Gong Show

A POST ABOUT THE FALUN GONG AND THEIR PAPER THE EPOCH TIMES, WHICH HAVE BEEN IN THE NEWS AS OF LATE.

FINANCIAL MISDEEDS, PONZI SCHEMES, RIGHT WING AMERICAN DEMAGOGUES  AND TRUMPETTES WITH CHINESE MOONIE LIKE CULT (NOT UNLIKE THE OLD KUOMINTANG) PLOTTING AND SCHEMING AND OF COURSE UP TO NO GOOD.

OF COURSE BACK THEN JASON KENNEY WAS A FEDERAL MP AND STILL IN THE CLOSET, NOW HE IS PREMIER OF ALBERTA AND STILL IN THE CLOSET. LIKE KENNEY ANDERS IS A VIRGIN WITH A RING TO PROVE IT, STILL UNMARRIED.
PASTOR STOCKWELL DAY IS STILL IN KELOWNA ENGAGED IN WATER SPORTS.


SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=GONG

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Gong Show

With Tories like Rob Anders, Jason Kenney and Stockwell Day supporting the fascist homophobic CIA cult; Falun Gong this was bound to happen; China snubs Harper

The untold story of Falun GongMaster Li, the founder and leader of Falun Gong introduced his teachings to the United States in 1996. Since July, 1999 the group has received a great amount of media coverage because of its ban in China. However very little is known to the American public about Li and his core teachings to this day, as our media focuses solely on the group being victimized by an authoritative regime. This paper inquires into the origin of Master Li, the core of Falun Gong’s belief system and the rationale for the ban. In an effort to provide a fair and accurate analysis, this paper relies mainly on information found on Falun Gong’s own literature and websites.

INTRODUCTION TO FALUN GONG & FALUN DAFA

Racism:

According to the New York Times, Li Hongzhi said that: "...interracial children are the spawn of the 'Dharma Ending Period,' a Buddhist phrase that refers to an era of moral degeneration. In an interview last year, he said each race has its own paradise, and he later told followers in Australia that, 'The yellow people, the white people, and the black people have corresponding races in heaven.' As a result, he said, interracial children have no place in heaven without his intervention."

Beliefs about homosexuality:

The Falun Gong movement appears to treat homosexuality -- presumably homosexual behavior not homosexual orientation -- as a degenerate behavior, on a par with sexual promiscuity:

Founder and current leader Li Hongzhi delivered a lecture in Sydney, Australia in 1996. 7 In it, he made a passing reference to homosexuality:

"...the morality of human society has altogether declined. The moral values in people’s hearts have been corrupted. When there is no righteous mind, it means that the Fa [law, principle, way] is no longer effectual. When the Fa is no longer effectual in human society, mankind will decline. ...The change in human society has been quite frightening! People would stop at nothing in doing evil things such as drug abuse and drug dealing. A lot of people have done many bad deeds. Things such as organized crime, homosexuality, and promiscuous sex, etc., none are the standards of being human." (Emphasis ours).

In New York City during 1997, he said during a lecture:

"I often say that humankind has gone through different historical periods before arriving at this day. In other words, many, many times humankind was wiped out after experiencing catastrophes at different points in history. ...Some people talk about how great Greek culture was, but where did those people go? Today something from Greek culture can be found: The elements of Greek culture that have been left are definitely from the final period of Greek civilization’s development, and we’ve found that there was homosexuality in it as well, along with promiscuous sex, and in addition, life was really extravagant and wasteful, corrupt, and terribly degenerate; we can see that humankind had already deteriorated terribly....Aren’t humans in a dangerous state? Your government permits something, your country permits it, your nation permits it, and even you approve it in your thinking, but it isn’t necessarily good. That’s why if you look at today’s society you can see that drug use, drug trafficking, drug making, sex changes, homosexuality, sexual freedom, organized crime, etc., emerge in an endless stream. Selfishness and desires have made people enemies of one another and without any righteous thoughts. All kinds of phenomena of a degenerate human society abound." (Emphasis ours).

Search Results

Web results.

Now fake Facebook accounts are using fake faces - CNN

https://www.cnn.com › 2019/12/20 › tech › facebook-fake-faces

Dec 21, 2019 - Experts who reviewed the accounts say it is the first time they have seen fake ... Facebook's data scandals aren't just bad publicity .... Facebook said the accounts were tied to the US-based Epoch Media Group, which owns The Epoch Times newspaper, a paper tied to the Falun Gong movement that is ...

Does Freedom Have a Future in China? - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com › Opinion › The Weekend Interview

Nov 8, 2019 - Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee and mainland artist Jingxiong Guo both ... the sex lives and scandals of Chinese Communist Party leaders. .... the Epoch Times, a New York-based newspaper founded by Falun Gong ... He adds: “Art is a gift that God has given to us to solve problems in a merciful way.

