Guns, God, and Greeley: Three Days in a Poconos MAGA Cult
Weeks before Election Day, some of Donald Trump's fringiest fans descended on Pennsylvania's popular mountain destination — armed to the teeth.
A scene from the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival 2024 in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania. Donald Trump supporters showed their love for MAGA and guns and God. And their hate for Democrats and Kamala Harris. (Getty Images.)
I’ve been to the Poconos so many times that I’ve lost count. Summers swatting those brutal Lake Wallenpaupack flies. My futile attempts at trout fishing in many a Pocono stream. Cozying up by a wood fireplace inside a Promised Land State Park cabin. Falling out of my raft in the rushing rapids of the Lehigh River just after a dam release, only to be rescued by a raft of ravishing Portuguese women. So many memories. But one Poconos memory that will stay with me forever just came last month. All thanks to the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival.
Chances are, you have never heard of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival or Rod of Iron Ministries, the Poconos church that begat it. But if I had to guess, you are familiar with the late Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. Or, at the very least, you’re aware of the religious group he founded. That’s the Unification Church, informally called the Moonies. Their spaced-out members have been known to sell flowers at airports and public squares and to participate in controversial mass weddings. We’re talking 20,000-plus couples at one time. Many have described their activities as cult-y.
Pastor Moon was kind of a big deal. In the 1970s, he delivered speeches to massive crowds at places like the Washington Monument, Yankees Stadium and Madison Square Garden. In the 1990s, the New York Times referred to Moon’s Family Federation for World Peace and Unification as “a theocratic powerhouse that is pouring foreign fortunes into conservative causes in the United States.” He was able to get an audience with heads — and former heads — of state, from George H.W. Bush to Mikhail Gorbachev. Moon invested heavily in stateside industries, owned news outlets.
Well, Sun Myung Moon died in 2012, reportedly leaving a vast fortune behind. One year later, Sun Myung Moon’s son Hyung Jin Moon, who goes by Sean Moon, somehow landed in the Poconos. He eventually bought a $1 million home in rural Pike County. And he starting Rod of Iron Ministries in nearby Newfoundland. This particular Poconos church reveres and worships the AR-15 and guns similar to it. These are the infamous high-powered assault rifles front and center in so many American mass shootings.
Rod of Iron is, in essence, a gun church. Sean Moon and his followers believe that the AR-15 is used to carry out God’s will. He points to Revelation 2:27. “And he shall rule them with a rod of iron,” reads the passage. “As the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.” Rod of Iron church members carry AR-15s and other firearms at Sunday services. Sean Moon blesses AR-15s upon request. And he is known for donning, instead of a crown of thorns like Jesus, a crown of sniper bullets.
(I requested a phone interview with Sean Moon. A church spokesperson suggested I interview him at Madison Square Garden during the now-infamous Donald Trump rally. I had another obligation.)
Reverend Sean Moon from Rod of Iron Ministries, the church behind the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival (Getty Images)
All of this brings us to a weekend in mid-October in the small Poconos town of Greeley. It’s the kind of place where you get breakfast in booths at the Valero gas station. Later in the day, you indulge in beers and friendly conversation at Mel’s Place. Kahr Arms is the other notable business in Greeley. Kahr Arms is a firearms manufacturing and distribution company founded by Kook-jin Moon. He goes by Justin Moon. He’s another son of Sun Myung Moon and the brother of Sean Moon. And it is on the grounds of Justin Moon’s Poconos firearms factory that the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival happens, as it has since 2019.
This year’s festival began on Friday, October 11th, with a $25-per-person ($200 for VIP) movie premiere for the documentary Flynn: Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost. “Flynn” is Michael Flynn. He was a United States Army general during the Obama administration. And he was Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor. In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador. But then, he said, no, it was actually all a frame job by the Obama administration. Trump pardoned Flynn. And since then, Flynn has become a celebrity in MAGA circles. He’s making lots of money off of election denialism.
