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I've seen numerous conflicting posts on what and who the Falun Gong are. I first encountered the name when reading about forced organ removal by the CCP in prison, and subsequently, hearing it is because of their religion resulting in the purity of their lifestyles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China Then, there was that article from an asylum-granted woman describing the brutal conditions of the Xinjiang prison from Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/...nside-1.7994216 Following that, I hear they are extremely pro-Trump for reasons which I cannot discern other than "anti-socialist policies" through their newpaper, The Epoch Times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times#Trump_administration I present these links and such in the order I heard of them in a casual manner, and I just wonder, what's real information coming out of China, and what's not? Not that I discount an overpopulated prison population being used for the bodily value when imprisoned or a majority-male society taking advantage of imprisoned women, but how do we discern truth from fiction?
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Jun 4, 2020 02:24
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they're a crazy right-wing cult dedicated to destroying the CCP and they've received CIA funding in the past. This long article mentions that, not sure where the original reporting was.
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Jun 4, 2020 03:39
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Someone posted this when I kept asking "what the gently caress is Shen Yun?" and everything made a lot more sense. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun I think what's impressive is the amount of funding they're either getting from the CIA or their own fundraising. Like running some propaganda newspaper, a big musical all over the USA (and Canada, and elsewhere), I guess pushing that hard against China pays big bucks.
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Jun 4, 2020 03:40
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sincx has issued a correction as of 06:09 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Jun 4, 2020 07:33
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I had a bunch of academic articles about Falun Gong saved from classes on both American and Chinese religion in undergrad, but I can't find most of them now. Putting together what I remember offhand with some research from Wikipedia just now: Falun Gong, interchangeably called Falun Dafa, was started in China by a guy named Li Hongzhi in the late 80s/early 90s. At that time, resulting from the broader cultural liberalization under Deng, qigong (think yoga - physical movement and breathing exercises with a spiritual component that people buy into to varying degrees) was massively popular across China and the Chinese diaspora; there were tons of organized groups practicing it, including Li's group. A detail that sticks in my mind from lectures was that there were many CCP, government, and military officials practicing Falun Gong-style qigong in the early/mid-90s. Unlike other qigong groups, Falun Gong was increasingly banned by the Chinese government after a policy change in the mid-90s. Based on the wider qigong situation and how the Chinese government responds to other religious groups, my guess would be that the problem was Li's group was both too widespread for their comfort (including among Party and military personnel) and wasn't integrating with government-sanctioned qigong groups or recognizing government authority over Li. The content of their beliefs isn't really relevant to the crackdown IMO. Falun Gong basically had no political aspect at that time (they became quite popular and widespread a couple years after Tiananmen), all of that developed in the early 2000s in response to the crackdown. I'm personally not interested in talking about how Weird and Crazy some religious group's ideas are in their own right, especially religious ideas that are framed as exotic and bizarre in the US but are much more mainstream within a different cultural context. In the 90s, Falun Gong (like other qigong groups) was seen as unremarkable within China in terms of its beliefs, practices, and social role. I will say that Falun Gong as a doctrine (and surely many of its members) thinks modern science and evolution are fake and is explicitly racist, which is also true of the organized Christian beliefs of most of the US government and military. Li Hongzhi permanently relocated to the US in 1998 and probably lives at their headquarters in New York state. They started publishing Epoch Times, as well as a TV station called New Tang Dynasty Television, in the early 2000s. Both of these focus on news from/about China with a very explicit anti-CCP focus, as well as "traditional Chinese culture" programming like dance, cooking, martial arts, etc. They don't particularly promote the religious teachings of Falun Gong itself in those outlets, although they certainly highlight the persecution of its members in China above other issues. Shen Yun was founded in 2006 based on the apparent popularity of their dance and entertainment shows in reaching outside audiences. By the way, "traditional Chinese culture" (whose? from when? what ethnicities? where was it practiced?) is used by both Falun Gong and the Chinese government itself when they promote their image abroad. It's very funny to me that Shen Yun plays up how "traditional culture" (like our beautiful dances!) is persecuted by the CCP. The Chinese government-sponsored Confucius Institutes, where I studied Mandarin in high school/college in the US, are submersed in exactly the same cooking/Tang sancai/Beijing opera stuff for both their public outreach and language curriculum. My view is that Falun Gong and its surrounding media organizations oppose the Chinese government and specifically the CCP mainly because it shut them down in China in the late 90s and continues to imprison and kill their adherents, and the Chinese government opposes Falun Gong mainly because it's a large and organized group abroad with influence among some people in mainland China that also explicitly rejects the CCP. I think that, to the very limited extent Falun Gong has influence with politicians and government in the US, it's because they're the most organized Chinese expatriate group that opposes the government. None of that requires Falun Gong to have a clearly articulated "pro-democracy" or other political program. They're certainly anticommunist in that they oppose the Chinese Communist Party (and the feeling is extremely mutual, although the CCP uses stronger weapons than dance recitals) and want to see it removed from power, and many of their members have conservative beliefs, but they're not the new KMT or anything. I haven't picked up an Epoch Times in a while, but I imagine to the extent the media organization is pro-Trump, it's because he Stands Up To China and they hope to get his attention and support. Falun Gong definitely highlights the persecution of their members in China (including prisoners being killed for their organs) over other issues, but that doesn't make it untrue. This wiki page goes over the evidence specifically for organ harvesting. "Overpopulated prison population being used for organ donation" doesn't cover it - the claim is that organ removals are part of a targeted program of imprisoning, torturing, and killing Falun Gong adherents specifically. It's deeply disturbing to me that the official Chinese response has basically been "nuh uh" without giving a clear and simple explanation for where all those on-demand human organs are coming from.
