[narrator] The playbook's given nearly all the tools
to become an A-list cult leader.
Hope you paid attention,
because it's time for your final lesson
on how to avoid most charismatic gurus' unfortunate endings.
Don't let these odds bring you down.
[siren wailing]
[narrator] You can chart a different path,
then preserve your group for generations
by following the eternal father himself,
Sun Myung Moon,
a legendary spiritual leader
whose global appeal and staying power
set a standard few have been able to match.
[cheering]
Moon made that bridge between politics, money, and religion.
[speaks Korean]
That was like a trifecta.
[narrator] Let Moon show you how to turn your handcrafted following
into a global powerhouse built to last forever.
Thank you.
[clapping]
[narrator] Over six decades,
Reverend Sun Myung Moon built his Unification Church,
often referred to as the Moonies,
into a mass movement that's still influential today,
more than a decade after the leader's death.
Of all the new religions that emerged in the '70s,
you'd have to consider the Unification Church
as being the most successful.
[David] They've proven they can sustain themselves.
[narrator] If you wanna learn how to set up your group for the long haul,
it'll help to know some key things about Moon himself.
The official story of how the Unification Church was founded
was that when he was 15 or 16,
Moon was up in the mountains in Korea on Easter Sunday praying,
and Jesus appeared to him and said,
"I came and I failed to fulfill my mission."
"I need you to fulfill it for God."
[Teddy] Moon refused at first.
He was like, "No, I can't." Jesus was like, "Please take my mission."
"You're the chosen one." And he's like, "I'll do it."
These are stories we heard growing up.
The Unification Church
had an active membership in Japan and Korea.
[speaks Japanese] Japan was a place where you could make money.
The strategy was to gain economic power.
I'm half Japanese.
Values like loyalty and honor are very strong in Japan,
so I think Moon exploited those things.
During the '70s,
Moon came to the United States and started to try to gain following.
[Teddy] He settled in Tarrytown, New York,
a suburb north of New York City.
I call it Ground Zero of the Unification Church,
where a lot of church families lived.
[Lisa] It was the age of cults in America.
Hippies from the '60s searching for truth,
and searching for love, and searching for a better way.
His membership thrived,
and they posed as a New Age Christian church
when really it's like this ultra conservative organization.
[narrator] That's how Moon got his foothold.
But how did this ambitious evangelist
make it to the top of the spiritual mountain?
It started with some sleight of hand.
One of the distinguishing markers of a cult is rampant deception
from start to finish.
If these groups were advertising what they're really about,
what the ideology really is,
nobody would join.
And it's slowly over time that a little bit more is asked of you
and a little bit more control is taken over your life.
[narrator] That's why you need to offer potential followers a new truth,
like these crafty leaders did.
The political cult run by eight-time presidential candidate
Lyndon LaRouche went by names like the Schiller Institute
and the Fusion Energy Foundation
to hide its connection to the controversial leader,
whose claims included that Jews formed the Ku Klux Klan
and the Bush family worked with the Nazis.
Charles Dederich started his cult, Synanon, as a drug rehab program.
He eventually forced followers
to sign over all their money and refused to let them leave.
Things went south after he tried to kill an ex-member's lawyer with a rattlesnake.
Followers of Australian cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne
thought they were part of a peaceful yoga group,
except for the few who knew she was grooming
her illegally adopted children to become a master race.
While the Unification Church's status as a cult is in dispute,
Moon knew his messianic mission could be a tough sell at first,
so he reportedly made hiding the ball a team sport.
One of the things we were often taught when proselytizing
was to not reveal we were members of the Unification Church or Moonies
because if they knew, they'd be less receptive.
[narrator] You could call it lying,
but the Moonies preferred "heavenly deception."
The underlying principle of "heavenly deception"
is you can say anything as long as it's for the church's purposes,
for God's purposes.
When people said, "Who are you with?" You could say, "CARP."
[Lisa] "The College Association for the Research of Principles."
Or, "I'm with the IOWC, the International One World Crusade,"
because those are great powerful names that aren't the Unification Church.
[narrator] While the church denies using deceptive recruiting practices,
here's how young Diane Benscoter got sucked in.
It was the early '70s.
[Diane] I was 17, walking down the street,
someone handed me a banana with a flyer wrapped around.
It said, "Walk for world peace. 150-mile walk from Omaha to Des Moines."
[narrator] The march is sponsored by the One World Crusade.
As an aspiring journalist, Diane smells a story.
A few days later,
Diane tags along for their five-day march across the Midwest
and quickly starts making friends.
[Diane] During this walk,
there'd always be two people
that would really be interested in my life walking with me.
