Don Lattin, the award-winning journalist who covered the religion beat for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle and wrote The Harvard Psychedelic Club, draws parallels between Donald Trump and the messianic leaders he reported on for decades. Lattin came to the beat through Jim Jones, whose People's Temple ended in the November 1978 murder-suicide of more than 900 followers in Guyana, and he stresses that Jones was a politically connected progressive appointed to head the San Francisco Housing Authority by Mayor George Moscone. He recalls covering the Unification Church and Hare Krishnas during the 1970s cult wars, and his earlier reporting on the shepherding movement and Pentecostal spiritual-warfare groups that he sees as groundwork for the New Apostolic Reformation and white Christian nationalism. Lattin also discusses his Substack series and his later psychedelic books.
Guest: Don Lattin
In brief
- Lattin argues that Trump's insistence that only he can save the country is a messianic narcissism closely resembling Jim Jones, and says former People's Temple members and fellow reporters told him they heard Jones's voice in Trump.
- Jim Jones was not widely regarded as a dangerous cult figure for most of his career but as a politically connected progressive clergyman with access to the White House and the governor's mansion.
- The San Francisco Chronicle created a full-time religion beat after Jonestown because editors concluded that sustained coverage might have caught the warning signs earlier.
- Lattin says his predecessor on the beat had reported Jones's dark side roughly a decade before Jonestown, but some of those stories were censored under political pressure and then forgotten.
- Lattin traces today's white Christian nationalism and the New Apostolic Reformation back to the shepherding movement and Pentecostal spiritual-warfare groups he covered in the 1970s and 1980s.
- Lattin defines a cult as somebody else's religion, noting that Christianity began as a Jewish sect and Mormonism as a group around Joseph Smith, and argues that people leaving high-control groups respond to curiosity and listening rather than argument.
Full text
when Trump first rose was, you know, the Trump 1.0, you know, in 2016 and when he famously said, you know, I could uh stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and, you know, shoot somebody and not lose a single voter. And this whole idea of only I can save America from this, only I can do this this this, you know, incredibly narcissistic messianic attitude, which he has. It so similar to Jim Jones. I mean, people who knew Jones uh both as reporters and as as former members of People's Temple were telling me this, you know, that they really heard the voice of Jim Jones in Donald Trump. Do you have um favorite messianic cult leader?
Trump, of course, by far. you know, uh, you know, I I was writing about, you know, I've been writing about these me M messianic cult leaders for, you know, since the 70s, you know, starting really with Jim Jones. And there are a lot of similarities there we can talk about. And so when I Substack series, um, I real and I was, you know, writing about, you know, Dree John, you know, now now called Adi Dahostimously and, you know, others. I thought I am ignoring the 600 pound messianic gorilla in the room, right? Which was Donald Trump, right? Because it's happening now and this was this was a lot of old stuff that I was putting out there.
I I did a few um I did a few posts on Trump, you know, and started thinking about what's going on now with him, you know, and I I've I wrote a lot about back in the 70s and 80s, I wrote a lot about the rise of the religious right, uh uh including this something they called the shephering movement, uh the Pentecostal, you know, spiritual warfare groups, the early Christian nationalist stuff, you know, the people who kind of laid the foundation for what they're now calling the new apostolic reformation. and the and the white Christian nationalist. And so I I'd written a lot a lot about that, you know, years ago. Uh I hadn't kept up on it so much lately because I left my job as the full-time religion reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006. You know, that was almost almost 20 years ago.
And my attention has kind of been diverted elsewhere on other books and projects. So, I'm just kind of getting back into it now because uh you know, frankly, Daniel, I was trying to think when when I left the Chronicle in 2006, I you I was trying to think less about all this stuff, not more because I was kind of tired of it. But, you know, that's really difficult uh with Trump. You know, you can't ignore him and you can't ignore what's going on in the country right now with these groups. So, I've kind of been, you know, pulled. It's like the Godfather, you know, I try to get out and they're pulling me back into it, you know.
Yeah. Of course. So that's kind of where I am right now. I in a way I'm kind of trying to retire, but I can't seem to do it, you know? Uh I'm in my 70s and there's things I want to do, but there's just so much going on now, you know. Yeah. So you you were full-time on the religion beat for like 20 years or something like that. Yeah. I started Well, I examiner in in uh 90 77 1977 and I wasn't the religion reporter. I was just general assignment reporter. But I wound up writing a lot about uh cults, new religious movements, whatever you want to call them.
Uh you know, like the mooneyies, the Hari Krishna, you know, this was back in the 70s, the so-called, you know, the cult decade, the cult wars, right, of now we have the culture wars, but then we had the cult wars, right? Uh of the 70s. So I was writing about uh the Mooney's uh unification church um the Hari Krishna's and then Jonestown happened you know the Reverend Jim Jones which was a local story right he was in San Francisco uh and so when that whole thing exploded you know in Guyana and South America the the mass murder suicide of more than 900 followers of Jim Jones and People's Temple that was in November 1978 I was you know it was my first year at the examiner when Then I moved to the Chronicle later. But anyway, I did some of those stories about Jones. And that's how I one of the reasons I got interested in uh volunteering to become the full-time religion reporter because people forget that Jim Jones was not considered to be some crazy cult leader for much of his, you know, career.
He was a very politically connected progressive uh religious. He was chairman of the housing authority. The mayor, George Moscone, appointed him head of the housing authority. He was he was in the White House. He was hanging out in the governor's mansion. I mean, he was a politically connected guy. Um, and so after Jonestown blew up, the editors at the paper thought, well, you know, if we would have had a full-time religion reporter, we maybe we would have been more up to speed on what was happening. you know, caught the early warning signs of what was the dark side of Jim Jones, which which had actually been reported by my predecessor, a religion reporter at the paper like 10 years before and everybody had kind of forgotten about that.
