September 9, 2022 • 59 mins
What makes one belief system a religion, and another a cult? How can non-religious organization themselves be cults? In part one of this two-part series, Ben, Matt and Noel explore modern cultic organizations. They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Max Williams filling in today. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Today's episode is a doozy.
We are diving back into the world of alleged cults,
(00:47):
several of which you may have never heard of before. Now, folks,
please be aware that this episode or series contains descriptions
of violence, as well as serious emotional and physical abuse,
sometimes against children. As a result, it may not be
appropriate for all listeners, but we wanted to give you
a heads up. Uh And additionally, our legal department probably
(01:10):
wants us to say, in all but one of the
cases we're discussing today, we're exploring allegations, not proven crimes.
So with this in mind, we're also making space for
responses to these allegations where appropriate. But before we get
into any of that at all. We've got to respond
(01:30):
to some allegations about us, folks, uh, Matt Noll. The
rumor is that we don't just have a book, we
have an audio book and we're allegedly going on tour.
I thought you were gonna say we were a cult. Geez.
We're cult of personality, all right, I suppose, and that
we all have personalities and we hang out together and
(01:51):
talk about spooky stuff. But we're gonna be doing that
in person. Well, first of all, we're gonna be doing that,
uh virtually and audio book form where you can listen
to the entirety of our book stuff that it wants
you to know, available soon anywhere audio books are found.
That's right in the book releases on October eleven, and
we're gonna be celebrating by going on the road. We're
(02:12):
gonna be in Atlanta, Washington, d C. And Plainville, Massachusetts.
Check out the site stuff you should read books dot
com to learn more. And speaking of learning more, whenever
we talk about organizations like this cultic groups, you'll see
(02:32):
why we're calling that them that and a bit. Uh.
We first have to talk about the C word. What
is it about just the phrase cult? That makes makes
the concept so inherently controversial. Uh, here are the facts.
There's some tricky stuff about the C word, and the
three of us have run into it extensively in the past.
(02:55):
We have a little list of related episodes, uh that
we like to keep track of in in our show notes,
and uh in this for this episode, I just put
there too many, too many other episodes to name. We
have done a lot of work on cults, as has
the International Cultic Studies Association, which attests that at least
(03:17):
two million, five hundred thousand Americans have joined some of
these cultic groups during the past thirty to forty years,
which means that some people who joined groups during the
nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties went on to have children
who were born or raised in these environments. UM. Highly
controlling cultic environments. Yes, and if we want to define
(03:41):
a cult, we can to an extent. Uh. Well, let's
give let's let's give a quote here from that same organization.
Occult is quote a religion or religious sect generally considered
to be extremist or false, with its followers often living
in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian,
(04:01):
charismatic leader check check check. I do have to ask
the notion of something being false seems very relative. You know,
I mean one person. When we always say one person's
cult is another person's religion. It's very difficult, now impossible
to prove the validity of one's religion, of any sort
of deity or the existence of any kind of you know,
(04:22):
religious figure from the beyond. So that term definitely throws
me a little bit. The extremist part is a little clearer,
and the idea of this controlling authoritarian guidance typically under
an individual or a small group of individuals that are
kind of working together to exert control over their followers. Yeah,
this is an interesting point. By false, let's uh, let's
(04:48):
frame it this way. False doesn't necessarily refer to one's
spiritual beliefs. And you know, our longstanding policy on stuff
they don't want you to know is that your spiritual
beliefs are your own. Uh. Instead, false here it seems
to be referring to objectively disproven information. So for example,
(05:10):
if you say I am starting, you know the n
C O B New Church have been and our belief
is that when your physical body dies, you are reincarnated
as an item at the closest taco bell. That's fine,
that's a spiritual belief. But if you were to say instead, um,
(05:35):
the New Church of Been believes that books are hoaxes.
They don't actually exist. Anytime you thought you saw a
book or a library, you were wrong. You were misled.
Wake up, sheeple, Like that is demonstrably false because everyone
has seen a book, even if you don't like them. Yeah,
those are just items from your local taco bell. But
(05:57):
we also see, you know, shades of that within fundamental Christianity,
for example, h who some who claim that evolution is false,
evolution isn't real, or a certain scientifically proven things are hoaxes.
So you know, it kind of the whole when when
person's religion is another persons called, it still holds true.
(06:18):
And there are these weird gray areas that we do
have to dance around because it's a very interesting area.
How are you going to disprove that Jesus came from
Venus and landed on a specific hill in England? Right?
And why are you going to ruin someone's day if
they believe something that makes them happy. That's that's kind
of the liminal space that I wrestle with personally. It
(06:40):
is important to note, though, that many organizations that have
been called cults find the term profoundly offensive. They feel
being labeled a cult diminishes their legitimacy and it kind
of attacks their beliefs. And that's, of course, you can
see why people wouldn't want to be described as a cult,
and for this reason you'll see some groups calling cults
(07:04):
unorthodox religions instead. UM. But as well intentioned as that
might be, I argue it still falls far short of
the mark because there are groups that don't seem to
have a thing in common with the stereotypical film and
fiction idea of a cult. Fitness groups can be cultic,
life coaching organizations can be cultic. MLM multi level marketing
(07:26):
outfits can definitely be cultic. And with that in mind,
it's best for us to center the definition of a
cult on the tactics and practices used by a group
rather than a specific set of beliefs. And what are
we talking about here? We've mentioned this before, especially I
think most recently maybe guys in one of our Listener
(07:49):
Male episodes where you've talked about UM. Any particular group
that operates in a certain way. Right, Uh, maybe it's
not a religion at all. Maybe it's a juice company.
It's a small cafe that specializes in juice or something
like that. And additionally, maybe they don't even have some
kind of official book or maybe three thousand books like
(08:10):
one of the organizations we're going to talk about today.
They just have some set of practices that make you,
as an adherent or someone who wants to be a
part of the group, go through all kinds of rigorous mental, emotional,
physical things, tasks that are meant well, I say, I
think we say, are meant to control you as a follower. Yeah.
(08:35):
Check out our video from years ago that still holds
up how to start a cult. It walks through the
different steps that these organizations will use to control someone's body,
more importantly, their mind bonus points. You will see me
successfully get our pal Chuck Bryant to join join a cult. Uh.
(08:56):
Probably should follow up with him on that. I think
I left him hanging on the news last her. But yeah,
it's true. It's almost content agnostic, and that is not
to diminish again, anybody's metaphysical or spiritual beliefs It's just
to say that what matters to the definition of occult
(09:16):
is again the tactics. You will have a leader who
cannot be questioned. You'll have very strict dictates about what
you do in your day to day life, what you
can eat, how you can spend your time, what kind
of job you can or can't have, when you can sleep,
or in the amorous sense, who you can sleep with,
who you can fool around with. You might be forced
(09:37):
to not pursue romantic interest, or you might be forced
into a marriage with someone you don't know. Uh. And
then also your children will be controlled, often brutally in
these sorts of environments. The big big thing restricting information.
This is the key. This is how they keep you
(09:59):
from uh asking too many questions about venus for instance.
Uh and this that example is just stuck in my head.
And then you know the big them versus us, insider
versus outsider. Yeah, exactly, And that's the way they restrict
your interactions with others, right be. And that's a part
of restricting information that comes to you as a follower. Well,
(10:20):
that includes even you know, your your own family and
loved ones. The idea of separating you from them and
their influence because they are a threat. They are a
grounding influence that has the ability to pull you out
of this new reality that is sort of taking precedent
over what others might argue is you know reality. Um. So,
the more they can do to separate you from those
(10:41):
folks who might have influence to pull you out of this,
the better and more successful they can be at recruiting
you know, new members that are full adherents. Yeah, always
be worried of any organization that treats all questions as
though they are hostile interrogations. It's hate to ask stuff.
(11:01):
It's actually it's a very good thing for humans to
do in general. I mean, also, do cults get a
bad name? Yeah, because you usually you don't. You usually
hear about cultic organizations when they meet with Disaster, Heaven's Gate,
the Manson Family, the flavor Aide, Massacre, Jonestown, But you
(11:22):
don't hear about a lot of the groups of people
who just got together because they share the same beliefs
that maybe or share the same aspirations that maybe uh
don't vibe with the mainstream society in which they live.
They're not abusing their members. They may not even necessarily
be proselytizing like going out and trying to convert. They
(11:45):
may have no sinister intentions. They just maybe have some
different holidays and some different opinions on what happens before
you're born or after you die. As I like being
a big fan of fish, they say so and maybe
fishes the charismatic leader. They do good things, they're happy,
(12:06):
and they don't even well. I've mentioned in the past
two that I had some dabblings or encounters with the
be High Faith, which is a group that has you know,
if you look up behind Faith you'll see google instance
saying is the behind Faith occult. And a lot of
that stems from the fact the prophet behind a law
is a relatively speaking, modern figure, um, you know, certainly
(12:30):
not ancient like like the you know, mast heads of
many other religions. And I found it just to be
a very family oriented group of people who were very kind.
I didn't feel like I was trying to be arm
twisted into any kind of action or any kind of
behavior or anything. Um. It was something that some friends
of my my kid, um you know, invited us into
(12:51):
and we went to a few of their meetings and
it was lovely. Um. But that is a group that
I think likely, in my opinion, unfairly gets that wrap. Yeah,
big is it's easy to demonize or vilify those who
have different beliefs tail as old as time, and of
course the bi high faith is arguing for things that
everyone can agree are generally a cool idea. Don't be
(13:16):
a jerk to people. Try to make the world a
better place, you know what I mean. Another another religious
group that gets a lot of unfair bad press is
the Sikh community and the Sikh community and I haven't met,
of course every adherent to that faith, but everyone I
have met have been universally awesome. So you can't. You can't.
(13:38):
We have to be careful not to unduly judge people
or to paint with a broad brush. But with that
being said, with these important notes about how to think
of organizations described as cults or cultic, we have to say,
even with all those caveats, there are many, many, many
more cults out there then you might have guessed. So
(14:02):
I say we pause for a word from our sponsor.
It's obviously scientology, and then dive in. Here's where it
gets crazy. Uh, And we're not talking about that that
c I a ad. You guys hear about that. There's
(14:22):
a CIA recruitment ad that's been running on our show.
You don't even have to be a Georgia Tech student
anymore to get one of those or you know, M
I T. They just send it to everybody careful. So
so the cults, though, I guess you can say factions
of the CIA functioned as a cult during at certain times. Right,
(14:46):
cultic reasoning is what leads to wild stuff like MK ultra.
But today, when we're talking about obscure cultic organizations, we're
talking about organizations that have been described as such, often
by form or followers or by outsiders. It is incredibly
rare for a leader or active member of one of
(15:08):
these organizations to say, hell, yeah, brother, we're a cult.
