2024 saw a smaller Rod of Iron Festival that was not without the big names and fiery rhetoric.
The annual festival celebrating Trump, guns and a violent hateful version of Christianity happened once again in the forests of Greeley, Pennsylvania. The festival which has your standard funnel cakes, bbq, and raffles is sponsored by the Rod of Iron Ministries and Kahr Arms. Both are run by a separate son of the cult leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon – Pastor Sean Moon is the leader of the church and Justin Moon runs the guns.
Kahr Arms makes the Tommy Gun and the infamous Desert Eagle. The cash that they make from that goes to funding right wing radio, like hate-monger and Nazi-adjacent Sebastian Gorka. The church, Rod of Iron, is best known as the gun worshipping church – they use rifles as part of some of their services and Pastor Sean Moon wears a crown made of bullets.
The night before the festival officially opened, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former National Security Director, spoke after a viewing of his documentary about his struggles keeping a job in Washington DC. The film, FLYNN, claims to tell the truth about his many controversies. Oddly, the film, which is over two hours long, doesn’t go into January 6th and his potential involvement in the insurrection. It is very well produced and has the same vibe as 2000 Mules, it just plows through laying seeds of disinformation for its audience.
After the film, the pardoned Flynn took the stage with his son Michael Flynn Jr. who spoke about Elon
Musk taking on a position with the theoretical new Trump administration along side his father. Flynn Jr. had worked in the previous Trump administration, but like his dad was also booted from the White House due to his tweets about the Jack Posobiec pushed ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy.
Flynn seemed to be having a great time as the Q&A began, loving one of the first questions which was this – which I feel needs to be shown in full.
Q: Is there any chance that, should the election go in a positive result, you would get your rank reinstated and sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp but imprison the swamp — and, on a few occasions, execute the swamp?
Flynn: I’m about winning. We have to win. And these people are already up to no good. So, we gotta win first. We win, and then, “Katy-bar the door.” OK? Believe me: The gates of hell — my hell — will be unleashed.
For a man that claims to be a bit of a scholar like Flynn, he seems to take some of his history from old John Birch Society tropes. Like the idea that Democratic Socialists of America actually runs the country and former President Barack Obama still actually is the puppeteer.
This country has been undermined by a group of socialist Marxists. Okay. Most people in this room, and certainly most people in the country, have never heard of something called the Democratic Socialist Party of America, not the Communist Party of America. They changed their name, right. The Communist Party of America, still around and around since probably 1918, 1919. The another name of Trotsky stood it up till when or till, Stalin had him killed. So you know who’s running the country? Barack Obama. I mean, he’s you know, it ain’t Joe Biden.
Flynn also gets his news from Alex Jones and Roseanne Barr. Which explains a lot about his beliefs as of late – not that they haven’t been off the wall for years.
Former Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tom Homan, who seemed committed to his role playing every stereotype lackey for a strongman in a bad film opened his speech by saying, “If I offend anyone here today, I don’t care.” There is a reason why Trump loves him, and it’s not just because he calls former President Trump, “the greatest President in my lifetime.”
Following up with telling off the media, which was a total of five of us, he announced that if Trump is reelected he will be back and he will run “The biggest deportation operation in history.” Even though the former ICE director was part of controversial Project 2025, Trump has committed to bringing him back into the White House.
Homan, who is usually quite aggressive in his speeches, was on a different level, claiming that the Democrats were in fact doing the great white replacement theory. Yes, the same conspiracy that several mass shooters, including the Buffalo mass shooter in 2022, were obsessed with. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center “the “great replacement” theory is inherently white supremacist. It depends on stoking fears that a non-white population, which the theory’s proponents characterize as “inferior,” will displace a white majority. It is also antisemitic.”
The idea is that certain groups of people, often people who are coded as Jewish (Soros, bankers in general) want immigrants to overwhelm the white citizens in the United States so that they can more easily control the population. That’s essentially what Tom Homan, the man that will be running Trump’s immigration policies with Stephen Miller said on stage to applause.
Who unsecures the border purpose? This isn’t an accident. This isn’t incompetence. This is by design. And folks, they own it. Why? Well, they obviously perceive our picture political advantage, thinking maybe they’re future Democratic voters.
But don’t say that. Don’t say that’s a racial statement. That’s a great white replacement theory. Call it what you want.
“Pizzagate” profiteer Jack Posobiec was the next big name ready to spread big lies. Posobiec’s speech was shockingly similarly to last years, just with Harris switched out for Bidens. He seems to have one story and that’s about Poland and Communism.
Like all of the speakers at the festival this year they expressed, albeit subtly the threat of violence if Trump does not win outright on November 5th. Posobiec soke of how Trump was “surrounding himself with the military” and “putting the real patriots back in charge.” All of this of course is said with a wink and the intention of a joke. They don’t really mean it, it’s not terrorism, it’s just stochastic terrorism.
One speaker who was pretty clear on his post election intentions was Michael Flynn associate, Ivan Raiklin. Ivan has become a bit of a name as of late as he has declared himself the “Secretary of Retribution.” If Trump should win, Ivan insinuates (sometimes) that he be the arm of the Trump administration that gets revenge on those that went against his first administration. When I asked him about it after his speech at the Rod of Iron festival he was a bit more shifty, telling me that I needed to subscribe to his substack for more information. Congressman Jamie Raskin told Raw Story “A retired U.S. military officer [Raiklin] has drawn up a ‘Deep State target list’ of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff. His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.”
Speaking to journalists at the festival, Ivan threatened “maximum consequences” if the election count and legal battles didn’t go the way he wanted, emphasizing he was a constitutional lawyer and a Green Beret intelligence officer. The constitutional lawyer cited several “precedents” that the opposition “established.”
Alvin Bragg? What did he just do to our district attorneys? He just set our precedent. Fulton Fatty. [Guessing he’s referring to Fulton County DA Fani T. Willis] Oh. What did she do? Did she just set our precedent? She did.
Ivan is implying here that the arrests of Trump and other MAGA world figures give them the legal precedent to arrest/kill their enemies for their imagined crimes.
The show continued with conspiracy theorists like Mel K (pre-recorded) and Craig “Sawman” Sawyer who should have been speaking in front of a murder board with pins and yarn. The pastor claimed that the part of Pennsylvania we were in was a hotbed for Nazis and historically had witches covens.
“By the way, we’re in Pennsylvania, one of the most demonic states where there’s the most occult and witches covens of satanic cult groups, of any state in the continental United States, Ohio, Pennsylvania particularly heavy. So I guarantee someone here probably more than one or in a satanic cult group or witches.”
As with every Rod of Iron Festival it ended with a bonfire which represented the whore of Babylon. Last year they added a pansexual flag to the fire, but this year they just lit the large pile of pallets on fire with little ado.
The assembled followers of Moon sang quietly as the metaphorical whore burned to end the evening. Pastor Moon and his brother left on their ATV back to the festival, and the 150 red hat wearing followers continued their quiet songs.