Actually, his stories were some of them were censored because so much political pressure was put on the paper uh at the time. So anyway, there's a there was a so it's really it was really uh People's Temple and Jim Jones that kind of got the paper and me thinking about you know having a full-time staff person on that beat which people thought at the time oh religion who cares about religion anymore you know that's so 1950s uh this is San Francisco we're so sophisticated we don't care about you know Christians know and and they were really wrong of course and u so that that's how it started let's take a second I just wanted to welcome Everybody, this will eventually go up on You Tube as part of my liinal news uh podcast there and um be on Substack. And today I'm joined by Don Latton who's an award-winning journalist, the author of seven books. Uh he was the you know religion beat reporter for many years, San Francisco Chronicle and uh his books include the Harvard Psychedelic Club on Liry, Andrew While, Ramos and Houston Smith. Um which um yeah, I guess that I wrote a book on psychedelics that came out in 2002.
So I remember hearing about your book, but I was already saturated with the whole psychedelic topic at that point. So I don't I don't to be honest with you, I don't think I read it back then. Um then you wrote God on psychedelics, tripping across the rubble of old time religion, changing our minds, psychedelic sacraments and the new psychotherapy. Uh earlier book was Jesus Freaks, a true story of murder and madness on the evangelical edge. And uh you're doing a Substack series um on messiahs you have known or Messianic cult leaders. And yeah, people can also check out your your website www. donlatinwith Don Latin with two twot's uh.
com. Um cool. Yeah. And I thought there'd be you know all sorts of overlap between our interests um you know from kind of like the trajectory of the psychedelic movement to kind of the um yeah the sort of you know the cultlike um situation uh of Trump and the sort of religious fervor that they're trying to engender. the sort of apocalyptic uh tonality of this whole thing. Um so we can I don't know where you want to start with. We can we can we can jump in any of those directions, you know. Yeah. Well, we started talking about Jim Jones before and you know, one of the things that uh that I saw when Trump first rose was, you know, the 206 Trump 1.0, you know, in 2016.
Um he when he famously said, you know, I could uh stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and you know, shoot somebody and not lose a single voter. You know, that kind of an attitude and then this and this whole idea of only I can save America from this. Only I can do this this this you know incredibly narcissistic messianic attitude which he has it so similar to Jim Jones. I mean, people who knew Jones uh both as reporters and as as former members of People's Temple were telling me this, you know, that they really heard the voice of Jim Jones in Donald Trump. And what I found interesting about that was, you know, with with Jones, I mean, he was a leftist, right?
I mean he was he called himself an apostolic socialist and but his whole thing was only I you know Jim Jones and he often compared himself to like Messiah and and you know claim to raise the dead and all that but he only Jim Jones could save the left right from the CIA and the the deep state the version of the deep state back then right and uh and drew his people in that way mostly you know very very progressive like social justice type people were were drawn into people's temple. Um, and it was just the exact same thing that um that that Trump was doing except the politics were reversed. You know, he's like he's a right-wing Christian nationalist. You know, it's not apostolic socialism. It's it's Christian nationalism that he's, you know, that he's using, you know, to to to to solidify his power.
But it was all that that same messianic narcissistic attitude. Um and uh so I so I did start writing some uh some pieces about that, you know, in in the series. Um and uh and then I've talking to other people like, you know, uh this guy Steve Hassan who who was a former Mooney Unification Church, you know, who now leads an anti he's like an anti-cult activist and a therapist helping people leave cults, including the cult of Trump. He wrote a book called the cult cult of Trump a few years back. Uh he said you know you remember the first cabinet meetings that we saw like the fir when there was this just you know these sync of this like sickening like sympathy of symphony of sympathy if that's the word right I mean just like the dear leader right uh it was shock I remember I remember watching that because he televised you know it was it was shocking the the cabinet's attitude towards him and it was just like a cult leader right and you know shortly after that I was talking to Steve you know he And he used to be in meetings with with Moon, you know, Reverend Sunyong Moon, the the Korean evangelist and the leader of the unification church in the Mooneyies.
And it was just like that. You dare not question the leader. And you also the case with, you know, North Korea Putin or something. It it was just so there were so many parallels, you know, between sort of the cult Trump, the the Trump cult, and some of these other groups that, you know, that I was writing about back in the It does begin to feel like Trump is waning. Uh I mean, he's certainly waxed and now he's waning. Uh in that, you know, first of all, he just seems like he's, you know, becoming increasingly scenile, like he's becoming kind of he's reaching some type of um What's that?
It's not reassuring in a way since, you know, he has the this figure on, you know, on the on the button, right? So, he does have, but I mean it it it sort of feels like I mean, like, you know, the Turning Points USA just had a big conference and it sort of felt like they were really beginning to fight amongst themselves for who becomes the, you know, takes on the mantle of of this movement in a way. Yeah, it that's what happens in cults actually. Usually, usually when the leader dies, that's when there's all all the infighting starts, you know, and the schisms and the and it is often falls apart. That's starting to happen with the Trump cult, but it's really the very beginning of it.
I'm not sure if it's, you know, who knows what's going to happen, you know? I mean, this movement is also I I think it's more than just Trump, you know? It it it reflects something that's going on in the culture, right? And you know, you've got J. D. Vance waiting in the wings, you know, and he's kind of the point guy, you know, with the the tech bros, you know, and the Christians. So, it's it's far even if Trump is losing it, it doesn't really reassure me too much. Yeah. Well, it, you know, turns out that many, many people were very frustrated and almost at the point where they just prefer to destroy the whole American system, uh, whether it hurts them or not because a lot of these people we know are voting against their own interests.
I mean, the interest of their children and we now putting back all these sort of cancer-causing, you know, asbestos, pesticides, you know, ammonia back into meat and so on. I mean, you know, the cancer rates are going to, I guess, skyrocket. I mean, you know, so people who cared about their kids, you know, should not have been voting, but there's so many things to talk about. It's sort of interesting. I think maybe one through line a little bit is um kind of because you were covering uh yeah these kind of like fringe new age and religious movements and kind of psychedelic spirituality and how there was like a large uh kind of um wave where a lot of those people you know through the Maha RFK kind of uh channel got pulled into the the sort of you know Trump Trump world.