Join on in, you know. And if there was someone
who did that, I would probably hear their pitch, because
I prize the honesty and advertising. I'd be like, okay, well,
you know, uh. We wanted to make it clear that
in all but one case of what we're discussing today,
(15:28):
these are active organizations. You can visit their websites, we have,
you can even in some cases request uh, literature or
learn more. What we're saying, what we're describing now is
in no way an endorsement of these organizations. Uh, nor
is it us putting our opinion on this. We're just
(15:49):
dealing with publicly available info. And uh, to my knowledge,
none of the three of us have been active members,
thank goodness of the organization. And we're about to describe.
Why don't we start close to home. There's one in Atlanta, Georgia.
It's a it's a political movement that's been described as
a cult, the Black Hammer Party, which I I'm sorry,
(16:12):
I'm not trying to start off with tongue in cheeking
this year, but I just can't not think of MC hammer.
When I think of the idea of a Hammer party Hammer,
I think of parachute pants and that sideways, you know,
hammer dance move with the legs kind of boat out.
That is not what this is. Um, we'll see. I
think about the Black Panther Party for self defense, but
like a play on it, right, like Huey Newton styled
(16:35):
on thing where it's the Black Hammer instead, because that's
more I don't know, you can hold it suggressive imagery,
you know. Yeah, I was thinking of the the hammers
those low level bosses throw in in Mario games. But
I might just have a case of black hammers. Yeah, no, no, no,
I mean that's probably good. What's that black? Kind of
(16:56):
like a seasoned steel, like cast cast eye, Aaron. I
guess those old school hammers and sledge hammers might have
been made of. Um. But let's let's let's do start
right here. It are in our home turf of Atlanta.
You likely may not have heard of, and I had not,
and I live here. Of the Black Hammer Party. It
is a relatively young group, formed only as recently as
(17:18):
two thousand and nineteen. The Black Hammer Party a k a.
The Black Hammer Organization started as a collective of people
who were disgusted by the ongoing systematic institutional racism of
the United States, the government, the police, all of these systems,
and rightly so I think we all share that perspective
(17:39):
to to some degree or another. Yeah, And the founders
here described themselves as activists. Primarily, they are a collective
of people who have backgrounds in what is called radical
black separatist pro segregation organizing. So the idea is that, uh,
to address the evils and the historical consequences of colonialism. Uh.
(18:06):
We one must organize the working class. One must decolonize
by making one's own community that does not suffer from
the evils of racism. That is understandable, right, that's you
don't need to believe in some god from Venus to say, yeah,
let's get rid of bad stuff in society. After the
(18:29):
murder of George Floyd and nationwide protest, the group experiences
a significant rise in public profile and in active members. Uh.
They also become uh known for social media. I don't
want to call them stunts, but they become known for
being quite adept at pulling the levers of social media,
(18:54):
and they can go viral with things hashtag no COVID.
They once protested outside of the c d C in
support of Nicki Minaj because the Black Hammer Party was
very much against COVID vaccination. And when Nicki Minaj also
came out on Twitter saying she was skeptical about vaccinations
(19:17):
because of what happened to her cousins, scrowed, um, then
that's true, you can look it up. Then they wanted
I'm sorry, I just I'm telling our listeners that because
it sounds so crazy, but it was these were crazy times.
So they protest um in support of manage, and they
(19:38):
get a lot of um attention for that. They're more
front of mind to the average audience member, especially if
you're here in Atlanta. And so their plan expands and
they say, hey, we're still going to stage protest right
and speak truth to power, but we're also going to
make a place of our own. But did you know it,
(20:00):
iss um and and uh, what are your thoughts around
you know, the black community being in general somewhat more
hesitant around these kind of government fast government rollouts of vaccines.
It just seems like, you know, with the history of
mistreatment of that community and you know, things like experimentation
and all of that over the years, that makes sense
(20:21):
that there might have been, you know, some trepidation within
that community and hesitancy to just accept that this thing
is okay. Well, I mean, yeah, we talked about it
in uh what a Plug what we Create set Up.
We talked about it in our book. The idea, like
the these ideas don't come from nothing. You know, people
(20:42):
remember the horrors of Tuskegee and mistreatment of people of
color in the medical community is far reaching and well
known and there are. You know, it's weird because we'll
get into the leader of this movement in a moment,
will introduce him. But it was surprising to some observers that, uh,
(21:06):
this this founder of the Black Hammer Party announced that
they were in league with the Proud Boys, who are
more of a further right organization. So the ideology gets money.
Maybe you could call it a case of strange bedfellows.
But yes, there was a lot of hesitancy and there
(21:27):
remains a lot of hesitancy around the vaccine or taking
a vaccine, and it is because of mistrust of government entities,
and it's also because of um it's also because to
an outside observer, you're saying, hey, there's so many other
diseases that have been around for so long and there
(21:49):
is no vaccine for them. Right, how did this suddenly
get fixed? Uh? That those are that I think the
two pillars of vaccine hesitancy on Black Hammer was, you know,
anti COVID vaccine. There were a lot of protest groups
that were uh and they didn't agree on literally anything
(22:12):
else except for that, uh and maybe and maybe the
importance of firearms. But Black Hammer decides they're gonna go
to the Rocky Mountains. They're gonna outside Denver. They're gonna
build their own utopia, a compound with some specific ideological guidelines.
They're gonna call it hammer City, by the way, which
(22:33):
I think is a really cool name. Also sounds like
a Mario level way. Hammer City and the Rocky Mountains.
Let's go, I meant, is it near rock City? All right? Well,
let's talk about how Black Hammer describes what hammer City
would be on their own website. Here here, just a
(22:54):
couple of things. Uh, the purpose of hammer City is
to build this city and other cities for all people
of color to be free. Sounds good. They want to
return the land to indigenous people, sounds good. Those who
moved to and live in hammer City would be offered jobs, housing, food,
(23:14):
and healthcare. And Black Hammer also states that in hammer
City there will be no discrimination of nationality, gender, age,
or mental and physical differences astric there will be no cops,
no rent, no coronavirus, and no white people. And that's
the asterix. That's they said, uh, uh, none of that,
(23:37):
but that's that's what a separatist movement that you know,
that's one of the tenants of the separatist movement and
there are you know, there's another group that I think
can fairly be called occults, which might have to get
into in another iteration, called the creativity movement. Is it
like lego sounds like about it's so confusing it It
(24:00):
is an atheistic religious, wide supremacist movement started in the seventies,
and it's not super creative either. But their idea is
that they will um, they will unite all the people
they consider white through this atheistic religion. So we're throwing
(24:24):
out the example of the Creativity Movement to show that
there are other there are other movements with those kind
of goals of separation, right according to what they see
as their definition of race. And in the US at least,
it is completely legal to find like minded colleagues, buy
(24:48):
some land and live on it. Right, It's completely legal
to do that, and there's nothing wrong with it. So
there's you may not agree with their das right as
espoused in Hammer City, but you don't have to visit
and if they're not hurting you, AND's okay. Now, would
(25:10):
they get sticky with local law enforcement? Sure, right, because
local law enforcement would come on the scene if there
was a crime or something like that. Uh, like the
branch Davidians. They look how bad? You know? All right,
would it be sticky if some group of white people
(25:30):
does try to come in, Uh, you would probably use
a private property defense at that point, right, unless you
incorporated as a municipality. So you can see that there.
You know, it's kind of a we're thinking big, we're
being ambitious. We will figure out the details along the
way because this is important to us. And one of
(25:51):
the thought leaders of this group as a guy who
was born Augustus c Romaine Jr. Also known as Ghazi Codeso. Uh.
This person is a controversial figure. Two former members of
the Black Hammers. Uh. You will see them saying that
(26:12):
under his leadership, the group transformed and became kind of uh. Well,
the phrase I are used most often was abusive, like
a hotbed of abuse and toxicity. Toxicity is kind of
a loosely defined term in today's parlance, but you know,
stuff like holding people against their will, forcing people to
(26:34):
do stuff they didn't want to do. Yeah, and this
soon boiled over as the group encountered external criticism from
other groups that you might, you know, on upon first glance, say,
would seemingly be aligned to some degree For example, Kevin
Rashid Johnson of the New African Black Panther Party UM.
(26:57):
Johnson reportedly accused the Black Hammer of being a conspiracy UH,
a secret right wing conspiracy, an operation meant to sow
division amongst leftist movements. UM also the Whole Hammers. Anything
didn't quite pan out. They did some fundraising, the group
missed a deadline, which is usually a red flag, of
(27:17):
May fourteen to sign the paperwork for the land. On
May seventeenth, the San Miguel County police escorted the remaining
members from off the property. They were not there legally
because they had not done the deal. Yeah, and then
things started heating up in Fayetteville, Georgia. This occurs in
July of this year. July, law enforcement in Fayetteville get
(27:44):
an anonymous phone call from this guy who says, I
have been kidnapped. I'm being held against my will in
the garage of this house. So the cops send a
SWAT team to search the home. This leads to a standoff.
Swat arrives, they surround the structure and they're asking questions
(28:07):
be allowed. Speaker UM and the people who are inside
are talking with law enforcement. They're about ten people inside.
Law enforcement is telling them all to exit. It takes
some hours of talking, but eventually nine people leave willingly,
and Swat dispatches their robot, you know when they're creepy,
(28:32):
creepy law enforcement robots to search the house, and this
is where they find the tenth person, who is unfortunately dead,
and they would deploy a device like this because of
fears of their being explosives or booby traps. Correct correct, Yeah,
And when they found that tenth person, they appear the
(28:55):
deceased person appeared to have died from a self inflicted
gunshot wound, and that's what's been report ordered by police. Um.
There you will find people writing on the internet, some
former members, some others who were just commenting on it
that perhaps that was not the case, that it was
not a self inflicted gunshot wound. But those are allegations well,
and it fits the narrative you know of of at
(29:16):
least they're perceived narrative that we are anti police brutality,
that we are here to protest the corruption and law enforcement.
So for this to be like a martyrdom kind of
event makes sense to fit their larger story. Um, but
it doesn't seem to check out. Well, there are two
versions of it. There are two versions of it. One
that I've read online was that someone within the home
(29:39):
shot and killed that tenth person who was there. And
the other version is that police officers swat team entered
and killed that person. That's and that story is coming
from Blackhammer and its members. That's what I mean. That's
the It makes sense that would suit their their narrative,
you know, for the mission statement of their group, um,
and that it would potentially help rally support around them,
(30:01):
um when they're kind of starting to get a bit
of a bad look. Yeah, these incidents lead to Ghazi
being arrested on a number of charges, and one of
his one of his associates, a guy named Xavier H. Russian,
is also arrested. That's r U S h I N.