EXCLUSIVE: Expanding Pro-Trump Outlet 'The BL' Is Closely ...

https://www.snopes.com › News › World News

Oct 11, 2019 - Both The Epoch Times and The BL deny any connection whatsoever. ... of 2019, several “sock-puppet pages” popped up promoting Epoch Times ... Similarly, The Epoch Times' publisher, Stephen Gregory, told us by email that “The .... points and proffer (or repost) pro-Trump takes on White House scandals.

​A truly 'fake news media' | High Plains Reader, Fargo ND

https://hpr1.com › index.php › feature › news › a-truly-fake-news-media

Oct 9, 2019 - A member of the fourth estate, The Epoch Times, is the fifth major foreign ... on Trump's campaign as the “biggest political scandal in modern history. ... Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, fled to the United States after China ...

Reports on China 'organ harvesting' derive from front groups ...

https://thegrayzone.com › 2019/09/30 › reports-china-organ-harvesting-cu...

Sep 30, 2019 - Falun Gong, whose devotees can often be seen clad in yellow and ... headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.” ... Epoch Times Trump Facebook ads Falun Gong .... Behind the US-backed Venezuelan opposition's massive corruption scandal.

Facebook tightens rules amid 2020 US election fears - BBC ...

https://www.bbc.com › news › technology-49495891

Aug 28, 2019 - Facebook tightens rules amid 2020 US election fears ... Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal ... The company recently banned the Falun Gong-linked Epoch News outlet after a report from NBC News claimed it had used ...

Facebook BANS right-leaning Epoch Times from running ads ...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk › news › article-7391223 › Facebook-BANS-r...

Aug 24, 2019 - Epoch Times publisher Stephen Gregory confirmed the ban in a statement on Friday ... move 'appears to be a response to NBC News' reporting on us. ... were associated with the persecuted Chinese spiritual group Falun Gong, but ... a low profile' if she is jailed for her role in the college admissions scandal.

Facebook bans the Epoch Times ads — Z6 Mag

https://z6mag.com › 2019/08/23 › facebook-removes-the-epoch-times-ads

Aug 23, 2019 - Following reports that the Epoch Times continue to publish ads in ... “We acted on additional accounts today, and they are no longer able to advertise with us. ... group of Chinese-Americans affiliated with the religious group Falun Gong. ... and with the lessons they earned from scandals like the Cambridge ...

Anti-China Cult Gets U.S. Government Money - Runs ... - MoA

https://www.moonofalabama.org › 2019/08 › anti-china-cult-gets-us-gover...

Aug 21, 2019 - The Epoch Times looks like many of the conservative outlets that ... What NBC does not mention is that Falun Gong is a U.S. anti-China asset ..... scandal lies with what the US and UK intel communities, not Russia, have done) ...

A Chinese cult thinks aliens have invaded and that Trump is ...

https://www.patheos.com › blogs › 2019/08 › cult-falun-gong-trump-politics

Aug 21, 2019 - A very strange Chinese cult has the U.S. president's attention and has infiltrated ... Keep in mind that The Epoch Times and Falun Gong operate within a web of ... campaign — is “the biggest political scandal in modern history.

Pro-Trump news outlet The Epoch Times funded by Chinese ...

https://www.msnbc.com › stephanie-ruhle › watch › pro-trump-news-outle...

Aug 20, 2019 - NBC News has exclusively learned that the popular conservative news site ... Falun Gong, which hopes to take down the Chinese government.

Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day ... - NBC News

https://www.nbcnews.com › tech › tech-news › trump-qanon-impending-j...

Aug 20, 2019 - Former practitioners of Falun Gong told NBC News that believers think the ... U.S. politics — Trump in particular — has doubled The Epoch ...

The Epoch Times commercial about Spygate by the Obama ...

https://support.google.com › youtube › thread

Jun 30, 2019 - I just saw the commercial for The Epoch News that states very factually that ... Get on the right side of this before you do more harm to the United States and before public ... Epoch Times was started by members of Falun Gong.

That Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Is “Absolute Nonsense”

https://theintercept.com › 2019/05/10 › rumors-joe-biden-scandal-ukraine-...

US Vice President Joe Biden (L) shakes hands with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko prior ... May 10 2019, 2:52 p.m. ..... online show that the Epoch Times has even paid to spread the conspiracy theory more widely on Facebook.

The Epoch of Social Media - Popular Information

https://popular.info › the-epoch-of-social-media

May 8, 2019 - It is supposed to tell us who is paying for these ads. ... The Epoch Times is banned in China, where Falun Gong is being persecuted, and ... spying on Trump's campaign — is “the biggest political scandal in modern history.”.