They wanted to know what I cared about,
what I wanted to do with my life.
No one had given me that kind of attention maybe ever.
[narrator] Diane is being love bombed,
the Moonies' favorite technique for seducing unsuspecting recruits,
even skeptical journalists like Diane.
It was really nice to have someone care so much about what I thought.
[narrator] The group marches non-stop, sleeping just a few hours per night.
[Diane] We'd stay in church basements along the way.
It was exhausting.
[narrator] Every evening, the group listens for hours
to lectures drawn from a book called The Divine Principle.
Its author?
Sun Myung Moon.
The Divine Principle explains
that God's plan was for Jesus to get married and sire sinless children,
but Jesus had failed,
so God sent another messiah who had been born in Korea in the 1920s.
We all had these epiphanies that the messiah was Moon.
[Diane] "Oh my God."
And we all break into tears.
They were saying,
the reason you came to this was because God led you here.
[narrator] Without realizing it,
Diane was becoming fully indoctrinated into the Unification Church.
All that's left is to meet the messiah himself.
[Diane] All the members were crying,
and they ran and fell down at his feet and kissed his shoes.
It was like this beautiful scene of adoration.
[narrator] And with that, she's hooked.
Moon's methods of indoctrination
in the early years were extremely effective.
[newscaster] Thousands of young people have joined the Unification Church,
which began in Korea.
[Janja] A number of people were convinced.
This is what they want to do, that Moon was the Second Coming,
Moon was the messiah.
I believe he's a prophet in a similar position to John the Baptist
to prepare the way for the Second Coming of Christ.
[narrator] Playbook-inspired misdirection will help lure people in,
but maintaining your movement for the long haul
is going to take something more tangible.
If you wanna build your group to last,
faith will only get you so far.
[cheering]
[narrator] You'll also need cold hard cash.
There was a definite business aspect of the Unification Church.
We were told we needed to raise money
in order to create a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth
because that's where the power was.
[narrator] To consolidate this Earthly power,
Moon invested in everything under the sun,
from Ginseng tea,
to M79 grenade launchers.
Hotels, universities, dance troupes,
golf courses,
even chinchilla farms.
But perhaps the most influential enterprise was this one,
True World Foods,
which brought the gift of sushi to American shores.
Tastes divine.
True World Foods claims it's the number one supplier of sushi
to American restaurants, which is a bummer 'cause I like sushi…
[narrator] Me too.
…and every time I eat it, I think,
"I might have given more money to the church."
[narrator] But if you don't want the tax man biting into your profits,
you're going to want to hire some clever accountants.
[Janja] A lot of groups will declare themselves a religion
so that they don't have to pay taxes.
It apparently is very easy to become a religion in America.
[narrator] According to former members,
Moon had yet one more trick to maximize his bottom line.
I worked sometimes 18 hours a day, seven days a week for no pay.
My mom spent most of her time in the church running nurseries.
[Lisa] I don't think she ever got paid.
[narrator] But just because your followers are tightening their belts
doesn't mean you have to.
[Lisa] Moon had a huge estate.
They had bodyguards to be protected for God.
They wanted for nothing. His children wanted for nothing ever.
He had boats, he had yachts, he had it all,
and we were lucky to give it to him.
[narrator] Of course money, even lots of money, isn't everything.
To achieve immortality as a spiritual leader,
you'll need to raise your profile.
When it's time for your coming out party, make your movement the main event.
How do you prove your theology's appeal to the world?
Write a mission statement?
Boring.
Go on talk shows?
Conventional.
No. You pack a stadium like a rock star.
[Rachel] The big leaders know how to put on a show.
They'll have lighting, they'll have music,
they'll have a huge audience of people applauding.
You need to generate an experience
that feels heightened, and feels spiritual, and feels special.
[narrator] Say what you will about Reverend Moon,
the guy had flair.
There was a lot of emphasis in the Unification Church
for these big events.
[Diane] They raised Moon's profile
such that everyone's attention was drawn to him.
He really wanted mass adoration.
[singing]
There was nothing small about him.
[Lisa] He spoke at Madison Square Garden in 1974.
He spoke at Yankee Stadium on July 1st, 1976.
[narrator] Later that year, Moon staged an event at the Washington Monument,
but where Moon made his biggest splash was with these.
[cheering]
The Reverend Moon
produced a number of mass weddings
as a demonstration of his influence and his power.
[in Korean] Long live the true parents!
[narrator] Of course, that's not the official reason.
The goal of the messiah was to create a perfect society of people
free of original sin.
It was a way to cleanse the original sin with which you were born
and bring the world back to God.