(30:21):
You'll see why we want to clarify in justice. Second, folks, uh,
how it's important to note that neither of these individuals
have been convicted of a crime at this point, so
we want to make sure that we're clear about that
these are charges not convictions. One last note. Something tells
we may return to the story of the Black Hammers
(30:42):
in the future. But one last note the story is
still developing. This caught my interest. The FEDS maybe investigating
Black Hammer, and they have been investigating Black Hammer, but
the reasons for doing so might surprise you. In July
of this year, July twenty nine, a few days after
(31:04):
after that standoff, we mentioned the U s. D o J,
the Department of Justice released information about alleged Russian influence
on US political organizations. And depending on who you ask,
you will find some people convinced that these allegations indicate
the Black Hammer Party was receiving funding from Russian individual
(31:30):
with connections to the Russian government. So straight out of
the Dugan cookbook Foundations of Geopolitics. Well, also on on
on just a cursory glance of the Black Hammer website. Uh,
it is a hotbed of right wing political hate speech.
I just want to also pretty archive semitic. Yeah, yeah,
(31:52):
there's an article, as the headline is. And this is
not like reposted from some other site. This is written
by someone who contributes to the site, presumably someone who's
a member of the organization, an individual signing on as
o JO. Marjorie Taylor Green is right and here's why. Um,
you know, whatever your political leanings are. I think most
of us that are somewhat moderate, uh can agree that
Marjorie Taylor Green is a very toxic and nasty individual
(32:16):
in terms of the you know, the things that she
puts out there, the unfounded conspiracy theory that she helps,
you know, proliferate, and you know, it's just using these
buzz terms like it says earlier this month, while former
President Trump was in New York City, he had his
resort home at mar Logo rated by Sleepy Joe's fbi um.
They go on to say, your decrepit Bernie Sanders. They
(32:36):
go on to call Joe Biden peto Joe at some point.
I mean, just a lot of it's a lot of
this very charged right wing kind of four Channy type
language on here. So that part, yeah, And also that's
another point we talk about in the earlier video. And folks,
this is a smart way to tell when an organization
(32:58):
might be becoming a little cult tick. The use of
specific nomenclature, right, the use of initialisms, the use of acronyms,
the use of jargon that further brings you into the
cognitive space and then further separates the them from the US.
(33:21):
The ends from the outs, the nose from the no
knots Uh. It's it's insidious. I always think about titles
titles in an organization in that context, ben like as
you're moving up the ranks or something, you attain these
new titles. And if you don't know what that is,
there's a lot of explaining to do. Sure, I'm always
(33:42):
about it. Uh. This last thing that the takeaway from
this article or this blog post, I guess, Uh, the
FBI has come for Trump. Who's next? Uh? Is again
that that up that other ing. That that's sewing distrust,
you know, for the government and the idea that you know,
and again the government deserves plenty of disc but this
is very specific. Um. And then there's a picture of
(34:03):
the FBI raid and the head that the subhead is
or the little subtitle is the FBI rating the Mara
Lago resort home of Trump in the darkness, like the
greasy cowards. They are not exactly unbiased reporting. Yeah, that's true.
And you can check that website out. Uh. We it's
an unfolding saga. As we said, there's more to the story.
(34:25):
We may return in the future, but that's some pretty
deep water already. This organization is not unique. Uh, and
there are there's not really a shortage of former members
who will tell you that there are dangerous things going
on internally. Just before we move away from the Black
Hammer Party, it should be noted that I believe it
(34:46):
was Augustus, correct me if I'm wrong, there Ben who
was charged with sexual assault of some variety. And there
are other allegations of such things going on at the
at the house, in other locations inside the Black Hammer Party. Yeah,
and with some of the charges were related to sexual assault. Again,
(35:07):
this is deep water. We're gonna pause for what. We're
gonna pause on the Black Hammer Party from now and
follow up in the future. Let's try something different, right,
We're talking about painful, disturbing stuff, so what don't we
talk about something happy but keep it scientific. That's where
happy science comes here. I love that is that, like
(35:28):
the creativity movement, it's way less well damn kind of
get to make floam, to get to make go black
and bounce around upon it in your swimming pool. We're
gonna answer those questions and more right after this break.
Get happy, Get science. We've returned. Okay that that last
(35:55):
tagline wasn't my best. But as you can tell, I
am enamored of the name Happy Science. If you haven't
heard of Happy Science, perhaps you are more familiar with
its original name, The Institute for Research and Human Happiness.
Sounds like a dream job. Actually, that sounds really cool.
Our our story starts with the founder of the i
(36:17):
R h H or the founder of Happy Science, a
guy who is known as Rio Hoo Okawa born Takahashi
Nakagawa in and this guy has this really cool moment
in his origin story. He is a prestige. He's got
a job, a Wall Street job. He's a trader at
(36:40):
this pretty prestigious firm and he even works in their
Manhattan office for a year or so. And one day
in the course of his career, on July, Mr Okawa
has had enough. He quits. He quits a job that
a lot of people would literally kill to have. Uh
(37:01):
So he quits. He walks away from those earthly concerns
because he needs to focus on this organization, this Happy Science.
He needs to quote, bring happiness to humanity by spreading
truth that sounds good. Tell the truth, make people happy.
Those are two very positive things. It's it's similar similar
(37:21):
to David Ike in a couple of ways. In the
story he told us about you know, he had his
own thing. He was doing this thing and he got
inspired one one moment and then he had to tell
the world. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, it does
sound innocuous the way we're describing it. But in this
guy's case, this has been uh building for a while
in the background, because he had kind of a second
(37:42):
gig that was unrelated to his professional career. He was writing.
He published several spiritual books wherein he claimed to I
think the phrase would translate to channel messages or communications
from historical and religious figures who have passed away, folks
(38:03):
like Confucius or of course Jesus Christ, who is a
person that many new spiritual leaders apparently have in depth
conversations with. And you can see videos of him channeling
political and religious figures, and I just have to say
(38:24):
it's quite fun. I quite enjoyed watching some of those videos.
I kind of like the vibe. I'm gonna be honest
with you. Your mileage may vary, but I I enjoyed
watching it, and I think I think the guy the
vice journalists, we're gonna introduce. I think he enjoyed it too.
So okay okahwa spoiler alert figures out why he, of
(38:47):
all people is receiving these messages, these divine communications. It
all goes down to El Cantareu, which is the real
name of God, the highest God of Earth, the Lord
of all gods. Uh. Followers of adherents of that happy
science believe that this entity was born on Earth threety
(39:09):
million years ago, and it's the same entity that gets
worshiped at different times through different cultures and civilizations. And
they're all naming the same thing. Whether they're talking Tough
or Osiris or Odin or Hermes, they're all talking about
El Contarre and Okawa, it turns out, is receiving these
(39:33):
messages because he is this era's current incarnation of the
action of real God. Yeah. Fun fact about the singer
or elkantari Uh. He was once the ruler of Venus,
former ruler of Venus. M m M yeah. Tweird that
(39:54):
they emphasized former. I wonder if the word can't say
it's singer, maybe it's tight like there's the the word
cantor you know, it's like a sacred singer and um
and Judaism, or like who sings for religious ceremonies during
like high holy days and things like that. Yeah, the
I mean the idea of the idea of the creator
(40:16):
of everything being a singer or that being a human
way to understand it. It's it's quite beautiful, you know,
it's it's poetic. Um, you've got gotta check out. We're
not proselytizing, to be clear. It's just if you are
interested in these kind of things, you can find you
can find videos and lectures online and you can also
(40:39):
get some books. He is quite a prolific author. Be
do be aware that many of those books are transcripts
of lectures that he's made. Look okay, so they are
all these This has happened so often that they're even
jokes and bits of folklore about it, you know, like
the like the three guys and the Insane Asylum who
(41:03):
are each convinced their Jesus Christ and you put him
in a room and you see if they eventually get along. Right,
That's the thing. Uh, It's not unusual to be loved
by anyone. I'm kidding. It's not unusual to see people
who believe that they everybody wants to be special, right,
everybody wants to be extraordinary, So it is not uncommon
(41:27):
for people to believe that they have been um singled
out for some divine purpose. And honestly, again, that's a
personal belief. There's nothing wrong with it. You might find
that other people don't agree that you are the main
character of the universe because that might diminish their experience.
(41:48):
That's fine. You can be a one person belief system.
Millions of people over the years have claimed to commune
with spiritual leaders from beyond the grave. And if you
look at Happy Sciences basic spiritual belief system and structure,
there's nothing immediately dangerous. It's like, try to love in
a giving way, try to be honest, work actively to
(42:13):
make the world more peaceful and more joyful. All the hits,
you know, the good stuff. Uh. Until that is you
get into their political arm, their political wing or branch,
because unlike a lot of other spiritual movements, uh, they
are heavy in politics. They do not care about separation
of church and state, and the political wing of of
(42:36):
the Happy Science organization is known as the Happiness Realization Party. Um.
You don't really throw that word around unless you're talking
about something politically motivated and organized, unless like Mario Party
or you know, Pizza Party, which are one quickly great things. Uh.
This is incredibly right wing in its ideology, um, and
(42:57):
much less warm and fuzzy uh than the spiritual teachings
might make you think it would be. Um. This organization
supports the expansion of the Japanese military, erasure of proven
World War two war crimes like the Nanjing massacre, and
is really hot to try when it comes to getting
(43:17):
the nukes amassing nuclear weapons. Oh. It hates hates uh
China like the whole, the whole thing of China. It's
not one of those things where you say, I know
people don't control the government. I may disagree with the
government of a country, but I recognize the people are
human and decent and have the same wants and desires
(43:37):
and fears. No, it's it's very um beat me just
because I love this. Beep me Max. It's very Uh.
They're very tupac in this. They're saying China and if
you roll with them, Q two. That's basically and I'm
not being too hyperbolic with the language either. No, there's
(43:58):
some rough things you can find online. Statements and again
there's so many videos. You can find it if you
look for it. He doesn't he have the the the
Leader Rio hoo. He has, or at least for a time,
had the Guinness Book of World Records. I think he
had a record for the most books published in one
year and the number was fifty four. Wow. That's great.
(44:21):
I didn't know that. That's cool. That's a cool fact
to walk away with. Uh. Okay, yeah, but like you said,
it's transcriptions of like just talking and then it's put
into a book. And he's freestyling a lot in those videos,
you know what I mean. It's like one thought leads
to the next. I don't think he has his script often.
But as of spring of uh and this number may
(44:44):
have changed a little bit, there are at least twenty
one local political officials in Japan who are members of
the HRP, the Happiness Realization Party that we'll just described there.