The Epoch Times: Pinchuk funds report at core of charges ...

https://www.kyivpost.com › ukraine-politics › the-epoch-times-pinchuk-fu...

Apr 16, 2019 - (FILES) In this file photo taken on Oct. 17, 2016 attorney Greg Craig (L) arrives for a hearing at US District Court in Washington, DC. Former ...

Tom Fitton w/ The Epoch Times: #SpyGate “The Worst ...

https://www.judicialwatch.org › videos › tom-fitton-w-the-epoch-times-spy...

Subscribe. Share. April 08, 2019 JW: ON THE AIR. Tom Fitton w/ The Epoch Times: #SpyGate “The Worst Corruption Scandal in American History" ...

THE EPOCH TIMES SAYS

EPOCH TIMES RESPONDS Thread by @EpochTimes: Dear readers, As you know, The Epoch Times ...https://threadreaderapp.com › thread 

 Aug 22, 2019 - Why NBC, MSNBC's Reporting on The Epoch Times Is Textbook ... the scandal is “something about Donald Trump saving America from ... In a further attempt to discredit us, #Maddow tried to mix The Epoch Times' reporting with ... …truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, the principles of #FalunGong.

Glenn Beck: On the Ukraine Scandal, the Culture War & How ...
https://www.theepochtimes.com › glenn-beck-on-the-ukraine-scandal-the-c...
Dec 24, 2019 - At Turning Point USA's 2019 Student Action Summit, we sit down with Glenn ... Glenn Beck: On the Ukraine Scandal, the Culture War & How His Views on ... American Thought Leaders is an Epoch Times show available on ...

NOT A WORD OF THIS IS FACTUAL 

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2018

A Newspaper Banned In China Is Now One Of Trump's ...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com › article › hayesbrown › epoch-times-trum...

Oct 22, 2018 - The Epoch Times, a newspaper with links to the Falun Gong ... of both the United States and China, a Falun Gong–linked newspaper has emerged ... on Trump's campaign — is “the biggest political scandal in modern history.

OLDER STORIES

Why China fears the Falun Gong | Public Radio International

https://www.pri.org › stories › why-china-fears-falun-gong

Jul 14, 2014 - During a Falun Gong rally in Taiwan in 2006, four demonstrators ... lived in the US since 1996, he came up with the central Falun Gong .... Based overseas, Falun Gong-linked media such as the Epoch Times and New Tang ...

China's Bo Xilai scandal revs up news media run by exiles ...

https://www.latimes.com › archives › la-xpm-2012-may-18-la-fg-china-exi...

May 18, 2012 - China's Bo Xilai scandal revs up news media run by exiles. ... Falun Gong to independent Chinese-language news sites in the United States, ... It runs the newspaper Epoch Times, which carries a daily litany of unflattering stories about ... The Falun Gong's key nemesis, public security chief Zhou Yongkang, ...

China's enemy within: The story of Falun Gong | The ...

https://www.independent.co.uk › News › World › Asia

Apr 22, 2006 - But the woman, Wang Wenyi, had been granted an official pass as a reporter for The Epoch Times, ... After all Falun Gong, to most of us, is nothing more than a version of the ... The demonstration was peaceful and ended quietly, after 12 hours, ... The worst financial scandals critics have uncovered are that ...

REFERENCE

Epoch Times - Recent News & Activity | Crunchbase

https://www.crunchbase.com › epoch-times › timeline › news_headline

Epoch Times is an online and offline publication that provides

The Epoch Times - Conservapedia

https://www.conservapedia.com › The_Epoch_Times

Oct 6, 2019 - The Epoch Times is a conservative, anti-communist American newspaper found in ... It is known for its reporting on the Spygate scandal in which Obama ... made by the Chinese Communist party on the Falun Gong spiritual practice ... Jump up ↑ https://www.theepochtimes.com/about-us; Jump up ↑ "Why ...

The Epoch Times - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › The_Epoch_Times

The Epoch Times is a multi-language newspaper founded in 2000 by John Tang and a group ... Toosi noted that "many observers" have said that Falun Gong uses the .... According to a report by NBC News, The Epoch Times "generally stayed out of U.S. politics" before 2016, "unless they dovetailed with Chinese interests.

Publisher‎: ‎Epoch Media Group

Political alignment‎: ‎Conservatism‎, ‎anti-commu...

Owner(s)‎: ‎Epoch Media Group

Founder(s)‎: ‎John Tang

‎Falun Gong · ‎New Tang Dynasty Television · ‎Shen Yun

Behind the blitz: Falun Gong practitioners spend millions on Shen Yun ads. How do they do it?

Matthias Gafni Jan. 11, 2020

1of5

A man walks near a Shen Yun billboard as he approaches

 Park Blvd. and East 20th Street, in Oakland, Calif., on 

Tuesday, January 7, 2020.

