On August 31, 2021, Falun Gong’s major media outlet, the Minghui Website (“minghui.org”) released one of Li Hongzhi’s “new scriptures” titled A Strong and Urgent Warning , plus a series of commentary articles of “Master Li”, reprimanding some followers who opened we-media and publicly exposed the hidden contradictions within Falun Gong organization. Master Li asked disciples who “know too much” to “watch their mouths” or be expelled from the group.
What on the earth have those Dafa disciples revealed that made Li Hongzhi so furious as to send a “strong and urgent warning”? There are a lot of facts out there, one of which is that Falun Gong fraudulently leads itself to support Trump during the US presidential election.
The disciple who made the revelation is named Li Liang, a Falun Gong “pseudo-refugee” stranded in Thailand. According to Li Liang, during the 2020 US presidential campaign, Falun Gong, who self-claimed not to participate in politics, was deeply involved in the election campaign. In order to let Dafa disciples to do their best, the high-level leaders of Falun Gong deceived followers by saying that “the Shen Yun troupe will return to the mainland China in August next year” after the election, and asked all disciples to work hard, otherwise they would be discouraged. They said, this was what Master Li meant. And they asked Falun Gong disciples in North American to pretend to be ordinary people, getting out by cars, assemble to put up campaign banners in the streets, so as to publish a news report, saying that the US and Canadian people were all supporting Trump. In response, a Falun Gong disciple (Li Liang) questioned: “Isn’t this a self-directed news?”
Judge by the story, it can be seen that Falun Gong is definitely supporting Trump, but the way it adopts is deception and farce-led by itself.
Why Mr. Trump is unduly favored by Falun Gong?
Since Falun Gong fled to the United States, and in order to escape from punishment for their crimes, Falun Gong members actively sought Western masters as their backer, so as to find the chance to survive.
Before 2016, when Obama and Hillary Clinton were in office together, their snub of Falun Gong caused the cultic group to secretly resent and hate the Democratic Party. In the face of American politics, a comparatively weak Falun Gong and its mouthpiece media generally stayed out of it in silence.
With the rapid rise of China, the living standards of its people continue to improve. China’s economic and national strength are quite different and, in the eyes of American politicians, China’s international status is increasingly prominent, which has threatened the hegemony of the United States.
After republican Donald Trump takes office, a series of measures have been taken to curb China. Falun Gong sees it as an opportunity and thinks that "Trump was sent from heavens to destroy China". According to NBC news, Falun Gong believes that "the end of the world" is coming, that those who bear the mark of "communism" will be sent to hell, and that those who sympathize with Falun Gong will be saved. Trump is seen by Falun Gong as a key figure in their anti-communist struggle. In the eyes of Falun Gong, Trump's coming into power is a golden opportunity.
Falun Gong does not want the rise of China, does not hope the status of the Chinese ruling party be increasingly consolidated. And of course, Li Hongzhi does not want to see his imperial dreams get broken, or his Falun Gong group become American politicians’ next abandoned child. So, during the 2020 US election, Falun Gong spare no pains to ensure Trump’s re-election, hoping that the president could continue to fight against China.
The intention of Falun Gong was so obvious that, early in 2018, a US political commentator named Caleb Maupin had warned in an article titled The Deceptive and Dangerous Anti-China Cult that Flatters Trump Supporters, exposing that, Falun Gong disguised itself as a “peaceful, sports-oriented spiritual group”, but in reality, it was trying to hide its extremist and political overtones from the West, while fraudulently pandering to its American supporters.
In August 2019, the front page of NBC website published an article titled Inside the Secretive Media Outlet That Became One of Trump's Biggest Supporters, revealing a fact that Falun Gong “has spent more than $1.5 million on 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements in the last six months” on Facebook, these numbers far exceeded those of other “Pro-Trump” organizations outside Trump’s official team. So it was no wonder that the author sarcastically referred to Falun Gong’s Epoch Times as Trump’s “biggest supporter” on Facebook. At the same time, the AD spending of Epoch Times and other Falun Gong media for Trump also reached its peak, gaining a large number of views on social media.
Due to Falun Gong's clear choice of sides, Epoch Times has become the favorite of the Trump family and an important tool for Trump's re-election campaign. Trump has posted Epoch Times stories on Facebook at least six times since 2019, some of them written by his team. Trump's eldest son also retweeted the Epoch Times story several times.
▲ Falun Gong invested heavily in attacking Trump’s political opponents and running for Trump’s re-election. (Source: NBC website)
In May 2019, Laura Trump, Mr. Trump's daughter-in-law, sat down for a 40-minute interview with a senior editor at The Epoch Times at Trump Tower. The Epoch Times head-starred at CPAC (US Conservative Political Action Conference)for the first time in 2019, gaining easy access to interviews with members of Congress, members of Trump's cabinet, and right-wing celebrities.
Some people also discussed the motivation of Falun Gong, which jumped up and down behind the American politics, and pointed out that Falun Gong's pandering to Trump was fake, its real intention was to recruit followers and spread evil ideas.
On the afternoon of July 17, 2019, U.S. local time, President Trump met a cult member of Falun Gong in the name of “granting an interview to religious minorities” at the White House.
On October 24, 2020, the New York Times published an article, exposing the fact that the Epoch Times has become a far-right wing, anti-China, anti-communist, pro-Trump paper through and through. The paper, featured moral hazard and shameless disinformation, was disgusted even by former Falun Gong followers who once worked as its part-time editors.
In terms of relations with China, Falun Gong shouts out for Trump's trade war, technology war, as well as financial war against China, and spares no effort to blame China for the COVID-19 epidemic in particular, working hands in gloves with the Trump administration to defame the Chinese government.
