And so, yeah, that's all I know.

You know, you've got a lot of it. The Moonies are still around, although since the deaths of

Sun Myong Moon in 2012, they have split into rival factions. Oh, of course. So his wife is running one

faction and she has secured control of most of their remaining properties. Part of this is a story

about real estate. Honestly, they own a ton of real estate and land and businesses. And then two of his surviving sons, who in the U.S. go by Sean and Justin Moon,

have split off and formed their own sex called the Ministry of the Heavenly Rod, I believe,

which is an AR-15, like assault rifle-based religion.

Oh.

They wear crowns made of bullets.

Thought it was going to be dildos.

...