Photo: Yalonda M. James, The Chronicle

2of5

A Shen Yun ad and poster are seen on the outside of the 

San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, 

January 7, 2020 in San Jose, Calif.Photo: Lea Suzuki,

 The Chronicle

3of5Shen Yun advertisement at 6th and Folsom in San Francisco, 

Calif., on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

The image is likely hanging on your doorknob as you read this. And popping up on your Facebook feed. When you glance up from your phone, there it is again — on a billboard, a bus or the wall of a BART platform

A smiling young woman flying through the air, her legs splayed at a perfect 180 degrees as she reaches her arms skyward, unveiling a nearly full circle of white fabric

It’s “Shen Yun” season and if your heart circulates blood you’ve seen an advertisement promising “5,000 years of civilization reborn.” In the Bay Area and across many parts of the world, Shen Yun ads are as ubiquitous as 1-877-Kars4Kids radio jingles as they encourage people to shell out for tickets to see the dance troupe and symphony that — to the surprise of some viewers — promote the spiritual movement called Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa.

If it seems practitioners of Falun Gong, which is locked in a bitter political battle with the communist government of China, spend a lot on publicity for the show, well, they do.

Shen Yun-linked nonprofit groups spent at least $39.3 million on advertising across the country from 2015 to 2017, according to a Chronicle review of three years of federal tax returns, the most recent made public. It’s possible the spending has gone up since, and that the records analyzed do not account for all of the spending on publicity for Shen Yun.

Over those three years, Shen Yun Performing Arts Inc., based in Cuddebackville, N.Y., reported revenue of $72.8 million, largely from ticket sales for shows performed in various cities by one of the dance company’s traveling troupes. The outfit just finished up a run of shows in San Francisco and has upcoming performances in San Jose, Berkeley, Modesto and Fresno.

Shen Yun Performing Arts spent $47.2 million in those three years, according to tax returns, putting on its shows that accuse the Chinese Communist party of persecuting Falun Gong adherents. That has helped the nonprofit boost its assets from $61 million to $95.7 million by the end of 2017.
In San Francisco and the Bay Area, the shows are run by the San Francisco Falun Buddha Study Association, which lists as its mission: “Foster the universal principles and values of ‘truthful, compassion and tolerant’ through various forms including Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) studies, exercises and experience-sharing activities.”

Such nonprofit organizations are required by law to release their tax returns. The Chronicle’s review of ad spending looked at more than 30 groups, most of whom posted three years of records. Shen Yun Performing Arts itself spends no money on advertising, instead relying on the smaller Falun Dafa nonprofits, based out of regions across the country, to promote the shows in their areas.

In 2017, the San Francisco nonprofit group reported $3.9 million in ticket sales, while spending $2.2 million on advertising and promotion.

In general, spending such a high percentage of expected revenue on marketing “just defies logic,” said Bill Pearce, assistant dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and its chief marketing officer.

“Typically, if you’re higher than 10% it’s really high,” he said, noting that the industry benchmark for ad spending is 7.5% of projected revenue. “It’s truly from a marketing standpoint what we call a ‘heavy-up.’ ”

Shen Yun’s finances seem to pencil out, Pearce said, thanks to the work of volunteers. The San Francisco Falun Gong group reported having 100 volunteers, while the international theater company had another 211, according to the 2017 tax returns. Each regional nonprofit operates on a completely volunteer workforce.

The theater company reported paying 192 employees a total of $5.9 million in 2017, meaning dancers and other paid workers made less than $30,000 on average.
A Shen Yun ad is seen on the side of a bus traveling down

 Santa Clara Street on Tuesday, January 7, 2020 in San Jose, 

Calif. Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

Another financial benefit: Falun Gong is linked to the Epoch Times and Epoch Media Group, news organizations founded by practitioners that provide an outlet to handle printing, direct mail and other marketing needs for Shen Yun, according to tax returns.

The Epoch Times, which in recent years has been criticized for supporting far-right conspiracy theories, prominently features stories about Shen Yun. An article on the website dated Friday carried the headline, “Corporate Leaders Applaud Shen Yun’s Beautiful Stories of Integrity.”

Officials at Shen Yun Performing Arts headquarters did not respond to a request for comment, but one of the volunteers at the San Francisco nonprofit spoke to The Chronicle.

David Zhang, a software engineer who has practiced Falun Gong for 16 years, helps promote performances in the Bay Area. The mass advertising is only possible because he and other followers give their time, Zhang said, emphasizing he spoke for himself and not the entire nonprofit.

“I don’t dance or sing, I just do my best to help and do it from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “We’re facing an incredible challenge and we want to get the word out. We’re facing incredible repression.”

Shen Yun was formed in 2006 by followers of Falun Gong, which Li Hongzhi had founded in China in 1992 and drew on the tradition of qigong, in which breathing, meditation and movement foster good health or spiritual enlightenment.

