Interview with Author John Gorenfeld

by DarkSyde [courtesy of Daily Kos]

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."