Uh was that was that surprising to you to see so many of the sort of alternative spirituality people and even the psychedelic people uh suddenly go down this this road? Uh no it it was a bit of a surprise. Uh although looking back you can kind of see how it happened really. RFK Jr. that was the key thing right when he w when he got in bed with Trump that people followed. So, um, uh, yeah, it is such a it's a fascinating coalition. I mean, strange bedfellows, right? I mean, you know, you've got you've got him, you've got, you know, the the the hardcore Christian right people.
You've got the the sort of the wellness crowd, some of the wellness crowd, you know, with RFK. I mean, even the psychedelic stuff, you know, there's there's a lot of sympathy to psychedelic therapy among some of these folks, too. Uh and uh so there's there's that we bring bring that thread in as well. You know, I mean a lot of people, you know, will who don't really know what's going on will say, "Well, I'm afraid that like Donald Trump is going to crack down on psychedelics." I said, "I I wouldn't I'm not afraid of that. I mean, actually, it's the whole libertarian sort of arm of the not just Trump, but the libertarian arm of the party, you know, they they want to deregulate everything, right?
Uh they don't want to have safeguards for anything, including psychedelic drugs." So in and and uh in some ways they're they're more open to uh rescheduling or perhaps even legalizing but certainly rescheduling psychedelia for therapy uh you know for for veterans and and other people. So there there's there's all kinds of strange coalitions and bedfellows uh you know happening here. It's it's amazing time. Yeah, it's crazy. So I mean um it's very scary in terms of the surveillance uh state and the and the military uh state but um yeah I saw in one of your books you were talking about uh kind of religion and psychedelics and even how traditional religions like you know Christianity um are beginning to sort of reexamine psychedelics and try to sort of uh incorporate them.
Uh do you want to give us any like updates on that? What what what are you seeing in that? Well, you know, the la the last book that I did, which is titled God on Psychedelics, Tripping Across the Rubble of Oldtime Religion, it was published by a small press called Apocryphile Press. Um, and what what sort of inspired that was, you know, I've been writing about this so-called psychedelic renaissance, you know, really ever since Harvard Psychedelic Club came out in 2010. And that's when these clinical trials were just really starting to pick up steam, you know, and all that was going on with research into MDMA and psilocybin and all that.
So, I've been writing about that for a while. And, you know, I've been the religion reporter, so uh at at the paper. And one of the things that always struck me is that uh it seemed like the psychedelic uh folks were you know more drawn towards shamanism or eastern religion you know to to explain the revelatory experiences they had on psychedelics. Now part of that is just cultural and what was happening in the 60s you know with Liry and Rahm Doss and and then with you know people like you know people like Terrence Mc Kenna or you know Carlos Castanada all that stuff the psychedelic influencers of my generation the baby boom generation um um but I was wondering you know why is it that you know a lot of these people are brought up as Christians and Jews you know why don't they ever look at their own religious tradition because there is a mystical tradition in Christianity and Judaism it just has been very poor poorly taught by you know uh by religious leaders of both those faiths. So any I just started looking around for it you know when you look for something you find it and there were some it's just really the beginning of kind of an avanguard of like Christian clergy and some Jewish some rabbis who are starting groups that are trying to uh you know uh bring uh s encourage people to integrate and look at the psychedelic experience through their own religious tradition if they so desire.
Right. and pointing out that you know there is a mystical tradition in Christianity is really hidden because a lot of that like the go the gospel of Thomas for instance one of which is just as just as authentic as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but it was not included in the canon for interesting reasons you know and so and then the kabala Jewish mysticism. So I so I wrote about some of groups and then at the same time you had the Brazilian um Iawaska churches and these are like you know established churches. They're really you know established denominations. There's two of them uh UDV uh and Santa D.
Yeah. and they've both established congregations up here in in North America and they are really the ones who are the only ones who are legally in terms of the DEA, you know, using psychedelics as part of their religious rituals. They've gotten exemptions, you know, from the DEA, which is not and the Native American church. But yeah, of course, Native Americans. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Um, but I'm talking about the newer sort of newer groups as part of this. Um, a lot of people claim that they've, you know, it's it's quote legal because it's their freedom of religion, but uh, not really. I mean, they can argue that, but they have to argue it in court, right?
So, anyway, there's lot lot. So, I the book was about bringing together all that and and sort of looking at, you know, what can um what can mainline churches uh, learn from the psychedelic renaissance, you know, and and vice versa, you know. So, uh, so this is a little book. I I it's it's a thin book, you know, it was it's based based on a series of articles I wrote for Lucid News, which is a psychedelic news website and I put it together and put out this little book a few years ago. Yeah. Nice. And you've also written about the value of psychedelics for your own like development and um you know, kind of your own personal use.
You said you sort of sort of been more on the more impactful for you on the therapeutic side than the mystical side. I think of besides oh actually kind of both in a way you know I mean I I haven't written well but I I never really wrote about that in the past you know I'm kind of an old school journalist you know where I is a dirty word you know write about yourself you know for years I never wrote about that at all and I was you know hesitant to because I was you know I was the religion reporter at the chronicle in San Francisco the main newspaper people have sort of expectations of what a religion reporter is supposed to be up to and you know taking drugs is not maybe one of it but especially if they're legal So I I never wrote about that you know when I was still working for the paper but it was really uh first time I wrote about it was Harvard Psychedelic Club which came out in 2010 and that was a group biography as you mentioned of you know Timothy Liry uh Richard Albert Ramdos Houston Smith Andrew while at the end I wrote a little afterward saying you know telling the reader there's another reason why I'm interested in this stuff and that was basically yeah a couple of very revelatory and also terrifying experiences you know, LSD, you know, as a very young man as a, you know, freshman at Berkeley in the early 70s. Yeah. You had the classic melting into your girlfriend at Big Su experience. Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like a cliche, but it actually happened. Daniel, you know, listen, I had a very important mushroom experience on at at Big S. It's a great place to read about I thought this sounds this is this is sort of cheesy, you know, sounds like on a cliff at Big S. But no, that's what happened. And then I had a very very bad very bad very difficult experience just a few months later. And so you know that convinced me of you know both the promise that showed me both the promise and the pitfalls of psychedelic and um and made me kind of cautious for a long long time.