Li drew attention for voicing strange beliefs, including saying in a 1999 interview with Time magazine that “aliens have begun to invade the human mind and its ideology and culture.” But Falun Gong has fought allegations that it is a cult from Chinese authorities, and journalists and researchers who have written about the movement say it has no record of using abuse or coercion.

The Chinese government banned Falun Gong in 1999, and in recent years the embassy in the U.S. has not shied from striking against Shen Yun — and its organizers.
Before the show started at a Dec. 20, 2019 performance

of Shen Yun at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.
Photo: Alix Martichoux, SFGATE

“Clearly, the so-called ‘Shen Yun’ is not a cultural performance at all but a political tool of ‘Falun Gong’ to preach cult messages, spread anti-China propaganda, increase its own influence and raise fund(s),” the embassy states on its website. “(The) show denigrates and distorts the Chinese culture, and deceives, makes fool of and even brings harm to the audience.”

On its own website, Shen Yun leaders state, “While Falun Dafa practitioners in China continue to face horrific abuse, the Party has been extending its persecution outside of China. This includes harassing Shen Yun.”

Shen Yun means the “beauty of divine beings dancing,” and has six companies touring the world, claiming to perform in more than 150 theaters every year.

The show is a “soft approach in trying to interest people in their practices and win people over,” said David Bachman, an international studies professor at the University of Washington who specializes in Chinese politics. He said he often sees students handing out Shen Yun fliers on campus.

In a particularly detailed tax return, the Greater Philadelphia Falun Dafa Association offered a peek inside its operation of 55 volunteers. In 2017, Shen Yun put on 23 shows in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, gaining almost 31,000 attendees and almost $2.8 million in ticket sales.

The group spent $1.4 million in advertising that year, paying an Illinois company $500,000 for direct mailing and a Dallas television station $200,000 for ads. It also paid $320,000 to two companies linked to Falun Gong for direct mailing and online ads, according to its tax return.

A Shen Yun billboard in the 900 block of Mission St. in 

San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.
Photo: Yalonda M. James, The Chronicle

Pearce, the Berkeley marketer, called the advertising blitz “omnipresent,” an approach that can backfire.

“There’s always a risk that if your message is seen too many times consumers will tune it out,” he said. “I think you can go past building a brand and you start building a meme.”

Zhang said that while volunteers are not marketing experts, they feel the publicity is effective.

“It’s working good. It’s getting a lot of people to the performances. Most of the shows sold out,” Zhang said. “That’s the goal of marketing. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni



Matthias Gafni

Follow Matthias on:https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/mgafni

Matthias Gafni joined The San Francisco Chronicle as an enterprise reporter in February 2019. He investigates stories in the East Bay and beyond. For almost two decades, Gafni worked for the Bay Area News Group – San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times and Vallejo Times-Herald -- covering corruption, child sexual abuse, criminal justice, aviation and more. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and graduated from UC Davis. He lives with his wife and three kids in the East Bay.

How the conspiracy-fueled Epoch Times went mainstream and made millions

Story by Brandy Zadrozny •


In the runup to the 2020 election, a small news organization saw an opportunity.

The Epoch Times directed millions of dollars in advertising toward supporting President Donald Trump’s campaign and published dozens of articles parroting his lies about the election — resulting in huge growth to its audience and its coffers.

The strategy garnered criticism from fact-checking groups and got it banned from advertising on Facebook, but it ultimately paid off — putting the once-fringe newspaper on a path that perhaps only its leader, who claims to have supernatural powers, could have foreseen.

Today, The Epoch Times is one of the country’s most successful and influential conservative news organizations. It’s powered by Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted in China, which launched The Epoch Times as a free propaganda newsletter more than two decades ago to oppose the Chinese Communist Party.

Funded through aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors, The Epoch Times now boasts to be the country’s fourth-largest newspaper by subscriber count. (Unlike most major newspapers, The Epoch Times isn't audited by the two major independent collectors of circulation data.) The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax records.

Its editorial vision — fueled by a right-wing slant and conspiracy theories — is on display in recent reports on how “Jan. 6 Capitol Hill Security Footage Challenges Key Narratives” and “Meteorologists, Scientists Explain Why There Is ‘No Climate Emergency.’” Its video series include a documentary-style film alleging widespread vaccine injury and death and an exposé of an alleged world government agenda to harm farmers, cull the population and force survivors to eat bugs.

What The Epoch Times lacks in standards, it makes up for in style and form, mirroring the aesthetics of journalism — a feature that’s attracted subscribers and big-name supporters.

Anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls The Epoch Times a daily read, among his most trusted news sources. “They have a real bias against China, but on other reporting, they’re very courageous and it’s real journalism,” Kennedy said in an interview with NBC News this summer.