And this article that made me laugh is from a
journalist named Scilla sat Gully over advice. Silla goes and
(45:08):
visits uh Parisian branch of Happy Science and he says, Okay,
give me the scoop. Tell me you know, I am
all eyes and ears, I want to hear, I want
to see, and you can tell that this is going
to be a little bit of a snarky article. Uh
an article uh through the title happy science is the
(45:30):
Laziest cult Ever. Again, we didn't write that, no need
to get the lawyers involved, No, no, no. So he
goes and checks out this local branch right and the lectures,
and unexpectedly, I would I would think and say that
the lectures are about extraterrestrials in part they're also about
(45:54):
this very specific viewpoint of reality and the afterlife and
the connection between ween you know, Earth and this other
realm that exists in nine dimensions. And you can even
I I can't remember if if this author in particular
found of the actual sketch like the diagram of Heaven
(46:14):
when it's laid out in these tiered dimensions. Yes, I
think there are some profits who only get to hang
out in the eighth level. But then the ninth is
like the V I P area. It's really really interesting stuff.
And again there's nothing wrong with that. That's a belief
that Mr Okawen his followers subscribe to. There's nothing wrong
with having your own personal beliefs, but just like us. St.
(46:38):
Gully notices a little bit of a discrepancy between this
very huggy, lovey, inclusive language on the spiritual side of
happy science and then the somewhat more militant geopolitical philosophy.
I've had a hard time not laughing as we get
closer to this because I love this excerpt. I love
this quote. I feel like some someone else do the honors. Sure. Um.
(47:04):
After the break, we were subjected to another tape, Rebirth
of Your Hopes, a completely overt attack on China and
North Korea, where Okawa characterized the two countries as quote
responsible for the decay of Asia. Responsible for the decay
of Asia. Okay Um. There was a part where he
(47:24):
started screaming about the Chinese being quote dumb, lazy, and
full of okay, no hyperbole there, uh, And another part
where he claimed that the Japanese government was going to
raise taxes because of Oh good Lord, I don't know.
I just want to say, this is a quote. This
(47:45):
man said this. This was reported by by St Cali
was going to raise taxes because of the quote Chinese
ng of their minds. Yeah, I don't know why that? Uh,
that insult? Is that just string of insults, calling someone dumb, lazy,
and YadA YadA. I don't know why that that tickles
(48:06):
me so, but he is very serious. Uh. You know,
I want to ask you guys about Chinese ing of
the mind. Is that meant to? Is that like a
statement about communism? Maybe it does seem to be referring
to some sort of indoctrination. Uh, communism being the closest,
lowest hanging fruit, I would argue, which is wild because
(48:29):
in China's hyper capitalist authoritarian isn't you're right there? Who
knows man that? I mean? We talked about him channeling
stuff right in the in there's a similar Vice video
where you can watch you can watch the founder in
a like press conference like setting with some supposed reporters
(48:51):
asking him questions while he's channeling the ghost of Margaret Thatcher,
the spirit of Margaret Margaret Thatcher, and it is one
of the most surreal things you can see. Uh. He
it's it's kind of it's more like an affect, like
a I'm I'm so possessed right now, That's what I
That's what it reads to me. If if he was
(49:11):
if he was an actor and playing a part, that's
a little. It's a little much, but sorry, I don't
want to make fun of him. It's just it. The
guide does some in some very strange stuff on camera
and then purposefully puts it out as uh messaging for
his organization. The New York Times has written about him
(49:35):
as well, fairly recently. Just a few years ago in
journalists Sam Kestenbaum went into detail about how Happy Science
was approaching COVID nineteen. Again, you see a lot of
these organizations spending a lot of time on their own
interpretations of the pandemic because it was a global event, right.
(49:58):
So kest and Bomb says that the group was claiming
they could cure infections of COVID nineteen through spiritual vaccines,
the remote application of spiritual vaccines. So you pay insert
fee here, and then you have a prayer directed at you,
(50:19):
the ideas that that prayer will spiritually protect you from
from contracting this physical ailment. So it's like a laying
on of hands, almost like big tent revival kind of mentality.
The idea that I could like inoculate you with a
blessing you know, or or restore your ability to hear
(50:42):
or walk or whatever by you know, touching you or
or doing some sort of sending five base thank you.
That's a much better way of putting a vibe base. Yeah,
and this, you know, I think it's a worthy comparison
because lest anybody in the st be too quick to judge,
do remember that tent revivals and televangelists of plenty have
(51:06):
have applied similar techniques or similar claims at least uh
test and Bomb seems pretty skeptical just to be fair,
and says that Happy Science is an enormous and powerful
enterprise claiming millions of adherents, tens of thousands of missionary
outposts across the world. It's secretive, it's hostile to the media,
(51:29):
and it's structured around a tiered, paid a progress system
of membership. They're sometimes called Tokyo's answer to Scientology, which
is in comparison I haven't. I haven't thought of, but
I imagine critics would. I would agree with that, right. Um, Still,
it's it's definitely it checks all the boxes for a
(51:50):
cultic organization. Yes, it does. Were you guys aware that
there's a Happy Science branch in our fair city of Atlanta? No,
but I'm not surprised there is it has four reviews
on Google and it is temporarily closed, but there is
a phone number associated with it, and you better believe
I'm about to call it later. Let's just see what
(52:11):
are their hours. Let's just roll up. It's temporarily closed,
it says, yeah, all right, we'll find him. But it's
on Piedmont. It's nice part of town. Actually. Uh so
they're doing well really quickly. There's a there's a book
by Nietzsche, uh called The Gay Science, um, and it's
translated to the the Joyful Science, the joyous science, or
(52:35):
the joyful Wisdom. Do you see any connection between the
the the the work of Friedrich Nizicchi and uh and
this or is it just kind of a parallel thinking coincidence.
It may be parallel because it's a very powerful phrase.
I think, you know, joyful science, happy science. Uh. But
(52:56):
I I'm sure that sir Okawa has discussed Nietzsche or
Nietzsche in thought at some point, just because he is
so prolific. He's like, he reminds me of that guy
we talked about earlier, ad non Altar with a Turkish
sex cult and and attempted coup of Turkey. That guy
(53:19):
was also very prolific, So I feel like at some
point it wouldn't be surprising. Rather if at some point
in Mr Okawa's writing or lectures we can find comments
about Nietzsche and what was that the basis for his
decision to name his movement this that I do not know,
but it would be really interesting to find that out.
(53:41):
And by the way, one note with Mr Okawa. Yes,
always people with UM unorthodox or newer spiritual beliefs are
gonna be vilified by the status quo in the mainstream.
So he's got a lot of outside critics, but it
might surprise you to know that one of his number
one critics is another their Japanese cult. It's the one
(54:02):
most Westerners think about when they think about Japanese cults,
om Shinriko, which we covered in a previous episode. Uh,
they had a very intense rivalry. I guess they're competing
for followers maybe, or maybe it's just the thing where
someone saying, no, I'm the main character, You're incorrect, I'm
the real Jesus or what have you. Anyway, before they
(54:25):
made that horrific attack on the Tokyo subway, UM also
tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Mr Okawa uh Like, like you
were saying that Happy Sciences around today. You can go
visit their website for firsthand information. And while you may
not have heard of this group, make a mistake, they're
(54:47):
making some big waves around the world. This is gonna
end up being a two parter for us. Oh yeah,
where it is gonna be two part We're gonna have
to end very shortly here. I just want to point
out another commonality that I'm seeing with this group in particular,
and some of the ones we're gonna talk about the
next episode, the deification of that leader. Like if you
(55:08):
go to Happy Happy Sciences website, there are numerous videos
and full books written about Okawa's uh like birth to
the story of how he was so intelligent, he had
an i Q of two hundred, he was twelve years old,
but he you know, it's like he was twenty, and
(55:29):
how he went to this prestigious university and then went
to this other one, and it's just really you can
watch these videos with this very emotional, moving, triumphant music
over top of it, you know, and just talking about
this this person. I think that's a commonality we see
in a lot of cultic groups that put their leader
in that space, right, who is now Jesus or God
(55:51):
or the next coming or whatever. Yeah, and I I
personally don't like deifying anybody, so I don't know if
I'm in the demographic, but but yeah, you're right again.
It is the tactics that define what we would consider cultic,
not the content of what they're saying. And we have
there's so much more that we want to dive into.
(56:13):
Join us for part two, our episode on up and
coming cults culture may have never heard of yet. We're
going to go into some more strange territory. But whenever
we talk about stuff like this, we feel morally bound
to end our episode with a little bit of a
(56:36):
p s A. This is just scratching the surface, is
one thing. For sure. There are many, many, many organizations
that might not call themselves cults, but sure do a
lot of things that occult would do. And if you
or anyone you know has been taken in by an
organization that is emotionally or physically unsafe, please do not
(56:58):
hesitate to reach out to any multiple resources online, over
the phone. There are forms of plenty. They can provide
free counseling and assistance. Um, it's worth it, and that's
we're into today. What do you think do you have
any experience with a cultic organization. I'm sure some of
our fellow listeners do. People often told me that they
(57:20):
didn't understand what they were in until they left and
they looked back and they had that lightbulb moment and
they said, that was a cult. I thought I was
just selling popcorn on commission, but I was in a cult,
no wonder. There was a giant golden idol of this
El Kantari guy behind him at all times. So yeah,
(57:43):
I mean, we're putting levity on it. But yeah, these
things can be serious. So we would love to hear
your stories. We can't wait to read them, to listen
to them, to experience them. Please do not try to
convert us if you are a cult leader. Otherwise, we're
easy to find online. That's right. You can find us
on Twitter, on YouTube, and on Facebook, where we have
(58:04):
a Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy, joined that thing.
We exist on these platforms under the handle conspiracy Stuff.
On Instagram you'll find this a conspiracy Stuff show. Check
out link to dot e slash std w y t
K if you want to look at that's our link tree.
I'm being silly. Um. If you want to find how
(58:24):
to pre order our book, or come and check us
out on the book tour coming to you in October. Hey,
we also have a phone number right. Oh, snap, you're right,
these allegations are indeed true. Just give us a ring
a ding ding banana phone. Where we are one eight
three three st d w y t K. You'll you'll
(58:45):
hear a brief message, tell you you're in the right place.
You'll hear a beep like so beep, and then you
will have three minutes. Those three minutes they belong to you.
Go nuts, get wild with it, go harden the paint.
And while you're doing that, please let us know what
you would like to be called old We love a
good nickname or moniker. Uh, tell us what's on your mind.
Second most important thing, let us know if we can
(59:06):
use your name and or voice on the air. Most
important thing. If you need more than three minutes, don't
censor yourself, don't edit yourself. Write us an email, send
us those links. Take us to the rabbit hole. We
will dive in. We read every single email we get.