Um uh so yeah so there was that you know and I think I I mentioned that Jim Jones was one of the reasons I started writing about religion and spirituality but but another reason was experiences that I had on psychedelics you know in the 70s I got into you know meditation I went to Zen retreats you know I got into Tai Chi uh you know so I did start and and mysticism and then later on some Christian mysticism and exploring that so I I really can link that back to the experiences I had. The first real quote mystical experience, religious experiences I had were on psychedelics. So, uh, it did have an in that had an impact too on why I just spent wound up spending 30 years of my life, you know, as a religion reporter. Uh, most of it most of it writing about mainstream churches, not anything to do with psychedelics or or mysticism, but that that that was part of the part of the, you know, reason I got into this. Totally.
I'm curious with like um you know Jim Jones and Daffrey John and these kind of extremist cults of the 70s was there usually like a a psychedelic use that that sort of triggered something in these guys or was it all sorts of different ways? I don't think there was any psychedelic aspect to Jones. There certainly wasn't Daffrey John. Um different uh I mean Jones I think was on a lot of drugs maybe maybe on speed. I think a lot of his paranoia, you know, at the end was partly due to the drugs he was on, but it wasn't he wasn't on psychedelics as far as I know.
Do John Yeah. I mean, they came they came up in the late 60s, early 70s. Yeah. You know, started in Southern California, but they were based in Marin County here in the Bay Area. And they went through a period where psychedelics were a big big part of what they were doing. Well, yeah. ju just uh one of his uh followers donated him an island, right, which he visited near Fiji or something. Yeah. The the most sort of one of the is the first thing I write about in this Messiah's I have known series and it's it's kind of the story that we never really got told about what happened but till now.
But yeah, what happened was uh one of his wealthy uh devotees uh bought him his own island uh a freehold island in Fiji in the South Pacific um where he took off with kind of this inner circle of his top lieutenants and some of his followers uh you know in the 1980s in a way it was very similar to what Jones did you know going down to South America and establishing a compound down there. So some people thought this could be quote another Jonestown, you know, with Daffhrey John in the 80s. Uh so when he he had this ashram Yeah. And he was kind of chased out, right, of the US for sexual stuff and so on. No, he wasn't really No, he was Jones was chased out, you know, because that's okay.
Go ahead. Jones was not not so much for sexual stuff, but just for a very abusive uh uh uh practices towards his devotees. Um but uh no so no Drey John was he wasn't really chased out. He was he had a guy who bought him this island and then he he was starting starting to get some negative often it's a it's they get they get negative media publicity you know then they they flee. But um in his case it was they just had this opportunity. Now what happened there is it was some of the some of his top lieutenants uh defected and filed a lawsuit in Marin County claiming that people some people were being kept against their will.
uh you know, brainwashed and kept against their will on this island in Fiji. Uh including the former wife of the president of the cult and uh sensationally uh a former Playboy playmate of the month, Miss September 1976. So you had this story that you know the exam I was at the examiner at the time which had some tabloid tendencies, right? So it was a hard to ignore. You have this sex craze guru on his own island allegedly keeping a Playboy playmate, one of his nine wives captive. So, this was such a exciting story that the examiner sent myself and a photographer all the way to Fiji to look into this.
So, so I tell the whole story about what happened on that trip in the the Messiah's uh Substack series. Yeah, I've I've been friends with some of the kids who grew up in that community. Um yeah, it's interesting. Uh do you know his any of his daughters like Namela Jones and there's two two do two or three there's two or three daughters from from different mothers that are one of them is seen as a potential uh I think maybe successor or something but there's a there's a power struggle in that group like there always is when uh you know the leader dies uh so yeah um yeah so I mean and and so what do you kind of um you know maybe maybe extrapolate a little bit on some of the parallels somebody was asking I mean do you think that um you know somebody was noting in the in the in the comments that Mary Trump believes that um you know if if they try to take Trump out he's going to try to take the country down with him um which sounds sort of Jim Jonesesque but what do you see as kind of the um the parallels between uh how Trump operates and how Jones operates and you feel that you know we could see something like a uh you know apocalyptic scenario here where if he feels too threatened you know the The real answer, Danny, is I don't know. But is that the But um there are the parallels are striking.
Uh I'm not saying that, you know, it's just like I guess I'm not saying it's another Jonestown. What one of the mistakes a lot of reporters made after Jonestown is every single new religious movement that came along that somebody didn't like was another Jonestown, right? And obviously most of them weren't. I mean, there were a few other later examples of like mass, you know, mass suicide, you know, ritual suicides like Heaven's Gate, you know, and and horrific things that happened like Waco. That's another story. But, uh, with with with So, I'm not saying that that the Trump cult Yeah. Also, I'm not saying everyone who voted for Trump is in this cult, you know.
I mean, people vote for Trump for all kinds of reasons, you know. There is a a hardcore follower you the mega follower following, right? uh which you see at the you see at the rallies or you saw on January 6th, right? And you see now with uh you know the top lieutenants like what what always gets me about cults is the most dangerous usually the inner circle right around the cult leader not the leader himself. The leader himself always has something going for him. there's some charisma, some message, some, you know, some maybe even enlightened aspect to this person that draws people and it's often the people right underneath him.
And you sort of see that with the people that that are right underneath Trump. Um, and then what tends to happen is the the negative personality traits of the leader sort of are projected onto the followers. you know, whether it's the persecution complex, right, or the demonization of the other or, you know, with all the stuff that Trump is doing, which a lot of cult leaders do, right? It's uh creating this divisive, you know, us versus them scenario, which is what Trump is constantly doing. He even did it yesterday, you know, at Christmas, right? I mean he he put out these very divisive you know Christmas messages uh you know pitting half the country against the other half you know and this whole and then the whole uh this these very religious Christian messages that that the cabinet is putting out the other leaders and administration and you know it's sort of creating this us versus them aspect uh and I find that very very troubling Um, what he's going to do if he's really threatened is is a is a great question.