In July, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., recited the history of The Epoch Times into the congressional record. “This is all about one word: freedom,” Norman said.

The Epoch Times has yet to throw its weight behind a candidate for 2024, but heading into the election cycle, it is moving into new and bigger office spaces and production studios in California, hiring mainstream news veterans who are not affiliated with Falun Gong, and revving up an ad-buying blitz.

“They achieved the goal,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist hired by The Epoch Times in 2018 to open doors to conservative politicians and players. Steinhauser said that a series of interviews and introductions with politicians and media figures at that year’s Conservative Political Action Conference offered access to a wider conservative audience. The Epoch Times was a “supporting sponsor” for this year’s conference.

“They take advantage of every opportunity,” Steinhauser, who is not currently working for The Epoch Times, continued. “They studied digital marketing. They learned how to work the system. And they did it. They're smarter than people give them credit for, and they’ve got the money to back it up.”

As a nonprofit, The Epoch Times is exempt from most federal taxes. Its mission, according to tax filings, is independent journalism, “outside of political interests and the pursuit of profit, for the public benefit and to be truly responsible to society.”

Neither the chairman nor the editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times returned multiple requests for comment. Representatives for The Epoch Times have previously defended it against critical reporting, labeling reports of the paper’s conservative mission, and its penchant for misinformation, “smears.”

Epoch Times representatives also deny an affiliation with Falun Gong, despite the two groups’ clear financial and organizational ties: The Epoch Times board members and most staff are Falun Gong practitioners. The nonprofits behind The Epoch Times and Friends of Falun Gong, the movement’s advocacy organization, share executives and provide grants and services to each other, according to tax filings. And the newspaper, along with a digital production company and the heavily advertised dance troupe Shen Yun, make up a nonprofit network that the leader of the religious movement calls “our media.”



Li Hongzhi poses during an interview (Henny Ray Abrams / AFP via Getty Images)© Henny Ray Abrams

In 2009, Li Hongzhi came to speak to his followers, volunteers who worked at The Epoch Times’ offices in Manhattan. Li’s instructions for the group were simple. They needed to reach people outside of the Falun Gong religious community. And they needed to make money. A lot of it.


“Ensure that the paper gains a foothold in ordinary society and turns profitable,” Li said.

Falun Gong — or Falun Dafa, as some followers call it — is a kind of personal development movement started by Li in China in 1992. It combines tenets of Buddhism and Taoism, and followers practice with meditation and flowing breath and movement exercises, and by studying Li’s teachings.

To his followers, Li is a God-like figure who can levitate, walk through walls and see into the future. His ultra-conservative and controversial teachings include a rejection of modern science, art and medicine, and a denunciation of homosexuality, feminism and general worldliness.

In 1999, after thousands of Li’s followers silently protested its repression in Beijing, China banned it altogether. Labeling it a cult, the Chinese government confiscated Falun Gong books, blocked websites, closed teaching centers and arrested practitioners. Human rights groups reported a brutal crackdown: Some adherents were sent to labor camps; others were tortured and killed.



IMage: Falun Gong followers meditate outside the Capitol in Washington in 1999. (Joyce Naltchayan / AFP via Getty Images file)© Joyce Naltchayan

International human rights organizations condemned China’s attempted eradication. In the U.S., where Li and some of his practitioners had fled, a new collection of followers organized a campaign to raise awareness and sympathy with parades, demonstrations and pamphlets that touted the benefits of Falun Gong and the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Epoch Times was born out of that leafleting campaign. Started in Georgia in 2000 by John Tang, a Falun Gong practitioner who remains its CEO, in essence it was a Chinese-language public relations newsletter. The group’s long-term goals were ambitious: to expose the Chinese Communist Party and to save the world in a supernatural war against communism.

Through the early aughts, The Epoch Times grew from an online effort to a weekly physical newspaper, with a home base in New York and a TV production company, New Tang Dynasty Television. It raised money from followers and was staffed by unpaid volunteers. It ran aggregated articles on international issues from Voice of America next to Thanksgiving Day explainers, dispatches from Falun Gong parades, and exposés on atrocities alleged to have been committed by the Chinese Communist Party.

By 2019, it had gone mostly digital and was spending millions of dollars on creating a network of Facebook pages and groups and running aggressive pro-Trump ad campaigns. The move toward explicit support of Republicans, despite Li’s teachings to stay away from U.S. politics, was foreshadowed by Li’s comments at a Falun Gong conference a year before.

Li said that Falun Gong’s media ought to put a “constructive” spin on the news, to advance the group’s aims. It wasn’t wrong, he said, to favorably cover a politician who shared Falun Gong’s conservative values and whose goals aligned with their own.