[narrator] In the summer of 1982, Lisa's mom gratefully received this honor.
The best seats at Madison Square Garden were at my mother’s wedding.
[narrator] Lisa's mother, Mimi, a member of Moon's church for eight years.
Her engagement had been set
in a blessing ceremony three years earlier.
[Lisa] Moon would literally pick your spouse in a huge room.
A brother would stand up and go through the sisters
and pick someone to match with that person.
[narrator] Lisa's mom had been divorced,
which in the eyes of the Moonies made her damaged goods.
[Lisa] Moon had her stand up,
and he said something like, "Who'd be willing to take her on?"
And a man whom I will call Phil stood up and said, "I will,"
and that's how they were matched together.
[narrator] Moon gives the newly promised couples
only a few minutes together
before he directs everyone to return to their missions.
[Lisa] They saw each other once or twice until it came time for the wedding itself.
[narrator] When the wedding day arrives, the ceremony lasts for hours.
[Lisa] When my mom got married, it was 2,074 couples there.
I remember sitting there,
and just the throngs of the sea of black and white,
looking for my mom, never finding her.
[narrator] Moon's followers may be doing it for God,
but Moon is doing it for the cameras.
The world takes note.
Moon got more notoriety from mass weddings than anything
because there'd never been anything like this before.
[Teddy] It's all performance.
Mass weddings, show of strength, it's all PR.
[Korean] Long live!
[narrator] Moon's mass weddings
did something even better for his eternal goals,
because what comes after love and marriage?
[crying]
[narrator] Nothing like pitter-patter of little followers' feet to ensure
your movement's continued success.
Moon understood this so well that he baked it into his core theology.
Moon placed his own kids, who the Moonies called The True Children,
at the top of the Unification Church power pyramid.
They were the children of the messiah,
so they got away with anything and everything.
[narrator] After that came The Blessed Children,
born to couples matched by the True Father.
If you're born into the church, you are free of original sin,
so we were treated as like these special children.
[narrator] Then there were kids whose parents' marriages
weren't blessed by Moon,
so they still had original sin.
As for everyone else…
The rest of the world is inhabited by Satan.
[ominous music playing]
[narrator] When you see things that way, who wouldn't want to be blessed?
I believe it was used to coerce us to stay in the church.
They're like, "If you have sex with someone
outside of that pure blood group,
you're not pure anymore,
and thousands of years of spiritual preparation
to bring the messiah in order to purify our blood
is ruined and you're going to hell."
So a lot of pressure.
[narrator] And just to be sure The Blessed Kids didn't go astray,
Moon provided a refresher course called Camp Sunrise.
[Teddy] Camp Sunrise was kind of like the Bible Camp of the Unification Church.
It was for second generation kids.
[narrator] Camp Sunrise offers a slate of wholesome activities.
[Teddy] We had things like swimming,
archery,
hiking.
[narrator] All under the watchful eye of True Father.
Every morning before breakfast,
the whole camp meets for bonding exercises.
[Teddy] We had to do unity jumping jacks.
You had to count your jumping jacks,
skip a number.
If anyone forgot to skip a number, we had to start all over again.
We couldn't eat until we got it right.
[narrator] Next, eight hours of lectures on church theology.
[Teddy] People would see who was falling asleep
and come wake them up by poking them with a stick.
[narrator] There was also movie time.
[Teddy] We would watch these videos about how church members
literally got kidnapped off the street and thrown into a van to get deprogrammed.
Deprogrammers were the boogeymen for us growing up.
[narrator] The rest of the day was spent learning the perils of premarital sex
and preparing for their own blessed marriages to come.
Definitely a lot less fun than canoeing.
It was to keep us believing in the church,
and it gave us these fun childhood experiences
mixed with a lot of indoctrination.
[narrator] What better way to protect your investment in your group's future?
But before you can cash in…
you need to stay on top of problems in the present.
[man] We love our children. They're beautiful.
They've been the subject of a strenuous brainwashing exercise
by Moon and his people.
[narrator] Thanks to the playbook,
you won't have to face these obstacles alone.
With millions in the bank
and multiple generations of followers under your sway,
you'd surely become the envy of your peers,
but you still have to expect some landmines in your path.
[Janja] Most cult leaders, they're narcissists and megalomaniacs.
They don't believe they have to follow
the rules and laws of a society like everyone else does,
so a lot of things may be going on which they're hoping won't get found out.
[narrator] That's why it's good to have powerful allies like Moon did.
He knew how to engender
a feeling of trustworthiness in people.
He knew who to meet and who to shake hands with,
who to have his picture taken with,
and he was particularly successful in courting members
of the conservative establishment in the US.