Where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
(59:43):
they Don't Want You to Know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Max Williams filling in today. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Today's episode is a doozy.
We are diving back into the world of alleged cults,
(00:47):
several of which you may have never heard of before. Now, folks,
please be aware that this episode or series contains descriptions
of violence, as well as serious emotional and physical abuse,
sometimes against children. As a result, it may not be
appropriate for all listeners, but we wanted to give you
a heads up. Uh And additionally, our legal department probably
(01:10):
wants us to say, in all but one of the
cases we're discussing today, we're exploring allegations, not proven crimes.
So with this in mind, we're also making space for
responses to these allegations where appropriate. But before we get
into any of that at all. We've got to respond
(01:30):
to some allegations about us, folks, uh, Matt Noll. The
rumor is that we don't just have a book, we
have an audio book and we're allegedly going on tour.
I thought you were gonna say we were a cult. Geez.
We're cult of personality, all right, I suppose, and that
we all have personalities and we hang out together and
(01:51):
talk about spooky stuff. But we're gonna be doing that
in person. Well, first of all, we're gonna be doing that,
uh virtually and audio book form where you can listen
to the entirety of our book stuff that it wants
you to know, available soon anywhere audio books are found.
That's right in the book releases on October eleven, and
we're gonna be celebrating by going on the road. We're
(02:12):
gonna be in Atlanta, Washington, d C. And Plainville, Massachusetts.
Check out the site stuff you should read books dot
com to learn more. And speaking of learning more, whenever
we talk about organizations like this cultic groups, you'll see
(02:32):
why we're calling that them that and a bit. Uh.
We first have to talk about the C word. What
is it about just the phrase cult? That makes makes
the concept so inherently controversial. Uh, here are the facts.
There's some tricky stuff about the C word, and the
three of us have run into it extensively in the past.
(02:55):
We have a little list of related episodes, uh that
we like to keep track of in in our show notes,
and uh in this for this episode, I just put
there too many, too many other episodes to name. We
have done a lot of work on cults, as has
the International Cultic Studies Association, which attests that at least
(03:17):
two million, five hundred thousand Americans have joined some of
these cultic groups during the past thirty to forty years,
which means that some people who joined groups during the
nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties went on to have children
who were born or raised in these environments. UM. Highly
controlling cultic environments. Yes, and if we want to define
(03:41):
a cult, we can to an extent. Uh. Well, let's
give let's let's give a quote here from that same organization.
Occult is quote a religion or religious sect generally considered
to be extremist or false, with its followers often living
in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian,
(04:01):
charismatic leader check check check. I do have to ask
the notion of something being false seems very relative. You know,
I mean one person. When we always say one person's
cult is another person's religion. It's very difficult, now impossible
to prove the validity of one's religion, of any sort
of deity or the existence of any kind of you know,
(04:22):
religious figure from the beyond. So that term definitely throws
me a little bit. The extremist part is a little clearer,
and the idea of this controlling authoritarian guidance typically under
an individual or a small group of individuals that are
kind of working together to exert control over their followers. Yeah,
this is an interesting point. By false, let's uh, let's
(04:48):
frame it this way. False doesn't necessarily refer to one's
spiritual beliefs. And you know, our longstanding policy on stuff
they don't want you to know is that your spiritual
beliefs are your own. Uh. Instead, false here it seems
to be referring to objectively disproven information. So for example,
(05:10):
if you say I am starting, you know the n
C O B New Church have been and our belief
is that when your physical body dies, you are reincarnated
as an item at the closest taco bell. That's fine,
that's a spiritual belief. But if you were to say instead, um,
(05:35):
the New Church of Been believes that books are hoaxes.
They don't actually exist. Anytime you thought you saw a
book or a library, you were wrong. You were misled.
Wake up, sheeple, Like that is demonstrably false because everyone
has seen a book, even if you don't like them. Yeah,
those are just items from your local taco bell. But
(05:57):
we also see, you know, shades of that within fundamental Christianity,
for example, h who some who claim that evolution is false,
evolution isn't real, or a certain scientifically proven things are hoaxes.
So you know, it kind of the whole when when
person's religion is another persons called, it still holds true.
(06:18):
And there are these weird gray areas that we do
have to dance around because it's a very interesting area.
How are you going to disprove that Jesus came from
Venus and landed on a specific hill in England? Right?
And why are you going to ruin someone's day if
they believe something that makes them happy. That's that's kind
of the liminal space that I wrestle with personally. It
(06:40):
is important to note, though, that many organizations that have
been called cults find the term profoundly offensive. They feel
being labeled a cult diminishes their legitimacy and it kind
of attacks their beliefs. And that's, of course, you can
see why people wouldn't want to be described as a cult,
and for this reason you'll see some groups calling cults
(07:04):
unorthodox religions instead. UM. But as well intentioned as that
might be, I argue it still falls far short of
the mark because there are groups that don't seem to
have a thing in common with the stereotypical film and
fiction idea of a cult. Fitness groups can be cultic,
life coaching organizations can be cultic. MLM multi level marketing
(07:26):
outfits can definitely be cultic. And with that in mind,
it's best for us to center the definition of a
cult on the tactics and practices used by a group
rather than a specific set of beliefs. And what are
we talking about here? We've mentioned this before, especially I
think most recently maybe guys in one of our Listener
(07:49):
Male episodes where you've talked about UM. Any particular group
that operates in a certain way. Right, Uh, maybe it's
not a religion at all. Maybe it's a juice company.
It's a small cafe that specializes in juice or something
like that. And additionally, maybe they don't even have some
kind of official book or maybe three thousand books like
(08:10):
one of the organizations we're going to talk about today.
They just have some set of practices that make you,
as an adherent or someone who wants to be a
part of the group, go through all kinds of rigorous mental, emotional,
physical things, tasks that are meant well, I say, I
think we say, are meant to control you as a follower. Yeah.
(08:35):
Check out our video from years ago that still holds
up how to start a cult. It walks through the
different steps that these organizations will use to control someone's body,
more importantly, their mind bonus points. You will see me
successfully get our pal Chuck Bryant to join join a cult. Uh.
(08:56):
Probably should follow up with him on that. I think
I left him hanging on the news last her. But yeah,
it's true. It's almost content agnostic, and that is not
to diminish again, anybody's metaphysical or spiritual beliefs It's just
to say that what matters to the definition of occult
(09:16):
is again the tactics. You will have a leader who
cannot be questioned. You'll have very strict dictates about what
you do in your day to day life, what you
can eat, how you can spend your time, what kind
of job you can or can't have, when you can sleep,
or in the amorous sense, who you can sleep with,
who you can fool around with. You might be forced
(09:37):
to not pursue romantic interest, or you might be forced
into a marriage with someone you don't know. Uh. And
then also your children will be controlled, often brutally in
these sorts of environments. The big big thing restricting information.
This is the key. This is how they keep you
(09:59):
from uh asking too many questions about venus for instance.
Uh and this that example is just stuck in my head.
And then you know the big them versus us, insider
versus outsider. Yeah, exactly, And that's the way they restrict
your interactions with others, right be. And that's a part
of restricting information that comes to you as a follower. Well,
(10:20):
that includes even you know, your your own family and
loved ones. The idea of separating you from them and
their influence because they are a threat. They are a
grounding influence that has the ability to pull you out
of this new reality that is sort of taking precedent
over what others might argue is you know reality. Um. So,
the more they can do to separate you from those
(10:41):
folks who might have influence to pull you out of this,
the better and more successful they can be at recruiting
you know, new members that are full adherents. Yeah, always
be worried of any organization that treats all questions as
though they are hostile interrogations. It's hate to ask stuff.
(11:01):
It's actually it's a very good thing for humans to
do in general. I mean, also, do cults get a
bad name? Yeah, because you usually you don't. You usually
hear about cultic organizations when they meet with Disaster, Heaven's Gate,
the Manson Family, the flavor Aide, Massacre, Jonestown, But you
(11:22):
don't hear about a lot of the groups of people
who just got together because they share the same beliefs
that maybe or share the same aspirations that maybe uh
don't vibe with the mainstream society in which they live.
They're not abusing their members. They may not even necessarily
be proselytizing like going out and trying to convert. They
(11:45):
may have no sinister intentions. They just maybe have some
different holidays and some different opinions on what happens before
you're born or after you die. As I like being
a big fan of fish, they say so and maybe
fishes the charismatic leader. They do good things, they're happy,
(12:06):
and they don't even well. I've mentioned in the past
two that I had some dabblings or encounters with the
be High Faith, which is a group that has you know,
if you look up behind Faith you'll see google instance
saying is the behind Faith occult. And a lot of
that stems from the fact the prophet behind a law
is a relatively speaking, modern figure, um, you know, certainly
(12:30):
not ancient like like the you know, mast heads of
many other religions. And I found it just to be
a very family oriented group of people who were very kind.
I didn't feel like I was trying to be arm
twisted into any kind of action or any kind of
behavior or anything. Um. It was something that some friends
of my my kid, um you know, invited us into
(12:51):
and we went to a few of their meetings and
it was lovely. Um. But that is a group that
I think likely, in my opinion, unfairly gets that wrap. Yeah,
big is it's easy to demonize or vilify those who
have different beliefs tail as old as time, and of
course the bi high faith is arguing for things that
everyone can agree are generally a cool idea. Don't be
(13:16):
a jerk to people. Try to make the world a
better place, you know what I mean. Another another religious
group that gets a lot of unfair bad press is
the Sikh community and the Sikh community and I haven't met,
of course every adherent to that faith, but everyone I
have met have been universally awesome. So you can't. You can't.
(13:38):
We have to be careful not to unduly judge people
or to paint with a broad brush. But with that
being said, with these important notes about how to think
of organizations described as cults or cultic, we have to say,
even with all those caveats, there are many, many, many
more cults out there then you might have guessed. So
(14:02):
I say we pause for a word from our sponsor.
It's obviously scientology, and then dive in. Here's where it
gets crazy. Uh, And we're not talking about that that
c I a ad. You guys hear about that. There's
(14:22):
a CIA recruitment ad that's been running on our show.
You don't even have to be a Georgia Tech student
anymore to get one of those or you know, M
I T. They just send it to everybody careful. So
so the cults, though, I guess you can say factions
of the CIA functioned as a cult during at certain times. Right,
(14:46):
cultic reasoning is what leads to wild stuff like MK ultra.
But today, when we're talking about obscure cultic organizations, we're
talking about organizations that have been described as such, often
by form or followers or by outsiders. It is incredibly
rare for a leader or active member of one of
(15:08):
these organizations to say, hell, yeah, brother, we're a cult.