“If someone comes along now who can help to halt the downward spiral that the world is in, then he is truly someone extraordinary!” Li said. “He would in effect be helping us! Wouldn’t he be helping us to save people?”

The Epoch Times also employed a tactic more often associated with fake news content farms and scammers than news organizations, creating a network of inspiring and cute-content pages and fake accounts to inflate The Epoch Times' reach.

In 2019, following reporting by NBC News, Facebook found that The Epoch Times had “leveraged foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content” and banned it from future advertising, citing a violation of policies, including trying to circumvent review systems.

Undeterred, The Epoch Times pivoted to video, specifically YouTube, spending millions on internet-infamous ads featuring Roman Balmakov, a former Epoch Times delivery person who now hosts the online show Facts Matter. In the ads, Balmakov rails against the mainstream media, communism and the persecution of Trump.

The Epoch Times also revisited a tried-and-true strategy that the original anti-communism newspaper had been built on — free physical copies. Instead of boxes on street corners, this time The Epoch Times printed and distributed unsolicited special editions of the paper from California to the Carolinas to the U.K. In Philadelphia alone in 2020, the company mailed 280,000 free copies of its newspaper, “to increase subscription,” according to tax documents.

The aggressive online and real-life marketing campaigns paid off. The group reported $76 million in subscription revenue in 2021, compared to nearly $7 million in 2019. A former employee of a regional Epoch Times operation who asked not to be identified because he feared retribution said that in order to send the papers to the most likely customers, they bought lists of addresses from data brokers, specifically for conservatives aged 60 and over. And many of the new subscribers are seniors, according to an employee’s account shared at a Falun Gong conference.

But hundreds of online complaints suggest that not all of the new customers are satisfied.

“I’ve had the terrible misfortune of being subscribed to the Epoch Times without my consent,” one reads. Another says: “I want to stop receiving Epoch Times emails. That is all I want.”



Image: The Epoch Times newspaper (Elijah Nouvelage / Bloomberg via Getty Images file)© Elijah Nouvelage

As The Epoch Times’ marketing strategy shifted, so did the content — and by 2020, it became a megaphone for the U.S.’s most extreme right-wing stories.

There was plenty to write about: An election marred by disinformation, the bubbling culture wars and, most helpful for a media company missioned with ending the Chinese Communist Party, a pandemic originating from China provided endless opportunities for takes that aligned with hawkish conservatives and conspiracy theorists.

The Epoch Times was early to lay blame on China for Covid — labeling it the “CCP Virus” in its coverage. (The origin of the outbreak is unknown; the best evidence still points to natural transmission from an animal market.) China’s documented handling of the virus, including withholding information from researchers, a crackdown on whistleblowers and an authoritarian public health response, added credibility to The Epoch Times’ unproven claims.

“The dynamic for The Epoch Times changed in 2020, partly because of their criticism of China around Covid,” said A.J. Bauer, an assistant journalism professor at the University of Alabama who studies conservative media. “An entire new kind of ecosystem of Covid deniers and skeptics overlapped with right-wing media and were citing and drawing heavily upon The Epoch Times.”

The Epoch Times’ subscription page began hosting glowing testimonials from Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck and the far-right Arizona congressman Paul Gosar. The organization became a reliable source for misinformation around Covid, its treatments and the vaccines.

The Epoch Times was also an early and aggressive promoter of election misinformation, according to the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of researchers that documented misinformation and the 2020 vote. The group cited the news organization as a “repeat spreader” of false and misleading voter fraud stories as well as a major promoter of debunked conspiracy theories around Dominion voting machines and the “Stop the Steal” movement, aimed at overturning the election results. Months after the election, The Epoch Times refused to acknowledge the results.

With the new bedfellows came a new revenue stream. Though Falun Gong practitioners had been a reliable source of small donations in previous years, in 2020 the group started to receive gifts and grants from big money conservative donors.

While The Epoch Times is not required to list its donors, it reported $8.4 million in revenue from contributions and grants in 2020 and 2021. Tax documents from that period filed by scores of donors, accessed through ProPublica’s nonprofit explorer, show some of those funds came from conservative donors and foundations.

In 2021, The Epoch Times received $55,750 from the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which connects anonymous donors with Christian causes, and $31,000 from Donors Trust, a fund for conservative and libertarian donors. Smaller donations came from individuals — real estate agents, investors and surgeons among them — and small family foundations, most of which support right-wing causes, including evangelical Christian groups, anti-vaccine groups and far-right media organizations.

Most of the donors contacted by NBC News did not respond to interview requests; two declined.

The Epoch Times is pouring its revenue back into its own organization and others connected to the Falun Gong religious movement.

In the first half of this year, The Epoch Times spent 65% more on ads than in the first six months of 2022, with about half of its budget going to the X platform, formerly Twitter, according to the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Other recent ad buys were made on the right-wing sites Drudge Report, Breitbart and Rumble.