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Jun 4, 2020 12:03
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YES. My mom woefully purchased four tickets to Shen Yun thinking it was a history of China through the interpretive lens of dance. All of us thought that. We saw the constant ads on TV promising a "spectacular sight like nothing you've ever seen before in your pathetic life" as well as the countless posters plastered in the nail shops and casual dining restaurants around town. Even some light digging on Shen Yun doesn't yield much, you're not going to Google "is this show I'm about to see tied to a cult and will it offend me?" if you know absolutely nothing of the show beforehand. Shen Yun starts off with some beautiful traditional dances situated in front of a very large screen showing embarrassingly lo-fi graphics of historical Chinese locations. Slowly but surely they start peppering in their cult – a small flag that says "Falun Gong is Good" here and a slight about the oppressive Chinese government there. Then, after a few dances, a robot that is made to look like a caucasian man who speaks impeccable Chinese comes out with a beautiful Chinese woman. These are your hosts for the evening. They set up every. single. dance. about. to. happen with painfully cheesy jokes and slights against the Chinese government over and over again, it was INSANE. THEN the Opera singers come out. These women have powerful voices but it was hard not to stifle my laughter when they projected the translation behind them on the large TV screen that said, NO JOKE, "Evolution – man's biggest lie, claims we came from apes." This woman is in traditional garb, singing beautifully to me about how evolution is a farce. It was incredible. Several people got up and left. A LOT of people could not stifle their laughter and disbelief at what they were witnessing. My poor mom, those tickets are NOT cheap. In the end, I was glad I witnessed that because in our family, to be "Shen Yun'd" means to be swindled. Example: Mom, you told me there was no cheese in this sandwich and I clearly see a slice of Provolone. Did you just Shen Yun me?" Mom: "Yes, yes I did."
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Jun 4, 2020 14:32
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Kellsterik posted:I haven't picked up an Epoch Times in a while, but I imagine to the extent the media organization is pro-Trump, it's because he Stands Up To China and they hope to get his attention and support. i think its because Falun Gong is deeply racist, homophobic, theocratic etc and so are the forces that empower Trump
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Jun 4, 2020 16:47
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these are guys that think the moon is a spaceship, right? how do they feel about the hit video game series Destiny OP
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Jun 4, 2020 17:03
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the dude in the epoch times youtube ads is super unsettling, like uncanny valley poo poo
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Jun 4, 2020 17:11
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I've never been to a show that generated so many bad vibes for me. The whole thing screamed "CULT!" and reminded me of Mormonism. I imagine this is how people feel when they go to a temple open house and get asked for their contact information. Some "oh, that's nice" mixed with "what the heck was that?" and a lot of "this is not what I signed up for". The show is marketed as a celebration of Chinese culture, some parts seemed alright. The costumes are bright and colorful. The dancing was fun. But a large part of the show is propaganda for a cult called Falun Dafa (from what I've read, the group is anti-gay, they believe their religion can heal illnesses, and one leader is on record saying they don't believe mixed-race children will get to heaven... sound familiar?). Here's just a little taste of the unexpected weirdness. After finishing a dance featuring some long, twirly, Han-dynasty sleeves (pretty cool), the person introducing the next piece talks a bit about persecution in China and you move to a dance with this scene: a man is imprisoned and blinded by the evil prison doctor when he won't renounce his faith in Falun Dafa. The blind man's wife and other clean-cut Falun Dafa friends are still preaching in the park when he returns, tapping away with his cane. When they realize that he has stayed faithful this whole time, he is suddenly visited by a bunch of angels and receives his sight again! Yay! Falun Dafa is good! So bizarre. Quite a few of the dances included spiritual imagery mixed with messages about bringing the divine to earth through art. One piece was a song about how humanity's values are in decline and bad people will get their reward, but all of us want to go to Heaven and you can come to the light if you learn truth. The whole thing was covered in a good heap of persecution complex too, though persecution of certain groups has been a pretty big deal in China, so I'll give them a pass on that. They don't deserve brutality. No one does, no matter how crazy their beliefs.