Join on in, you know. And if there was someone
who did that, I would probably hear their pitch, because
I prize the honesty and advertising. I'd be like, okay, well,
you know, uh. We wanted to make it clear that
in all but one case of what we're discussing today,
(15:28):
these are active organizations. You can visit their websites, we have,
you can even in some cases request uh, literature or
learn more. What we're saying, what we're describing now is
in no way an endorsement of these organizations. Uh, nor
is it us putting our opinion on this. We're just
(15:49):
dealing with publicly available info. And uh, to my knowledge,
none of the three of us have been active members,
thank goodness of the organization. And we're about to describe.
Why don't we start close to home. There's one in Atlanta, Georgia.
It's a it's a political movement that's been described as
a cult, the Black Hammer Party, which I I'm sorry,
(16:12):
I'm not trying to start off with tongue in cheeking
this year, but I just can't not think of MC hammer.
When I think of the idea of a Hammer party Hammer,
I think of parachute pants and that sideways, you know,
hammer dance move with the legs kind of boat out.
That is not what this is. Um, we'll see. I
think about the Black Panther Party for self defense, but
like a play on it, right, like Huey Newton styled
(16:35):
on thing where it's the Black Hammer instead, because that's
more I don't know, you can hold it suggressive imagery,
you know. Yeah, I was thinking of the the hammers
those low level bosses throw in in Mario games. But
I might just have a case of black hammers. Yeah, no, no, no,
I mean that's probably good. What's that black? Kind of
(16:56):
like a seasoned steel, like cast cast eye, Aaron. I
guess those old school hammers and sledge hammers might have
been made of. Um. But let's let's let's do start
right here. It are in our home turf of Atlanta.
You likely may not have heard of, and I had not,
and I live here. Of the Black Hammer Party. It
is a relatively young group, formed only as recently as
(17:18):
two thousand and nineteen. The Black Hammer Party a k a.
The Black Hammer Organization started as a collective of people
who were disgusted by the ongoing systematic institutional racism of
the United States, the government, the police, all of these systems,
and rightly so I think we all share that perspective
(17:39):
to to some degree or another. Yeah, And the founders
here described themselves as activists. Primarily, they are a collective
of people who have backgrounds in what is called radical
black separatist pro segregation organizing. So the idea is that, uh,
to address the evils and the historical consequences of colonialism. Uh.
(18:06):
We one must organize the working class. One must decolonize
by making one's own community that does not suffer from
the evils of racism. That is understandable, right, that's you
don't need to believe in some god from Venus to say, yeah,
let's get rid of bad stuff in society. After the
(18:29):
murder of George Floyd and nationwide protest, the group experiences
a significant rise in public profile and in active members. Uh.
They also become uh known for social media. I don't
want to call them stunts, but they become known for
being quite adept at pulling the levers of social media,
(18:54):
and they can go viral with things hashtag no COVID.
They once protested outside of the c d C in
support of Nicki Minaj because the Black Hammer Party was
very much against COVID vaccination. And when Nicki Minaj also
came out on Twitter saying she was skeptical about vaccinations
(19:17):
because of what happened to her cousins, scrowed, um, then
that's true, you can look it up. Then they wanted
I'm sorry, I just I'm telling our listeners that because
it sounds so crazy, but it was these were crazy times.
So they protest um in support of manage, and they
(19:38):
get a lot of um attention for that. They're more
front of mind to the average audience member, especially if
you're here in Atlanta. And so their plan expands and
they say, hey, we're still going to stage protest right
and speak truth to power, but we're also going to
make a place of our own. But did you know it,
(20:00):
iss um and and uh, what are your thoughts around
you know, the black community being in general somewhat more
hesitant around these kind of government fast government rollouts of vaccines.
It just seems like, you know, with the history of
mistreatment of that community and you know, things like experimentation
and all of that over the years, that makes sense
(20:21):
that there might have been, you know, some trepidation within
that community and hesitancy to just accept that this thing
is okay. Well, I mean, yeah, we talked about it
in uh what a Plug what we Create set Up.
We talked about it in our book. The idea, like
the these ideas don't come from nothing. You know, people
(20:42):
remember the horrors of Tuskegee and mistreatment of people of
color in the medical community is far reaching and well
known and there are. You know, it's weird because we'll
get into the leader of this movement in a moment,
will introduce him. But it was surprising to some observers that, uh,
(21:06):
this this founder of the Black Hammer Party announced that
they were in league with the Proud Boys, who are
more of a further right organization. So the ideology gets money.
Maybe you could call it a case of strange bedfellows.
But yes, there was a lot of hesitancy and there
(21:27):
remains a lot of hesitancy around the vaccine or taking
a vaccine, and it is because of mistrust of government entities,
and it's also because of um it's also because to
an outside observer, you're saying, hey, there's so many other
diseases that have been around for so long and there
(21:49):
is no vaccine for them. Right, how did this suddenly
get fixed? Uh? That those are that I think the
two pillars of vaccine hesitancy on Black Hammer was, you know,
anti COVID vaccine. There were a lot of protest groups
that were uh and they didn't agree on literally anything
(22:12):
else except for that, uh and maybe and maybe the
importance of firearms. But Black Hammer decides they're gonna go
to the Rocky Mountains. They're gonna outside Denver. They're gonna
build their own utopia, a compound with some specific ideological guidelines.
They're gonna call it hammer City, by the way, which
(22:33):
I think is a really cool name. Also sounds like
a Mario level way. Hammer City and the Rocky Mountains.
Let's go, I meant, is it near rock City? All right? Well,
let's talk about how Black Hammer describes what hammer City
would be on their own website. Here here, just a
(22:54):
couple of things. Uh, the purpose of hammer City is
to build this city and other cities for all people
of color to be free. Sounds good. They want to
return the land to indigenous people, sounds good. Those who
moved to and live in hammer City would be offered jobs, housing, food,
(23:14):
and healthcare. And Black Hammer also states that in hammer
City there will be no discrimination of nationality, gender, age,
or mental and physical differences astric there will be no cops,
no rent, no coronavirus, and no white people. And that's
the asterix. That's they said, uh, uh, none of that,
(23:37):
but that's that's what a separatist movement that you know,
that's one of the tenants of the separatist movement and
there are you know, there's another group that I think
can fairly be called occults, which might have to get
into in another iteration, called the creativity movement. Is it
like lego sounds like about it's so confusing it It
(24:00):
is an atheistic religious, wide supremacist movement started in the seventies,
and it's not super creative either. But their idea is
that they will um, they will unite all the people
they consider white through this atheistic religion. So we're throwing
(24:24):
out the example of the Creativity Movement to show that
there are other there are other movements with those kind
of goals of separation, right according to what they see
as their definition of race. And in the US at least,
it is completely legal to find like minded colleagues, buy
(24:48):
some land and live on it. Right, It's completely legal
to do that, and there's nothing wrong with it. So
there's you may not agree with their das right as
espoused in Hammer City, but you don't have to visit
and if they're not hurting you, AND's okay. Now, would
(25:10):
they get sticky with local law enforcement? Sure, right, because
local law enforcement would come on the scene if there
was a crime or something like that. Uh, like the
branch Davidians. They look how bad? You know? All right,
would it be sticky if some group of white people
(25:30):
does try to come in, Uh, you would probably use
a private property defense at that point, right, unless you
incorporated as a municipality. So you can see that there.
You know, it's kind of a we're thinking big, we're
being ambitious. We will figure out the details along the
way because this is important to us. And one of
(25:51):
the thought leaders of this group as a guy who
was born Augustus c Romaine Jr. Also known as Ghazi Codeso. Uh.
This person is a controversial figure. Two former members of
the Black Hammers. Uh. You will see them saying that
(26:12):
under his leadership, the group transformed and became kind of uh. Well,
the phrase I are used most often was abusive, like
a hotbed of abuse and toxicity. Toxicity is kind of
a loosely defined term in today's parlance, but you know,
stuff like holding people against their will, forcing people to
(26:34):
do stuff they didn't want to do. Yeah, and this
soon boiled over as the group encountered external criticism from
other groups that you might, you know, on upon first glance, say,
would seemingly be aligned to some degree For example, Kevin
Rashid Johnson of the New African Black Panther Party UM.
(26:57):
Johnson reportedly accused the Black Hammer of being a conspiracy UH,
a secret right wing conspiracy, an operation meant to sow
division amongst leftist movements. UM also the Whole Hammers. Anything
didn't quite pan out. They did some fundraising, the group
missed a deadline, which is usually a red flag, of
(27:17):
May fourteen to sign the paperwork for the land. On
May seventeenth, the San Miguel County police escorted the remaining
members from off the property. They were not there legally
because they had not done the deal. Yeah, and then
things started heating up in Fayetteville, Georgia. This occurs in
July of this year. July, law enforcement in Fayetteville get
(27:44):
an anonymous phone call from this guy who says, I
have been kidnapped. I'm being held against my will in
the garage of this house. So the cops send a
SWAT team to search the home. This leads to a standoff.
Swat arrives, they surround the structure and they're asking questions
(28:07):
be allowed. Speaker UM and the people who are inside
are talking with law enforcement. They're about ten people inside.
Law enforcement is telling them all to exit. It takes
some hours of talking, but eventually nine people leave willingly,
and Swat dispatches their robot, you know when they're creepy,
(28:32):
creepy law enforcement robots to search the house, and this
is where they find the tenth person, who is unfortunately dead,
and they would deploy a device like this because of
fears of their being explosives or booby traps. Correct correct, Yeah,
And when they found that tenth person, they appear the
(28:55):
deceased person appeared to have died from a self inflicted
gunshot wound, and that's what's been report ordered by police. Um.
There you will find people writing on the internet, some
former members, some others who were just commenting on it
that perhaps that was not the case, that it was
not a self inflicted gunshot wound. But those are allegations well,
and it fits the narrative you know of of at
(29:16):
least they're perceived narrative that we are anti police brutality,
that we are here to protest the corruption and law enforcement.
So for this to be like a martyrdom kind of
event makes sense to fit their larger story. Um, but
it doesn't seem to check out. Well, there are two
versions of it. There are two versions of it. One
that I've read online was that someone within the home
(29:39):
shot and killed that tenth person who was there. And
the other version is that police officers swat team entered
and killed that person. That's and that story is coming
from Blackhammer and its members. That's what I mean. That's
the It makes sense that would suit their their narrative,
you know, for the mission statement of their group, um,
and that it would potentially help rally support around them,
(30:01):
um when they're kind of starting to get a bit
of a bad look. Yeah, these incidents lead to Ghazi
being arrested on a number of charges, and one of
his one of his associates, a guy named Xavier H. Russian,
is also arrested. That's r U S h I N.