I don't really have the answer, but I mean, look what happened last time. I mean, you know, it was a it was a coup to attempt to, you know, subvert the will of the people, right? Overturn the election. So, I I don't know what's what's what he could do. Um, it might get down to the point of what is where does the military go, you know? Uh it's it it's a frightening scenario in some ways. Uh I don't I don't I don't pretend to I'm not a prophet. I don't see can't see the future. But um it's going to be a wild ride, I think, one way or the other.
Yeah. Um yeah, I mean we can go into that a little bit. I mean I mean obviously also I mean as a somebody in San Francisco I guess you've also been paying attention to the tech the tech elite who kind of like put the nail in the coffin by swiveing over to uh Yeah. Trump. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. And then and then and then also that group has now absorbed some of this white Christian nationalist apocalyptic theology like Peter Teal giving talks on the Antichrist and so on. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's this and then there's JD Vance, you know, who's kind of a bridge between Trump and and that what do they call him?
The Pay Pal mafia, you know, like Teal and Musk and was it Reed Hoffman, David Sachs, you know, these people. I mean, David Sachs, he's like charged wriggling what crypto and AI, you know. Uh, yeah, it's it's it's it's interesting. It's sort of similar to what's happening with, you know, the Christian, right? You know, these kind of strange bedfellows in a way, right? Neither the tech people or the Christian people. I mean, a lot of people are I I I have maybe have more ideas about the Christian side of it, but you know, it's like people say, well, how can Christians, you know, be for Trump?
I mean, he's, you know, a you know, he's a he's a convicted, you know, sex abuser. You know, he's not a religious person, obviously. you know, and a lot of that is I think that most Christians, even if they're not like in the quote cult, but but they, you know, say they're anti-abortion, right? Or they're concerned about, you know, traditional gender roles or whatever. They see someone who can get the job done. I mean, he's the pagan ruler who can get the job done and we're going and give him that power. It's like the king the king Cyrus analogy you get compared with a Netanyahu came right out and said you know the Israeli prime minister came right out and said he's the Cyrus you know of our of our generation.
Uh so you know a lot of the people on the Christian right Trump delivered Trump delivered. He gave got them the Supreme Court. So uh it's really not surprising at at the leadership level right that they would be for him. I mean, and maybe it's the same, you could say the same thing about the tech guys. I mean, they're, you know, he they're they don't want to be regulated and they want to, you know, buy up this and buy up that and uh a lot of this is, including the media, you know, oligarchs, you know, it's everyone seems it's it's it's disgusting how everyone is falling in line.
that that sort of surprised me even more than the the Christian right. You know that that famous pick what was it at the inauguration where you had them all lined up you know Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg and you know uh beginning. Yeah. I mean Steve Bannon said that uh you know Trump's victory was a was divine providence. Um yeah he went out in this little he bunch of interviews I forget what it was. Yeah. He said something like, um, well, he's not a churchy guy, but you know, we see the hand of God in Donald Trump or yeah, divine providence. And I don't know if, you know, Bannon really believes that or not, but um but uh I think a lot of people do are are starting to see it that way.
Certain aspects of the Christian evangelical movement, it's not all evangelicals, you know, we can't really paint them all with this broad brush. Uh so I' I'd be curious to hear a little bit about so you you know you had psychedelic experiences like in early '7s and you covered the scene you wrote some books about it. What's kind of your perspective on the trajectory of the psychedelic movement you know from from you know the 60s through you know 80s 90s now today. Um, you know, yeah, I'm kind of curious. Do you do you see them becoming a bigger force in American life? Do you see them playing a certain role?
Or do you think that maybe the sort of, you know, mainstream structures are kind of assimilating them? They just become kind of like maybe therapy tools are helpful for like people to like self-optimize corporations and stuff like that. Yeah. I don't know. I found the whole thing more interesting when when we were counterculture at some point, you know. Yeah. But yeah, it is a quite a shift. I mean, one reason I a few years ago and after, you know, I'm really kind of got I really got tired of writing about the psych you're hearing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, you know, and a lot of it was around, you know, the therapeutic use of psychics, which I think is a real thing and it can help people, you know, I think MDMA, you know, with a trained therapist can help people with say PTSD or other drugs, you know, other uh medicines, whatever you want to call them, sacred medicines like psilocybin mushrooms or can help people with depression and substance abuse.
I think that's true. But uh what's happened is like what happens of everything in this culture now is the commodification you know of psychedelics uh and the medicalization uh which I do find kind of troubling and um uh I understand the reason that the people leading this like you know Rick Dolblin you know at maps uh you know is it was a strategy right to one of the reasons that they chose you know veterans uh and chose MDMA and uh PTSD was to help was a to help a lot of the veterans who are struggling with PTSD, but they also knew that that would be a way to get support, you know, from conservatives and it it worked. Um and uh it's to me it always seemed a bit like the medical the so-called medical marijuana, you know, movement that we had to go through that phase of medicalizing marijuana. Yeah, there were a few reasons that few I think legitimate reasons that marijuana could help you medically, but mostly it was just people who wanted to get high and you know, you'd go to the you get your card from your doctor and go get your go get your pot. So I I think a lot of it was the psychedelic, you know, lobby was sort of using medicine and therapy in one way, you know, as a road to legalization.
And Doblin even said that. One of the things I liked about Rick Doblin was he was honest about it, right? He wasn't pretending to not be for legalization. So, um, but I just got I I don't know. I just got a little then all this, you know, bill literally billions of dollars, you know, these v venture capital, you know, just comes in and all these cl these ketamine clinics were set up, you know, thinking that the next thing is going to be MDMA and then psilocide and then we're going to have this whole industry, this whole medical industry with where only, you know, wealthy people could afford to get this therapy.