Before speaking to the crowd that had gathered in his honor, Flynn, sporting salt-and-pepper hair and a jeans-blazer combo festooned with a matching Stars-and-Stripes lapel pin and belt buckle, greeted fans. He hung with the Brothers Moon. Flynn posed for photos. For some, he stood in front of a hulking pickup truck. The pickup was covered in Donald Trump imagery (for instance, a buff, shirtless imagining of Trump, all tattooed and blinged up with a rapper-thick gold chain) and assorted MAGA mottos and propaganda. Everything finished up not long after 9 p.m.
Donald Trump fans at Sean Moon’s Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in the Poconos. (Photograph by Victor Fiorillo)
Saturday was the first full day of the festival. That’s when thousands of people descended on Greeley. Under a perfectly blue Poconos sky, streams of MAGA-appareled supporters poured into the fairgrounds. Some of them had pistols on their hips. Others had AR-15s and other long guns slung across their shoulders. The presence of visible firearms stood out. It was as if we were suddenly on the set of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western. But with much more serious weaponry.
As I strolled from the parking area into the festival, I heard a chant that had become a familiar sound at Donald Trump rallies ever since a would-be assassin’s bullet nicked Trump’s ear 300 miles west of Greeley back in July: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The chant came from within that sprawling tent where Flynn spoke the night before. Inside the tent, I found Jack Posobiec. He’s the finest conspiracy theorist (see: deep state, Pizzagate, etc.) that Norristown ever produced. Posobiec is now a national figure in the world of MAGA.
The hundreds of people inside the tent cheered on a fiery Posobiec. He argued that the election is a “spiritual war” for the “very soul of our country.” He insisted that Donald Trump must win lest we fall to “godless atheist globalist communists.” But it’s not just the godless atheist globalist communists we have to fear. No, said Posobiec. It’s immigrants, too. “We live in an occupied nation,” Posobiec railed. He later added: “It’s time to have a country that is for Americans, that is by Americans, and only Americans.”
Posobiec then launched into a winding diatribe about the 2nd Amendment, explaining that Harris wants to take away people’s guns. And after that? She’ll take away their freedom of speech and freedom of religion, he insists. “If you want my gun and you want my Bible,” Posobiec said, summoning his best Charlton Heston, “You can pry them from my cold dead hands.”
I was about to wander out of the tent. Hungry, I wanted to see what the midway had to offer. But then Posobiec invoked the Butler assassination attempt. And I wanted to see where he went with it, as if I didn’t already know. He suggested a conspiracy and that the highest levels of government might have been “complicit” in not just the Butler attempt but also the attempt nine weeks later in Florida. And then he brought up the Bible. The bullet hit Trump’s ear at 6:11 p.m. And what does Ephesians 6:11 read? “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” Evangelical conspiracy theorists just love their numerology.
I slid out of the tent and into a crowd of people of Asian descent, most wearing MAGA shirts, hats, or other signs of support for Donald Trump. As I looked around in every direction, I quickly realized that this was not the homogenous crowd one would normally find in the middle nowhere in the Poconos (blindingly white). I knew that the Unification Church still has a major presence in parts of Asia, but what parts of this surreal mixture of gun worship, Donald Trump, xenophobia, and the Bible had attracted this particular crowd?
With the help of a translation app on her phone, one woman, who said her name was Bonnie, told me that she and about 300 other people from Japan had arrived to the East Coast on Thursday and then made their way by chartered bus to Greeley. “A Donald Trump United States is a strong United States,” Bonnie said, according to her translation app. “And a strong United States means a strong Japan.” She told me there were similarly large groups of tourists from other parts of Asia in attendance for the festival, and looking around, I believed her.
Their presence helped explain why the food for sale along the midway included not just typical county fair staples like hot dogs and barbecue but also Thai coconut-pumpkin soup, pho, various Chinese noodle dishes, some of the best spring rolls I’ve ever had, pad thai, bubble tea from two different vendors, and a stand selling only kimchi. Asian cuisine options actually outnumbered non-Asian fare.