(30:21):
You'll see why we want to clarify in justice. Second, folks, uh,
how it's important to note that neither of these individuals
have been convicted of a crime at this point, so
we want to make sure that we're clear about that
these are charges not convictions. One last note. Something tells
we may return to the story of the Black Hammers
(30:42):
in the future. But one last note the story is
still developing. This caught my interest. The FEDS maybe investigating
Black Hammer, and they have been investigating Black Hammer, but
the reasons for doing so might surprise you. In July
of this year, July twenty nine, a few days after
(31:04):
after that standoff, we mentioned the U s. D o J,
the Department of Justice released information about alleged Russian influence
on US political organizations. And depending on who you ask,
you will find some people convinced that these allegations indicate
the Black Hammer Party was receiving funding from Russian individual
(31:30):
with connections to the Russian government. So straight out of
the Dugan cookbook Foundations of Geopolitics. Well, also on on
on just a cursory glance of the Black Hammer website. Uh,
it is a hotbed of right wing political hate speech.
I just want to also pretty archive semitic. Yeah, yeah,
(31:52):
there's an article, as the headline is. And this is
not like reposted from some other site. This is written
by someone who contributes to the site, presumably someone who's
a member of the organization, an individual signing on as
o JO. Marjorie Taylor Green is right and here's why. Um,
you know, whatever your political leanings are. I think most
of us that are somewhat moderate, uh can agree that
Marjorie Taylor Green is a very toxic and nasty individual
(32:16):
in terms of the you know, the things that she
puts out there, the unfounded conspiracy theory that she helps,
you know, proliferate, and you know, it's just using these
buzz terms like it says earlier this month, while former
President Trump was in New York City, he had his
resort home at mar Logo rated by Sleepy Joe's fbi um.
They go on to say, your decrepit Bernie Sanders. They
(32:36):
go on to call Joe Biden peto Joe at some point.
I mean, just a lot of it's a lot of
this very charged right wing kind of four Channy type
language on here. So that part, yeah, And also that's
another point we talk about in the earlier video. And folks,
this is a smart way to tell when an organization
(32:58):
might be becoming a little cult tick. The use of
specific nomenclature, right, the use of initialisms, the use of acronyms,
the use of jargon that further brings you into the
cognitive space and then further separates the them from the US.
(33:21):
The ends from the outs, the nose from the no
knots Uh. It's it's insidious. I always think about titles
titles in an organization in that context, ben like as
you're moving up the ranks or something, you attain these
new titles. And if you don't know what that is,
there's a lot of explaining to do. Sure, I'm always
(33:42):
about it. Uh. This last thing that the takeaway from
this article or this blog post, I guess, Uh, the
FBI has come for Trump. Who's next? Uh? Is again
that that up that other ing. That that's sewing distrust,
you know, for the government and the idea that you know,
and again the government deserves plenty of disc but this
is very specific. Um. And then there's a picture of
(34:03):
the FBI raid and the head that the subhead is
or the little subtitle is the FBI rating the Mara
Lago resort home of Trump in the darkness, like the
greasy cowards. They are not exactly unbiased reporting. Yeah, that's true.
And you can check that website out. Uh. We it's
an unfolding saga. As we said, there's more to the story.
(34:25):
We may return in the future, but that's some pretty
deep water already. This organization is not unique. Uh, and
there are there's not really a shortage of former members
who will tell you that there are dangerous things going
on internally. Just before we move away from the Black
Hammer Party, it should be noted that I believe it
(34:46):
was Augustus, correct me if I'm wrong, there Ben who
was charged with sexual assault of some variety. And there
are other allegations of such things going on at the
at the house, in other locations inside the Black Hammer Party. Yeah,
and with some of the charges were related to sexual assault. Again,
(35:07):
this is deep water. We're gonna pause for what. We're
gonna pause on the Black Hammer Party from now and
follow up in the future. Let's try something different, right,
We're talking about painful, disturbing stuff, so what don't we
talk about something happy but keep it scientific. That's where
happy science comes here. I love that is that, like
(35:28):
the creativity movement, it's way less well damn kind of
get to make floam, to get to make go black
and bounce around upon it in your swimming pool. We're
gonna answer those questions and more right after this break.
Get happy, Get science. We've returned. Okay that that last
(35:55):
tagline wasn't my best. But as you can tell, I
am enamored of the name Happy Science. If you haven't
heard of Happy Science, perhaps you are more familiar with
its original name, The Institute for Research and Human Happiness.
Sounds like a dream job. Actually, that sounds really cool.
Our our story starts with the founder of the i
(36:17):
R h H or the founder of Happy Science, a
guy who is known as Rio Hoo Okawa born Takahashi
Nakagawa in and this guy has this really cool moment
in his origin story. He is a prestige. He's got
a job, a Wall Street job. He's a trader at
(36:40):
this pretty prestigious firm and he even works in their
Manhattan office for a year or so. And one day
in the course of his career, on July, Mr Okawa
has had enough. He quits. He quits a job that
a lot of people would literally kill to have. Uh
(37:01):
So he quits. He walks away from those earthly concerns
because he needs to focus on this organization, this Happy Science.
He needs to quote, bring happiness to humanity by spreading
truth that sounds good. Tell the truth, make people happy.
Those are two very positive things. It's it's similar similar
(37:21):
to David Ike in a couple of ways. In the
story he told us about you know, he had his
own thing. He was doing this thing and he got
inspired one one moment and then he had to tell
the world. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, it does
sound innocuous the way we're describing it. But in this
guy's case, this has been uh building for a while
in the background, because he had kind of a second
(37:42):
gig that was unrelated to his professional career. He was writing.
He published several spiritual books wherein he claimed to I
think the phrase would translate to channel messages or communications
from historical and religious figures who have passed away, folks
(38:03):
like Confucius or of course Jesus Christ, who is a
person that many new spiritual leaders apparently have in depth
conversations with. And you can see videos of him channeling
political and religious figures, and I just have to say
(38:24):
it's quite fun. I quite enjoyed watching some of those videos.
I kind of like the vibe. I'm gonna be honest
with you. Your mileage may vary, but I I enjoyed
watching it, and I think I think the guy the
vice journalists, we're gonna introduce. I think he enjoyed it too.
So okay okahwa spoiler alert figures out why he, of
(38:47):
all people is receiving these messages, these divine communications. It
all goes down to El Cantareu, which is the real
name of God, the highest God of Earth, the Lord
of all gods. Uh. Followers of adherents of that happy
science believe that this entity was born on Earth threety
(39:09):
million years ago, and it's the same entity that gets
worshiped at different times through different cultures and civilizations. And
they're all naming the same thing. Whether they're talking Tough
or Osiris or Odin or Hermes, they're all talking about
El Contarre and Okawa, it turns out, is receiving these
(39:33):
messages because he is this era's current incarnation of the
action of real God. Yeah. Fun fact about the singer
or elkantari Uh. He was once the ruler of Venus,
former ruler of Venus. M m M yeah. Tweird that
(39:54):
they emphasized former. I wonder if the word can't say
it's singer, maybe it's tight like there's the the word
cantor you know, it's like a sacred singer and um
and Judaism, or like who sings for religious ceremonies during
like high holy days and things like that. Yeah, the
I mean the idea of the idea of the creator
(40:16):
of everything being a singer or that being a human
way to understand it. It's it's quite beautiful, you know,
it's it's poetic. Um, you've got gotta check out. We're
not proselytizing, to be clear. It's just if you are
interested in these kind of things, you can find you
can find videos and lectures online and you can also
(40:39):
get some books. He is quite a prolific author. Be
do be aware that many of those books are transcripts
of lectures that he's made. Look okay, so they are
all these This has happened so often that they're even
jokes and bits of folklore about it, you know, like
the like the three guys and the Insane Asylum who
(41:03):
are each convinced their Jesus Christ and you put him
in a room and you see if they eventually get along. Right,
That's the thing. Uh, It's not unusual to be loved
by anyone. I'm kidding. It's not unusual to see people
who believe that they everybody wants to be special, right,
everybody wants to be extraordinary, So it is not uncommon
(41:27):
for people to believe that they have been um singled
out for some divine purpose. And honestly, again, that's a
personal belief. There's nothing wrong with it. You might find
that other people don't agree that you are the main
character of the universe because that might diminish their experience.
(41:48):
That's fine. You can be a one person belief system.
Millions of people over the years have claimed to commune
with spiritual leaders from beyond the grave. And if you
look at Happy Sciences basic spiritual belief system and structure,
there's nothing immediately dangerous. It's like, try to love in
a giving way, try to be honest, work actively to
(42:13):
make the world more peaceful and more joyful. All the hits,
you know, the good stuff. Uh. Until that is you
get into their political arm, their political wing or branch,
because unlike a lot of other spiritual movements, uh, they
are heavy in politics. They do not care about separation
of church and state, and the political wing of of
(42:36):
the Happy Science organization is known as the Happiness Realization Party. Um.
You don't really throw that word around unless you're talking
about something politically motivated and organized, unless like Mario Party
or you know, Pizza Party, which are one quickly great things. Uh.
This is incredibly right wing in its ideology, um, and
(42:57):
much less warm and fuzzy uh than the spiritual teachings
might make you think it would be. Um. This organization
supports the expansion of the Japanese military, erasure of proven
World War two war crimes like the Nanjing massacre, and
is really hot to try when it comes to getting
(43:17):
the nukes amassing nuclear weapons. Oh. It hates hates uh
China like the whole, the whole thing of China. It's
not one of those things where you say, I know
people don't control the government. I may disagree with the
government of a country, but I recognize the people are
human and decent and have the same wants and desires
(43:37):
and fears. No, it's it's very um beat me just
because I love this. Beep me Max. It's very Uh.
They're very tupac in this. They're saying China and if
you roll with them, Q two. That's basically and I'm
not being too hyperbolic with the language either. No, there's
(43:58):
some rough things you can find online. Statements and again
there's so many videos. You can find it if you
look for it. He doesn't he have the the the
Leader Rio hoo. He has, or at least for a time,
had the Guinness Book of World Records. I think he
had a record for the most books published in one
year and the number was fifty four. Wow. That's great.
(44:21):
I didn't know that. That's cool. That's a cool fact
to walk away with. Uh. Okay, yeah, but like you said,
it's transcriptions of like just talking and then it's put
into a book. And he's freestyling a lot in those videos,
you know what I mean. It's like one thought leads
to the next. I don't think he has his script often.
But as of spring of uh and this number may
(44:44):
have changed a little bit, there are at least twenty
one local political officials in Japan who are members of
the HRP, the Happiness Realization Party that we'll just described there.