That was one of one of the many problems with it. Um so yeah I very I profound I guess to summarize profoundly mixed feelings about the direction in which it was going and is is going. Um and I also just got tired of writing about it. So I kind of one one reason I went back to the writing about the cult of new religious movements is I was just tired of writing about psychedelics. I'd done you know I mean actually my first book where I was writing about this was about the about the time your book came out 2001 2002 I wrote a book called Following Our Bliss.
my first book with Harper Collins which was how the spiritual ideals of the 60s shape our lives today was this was the you know subtitle and there's a whole section there on you know drugs and psychedelics and all that so I've been writing about it you know as long as you have maybe I mean from the you know early 2000s and um uh Harvard psychedelic club and that that book did really well so I kind of wrote another one called distilled spirits another group biography going back a generation with Aldis Huxley Gerald Herd and Bill Wilson there you work with psychedelics in the, you know, 50s. Um, then changing our minds, which was, by the way, a year before Michael Polland's How to Change Your Mind, uh, but explored a lot of the same area that he did in his book, which did a little better, you know, than mine. But, um, you know, so I I've been writing about it a lot and I was just enough, you know, so I haven't really been I've been trying to like unplug from the whole thing to tell you the truth. Yeah. Yeah.
I saw that. Uh, in terms of the cult stuff, you'd also written about One Taste, Nicole Don. Uh, tell me a little bit about your perspective on on her and on that community. That was interesting because I um I wrote about her uh well, I actually wrote about More. There was this group called Morehouse. I don't know if you remember them or familiar with them. I've heard about them. They were another they were another kind of sexoriented One Taste came out of Morehouse basically. So, Morehouse was started by this uh former rancher named Vic Bronco in in Oakland and it was kind of a free love uh human potential, you know, es type encounter group uh movement called Morehouse.
They bought a bunch of houses all around the Bay Area. They always painted them purple. So there were you'd see these bright purple houses and they would have like seminars and a lot of it was you know part of the whole sexual revolution and um uh at all of that kind of taking like Masters and Johnson to the next level and and uh you know uh they were kind of a funny kind of seemingly relatively harmless you know group uh that arose in the 60s and 70s. Anyway um so Nicole Deion came out of that. she started this thing called uh one taste orgasmic meditation movement.
Um and uh so I wrote about so I I'd written about Morehouse years ago and then I I knew some people that were involved with one taste. Uh I wasn't into it myself but so I know quite a bit about it. So I actually did another book which I can't really talk about too much uh which never came out about some other people. Uh it was a work for hire. Um but anyway uh it never got published but I did do a chapter on one taste and Nicole for that book and got permission to use some of that material uh from that project. So I put all that out on Substack.
It's a four-part series about her her rise and now you know she's she's now in prison. I mean the feds went after her and charged her with uh you know we said coercive labor practices and convicted her and her CEO. So now she's in uh she's in jail in Brooklyn awaiting sentencing. She's she's also published jailhouse memoir. She wrote a book while she's been in jail. uh and her you know that so that was a movement that really took off you know in the early 2000s in San Francisco you know during the tech one of the first tech bubbles all these young people coming in and uh they practiced this thing called orgasmic meditation which were these sort of highly ritualized workshops where uh one partner someone you just met would stroke the clitoris of a woman in a very prescribed way for 15 minutes and then they would sit and talk about it and it was sort of looking at orgasm as a tool like a meditation tool and a lot people I think got a lot of got some good good uh fruit out of that actually.
I mean a lot of people I think you know maybe the improved their sex lives or couples were able to communicate better or I think there was some positive stuff that came out of that but uh again it was the inner circle of people around Dion the the who were living communally and had got into this very kind of cultic you know kind of abusive environment wi with her where some of her her uh followers were basically told to go have sex with this guy or that guy you know like wealthy donors And it got, you know, it got pretty dark uh in the inner circle like like I said before, that's often where the trouble is, you know, like like people can get a lot out of this these self-help movements, you know, but the ones who get really involved and and right around the the leader, that's often where the the problems arise. So that was yeah, that was one taste. So there's there's four long pieces in the substack series about that. So, but and you think that um it's the it's the correct resolution. Spends time in prison.
Sometimes I feel like um I don't sometimes I feel that normal societies doesn't like these types of groups. I mean, if you have, you know, consenting adults, you know, yeah, she might have told people to do things, but unless she was like holding a gun to their head or whatever, it was still their decision. Yeah. to, you know, I mean, NXVM or Nixium, I guess, seems like another, you know, kind of a situation where um yeah, I I was actually uh surprised. I wasn't really following because I had written about it like a few years ago and, you know, I didn't and so I I was just sort of, you know, following it like anybody.
But, uh, I was surprised that she was convicted. Um cuz I mean I' I've seen I'd seen worst examples of coercive, you know, labor practices and other groups. So why, you know, it's interesting that the feds went after, you know, both these groups. Um and I don't know if that's part of uh a a trend or not. Um on the other hand, you know, when I actually started, you know, when I got back looking into it now, you know, updating what I'd done, this was like five or six years ago that I wrote this material, right? Um when before the sort of the tide turned and the negative stuff started coming out.
I mean, I I have I had warnings about this about her her her sort of messianic and uh tendencies in a way in what I written. But when you act, there's a new book out called Empire of Orgasm by a woman Elizabeth uh Huitt who was a the Bloomsburg business reporter who actually did the first big expose about One Taste and then she just has a book. It's just out and there is some really dark stuff that went on in there, you know, that I didn't even realize. So, um you know, uh but it is interesting that they went after went after them. Um and what do you think is going to you know what's the destiny now of this kind of like spiritual but not religious movement that um you know there was like the idea of the age of Aquarius you know kind of like people expecting some kind of evolution of consciousness or transformation and instead it feels like we just have kind of like disintegration almost and then kind of fundamentalism.
turn around on to you then you wrote the book what the 2012 book right where that's true be the dawning of another dawning of the age of Aquarius right or something like it the Mayan version what well I saw it as an as an opportunity for us to try to make an evolutionary leap but um it feels like we you know have not figured out how to do that and in the time that we had available um to address kind of like the the deeper ills of the society and the wealth inequality and the injustice. We've we've you know for whatever reasons and I I honestly put a lot of the blame on the liberal establishment and the Democrats also uh but we were not able to um address the sort of fundamental flaws in the system and um yeah now it feels like it's sort of gotten out of anybody's control. you know, people were voting out of uh hate and and spite and, you know, frustration and wanting to just kind of blow up the institutional structures and so on. and um the right, you know, the sort of, you know, wealthy oligarchs, fossil fuel oligarchs, tech oligarchs were more than happy to have people kind of fall into this trap uh where now they've got them sort of like it's like a it's like a Venus fly trap or something where people are just going to be enclosed by media and ideology and then, you know, surveillance systems and AI manipulation systems and so on. So yeah, I'm very very very um troubled by the direction at this point, you know.
