Doomsday, guns and Jesus Christ: Inside the ultra-right Rod of Iron Freedom Festival – Pocono Record

It's like a county fair,except everyone has a gun.

Here,the word "pandemic"is said with air quotes around it,and the politest namefor a Democrat is"pencil-neck geek." Anthony Fauci is a known communist,andJesus Christ is an assault weapons manufacturer. Here, LGBT stands for liberty, guns, beer and Trump.

This is the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival.

Rod of Iron Ministries andKahr Firearms Group both with ties to theultra-rich World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Churchfrom Koreaknown to some as the "Moonies" hosted the festival from Oct. 8-10 in Greeley. Just over 1,000 people live in this rural town in the northern Pocono Mountains, but more than 5,000 arrived forthe weekend-long festival.

It sprawled across the lawn of the Tommy Gun Warehouse and boasted an impressive lineup of speakers: Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist for President Donald Trump;Dana Loesch, the formerNational Rifle Associationspokeswoman; Pastor Sean Moon,a self-proclaimed messiah and messenger ofJesus Christ. They and other GOPfigureheads rallied behindTrump and the Second Amendmentat the third annual Rod of Iron Freedom Festival.

To many here, theyrepresent the last line of defense in a fight for America's liberty.

"There aredark forces out there trying to destroy our republic," warned Rick Saccone, a Republican candidate for Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor. "Frankly, we have a nation to save."

It's why thousands of people, some from as far as Florida and Texas, flocked to Greeley for the weekend. They are the avowed champions offaith, family and freedom, and in few other places can they find an in-person community as large or as tolerant of fringe ideologies as this one.

Here, opinions normally reserved for anonymous online forums are said aloud. They range from the mundane to the alarming, and emerge in outbursts from the crowdand betweenstrangers in line forfunnel cake: The Deep State is real, but the pandemic is fake. Critical race theory is the scourge of America, and Black Lives Matter activists are secret communists.The Biden administration wants conservatives dead. Trump won the 2020 election.

The theories have been debunked, but guest speakers repeatedthemon stage beneath the festival's main tent anyway, appearingto grow bolder with each answering scream of approval.Theireffect on the crowd was electric.

Someone placed afire pitin front of the stage Saturday afternoon to cut through the chill of anovercast day. To the festival-goersnearest it, the flames framed each speaker'sfaceand lent weight totheir threats of impending doom. None were more gripping than those of Pastor Moon, who walked to the podiumwearing a crown of bullets.

The America he described is a terrifying one: Pedophilia, satanic cults and dangeroushuman-animal experiments are the norm; D.C. bureaucrats are the new Nazi leaders, and the U.S. dollar is on the brink of collapse;the Deep State exists, and corporate executives aretryingto "utterly kill America and eradicate freedom from the face of the earth."

It sounds bad. Still, Moon warned of worse to comeshould Americans fail to fight back against their "evil, vile and wicked" rulers. This is where the rod of iron the festival's namesake comes in.

It's referenced in the Bible as a tool from God used to smite and rule over nations, Moon said. To him and his followers, the rodis the AR-15, and it's the key to saving America from tyranny.

"Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession," reads Psalm 2:8-9."You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery

Jesus is not the "effeminate, castrated"man taught about atSunday school, Moon said. He's an assault weapons manufacturer.

"Is that amazing or what?" saidCharlie Cook, a firearms instructor and gun rights advocate, as Moon left the stage. "Man, oh man, oh man."

Related:PA representatives weigh in on bill to allow for concealed carry without permit

Behind each rallying cry was a sales pitch:Buy the speakers' books, listen to their podcasts, subscribe to their YouTube channelsand donate to the NRA, all in the spirit of saving America fromtyranny. Speeches like these occupied the first half of eachday while vendors in smaller tents prepared fried Oreos and hot dogsfor lunch.

Quiet moments on the lawn were rare. At one point, dozens of leather-clad veterans, bearded and grinning, ripped through the festivalonmotorcycles. A man in a green kilt played bag pipes. Somewhere else, a recording of "Stars and Stripes Forever" played.Vendors hawkedbullet-shaped thermoses for $20 each, and mugs that read "Thou shalt kill sloth."

