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How Shinzo Abe’s Assassination Brought the Moonies Back Into the Limelight | The New Yorker

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A shocking act of political violence exposed the cult’s deep influence.

Save this story Save this story Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister of Japan, was speaking at a political rally near a train station in the city of Nara when the shots rang out. It was an unfamiliar sound; it’s essentially illegal for Japanese civilians to own guns, and firearm-related deaths are very rare. The noise was so strange that only some of the rally-goers flinched. Abe collapsed onto the asphalt, microphone in hand. Blood seeped from his neck. A short distance behind him, a plume of smoke enveloped a thin, shaggy man wearing cargo pants, rectangular black glasses, and a face mask—i

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