Was Tulsi Gabbard In A Cult That Eats Its Leader's Toenails? Is She Still?
To be fair they could have been talking about fingernail clippings.
Sure, any religion is kind of weird, if you look at it too closely. It is faith, after all, not science. But the group Tulsi Gabbard grew up in (and possibly is still in) sure sounds like a cult. Or to use the more polite term, a “High Demand, Closed Group,” wherein the leader was worshipped like a God and some of his followers even ate his toenails, and sand from where he’d walked. Oh sorry, were you eating?
Just who you want to be Director of Giving Our National Intelligence To Russia Or Whoever, Using Our Intelligence Powers To Hunt Down Trump’s Enemies Within, and Making Sure Our Allies Never Share Anything With Us They Don’t Want Putin To Know.
The group is called Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), founded by an acid-dropping white surfer guy named Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, AKA Jagad Guru, AKA Sai Young, in the 1970s, as an offshoot of the Hare Krishnas, AKA the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Butler got his start as a guru teaching mediation and yoga, and was drawn to the Krishnas, but he didn’t want to shave his head or wear robes or do other Hare Krishna stuff. So he founded his own thing, which involved him living with two dozen 18-to-22-year-olds in a Quonset hut under a freeway, beating bongos and arranging his followers’ marriages.
Two of his hut-dwellers were Tulsi Gabbard’s parents, Mike and Carol, who joined the group in 1983. After they got married they built an altar to him in their house. According to Mike’s sister, they were “bowing and prostrating to this white surfer guy — it was bizarre.”
Butler taught the group that outsiders were not to be trusted, and was paranoid that the mainstream Hare Krishnas were trying to kill him. Like Chuck McGill in “Better Call Saul” he had a fear of electromagnetic radiation, and places he stayed when he traveled were lined with tinfoil. He was a hypochondriac, and at one point he accused disciples of poisoning him through light bulb fumes.
Followers were not allowed to learn from any other guru but him, and children in the group were homeschooled. Later SIF created schools in the Philippines, which Gabbard attended for two years. There the day began at 4:30 a.m. with a cold bucket shower, and the curriculum included “sexually graphic, deeply homophobic lectures,” and encouragement to worship Butler and his wife Wai Lana as messengers of God. Name sound familiar? She’s the yoga lady from public television! Maybe you’ve seen her videos before.
But while the yoga videos were quite relaxing and chill, life in the sect, not so much.
Here’s a description of the group from the New Yorker:
Defectors tell stories of children discouraged by Butler from attending secular schools; of followers forbidden to speak publicly about the group; of returning travellers quarantined for days, lest they transmit a contagious disease to Butler; of devotees lying prostrate whenever he entered the room, or adding bits of his nail clippings to their food, or eating spoonfuls of sand that he had walked upon.
Ew. A former follower wrote on Medium:
I was raised to believe Chris Butler was God’s voice on earth, and if you questioned him or offended him in any way, you were effectively offending God, and because we believed in reincarnation, that meant that you would be reborn as the lowest lifeform imaginable and then have to spend eon’s [sic] working your way back into God’s good graces.
Reported another former follower, Robin Marshall: “They told us: ‘We don’t associate with f**s’,’ using a homophobic slur. The hatred, the degrading language, it was just one thing after another.. […] They said he could read your mind. They were wholly and fully indoctrinated into this idea that Chris Butler was basically God.”
The group had financial ambitions: in Hawaii, group members worked on the group’s farm for free, and its financial arm, QI Group, runs the Hawaiian Down to Earth grocery store chain, which is registered as a 501(c)(3) religious charity. Internationally, member have been accused of ripping people off in illegal pyramid schemes in at least 10 countries.
And the group had political ambitions, running candidates for local office. Tulsi’s father Mike became a state senator, and an anti-gay-rights activist. Mom Carol was on the Hawai'i State Board of Education, even though Tulsi never attended public school.
To this day Gabbard is cagey about her ties to Butler. But in a video from 2015, she refers to him as “my guru” (at 4:44:28):
And Butler considers himself as such: “He’s taught one of his students cello,” he gushed, referring to himself in the third person to the New Yorker. “And he sees that, oh, this student of mine is now playing cello in the philharmonic orchestra. And it’s beautiful.”
In 2019, writer Christine Gralow showed up to a Gabbard town hall and asked her some questions about Syria, and the sect members in attendance did not like that. Her site was bombed with DDOS attacks, and members of the group showed up at her home, taking pictures. Gralow’s reporting on the group is fascinating, and if you want more details, you should totally read it.
Even not knowing a thing about the what sure sounds like a weird-ass cult that she grew up in, though, Gabbard is deeply, DEEPLY, EXTREMELY not qualified for the role of director of national intelligence.
It’s a cabinet-level position created after 9/11 that all 18 national intelligence agencies directly report to. The director is responsible for daily security briefings to the president, advises the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, and directs intelligence gathering and analysis. So she would have access to all of the stuff, every little secret the US has.
Not only does Gabbard have no intelligence experience whatsoever, or any management experience, many times she’s directly acted against US interests and pushed braindead conspiracy theories, such as repeating QAnon/Russian conspiracy-theory lies about biolabs in Ukraine.
She has blamed NATO for Russia invading Ukraine. And then there was how she went on a trip to Syria, funded by a pair of Lebanese-American businessmen with ties to a virulently antisemitic, pro-Assad Syrian nationalist party, and met with Assad, who is backed by Russia and used chemical weapons on his own people in 2017. She was skeptical that Assad used chemical weapons, when even authoritarian asstickler Donald Trump said there was “no dispute” that he did. Then she voted with Republicans to make it virtually impossible for Syrian refugees to come into the country.
Remember how Hillary Clinton was like, “not naming any names, but word on the street is Russia is grooming somebody to be a third-party candidate,” and Gabbard was like “STOP TALKING ABOUT ME,” and accused Hillary of being a conspiracy to destroy her reputation, even tried to sue her for defamation, though Clinton didn’t even say her name? Way to out yourself, lady.
She’s also praised Edward Snowden, and pushed for That Man to pardon him.
What could explain Gabbard’s flip-flop from Bernie-hugger to Putin apologist with tweets full of lies? In 2022, her now-deceased aunt told the Independent it was cult-fueled ambition. “It gives me no pleasure to note that Tulsi’s single governing principle seems to be expedience, which is in effect no principle at all.” Rejected by the Democrats, she clawed her way back to relevance by the only path available.
So, just like the boss. You’d think That Man would not want intelligence briefings potentially full of conspiracy theories and lies from the lady Russian state TV described as “our girlfriend Tulsi” shoved between his hamberder wrappers. There are literally thousands of millions of people who would be more qualified, and even loyal. But according to a Russian spokesman, he has “certain obligations.” Is giving Russia’s girlfriend a job one of them?
Scary shit, man.
[NYMag / New Yorker archive link / Medium / Meanwhile in Hawai’i]
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>> Tulsi’s father Mike became a state senator, and an anti-gay-rights activist. Mom Carol was on the Hawai'i State Board of Education, even though Tulsi never attended public school. <<
Oh, but times have changed so much since then! Nowadays we'd never elect a raging queer hater who boycotted the public schools, not sending a single one of her children to them because she hated them and considered them a dangerous source of corruption, to oversee those very same public schools. Yes, we have learned so very, very much over the decades...
At least we had Kim Coco Iwamoto on the Hawai'i SBoE for a while, and now she's the one in the state lege.
There's a simple way to avoid dangerous cults.
Just practice safe sects.
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You're welcome.