And this article that made me laugh is from a
journalist named Scilla sat Gully over advice. Silla goes and
(45:08):
visits uh Parisian branch of Happy Science and he says, Okay,
give me the scoop. Tell me you know, I am
all eyes and ears, I want to hear, I want
to see, and you can tell that this is going
to be a little bit of a snarky article. Uh
an article uh through the title happy science is the
(45:30):
Laziest cult Ever. Again, we didn't write that, no need
to get the lawyers involved, No, no, no. So he
goes and checks out this local branch right and the lectures,
and unexpectedly, I would I would think and say that
the lectures are about extraterrestrials in part they're also about
(45:54):
this very specific viewpoint of reality and the afterlife and
the connection between ween you know, Earth and this other
realm that exists in nine dimensions. And you can even
I I can't remember if if this author in particular
found of the actual sketch like the diagram of Heaven
(46:14):
when it's laid out in these tiered dimensions. Yes, I
think there are some profits who only get to hang
out in the eighth level. But then the ninth is
like the V I P area. It's really really interesting stuff.
And again there's nothing wrong with that. That's a belief
that Mr Okawen his followers subscribe to. There's nothing wrong
with having your own personal beliefs, but just like us. St.
(46:38):
Gully notices a little bit of a discrepancy between this
very huggy, lovey, inclusive language on the spiritual side of
happy science and then the somewhat more militant geopolitical philosophy.
I've had a hard time not laughing as we get
closer to this because I love this excerpt. I love
this quote. I feel like some someone else do the honors. Sure. Um.
(47:04):
After the break, we were subjected to another tape, Rebirth
of Your Hopes, a completely overt attack on China and
North Korea, where Okawa characterized the two countries as quote
responsible for the decay of Asia. Responsible for the decay
of Asia. Okay Um. There was a part where he
(47:24):
started screaming about the Chinese being quote dumb, lazy, and
full of okay, no hyperbole there, uh, And another part
where he claimed that the Japanese government was going to
raise taxes because of Oh good Lord, I don't know.
I just want to say, this is a quote. This
(47:45):
man said this. This was reported by by St Cali
was going to raise taxes because of the quote Chinese
ng of their minds. Yeah, I don't know why that? Uh,
that insult? Is that just string of insults, calling someone dumb, lazy,
and YadA YadA. I don't know why that that tickles
(48:06):
me so, but he is very serious. Uh. You know,
I want to ask you guys about Chinese ing of
the mind. Is that meant to? Is that like a
statement about communism? Maybe it does seem to be referring
to some sort of indoctrination. Uh, communism being the closest,
lowest hanging fruit, I would argue, which is wild because
(48:29):
in China's hyper capitalist authoritarian isn't you're right there? Who
knows man that? I mean? We talked about him channeling
stuff right in the in there's a similar Vice video
where you can watch you can watch the founder in
a like press conference like setting with some supposed reporters
(48:51):
asking him questions while he's channeling the ghost of Margaret Thatcher,
the spirit of Margaret Margaret Thatcher, and it is one
of the most surreal things you can see. Uh. He
it's it's kind of it's more like an affect, like
a I'm I'm so possessed right now, That's what I
That's what it reads to me. If if he was
(49:11):
if he was an actor and playing a part, that's
a little. It's a little much, but sorry, I don't
want to make fun of him. It's just it. The
guide does some in some very strange stuff on camera
and then purposefully puts it out as uh messaging for
his organization. The New York Times has written about him
(49:35):
as well, fairly recently. Just a few years ago in
journalists Sam Kestenbaum went into detail about how Happy Science
was approaching COVID nineteen. Again, you see a lot of
these organizations spending a lot of time on their own
interpretations of the pandemic because it was a global event, right.
(49:58):
So kest and Bomb says that the group was claiming
they could cure infections of COVID nineteen through spiritual vaccines,
the remote application of spiritual vaccines. So you pay insert
fee here, and then you have a prayer directed at you,
(50:19):
the ideas that that prayer will spiritually protect you from
from contracting this physical ailment. So it's like a laying
on of hands, almost like big tent revival kind of mentality.
The idea that I could like inoculate you with a
blessing you know, or or restore your ability to hear
(50:42):
or walk or whatever by you know, touching you or
or doing some sort of sending five base thank you.
That's a much better way of putting a vibe base. Yeah,
and this, you know, I think it's a worthy comparison
because lest anybody in the st be too quick to judge,
do remember that tent revivals and televangelists of plenty have
(51:06):
have applied similar techniques or similar claims at least uh
test and Bomb seems pretty skeptical just to be fair,
and says that Happy Science is an enormous and powerful
enterprise claiming millions of adherents, tens of thousands of missionary
outposts across the world. It's secretive, it's hostile to the media,
(51:29):
and it's structured around a tiered, paid a progress system
of membership. They're sometimes called Tokyo's answer to Scientology, which
is in comparison I haven't. I haven't thought of, but
I imagine critics would. I would agree with that, right. Um, Still,
it's it's definitely it checks all the boxes for a
(51:50):
cultic organization. Yes, it does. Were you guys aware that
there's a Happy Science branch in our fair city of Atlanta? No,
but I'm not surprised there is it has four reviews
on Google and it is temporarily closed, but there is
a phone number associated with it, and you better believe
I'm about to call it later. Let's just see what
(52:11):
are their hours. Let's just roll up. It's temporarily closed,
it says, yeah, all right, we'll find him. But it's
on Piedmont. It's nice part of town. Actually. Uh so
they're doing well really quickly. There's a there's a book
by Nietzsche, uh called The Gay Science, um, and it's
translated to the the Joyful Science, the joyous science, or
(52:35):
the joyful Wisdom. Do you see any connection between the
the the the work of Friedrich Nizicchi and uh and
this or is it just kind of a parallel thinking coincidence.
It may be parallel because it's a very powerful phrase.
I think, you know, joyful science, happy science. Uh. But
(52:56):
I I'm sure that sir Okawa has discussed Nietzsche or
Nietzsche in thought at some point, just because he is
so prolific. He's like, he reminds me of that guy
we talked about earlier, ad non Altar with a Turkish
sex cult and and attempted coup of Turkey. That guy
(53:19):
was also very prolific, So I feel like at some
point it wouldn't be surprising. Rather if at some point
in Mr Okawa's writing or lectures we can find comments
about Nietzsche and what was that the basis for his
decision to name his movement this that I do not know,
but it would be really interesting to find that out.
(53:41):
And by the way, one note with Mr Okawa. Yes,
always people with UM unorthodox or newer spiritual beliefs are
gonna be vilified by the status quo in the mainstream.
So he's got a lot of outside critics, but it
might surprise you to know that one of his number
one critics is another their Japanese cult. It's the one
(54:02):
most Westerners think about when they think about Japanese cults,
om Shinriko, which we covered in a previous episode. Uh,
they had a very intense rivalry. I guess they're competing
for followers maybe, or maybe it's just the thing where
someone saying, no, I'm the main character, You're incorrect, I'm
the real Jesus or what have you. Anyway, before they
(54:25):
made that horrific attack on the Tokyo subway, UM also
tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Mr Okawa uh Like, like you
were saying that Happy Sciences around today. You can go
visit their website for firsthand information. And while you may
not have heard of this group, make a mistake, they're
(54:47):
making some big waves around the world. This is gonna
end up being a two parter for us. Oh yeah,
where it is gonna be two part We're gonna have
to end very shortly here. I just want to point
out another commonality that I'm seeing with this group in particular,
and some of the ones we're gonna talk about the
next episode, the deification of that leader. Like if you
(55:08):
go to Happy Happy Sciences website, there are numerous videos
and full books written about Okawa's uh like birth to
the story of how he was so intelligent, he had
an i Q of two hundred, he was twelve years old,
but he you know, it's like he was twenty, and
(55:29):
how he went to this prestigious university and then went
to this other one, and it's just really you can
watch these videos with this very emotional, moving, triumphant music
over top of it, you know, and just talking about
this this person. I think that's a commonality we see
in a lot of cultic groups that put their leader
in that space, right, who is now Jesus or God
(55:51):
or the next coming or whatever. Yeah, and I I
personally don't like deifying anybody, so I don't know if
I'm in the demographic, but but yeah, you're right again.
It is the tactics that define what we would consider cultic,
not the content of what they're saying. And we have
there's so much more that we want to dive into.
(56:13):
Join us for part two, our episode on up and
coming cults culture may have never heard of yet. We're
going to go into some more strange territory. But whenever
we talk about stuff like this, we feel morally bound
to end our episode with a little bit of a
(56:36):
p s A. This is just scratching the surface, is
one thing. For sure. There are many, many, many organizations
that might not call themselves cults, but sure do a
lot of things that occult would do. And if you
or anyone you know has been taken in by an
organization that is emotionally or physically unsafe, please do not
(56:58):
hesitate to reach out to any multiple resources online, over
the phone. There are forms of plenty. They can provide
free counseling and assistance. Um, it's worth it, and that's
we're into today. What do you think do you have
any experience with a cultic organization. I'm sure some of
our fellow listeners do. People often told me that they
(57:20):
didn't understand what they were in until they left and
they looked back and they had that lightbulb moment and
they said, that was a cult. I thought I was
just selling popcorn on commission, but I was in a cult,
no wonder. There was a giant golden idol of this
El Kantari guy behind him at all times. So yeah,
(57:43):
I mean, we're putting levity on it. But yeah, these
things can be serious. So we would love to hear
your stories. We can't wait to read them, to listen
to them, to experience them. Please do not try to
convert us if you are a cult leader. Otherwise, we're
easy to find online. That's right. You can find us
on Twitter, on YouTube, and on Facebook, where we have
(58:04):
a Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy, joined that thing.
We exist on these platforms under the handle conspiracy Stuff.
On Instagram you'll find this a conspiracy Stuff show. Check
out link to dot e slash std w y t
K if you want to look at that's our link tree.
I'm being silly. Um. If you want to find how
(58:24):
to pre order our book, or come and check us
out on the book tour coming to you in October. Hey,
we also have a phone number right. Oh, snap, you're right,
these allegations are indeed true. Just give us a ring
a ding ding banana phone. Where we are one eight
three three st d w y t K. You'll you'll
(58:45):
hear a brief message, tell you you're in the right place.
You'll hear a beep like so beep, and then you
will have three minutes. Those three minutes they belong to you.
Go nuts, get wild with it, go harden the paint.
And while you're doing that, please let us know what
you would like to be called old We love a
good nickname or moniker. Uh, tell us what's on your mind.
Second most important thing, let us know if we can
(59:06):
use your name and or voice on the air. Most
important thing. If you need more than three minutes, don't
censor yourself, don't edit yourself. Write us an email, send
us those links. Take us to the rabbit hole. We
will dive in. We read every single email we get.
Where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
(59:43):
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