This is part 10 of my expose on Falun Gong, the Chinese meditation practice that grew into a huge global right wing disinformation machine. A former FLG practitioner of nearly thirty years, I am using the anonymity of Blind to share my info on how FLG went off the rails. As mentioned in the previous post, FLG had a penchant for telling outrageous lies to (understandably) attack the CCP which was persecuting it. One can question the tactic of using lies to counter lies, but FLG leaders were perfectly comfortable with it despite espousing Truthfullness, Compassion, Forbearance as their creed. FLG ran a lot of newspapers, TV channels, and YouTube channels in many languages. Throughout the 2000s, FLG media matured and the message of each of these media channels diverged and sometimes even contradicted each other because they were tailored towards very divergent audiences around the world. The most important FLG media were the Epoch Times newspaper and the New Tang Dynasty TV channel (NTDTV) but many new media organizations with less obvious FLG ties were created to act as fronts for FLG. Chinese v Non-Chinese Language FLG Media: FLG Chinese language media focused on bad events in China, unsubstantiated rumors about political intrigue in China, and during the 2000s and early 2010s, also a lot of prophecies about how the CCP will suffer a great disaster and former president Jiang Zemin will die soon. Epoch Times and NTDTV also promoted the Quit the CCP Movement which is a bogus initiative that claims 400 million Chinese have quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations as of 2023. Many and maybe even most of the stories on China were fake, some fabricated by FLG while others were sourced from elsewhere but without proper editorial research. FLG Chinese language media soon gained a poor reputation among Chinese populations. Having said this, FLG did sometimes broadcast true info about bad things in China. The problem is that it mixed true info with so much false info that it is hard to tell what it says is true. Non-Chinese language FLG media focused on non-China related matters as well as anti-China content. Worldwide, FLG media tended to side with conservative content and gradually came to portray CCP-friendly and China-friendly politicians and political parties in very negative ways. This includes the American Democratic Party. Interestingly due to the divergent audiences that FLG media catered to, it had to take contradictory stances. For example, FLG Chinese media appeals to Chinese nationalism while non-Chinese media criticized Chinese nationalism. In Chinese language media, FLG blames the CCP for surrendering South Tibet/Arunachal Pradesh to India, giving up large tracts of land to Russia (which is not true because those were lost before the CCP rose to power), and being soft on Japan and various Southeast Asian countries on territorial disputes. Meanwhile in English media and Indian language media, FLG claims that the CCP is expansionist and illegally claims land of India, Japan, South China Sea, and Russia. In Chinese language media, FLG blames the CCP for failing to protect overseas Chinese in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge genocide, Chinese Vietnamese during the late 1970s Vietnamese expulsion of Chinese people, and Chinese in Indonesia during the anti-Chinese massacres there in 1998. Meanwhile in English language media, the same FLG charges the CCP with being overly involved in overseas Chinese matters and argues that the CCP needs to leave overseas Chinese alone. The same organization literally broadcasts doublethink. FLG Chinese language media found little reception among Chinese populations except in Taiwan and Hong Kong where the local people hated the CCP with a passion and loved anti-CCP conspiracy theories even if they were not true. Despite being Chinese myself, I have to admit that Chinese culture all over the world emphasizes falling in line with a particular side over factual correctness. FLG recognized that its obviously FLG affiliated media wasn’t gaining enough traction, so it created fronts: these were media sites or YouTube channels that focused on matters unrelated to FLG or the CCP but will inject FLG content once in a while. Some of these fronts have become major YouTube channels including the most watched Chinese language political channels and most watched English language channels on China. FLG also created front organizations to act as pressure groups eg The China Tribunal. Below is an incomplete list of FLG media that I know about. FLG Main Media: Epoch Times, NTDTV, Sound of Hope Secondary FLG Media: China Insight, Zooming in with Simone Gao, China Uncensored (widely popular anti-CCP channel), American Thought Leaders, 干净世界 (Clean World), China in Focus, China Observer, Vision Times FLG YouTubers: 江峰 (Jiang Feng is the top Chinese language political channel on YouTube), 文昭谈古论今, 天亮时分、方伟、睿眼看世界、微雨看世间、石涛、细雨人生、Inconvenient Truths (by Jennifer Zeng), 3 Musketeers (run by Shen Yun dancers), Lei’s Real Talk,老北京茶馆,大宇新闻,秦鹏 FLG Front Media: Off the Great Wall, Asian Beauty Secrets, Beyond Science, Mikey Chen, Strictly Dumpling, The Double Chen Show, Edge of Wonder Lastly, in the spirit of Blind, let’s talk about the TC at FLG media. Most of the people who work for FLG media are practitioners who are told that doing so is good for their cultivation towards Buddhahood because FLG media is “clarifying the truth” and “saving sentient beings” from the evil “Old Forces”. As a result they are given massive workloads and it is common to pull all-nighters on top of a full time job unrelated to FLG. Some have quit their jobs in order to work full time on FLG media. The overwork has directly led to serious illness for many middle aged practitioners. In a few cases, blindness, cancer, and even death have ensued due to the overwork, lack of sleep, and of course lack of medication (FLG teaches that illness is a chance to eliminate karma). All this and what is their TC? In the vast majority of cases these practitioners are volunteers who get compensated by their Buddhahood cultivation that accumulates in the form of priceless material in another dimension but in this world the TC is zero. FLG Media TC: 0 in the real world but ♾️ in other dimensions