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Jun 4, 2020 18:05
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they hate tai chi so gently caress them fuckers thinking they can go against the flow like that
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Jun 4, 2020 18:13
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COVID-420 posted:i think its because Falun Gong is deeply racist, homophobic, theocratic etc and so are the forces that empower Trump Wow, yeah, I spent some time reading the current Epoch Times page and I retract that. They're deeply and vocally pro-Trump alongside the specifically anti-CCP material and actually are a driving engine of the Trump media sphere. They're fully down with QAnon and heavily promote it online, too. You can see the blending of the two streams when they universally call coronavirus "CCP Virus" in their articles. It seems like that's a new development since 2015 - I didn't get the impression they were immersed in the pre-Trump right wing media world. The only thing I'd say about theocratic is to be clear that they're not an evangelical group. There also isn't particularly a hierarchy exercising control over practitioners or aggressively seeking donations/charging money; the group just isn't structured that way. That probably doesn't have much bearing on the Epoch Times or their media organizations though. From their US news section yesterday: Antifa, Other Far-Left Groups Exploit Protests for ‘Revolution’ quote:Communist groups—including the extremist organization Antifa—are hijacking what started out as peaceful protests over the death of an unarmed black man to usher in a revolution, according to officials, experts, videos, and anarchists’ own words. oh would you look at that INFOGRAPHIC: How the Chinese Regime Colluded With WHO During the Pandemic quote:Since the Chinese Communist Party virus (CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus) first broke out in Wuhan, China, the World Health Organization (WHO) repeated the Chinese regime’s talking points. It initially parroted the Chinese regime’s official statements that there was little or no risk of human-to-human transmission of the virus. Mounting evidence, including from leaked internal documents, however, shows that the regime knew about the outbreak’s severity and hid it from the public. The virus has since spread to more than 200 countries and territories, with more than 4 million people infected and more than 300,000 deaths worldwide.
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Jun 5, 2020 00:48
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I just got an issue of The Epoch Times in my mailbox yesterday. It's all about the "CCP Virus." I live in a rural county where the median age is 60, so they must have figured they can get a lot of the old chuds who had their brains melted by daytime news.
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Jun 12, 2020 18:20
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The New Tang Dynasty Television network (which Kellsterik mentioned is one of the media branches of FLG) provides Chinese language news and analysis for American audiences. The network is based in New York and has a major presence in other places like the SF Bay Area. They've been going on about the "CCP Virus" for months. Over the past several weeks they have run puff pieces on Steve Bannon and taken an entirely pro-Trump stance on the BLM/police protests with an additional dose of antifa/Soros conspiracies, and which they constantly explain are totally different from the Hong Kong protests. It's the same message as the print articles, distilled in nightly news broadcasts.
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Jun 12, 2020 20:52
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Typo posted:YES. My mom woefully purchased four tickets to Shen Yun thinking it was a history of China through the interpretive lens of dance. All of us thought that. We saw the constant ads on TV promising a "spectacular sight like nothing you've ever seen before in your pathetic life" as well as the countless posters plastered in the nail shops and casual dining restaurants around town. Even some light digging on Shen Yun doesn't yield much, you're not going to Google "is this show I'm about to see tied to a cult and will it offend me?" this sounds worse than Paris By Night, a similar Asian diaspora performance heck makes Paris By Night seem less overtly reactionary and corny heck at least they've leaned towards LGBT inclusivity over the years That godawful Daily Show knockoff China Uncensored is definitely getting that State Department / Falun Gong money, IIRC they basically summarized the religion as simply as an exercise before Dr. Killjoy has issued a correction as of 22:31 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 22:26
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ur in my world now posted:these are guys that think the moon is a spaceship, right? how do they feel about the hit video game series Destiny OP I wonder if the FFXIV writers got the idea to hide a world scorching dragon in a moon from Falun Gong
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Jun 12, 2020 22:35
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does falun gong have their own animes like the Happy Science cult in Japan?
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Jun 12, 2020 22:37
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I mean what really makes Falun Gong so suspect is not so much their anti-PRC stance so much as how they tend to always be pushing it while trying to keep themselves very low profile the epoch times is their newspaper but outside of the subject matter, you wouldn't know it because the link is never really explicitly noted shen yun advertises everywhere but you won't really find anything stating that they're a Falun Gong show
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Jun 12, 2020 22:43
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Dr. Killjoy posted:this sounds worse than Paris By Night, a similar Asian diaspora performance they also run the Edge of Wonder youtube which is full blown qanon poo poo which is hilarious
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Jun 12, 2020 23:38
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sincx posted:It's Scientology with Chinese characteristics
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Jun 13, 2020 07:27
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