A festival is only as good as the merch for sale by its vendors, so I went in search of some. One vendor was selling t-shirts from previous editions of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, ranging from Trump-as-God holding a golden AR-15 to something more subdued, like the black silhouette of an AR-15 superimposed on a distressed American flag above the slogan “Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God.”
Travel mugs at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in the Poconos. (Photograph by Victor Fiorillo)
But, really, who among us wouldn’t want a golden “Rod of Iron Kingdom” travel coffee cup the shape and size of an artillery shell? Remember those squeezable bear containers of honey? Well, replace the squeezable bear with a squeezable Trump figurine filled with honey, and you’ve got a $20 piece of edible memorabilia from the folks at Make Honey Great Again.
Donald Trump honey for sale at Sean Moon’s Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in the Poconos. (Photograph by Victor Fiorillo)
A more premium group of vendors offered customizable fare. One man sat at a sewing machine, explaining that he was making a Donald Trump-as-a-Marine teddy bear for a four-year-old child. Another was designing glitzy crowns, which were said to be for “sovereignty, life, and Glory of God.” And had I wanted someone to, say, transform the boring blackness of the Glock I wasn’t carrying into a Donald Orange? I was in the right place.
I soon took a right into what turned out to be the book signing area, an important thing to have when so many of the event’s speakers had books for sale. A long line queued at Posobiec’s table, where he was hawking and signing his just-released tome Bulletproof: The Truth about the Assassination Attempts on Donald Trump, impressively dropped less than a month after the second attempt. The publisher’s other recent titles include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health; Bitcoin Supercycle: How the Crypto Calendar Can Make You Rich, and, somehow, Drink Pink! Cocktails Inspired by Barbie, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, and More — 75 Dazzling Recipes.
Not everybody on the midway wanted to sell you something. It turns out some — many — just wanted to bend your ear. Maybe get a signature. There was the guy who, upon learning I was from Philadelphia, asked me if I knew that City Hall doesn’t allow residents to obtain concealed-carry permits. He was surprised when I told him it was downright easy to get such a permit in Philadelphia and then shocked when I produced my own permit for him to marvel at.
Then there was the table of ham radio enthusiasts who encouraged me to get my radio operator’s license and a radio so that I could still communicate with people once “the cell towers, internet, and most of America’s infrastructure are taken out.” I politely declined the efforts of the one woman — she reminded me of my grandmother — who urgently pleaded with me to kick State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta out of office, because he “is trying to turn our boys into girls.”
At another table, operated by the actual Rod of Iron church in Newfoundland, a woman invited me to attend their 11 a.m. Sunday services. I asked her if everybody shows up with a gun. “Well not everybody,” she replied, with a smile, before telling me “God bless” as I walked away.
Back under the tent, Mark Walters, host of the two syndicated radio shows Armed American Radio and Daily Defense, was revving the crowd back up, mocking the voice of Kamala Harris and lamenting the loss of former right-wing friends Fox News and the Drudge Report, the latter described by Walters as “left-wing garbage.”
“And what do we do if we wake up November 6th and Kamala Harris is the president?” Walters asked the crowd. “Do we lay down?” “No!” they yelled back. “Do we fight?” “Yes!” “And how do we fight?” Walters wanted to know. “With our guns,” yelled out one woman seated near me. “The Americans I know know that if we have to fight, we will fight,” Walters declared. “Who wants to live under communist rule? Who wants to live under a devout Marxist?”
Rhetoric like this continued under the tent all afternoon. At one point, Donald Trump himself was beamed in via video to tell his disciples that Kamala Harris is “the worst gun-grabber America has ever seen” and, not a man short on superlatives, “one of the worst dictators in the world.”