Well, that's the trouble with prophecy, you know, it usually does fail and uh it certainly seemed to have in that case. Um uh and you asked about, you know, the broader kind of spiritual but not religious shift, which is a real historic shift, you know. I mean I I I was uh you know the full-time religion reporter you know for most of the 80s and 90s left in 2006 and every year Gallup would have these surveys right on religion in America every year and it was amazing how slowly things changed how little things changed you know in terms of people's religious affiliation their ideas you know but there around the time I left uh there you started to see this real shift you know away from affiliation with religious groups but but people who are still maybe believe in God or some higher power. So the the whole idea of the spiritual but not religious uh took hold which is a real thing uh that that shift uh and it's I think it's continuing. There's been a few surveys recently showed some people are reconnecting with more conservative or orthodox with the capital O uh groups in Christianity.
But um but it's and there's the whole idea of the religious nuns and I think I might I might have been the one who coined that or I'm not sure but ns right as opposed to nu ns the religious nuns as in none of the above right n o n um I was writing the book I wrote actually in 2002 uh uh uh you know following our bliss was all about that it was about that shift right uh the way which was just getting going then um and I think that's continuing and I think that's much broader than the new age or much broader than the psychedelic you it's not not like the psychedelics are changing people's religion it's like there's this broader shift away from doct doctrine and dogma and denominationalism towards personal spiritual uh experience uh whether it's through you know um meditation or prayer or fasting or yoga or any or psychedelics or orgasmic meditation or whatever it is there's that shift towards a personal spiritual experience and a deinstitutionalization and that can even be among people that are still very Christian like uh you know Bible study groups people just getting together having Bible study groups without you know uh sort of a freelance kind of floating group uh so that's um or yeah or even like men's groups women's groups uh even the whole recovery movement you know there's lots of examples of how people's religious time and energy is diverted into other other forms uh that you can call spiritual but not religious. So I think that's you know continuing. Um so do you think um Christianity is I mean the sense one gets from you know the uh turning points and and and you know the sort of world around Trump is that Christianity is kind of taking off again. But do you think that's kind of an illusion and and actually I the problem is these media silos that were in if you you know some people think psychedelics are taking over the world because that's all they read about because they're in this you know they're in this closed loop of information about psychedelics or whether it's or the you know the media is very fascinated of course somebody like Charlie Kirk especially after he was shot I mean they weren't all that interested in him the mainstream media wasn't writing about him that much till he was assassinated and he became this martyr So yeah, I think there are very loud pockets that are getting a lot of attention, but I think well I think if you if you look at the Gallup surveys, you know, which are legitimate statistical surveys of the American population, I I think I just saw something about this whole Christmas, you know, religious messages, religious messages in Christmas with Trump and his people. I think the I think it's like 62% of the country today calls themselves Christian.
which is a drop of like you know something I can't remember the number something like 10% in the last 15 years which is a big drop I mean like I said that stuff didn't used to change a lot of it is generational the baby boom generation you know so many people in the baby boom generation fell away from organized religion and that happens kind of in every generation in a way you know people come of age and go their own way but um so no Christianity is not dead by any means um uh you know it's a very important aspect of people's life and people forget that there are all kinds of Christians out there who are you know not for Donald Trump at all right and uh probably the vast majority of them um but it's the uh you know it's the something about these Pentecostal groups you know the they're they're very media savvy the whole TV evangelism thing you know they got a lot of attention because they started their own TV networks right back in the8s And one reason they did, which is kind of interesting, is they were locked out of uh the networks used to have to have religious programming, you know, and they only have mainline Protestants and Catholics and Jews and they were locked out. So they started their own little their own channel on cable and developed this whole, you know, ecosystem we have now. And so you you hear a lot about it uh especially the more the more radical you know groups like the spiritual warfare people and all that you know that some of them which turned out to like in the 80s I wrote a lot about the shephering movement which was this group that uh of uh Pentecostals who would go into churches and take over members and take over churches and it was this very secretive cult-like organization uh and the other groups that were talking about spiritual warfare uh exercising the demons of the and these are the people who kind of wound up in some of the leaders in turning point and in this new apostolic reformation. So the these uh kind of extremist Christian groups, they play a long game, a really uh going back decades. And so um and we're and it just seems like we're just suddenly sort of seeing that now or some people are just suddenly seeing that now because Trump has embraced them for his for obvious you know political reasons.
There's a book uh I think it's I think the writer Sarah Pausner I think I texted you before unholy but she talks about how um you know the sort of Pentecostalists and evangel evangelicals you know recognized Trump as one of their own also partially by his style which was very similar to the style of uh kind of like this this type of you know television preaching and so on. Yeah. Well he was a creation of television just like Yeah. just like the the TV evangelists, you know, uh B Jimmy Swagger and Baker and you know, Pat Robertson and all those who rather president and and all those folks. Uh yeah, you can you can sort of see in the style for sure.
Yeah. How much do you follow kind of um Yeah. like the neo apostolic reform movement and these other kind of like movements the the seven mountains mandate uh that seem to have become very virulent and are really kind of like steering the country in a certain direction at the moment. Yeah. You know I haven't really been following them you know in the last 10 or 20 years that much because I got my attentioned elsewhere right onto psychedelics. Yeah. I did write about, you know, a lot of these people did come out of this thing called the the shephering movement and uh well I think you had did you have like the Francis Schae you have like his son Frank Frank Frank Schaefer.
