OPMay 20, 2020
stingrayFalun Gong is more complicated than a cult; they have continuously prosecuted by China. Reports also keep suggesting that the Chinese government have been harvesting organs from dead Falun Gong practitioners.
Don't listen to white people talk about people of colour's business too. That's lowkey how colonialism started
1. Im not white
2. Apologies for not knowing about the organ harvesting stuff prior, s*** is definitely atrocious. Still think Falun Gong is a weird group trying to do some damage but regardless that sort of persecution is vile on all levels
May 20, 2020IzzyRecently a lot of ads promoting a right-wing newspaper called the Epoch Times have showed up on YouTube. While it never bothered me initially, the more I saw the ad the more I wondered where the advertising money came from. Few seconds later and I find out it crones from Epoch Media Group, a subdivision of Falun Gong, a prominent Chinese cult
!https://youtu.be/1JaPzJKycxcThis video right here explains a lot regarding Falun Gong but the tl;dr is
-leader acts like a god and his followers treat him like such
-incredibly xenophobic and racist
-uses assets such as New Tang Dynasty Television (a subsidiary of Epoch Media), and Shen Yen Performing Arts to promote homophobia, anti-evolutionism, and race mixing
-owns many youtube channels under Epoch, including Edge of Wonder, a channel that heavily promotes QAnon with half a million subscribersFalun Gong is a lot more complicated than a summary video could go over. While they have many backwards beliefs (questionable racial beliefs, as well as anti-evolution and some homophobic stuff), they aren't like Scientology. They're a weird b******ization of Tao & Buddhist practices more akin to "new age" stuff.
If you're familiar with Shen Yun (the dance thing - as you mention), that's a Falun Gong thing where proceeds are used to fund the organization; they put their beliefs right on the table in the play. They do fund things like Epoch Times, but it's for a different reason than you'd expect. Not everyone who works for things like Epoch are Falun Gong practitioners - they recieved money because they're anti-China, and more importantly, anti-Communism.
Falun Gong believes modern China, and many of the founding philosophical foundations of China (i.e. Communism - partially because of associations with secularism), are essentially demons who will be divinely punished in retribution. Now as you can imagine, this hasn't gone over well in China, and there's essentially been a vicious cycle of heavy persecution on the Falun Gong historically which was then a chicken-or-the-egg cycle of active anti-government subversiveness & violence alongside very heavily violent retaliation and persecution (even on the non-violent parts of the cult).
If you're interested in it I would recommend doing a deep read on their beliefs. it's absolutely batshit insane but it's also very very complicated. Even what I'm writing now isn't doing it justice, but I don't really want to write a dissertation.