Former Green Beret and constitutional lawyer Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution,” gave a detailed speech about the election process and how Pennsylvanians can stop the upcoming “illegitimate steal” by going to Harrisburg and “confronting” legislators there. Raiklin, who originally floated the idea to get Vice President Mike Pence to nix the will of the people and keep Trump in the White House, suggested to the crowd that they could force the state to overturn its election results and deliver Pennsylvania for Trump even if the November 5th vote doesn’t go that way. The title of his speech? “How to Ensure PA Doesn’t Lose Its Electors to the Commies.”
As the Pocono sun began to make its way toward the horizon, we were treated to musical performances. If there’s a genre of music called patriotic rock, singer Dave Bray would fit that bill. He and his band got the crowd dancing with screaming guitar solos, a rockin’ version of “The Marines’ Hymn” (“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…”), a little Metallica and out-of-tune Bon Jovi for good measure, and, of course, that proverbial “fight, fight, fight” chant.
Then came rapper Sose the Ghost, whose Instagram page is filled with reels in which he laments how Democrats “are so happy about killing babies” and calls women “sluts.” On stage at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, he rapped about how those in power “put a plane through your tower” and then “blamed it on Islam.” He also raged in rhyme about those “people wearing wigs comin’ for your kids.”
And last but not least … King Bullethead. It turns out that Sean Moon isn’t just the pastor of a gun-worshiping church capable of convincing hundreds of people from Japan to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to come to a little town called Greeley. He’s also a rapper.
King Bullethead took to the stage amid much applause, many hands in the air, cell phone cameras pointed in his direction. After telling the crowd that we need to “save this republic,” he launched into his recent single “Fight Song,” about the Butler assassinaton attempt, performing over tracks and with a live drummer and electric guitar player. It felt like he was going for a sound that exists somewhere in the Kid Rock-Rage Against the Machine-Eminem realm. “If you come for the king,” goes the hook for his song. “You better not miss the shot.”
Out of breath, he rambled through a couple more songs before the grand finale, for which he brought Sose the Ghost, Dave Bray, and gun influencer and sometimes rapper Black Rambo to the stage for one last tune. It was getting late, and King Bullethead needed his sleep before he would deliver his morning sermon to festival goers the next day.
Sunday morning was when he preached against Satanism, Communism, the destruction of the American Christian family, self-pleasure, homosexuality, the deep state, Leftists, and connected it all to “the 666 antichrist beast.”
“It is a bitter reality we can no longer ignore: the end of civilization as we know it is being delivered to us,” he said from the pulpit as he wore that crown of bullets and carried an AR-15. But the one who can stop it all? Yes, Donald Trump. “MAGA 2024!” he screamed into the microphone on Sunday morning, his fist defiantly in the air. “Let’s go baby!”
The rest of the last day contained plenty of surreal moments. The Japanese choir’s tribute to United States war veterans, though it was unclear just how such a tribute aligned with the United States decimating two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. (Thank you, vets?) Another group from Asia performed a riveting flag-twirling demonstration using Rod of Iron Ministries flags. Then there was a large ensemble of people from Japan who held up numerous photos of Trump and signs reading “Trump Chosen By God” and “Victory for Trump” as they awkwardly tried their best to sing through the John Denver classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
As I made my way out of the festival grounds and back towards the parking lot, someone asked me if I wanted to sign up to go to a nearby shooting range so I could fire “a machine gun,” which explained all the gunfire I’d been hearing for two days. I politely declined, citing a tight schedule; the line waiting for the shuttle to the range was very long.
On the way to my car, I came across an older man who didn’t look well. He was sitting on a chair in the bed of a pickup truck that was covered in MAGA stickers. He looked at me, I looked at him, and I noticed he had an assault rifle across his lap. The way he was cradling it, the weapon could have been a Yorkshire Terrier.
“Going to the range today?” I asked him. “No sir,” he replied. “Just waitin’.” “Waiting for what?” I asked. “Just waitin’.”
