The Rev. Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon began the second day of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival with a sermon. Moon, 45, clutched a gold AR-15 and wore his signature crown of bullets. He stood underneath a big tent in a muddy field in Greeley, Pennsylvania, and told his audience, “In John Chapter 2, we see that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is an assault weapons manufacturer.”

His congregation, dressed in their Sunday best with red Make America Great Again hats, listened intently as Moon explained that Jesus told his disciples to break unconstitutional laws to save America from tyranny. The sermon was short, and Moon abruptly shifted from pastor to emcee. “Welcome to the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, folks. God bless you; may God save America using President Trump and every single one of you. God bless you. MAGA 2024, let’s go, baby!”

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In 2017, Rod of Iron Ministries splintered from the Unification Church, a Korean cult founded by Sean Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon. Adherents are called Moonies and believe that Sun Myung Moon is the messiah. Two of Sun Myung Moon’s sons, Sean and Kook-jin, or Justin, founded Rod of Iron Ministries. The church has many of the same core beliefs as the Unification Church—but it claims that AR-15s are the “rod of iron” that Jesus wields in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps not coincidentally, Justin Moon founded Kahr Arms, a firearms manufacturer that produces a commemorative Donald Trump AR-15.

The two-day festival was free and open to the public, but admission to Friday’s pre-event screening of Flynn, a film about the life of Michael T. Flynn, was $25. The retired lieutenant general and former national security adviser to Donald Trump has been touring to promote the movie. Flynn has partnered with Ivan Raiklin for Q&As across the country.

Raiklin is the man behind the “Pence card,” a legal theory that then–Vice President Mike Pence could have blocked the election certification on January 6, 2021, which led to Trump’s now-infamous tweet saying Pence lacked courage. Raiklin is also the self-appointed secretary of the so-called Department of Retribution, for which he maintains a “Deep State Target List” of journalists, politicians, and other foes. He wants to use sheriffs and local officials to arrest his enemies, and he has said that officials who crafted pro-vaccine Covid-19 policies should face “Public, Live-Streamed (in the interest of transparency) Capital punishment.” After the first assassination attempt on Trump, Raiklin demanded that the former US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle be executed. In a social-media post captioned “capital punishment,” Raiklin told Mark Zuckerberg, “There is no lawyering up” to defend his “crime” of restricting some pandemic misinformation on Meta.

Raiklin was not an outlier at the festival. One audience member asked Flynn if, under a Trump presidency, he “would 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 said that accountability is needed, but “we have to win first.” The response was met with cheers. Given that members of the church were involved in the January 6 insurrection, this was not surprising.

Saturday featured a long lineup of speakers that included former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, Pizzagate hoaxer and current Trump Force 47 associate Jack Posobiec, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan, and Raiklin. The speeches were standard fare for right-wing events, which is to say alternately terrifying and bizarre. Homan promised to run the “biggest deportation operation ever in the United States” if Trump wins. Gorka told an over-the-top story about wearing a MAGA hat into a liberal coffee shop and finding secret Trump allies everywhere. The messages were clear: Americans are being replaced by immigrants, and only Donald Trump, who is beloved by most Americans no matter what the polls or voters say, can save us.

Something that was unusual, even for a right-wing event, was that a shooting range was open for four hours each day. Guests had the opportunity to shoot AR-15s and other rifles. It wasn’t long before Raiklin made his way down to the range, taking his turn with one of the guns.

Raiklin is not usually friendly to journalists, even to ones not yet on his list. But after hitting the target just two-thirds of the time, Raiklin offered a few of journalists a ride back to the stage on his golf cart, and we set off, listening to him describe his plans for the Department of Retribution. “I’m doing it with or without Trump,” Raiklin told us. “It’s easier with him.”

Another journalist asked how having Trump in the White House would make things easier. Raiklin responded, “It would help because the president would not be on the list to receive retribution.”

The Freedom Festival is in its sixth year, and it never ceases to render even hardened reporters of the far right speechless—not necessarily because moments are so outrageous but because they’re so creepy. On Saturday, Reverend Moon—apparently going by his rapper name, King Bullethead—walked on stage and sang some bars about the upcoming election (“Too big! To rig!”). The calmest mosh pit I’d ever seen broke out, and then young men lined up on the stage. They each dove into the crowd in an orderly fashion, one at a time.

The next day, a Japanese choir, which had been flown in, performed. They wore MAGA hats and carried Trump flags and banners, including an AI-generated one where Trump is holding an assault rifle with a magazine emerging from both the top and bottom of the gun. The show started off normal enough; they sang “God Bless America.”

But then they began yelling, “We love Trump! We love Trump! We need Trump!” and wildly cheered when someone waved a cardboard cutout of Trump around the center of the stage. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the choir yelled. Then they took off their red hats, bowed, and walked off stage.

The final event is a bonfire meant to symbolize the burning of Babylon. (Sean Moon refers to his mother, who now leads the Unification Church, as the “whore of Babylon.”) Last year, the group lit the bonfire with a burning pansexual flag while singing and listening to a sermon. I was readying myself for a similar experience this year, but what happened was even more disturbing. There was firewood stacked at the top of a small hill, and a yellow rope for crowd control was set up to keep people from getting too close. A few of us journalists gathered in between the designated viewing space and the base of the hill, giving us a view of the crowd and the burning pyre.

The fire started quickly, without any preamble. The crowd sang “Amazing Grace,” and then stood in silence. Only the cackling of the fire and the occasional cries of a baby pierced the air. The silence seemed more sinister than the cheering and singing from last year. Standing in front of the rope, I started to feel like we were part of the show, too. The red-hatted crowd was staring at us, or maybe through us—the media—their expressionless faces illuminated by the fire.

“Was it like this last year? Were they this quiet?” I asked a videographer who had attended previous Rod of Iron festivals. He shook his head. “I was actually going to ask if you guys wanted to leave.”

Relieved that I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable, we slipped into the audience and began making our way to the back. Before we left, everyone in the audience raised their arms above their heads and yelled, “MAGA 2024!”

But true to form, the event balanced its terror with absurdity. As we returned to the car, a young man ran up to us and asked if we were the journalists. When we confirmed, he enthusiastically shared his message with us: Talk therapy should be illegal. He called it “spiritual prostitution” and handed us each a flyer. “I am a proud Christian Patriot determined to stand up to Big Therapy,” the flyer read. “I want to expose the damage done to conservatives by the people they have been misguided into trusting with their inner thoughts.”