Tulsi Gabbard’s ties to secretive cult may explain her perplexing political journey

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on October 16, 2022. Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, 78, was killed in Samoaon May 25, 2024 Tulsi Gabbard has staked out extreme positions on LGBT+ rights, spread disinformation about Ukrainian biolabs, and claimed she was being shadowbanned by Big Tech while using her vast social media footprint to label Joe Biden a “warmonger”.

In one breath Gabbard expresses a desire to bring love and aloha from her native Hawaii to the world, in the next she is fanning conspiracy theories on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.

Last week, Gabbard announced she wasleaving the Democratic Party, claiming it had become “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness”.

The decision came as little surprise to anyone who has followed her political trajectory from 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to darling of Russian propagandists and the American far-right.

To understand her ambitions, her aunt Dr Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard tells The Independent in an interview that it is necessary to look to her upbringing in a secretive cult called the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) whose members show absolute loyalty to a reclusive guru, Chris Butler.

A former member toldThe Independent the group’s teachings are virulently homophobic, often anti-Islamic and misogynist, and how they were forced to worship Butler, who is considered to be akin to a God.

Sinavaiana Gabbard says her niece’s career is all about the pursuit of power, and her bid for the presidency in 2020 was the culmination of four decades of Butler’s efforts to seek political influence.

“Once again I find my niece’s apparent penchant for parroting extremist toadies such as Tucker Carlson and vile ‘strongmen’ such as