In the battle against communism,
Reverend Sun Myung Moon has launched a crusade on a global scale
to bring about the total defeat of this godless empire of evil.
It was easy for people on the right to align with him
because he was expressing kind of the same ideals
that they would have about anti-communism,
freedom of religion.
He was able to make a lot of inroads because of his own political beliefs.
[narrator] But Moon was about to discover the limits of his current relationship.
[newscaster] Reverend Moon faces an 18-month prison sentence
for failing to pay income taxes on the interest from large sums
of church funds held in his personal bank accounts.
[narrator] Moon denied any wrongdoing,
and others agreed.
Seems to me that IRS and the government have overstepped their boundaries
in terms of separation of church and state.
[narrator] After spending 13 months in prison,
Moon decided to put even more of his money to work
to make sure his friends knew he was on their side.
They created this world peace organization, got into the UN.
[narrator] Moon also launched an influential conservative newspaper,
The Washington Times.
When I think of The Washington Times,
I think of a publication that has brought much-needed balance
to the way Washington is covered these days.
Many people didn't even know that Moon had started that newspaper
and that Moon organization people were running the newspaper.
[narrator] Moon's investments gave him influence and,
more importantly, protection.
You can even say he went mainstream.
There's very few Republican presidents who haven't spoken at a church event,
been paid to speak at a church event.
[narrator] But on his path to immortality,
Moon still had to overcome the most stubborn obstacle of all.
Impossible?
Not if you follow the playbook one last time.
Death.
It's the end of the road for us all,
even successful cults and their frustratingly mortal leaders.
Very few groups are able to sustain themselves after a leader dies.
[narrator] But Moon had a multistep plan to stake his claim for immortality,
starting in one of his favorite buildings,
the US Capital.
On a cool Tuesday evening,
guests arrive at the Dirksen Senate Office Building
for an event called The Ambassadors for Peace Awards.
It begins as a standard affair
honoring religious leaders' community contributions.
But as the ceremony stretches on,
the speeches begin teeing up the evening's guests of honor,
Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han.
Two members of Congress present the couple with royal attire,
bestowing Moon with the title,
"The King of Peace."
Moon declares himself humanity's savior and creator of the Kingdom of Heaven
for all eternity.
[clapping]
[Lisa] Doing that was making the statement,
getting it validated in Congress by Congress people.
That's a huge thing.
[narrator] But to really make Moon's claims stick,
he needed something much more concrete,
a succession plan.
Having a succession plan with individuals who would be popular
to the rest of the membership
is important because the leader will eventually die.
[narrator] Moon's strategy, like proper royalty,
was to keep power in the family,
grooming his wife, Hak Ja Han,
and youngest son, Hyung Jin,
also known as Sean,
to continue his legacy postmortem.
But how will the plan hold up when the rubber hits the road?
[speaks Korean] True Father,
thank you for your unparalleled investment.
After Reverend Moon died,
it just became Game of Thrones.
Everyone was claiming to be the one to take over.
[narrator] When the dust settled,
Moon's legacy was carried on,
not by a single heir, but by, appropriately enough, a trinity.
Hak Ja Han emerged as the church's main spiritual leader.
The Moons' oldest living son, Preston,
started the nonprofit Unification Church International,
while youngest son Sean broke off from the church
and began his own unique congregation.
[Teddy] They're called the Rod of Iron Ministries.
The Rod of Iron was written about
in the Book of Revelation in the Bible,
and they interpreted that as their AR-15 rifles.
Sean Moon believes his father, Sun Myung Moon, was the messiah,
and that he's a representative of Sun Myung Moon.
[narrator] And when it comes to political influence…
Father, we're so grateful for the Second Amendment.
…Sean is a chip off the old block.
Now that's a legacy to be proud of.
With this playbook as your guide,
you've learned how to build your foundation,
grow your flock,
control minds,
offer salvation,
protect your image,
and now, how to endure forever.
[in Korean] Long live the true parents!
Now's the perfect time to start a cult.
People are yearning for meaning.
The world is getting crazy.
We are all looking for reprieve from the chaos of our everyday lives.
[woman] With the emergence of social media,
you don't have to be able to manipulate a person to gain incredible power,
you simply have to manipulate an algorithm.
That's a lot easier to do.
[narrator] After all you've witnessed,
you might think the cult leader life isn't for you.
Just remember,
in this world,
you're either the predator or the prey.
To those of you that think that you never could have been in a cult,
you're the kind of person that they're waiting for.
[narrator] So, which way do you wanna go?
It's all a play, isn't it?
[chuckling]
Now that's the truth.