Pamela Hemphill, aka MAGA Granny, made headlines recently when she refused President Donald Trump’s pardon for her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. The Boise, Idaho, retiree had already served a six-month sentence but was still on probation for the misdemeanor charge of demonstrating in the Capitol.
“I lost my critical thinking ….” she told The New York Times, explaining why she wasn’t interested in the pardon. “I was in a cult.”
She is right: MAGA is a cult. I know, because I grew up in a group many believe to be a cult.
MAGA has all the parts required to define a cult: a charismatic leader, an authoritarian doctrine, a hatred of outsiders and a devoted following. Hemphill voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but had spent the rest of her life as a fairly disinterested Republican. Until she joined the MAGA movement and began posting online about how the upcoming Jan. 6 protest would be a “war.” She traveled thousands of miles to be there that day despite undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
I first left the Unification Church in 2010. Obama was in office. Back in the ’60s and ’70’s, hippies and other disconnected youth searched so hard for answers that they came up with some really weird ones. In those days, the Unification Church was famous for selling flowers and trinkets on street corners and inviting passersby to a nearby Church center for a free meal.
The leader of the church, the Rev. Moon, called “True Father” by his followers, personally arranged many of their marriages, usually by filling a large room with members and pairing them off. Newly formed couples were then married in mass weddings, the most famous of which took place in Madison Square Garden in 1982. My parents were married at that event, and I was born a few years later. I was known as a “Blessed Child” since I was a second generation member.
My parents told me stories of joining the Church, of escaping “deprogrammers” and “infiltrators,” making themselves sound brave and righteous. Most members I knew worked for Church-related organizations and businesses, and were barely scraping by. I spent most of my free time at Church centers with other Church families, sometimes singing Korean Christian hymns, sometimes singing Beatles songs with altered lyrics. It was easy to feel like I was growing up in a bubble, in a different time and place than my classmates and neighbors.
After college, when I began to tell new friends about my upbringing, I realized it wasn’t just a “strange community,” it was what I now believe to be a cult. Usually the first thing people wanted to know was why someone would join a “cult” in the first place.
“The American unrest in the 1960s and ’70s gave us a spike in tumult that prompted the formation of so many cultish groups, not unlike what we’re seeing today,” said Amanda Montell, author of the book “Cultish: The Language Of Fanaticism.” “Humans need to feel like they matter and that their world makes sense. And when they lose that sense of belonging, they get frustrated and sometimes end up looking elsewhere to fill the void.”
Cults thrive during times of social unrest. In 2025, most people I know are stressed from the daily grind, the everyday cost of survival. Conditions like income inequality, cuts to public spending and the rising cost of food — all predictors of social unrest — are also a breeding ground for cults. Just like sepsis only occurs at the site of an infection, cults flourish in ailing societies. They provide both a sense of community and a narrative that new converts can hold on to, one that validates their anger.
Trump, in my view, provides an answer, a narrative that helps some people make sense of the world. He has scapegoats, just like the Rev. Moon did. Many Trump supporters believe “illegals” are ruining our cities and destroying America. For the Rev. Moon, it was the “communists” and “atheists.” He used to say that America was “turning away from God,” a problem that would only be solved by a return to traditional family values with clearly defined gender roles. MAGA shares this view as well, with Vice President JD Vance giving interviews in which he accuses women of making themselves miserable by focusing on their careers instead of starting a family and having children. Both groups have been accused of being homophobic and transphobic, an expansion of their rigid expectations of gender. Both groups also are obsessed with guns and defending the Second Amendment.
The scapegoats that leaders like Trump and the Rev. Moon offer up to their members are never the real reason why we can’t afford our medical bills or why it costs thousands of dollars each month to put a roof over our heads. So “cults” have to find more of them, more reasons to stay angry.
Hemphill is so far the only one of about 1,600 Jan. 6 rioters to refuse a pardon. She credits therapy as a part of how she came to understand how she found herself in the MAGA world and to see it as a cult. I had already decided to leave the Unification Church before going to therapy, but it has been invaluable in processing my experience, unraveling the many lies of my childhood.
It took me a while to open up to my therapist. I had been warned about them since I was a teenager and struggling with depression. My mom refused to let me see one back then, because she was worried I’d tell them about the Church. From the outside, it’s easy to see why radical groups really hate therapy. Therapists help challenge our beliefs, guiding us to be ever more introspective and reflective. These groups need their members to ignore their feelings, to stay in a state of panic and fear of the outside world.
Which is why I keep thinking about Hemphill. It was hard enough — excruciating, even — to leave the Church 15 years ago. I had doubts for a long time, but I had outside friends and extended family who supported my choice. And while I could walk away from the Church, MAGA is currently in charge of our country’s three branches of government.
In 2016, when Trump was elected the first time, I focused my efforts on talking to people who I knew were still in the Unification Church or former members who still held on to some of their right-wing politics, encouraging them to change their beliefs. I signed petitions and marched around my city hall. This time, though, I want to do something different. I don’t want to just play defense.
I don’t know what the future has in store for my country. I know we’re up against a lot. But I want to be one of the ordinary people trying to do their part to repair their communities, whether that’s by passing out socks to my homeless neighbors or planting seedlings at a community garden or fighting for rent control. I want to support politicians and other leaders who are able to provide actionable solutions to the problems plaguing our society: student loans, health care, and the costs of child care, transportation and housing.
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It’s not enough to think about how to get people out of these dangerous, radical groups. We need to stop them from feeling like they have to join one in the first place.
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