Yeah. Right. Right. So Schaefer was also uh one of the leading lights that inspired the shephering movement people. So it was real some of the same same people and and one of the I did I write about this guy tennis Dennis Peacock who was one of the shephering movement leaders in the Bay Area and he still you know he was a six he was a free speech movement 60 Berkeley radical you know who went over like like a lot of the in the whole Jesus movement you know in the late 60s early 70s a lot of the counterculture people who you know found Jesus and some went off in some very strange directions including you know right-wing politics or you know I've wrote a whole book about one the children of God you know um but yeah what what that what's that one again uh so that was the children of so you know there was this this so-alled Jesus people the Jesus freaks uh of the late 60s and 70s they were many of them were kind of counterculture types you know baby boomers who were maybe into drugs or maybe meditation and were uh evangelized into Christianity and this whole movement a big part of the evangelical movement was a campus crusade for Christ which turning point is kind of comes out of right um there were these evangelical and and actually often about very positive you like the real image of Jesus you know like love and compassion and and you know uh communal sharing you know the the the Jesus you actually read about you know in the gospel stories Uh so there was this movement uh you know the Jesus Jesus movement which was very big and um so a lot some of the leaders of these groups came out of that um uh and so children of God was a very cultish group uh now called the family international.
They're still around, but they had uh they got a lot of attention because they had a free love. They they were conservative evangelical, but they had a free love philosophy. So, they would send out women, young women, missionaries, uh who they called it flirty fishing. They would go out and seduce men and uh sleep with them and entice them into the group. And uh that it was an evangelical tactic that they used which uh created uh literally several thousand babies were born from these leosons. They called them Jesus babies and the the men would often leave you know they would they'd hang around for a few weeks and then leave.
The women would the women were forbidden to use birth control because that was immoral. So there were a lot of pregnancies. So all these uh children were born in the mostly in the early 70s into the 70s. Um and David Berg who was the prophet the of this group. um he was a pedophile and uh a prophet and uh he eventually died. But so in in uh what was it in the 80s uh I started writing about this group and about the kids who grew up in this movement and then at certain point you know left and there was a very sensational story of a of a of a kid who was one of one of the children born in these leison was supposed to take over the take over the movement.
He rejected it, became a leader of the defectors, the young adults who were leaving. And then he kind of went off the deep end and decided to murder his mother who was the leader of the group. And there was a murder suicide. Basically, it didn't get the mother, but got her secretary. And soational story of this uh this this tragic example of this kid who grew up in this group who who was involved with this murder, suicide. And so it got a lot of attention. And um um so I wrote a book on the history of this this group still around. Are there any uh stories like that you wish that you could still return to or or is there you know kind of subject that's really like still something you would love to um delve into much deeper?
H well, you know, uh part of it is I'm in my 70s and I'm sort of trying to like do some other things with my life to tell the truth. Just personally, you know, I mean, I got back into Trump because I just you just can't ignore it. it's too important and it's and as a journalist it's just such but even there you know I mean I'm doing some some writing but I'm really trying to get in to do some other some I'm I'm interested in this whole you know what's happening with you know religion and AI and this whole idea of uh cult of one you know some cult of one like your chat buddy becoming your guru and how that's play out I mean you know I think people like you are more you know following that hopefully or other people um but personally I'm actually you I got some other things I'm trying to do with my life, you know, u still can. So, so I'm not really uh planning another book or anything, but who knows? I say that every time and then I wind up.
Yeah. Well, uh yeah, may maybe we'll we'll we'll stop there for today, but it was great to connect with you and um yeah, appreciate hearing about your uh your long storyried career and um this ultimately will go up on You Tube. If you're watching on You Tube, please like and subscribe and um yeah, we'll we'll stay in touch on and maybe we'll do this another another time. Maybe we've also been experimenting with some kind of like trialog formats. if there's like a a third person who has a whole another angle. Sometimes that's for in fact I'd love to do something with Steve Hassan. Uh maybe you can send me his contact info or can access.
He's a real he's a he's an activist. I mean, he's he's a little when I wrote about when I was a, you know, when I was a journalist writing in the mainstream media about about new religious movements, when I wouldn't use the word cult as much as I do now because it is kind of derogatory, but I it's a it's a word I refuse to give up on, but but anyway, there's there's two camps. There's the uh there's the academic kind of apologists that study cults and and they don't really care about the beliefs or the abusive practices. They're interested in, you know, how they evolve and all that. And then there are other people I call them the alarmists.
Yeah. Who every cult is bad, every religious religious movement is bad, everything's another joke. I mean, so there Steve is more toward not that he's an alarmist, but he's, you know, he's really part of the the the anti-ult activism. Yeah. Well, he was in he was in a bad one, so that makes sense, you know. Yeah. But like, let me say what what's a cult? It's somebody else's religion, right? Um but but but all religions start as sex or cults. I mean, Christianity started as a Jewish sect. Mormons, you know, started as sort of a cult around Joseph Smith and became like a major world religion with 10 million followers.
They're the only they're the only cult that made it in America, you know. So, so, uh, so I always tried to sort of talk to both sides, right, as we used to do, right? Talk to both sides and, you know, because you have to, you have to talk to the current members and understand what attracts them and what they're getting out of this. And often there's a lot that they're getting out of these these groups, even Trump perhaps. That's hard to hard to see there. But but um so any but Steve is great. Steve is a great person to talk to about how to you you mentioned this.
We might talk about like how do you talk to people in the Trump cult? How do you convince them to leave? How do you convince them to see the light? You know, and he's really good on that because he does he's a therapist, too. You know, he does therapy with people leaving these groups. And one of the points he makes is you don't argue with them. You listen to them, you know, you're curious. You you you know, you don't condemn them. You try to just have a conversation whether they're family members, you know, who are in it or or or whatever. It's the same whether it's, you know, the Trump cult or, you know, the the unification church, you know.
Um, so he would be a good person to have on, you know, to talk about that for sure. I would love that. I would love that. Okay, Don. Thank you. Great, great to chat. Uh, have a beautiful Californian day and, uh, enjoy enjoy the rest of Boxer Day out there.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.