The Epoch Times paid a company called Data Managing Corporation $2.7 million for advertising services in 2021, according to tax documents. The company’s listed address is a single-family home in New Jersey owned by a reporter for The Epoch Times, who did not return requests for comment.

In addition to running its business, The Epoch Times provided about $30 million in grants to its own affiliates and connected organizations in 2021, including $10.4 million to the dance troupe Shen Yun, and $8.3 million to New Tang Dynasty, which produces videos.

The three groups, united under the Falun Gong religious movement, made up a nearly quarter-billion dollar industry in 2021, according to tax documents. Li holds that the Falun Gong messages, shared in articles, videos and dance performances, will result in the salvation of humankind as the end of the world nears.


Roman Balmakov, a former Epoch Times delivery person, now hosts online shows and appears in internet-infamous ads for the paper.

 (The Epoch Times / via YouTube)© The Epoch Times

Despite its massive war chest, conservative partnerships and clear right-wing leanings, in many respects, The Epoch Times has never looked more like a legitimate news source.

Its glossy website and physical paper are emblazoned with its name in serif font, and wire service articles sit beside Epoch Times originals.

The hard news and political coverage is bylined by a mix of longtime Falun Gong followers with no discernible journalism training, early career reporters, some with experience at right-wing websites — and in the last year, a handful of more accomplished journalists, who come with resumés that span decades at mainstream publications.

Among them, Darlene McCormick Sanchez, a former journalist at the Waco Tribune-Herald and a Pulitzer finalist in the 1990s for her reporting on David Koresh. Sanchez now tackles the culture wars and LGBTQ topics at The Epoch Times; a recent report was headlined, “The Sinister Theory Behind the Q in LGBTQ.”

Beth Brelje, a former executive editor of a daily covering Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, now writes about state politics for The Epoch Times. Her recent stories include sympathetic profiles of anti-abortion activists federally charged with blocking access to abortion facilities and a ​​Hershey employee who refused to comply with the company’s vaccination requirement.

Janice Hisle, a former award-winning crime reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer, is covering Trump’s 2024 campaign. On Facebook, Hisle has been critical of the media and spread a conspiracy theory about Jan. 6, posting to a local radio station’s Facebook group, “FYI ANTIFA INSTIGATED VIOLENCE, not Trump supporters.”

The three journalists didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The news coverage is paired with Goopish articles like “Get Passionate About Passion Fruit” and “Pregnant Nurse With Terminal Cancer Refuses Chemo and Abortion, Lives on to Give Birth, Seeks Alternative Treatment,” written by international freelancers.

Its opinion section spans nearly the same length as news, and hosts right-wing points of view, from conservative authors, libertarian think tank fellows, political columnists and professional conspiracy theorists.

According to NewsGuard, a nonpartisan company that rates the credibility of news sites, both The Epoch Times news and opinion articles “frequently include distorted, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims.”

But that’s not how many readers see it. In 2020, AllSides, a media literacy company that rates the political biases of news organizations, revised its rating for The Epoch Times, marking it only “moderately conservative” after surveys reported people consistently considered it to be in the “center” of the political spectrum.

“The Epoch Times is a comment on how much credibility is put in things with the right look and feel. Things like naming, branding and headlines,” said Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University. “The forms and formats of news are there. But the actual goods are not.”

Rosen called The Epoch Times a sign of the times — one in which the public sphere is fractured and conservative media is ready to offer alternate realities.

“More and more, especially for the right-wing populists around the world, people approach truth and reality from the demand side,” Rosen said. “When there is the demand for something to be true, these media properties go out and meet it.”

The demand is clear. In January, at the height of its traffic, the Epoch Digital Network, which includes The Epoch Times and its video sharing website, Youmaker, clocked a little under 10 million unique viewers, placing it 78th on Comscore’s ranking of news and information websites. Though its metrics fall far short of legacy media organizations, The Epoch Times generally outperformed its conservative peers, including Newsmax and The Daily Caller.

And the media organization is expanding. Late last year, The Epoch Times signed a lease for a new 26,680-square-foot office space in Irvine, California, and it is advertising jobs for experienced journalists to work remotely, offering salaries of $40,000 to $72,000 a year.

Internationally, the media outlet also continues to grow, hiring in Canada, Sweden, Norway and other European countries where it is cementing itself as a trusted source among the global far-right.

Job boards show positions for reporters, producers, television writers, event managers and more — reflecting an expanded offering beyond newspapers. Backpage ads in the physical copy of The Epoch Times enumerate the possibilities: internet shows, podcasts, weekly magazines and documentaries.

“In today’s world of misinformation and media bias, how much is accurate, unbiased news worth to you and your family?” ads ask.

“You can’t put a price on truth.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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