The festival followed a packed schedule it was impossible to see everything.Attendees hurried from the Liberty Tent to Freedom Tent to listen in on seminars like "The Theft of Manhood" and"From Hell to the Grail," then rushed back to the mainstage in time for a Concealed Carry Fashion Show.There, armed men and women posed on stage while moderator Amanda Suffecool guessed where their guns might be hidden.

Elsewhere, a group called Friends of theNRA sold $20 raffle tickets for the chance to win a 9mm gun: a Smith & Wesson, a Glock, a SIG Sauer or a Springfield Armory Hellcat.

*If gun is not legal in your state, you will receive$450 cash instead,a poster said in small print.

Safety first: When it comes to firearms, education and training matter

Keith Parker and his wife, Rama, sat at their own tent yards away. They own a small business called ResistForty6 and sell T-shirts adorned withpointed, if crude, responses to popular liberal taglines.

"Danger: Toxic Masculinity," one said. Another:"Biden Loves Minors."

"The jokes write themselves," Parker said. "I just put them on shirts."

He held each one in front of his chest and explained the inspiration behind it. "BidenLoves Minors" isajab at theBlack Lives Matter movement, and it'sParker's best seller by far. He makesthem in sizes small enough for children to wear, and some at the festival do.

A salesman with grey hair and a matching goatee, Parker is quick to smile. He riffed with passersbyaboutthe "empty dimwits" elected to office and earned their nods of approval.

"Elected, or got installed. Whatever," he said.

The jokes are punctuated bymoments of earnestness. He and his wife Rama, a server from New Jersey, would rather not be there, Parker said. But after witnessing what they believeto be a fraudulent election, they no longer feel they have a choice.

"We're here to dissent while dissenting's still legal," Parker said. "That's not as funny now as it was when I said it a few months ago."

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On the final day of the festival, families shuffled under the mainstage tent to escape a light drizzle. Countless others were already there, waiting to hear Steve Bannon, arguablythe festival's most renowned guest. Hewas running late. Retired CIA officer and emcee-for-the-dayCharles Faddisshifted from foot to footwhile technicians worked to get Bannon on the phone.

"Steve, if you can hear me," Faddis said. "We've got a group of very fired-up patriots, and they're really tired of hearing me tap dance and stall."

Bannon answered the phone at last, hisvoice patched through to speakers on stage. He didn't say muchor, if he did, it was lost to poor cell reception. Attendees leaned forward in their seatsto hear him better.

"We are winning," Bannon told them. "It's going to be a long, nasty fight, but we're going to win this thing."

His voice wavered in and out over the course of the call, but the crowdseemed to know when they were supposed to cheer. The 2020 election was stolen,Bannon said, and itsconsequences have beencatastrophic. He promised that things will get betterif peoplecontinue showing up for rallies and listening to his podcast, the War Room. He spoke for three minutes, then hung up.

The conversation ended fasterthan it had beenscheduled to, so Faddis stalled some more. It isn't just the Democrats conspiring against America, he said into the mic. It's the Republicans, too.

"We are being betrayed by the people that supposedly are on our side," he said. "What do we do now?"

Immediately, people in the crowd began to shout: Vote 'em out.Hang them. Assassination! Put them in jail. Tar and feather them.

After three days spent here, mentions of assassinationare no longer shocking, and the presence of guns in front,behind and beside youfeels normal. Now, glimpses into attendee's livesbeyondpolitics reminders thatlife exists outside of this placearemore startling.

Like the heart-shaped bumper sticker on one attendee's car that said"I love my rescue,"right beneath another that said"#QANON." Or the parent who straightened the fairy wings on herdaughter's back and wondered aloudif fairy wingsare washing-machine safe.

They made their way back to theparking lot Sunday evening and stepped carefully over the ruttedtire tracksleft by a thousand cars. The lot sat ona hill overlookingthe lawn, and from there, the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival looked small. Not even the sound of the guest speakers' voices carried this far.

The popof gunfire from a nearby shooting rangedid, though. Trump'sface grinned from a sticker on a car window, and beneath it,a taunt: "Miss me yet?"

Hannah Phillips is the public safety reporter at Pocono Record. Reach her at hphillips@gannett.com.

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Published9:17 am UTC Oct. 18, 2021Updated9:17 am UTC Oct. 18, 2021

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Doomsday, guns and Jesus Christ: Inside the ultra-right Rod of Iron Freedom Festival - Pocono Record