It can be seen that Falun Gong's willingness to serve as talons and fangs in Trump's domestic political struggles and for anti-China forces is nothing but a speculative action to find an excuse for Trump's chaotic domestic policies and at the same time, find an protective umbrella for itself.
Biden’s victory declares the failure of Falun Gong’s gambling, but Li Hongzhi and his sworn followers cling to the vision of Trump’s comeback
During the 2020 US presidential election, Falun Gong clearly showed its support for Trump, believing him to be the strongest fighter against the CPC. Falun Gong media also provided one-sided pro-Trump news coverage. As to the Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden, Falun Gong claimed that the Chinese Communist Party “fell in love with him”, and Falun Gong's Epoch Times newspaper was involved in a Biden scandal fabricated by false whistleblowers.
As the 2020 presidential election drew closer, there were more and more sensational “news” spreading out around the US political arena: Allegations that Joe Biden was a pedophilia, that his youngest son molested his 14-year-old niece, and that he abused Barack Obama's daughter, and so on so forth.
A document involving Biden's son, and aimed at undermining Biden’s campaign was circulated first through fringe online media, then disseminated by the Epoch Times, and also among people like former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon.
▲ Falun Gong media promoted and spread “Spy-gate”conspiracy theory against former US President Barack Obama and other Democrats. (Screenshot of a video)
On October 29, 2020, the NBC News released an investigation article How a Fake Persona Laid the Groundwork for a Hunter Biden Conspiracy Deluge, co-authored by Ben Collins and Brandi Zadrozny.
The article pointed out that “A 64-page document that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump appears to be the work of a fake ‘intelligence firm’.” It was confirmed by both the researchers' surveys and public documents. The author of the so-called “Biden scandal” was also made up, with his face created using artificial intelligence and information copied from the Internet.
▲Falun Gong uses AI to fabricate false Facebook account. (Screenshot of a video)
On July 20, 2020, a public statement, signed by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and posted on the State Department website, was circulated across U.S. social media platforms. The statement was intended to criticize the Chinese government's legal crackdown on Falun Gong. That a secretary of state should speak on behalf of an extremist sect sends a dangerous signal: Falun Gong may have infiltrated the U.S. government in some form.
Their political views lean toward Trump and are increasingly radical and extreme. Trump's defeat in the final election made a small number of Falun Gong members look utterly wretched, and their inherent violent tendencies were also triggered off.
According to Vice Canada, on December 7, 2020, Falun Gong media spared no effort to fabricate and spread provocative videos and information, inciting Trump supporters to start a civil war, in a vain attempt to subvert the results of the US election. Members of the Falun Gong cult were incensed by Mr. Trump's electoral defeat and further stoked their innate propensity for violence.
▲Vice Canada suggests Falun Gong media openly inciting civil war in the US.
On November 21, 2020, BBC reporter Stephen MacDonald posted a tweet on Twitter claiming that Jiang Feng, a blogger with Falun Gong background, was inciting the US Special Forces to launch a military coup as a final plan to overthrow Biden, including beheading Mr. Biden.
▲ “Falun Gong’s private blogger Jiang Feng. (Screenshot of a video)
▲ Inciting program promoted by Falun Gong media
Internet users reported to the FBI that Falun Gong member Jiang Feng (wearing a mask) was involved in the Capitol riot on January 6. (Facebook screenshot)
Before the live broadcast of Trump's rally in Georgia, New Tang Dynasty TV, a media outlet of Falun Gong, aired Trump supporters chanting civil war slogans, inciting and urging the public to save the country from the Democrats.
On March 1, 2021, Mediamatters.org published a research report, concluding that between the November 3, 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, Falun Gong cult media, such as Epoch Times and NTDTV, as well as their social media platform channels, spread a lot of false information and rumors about the general election, which contributed directly to the Parliament Building riot on January 6.
Vision Times, the Falun Gong newspaper, was left at the scene of the US Congress riot, photographed by Washington Post
On May 18, 2021, several months after Joe Biden was elected president, Li Hongzhi, through the Website of Falun Gong, still repeatedly claimed that there was fraud in the US election and "complained" for Trump's defeat.
Falun Gong took sides and nailed Li Hongzhi's lie of "no-politics"
Li Hongzhi has publicly expressed on different occasions that "we are people of cultivation, and should not participate in politics." "We always do not interfere in politics or national law and discipline." "I have said time and again that we do not get involved in politics, never interfere with state affairs, we never participate in politics.” “If Li Hongzhi had been involved in politics, what he have been preaching today would be evil dharma. You mark my words." "This is the form of our Dafa cultivation, and we do not turn to any domestic or foreign political forces." (Cultivation is not Politics) Li Hongzhi went back on his word, intervened heavily in the US general election and actively campaigned for Mr. Trump. As the result, he nailed his own lie of "no-political", which proved that what he preached was evil law and his group a cultic organization.
And this was again proved on the day when the polls closed in the US. On November 7, 2020, the editorial department of Minghui Website hurriedly published a statement, saying, "The US election is a war between good and evil, and a battle between gods and demons. Trump is the chosen one... We don’t participate in politics, but we need to know the difference between good and evil, God and Satan, and who we want to support.” On November 8, Li Hongzhi openly published his new scripture named "On the General Election", complaining about Trump's defeat with the words "Fraud and corruption are harming a great nation; all the machinations make people only more despondent ". Not only at home and in the past, but also abroad and right now, Falun Gong has long taken off its false mask of "no-politics" and has openly taken sides in foreign countries that feeding it.
Li Hongzhi's "no-political" duplicity and deception also puzzled his “Dafa disciples”, and produced strong resistance among them, laying the groundwork for Li Liang's disaffection and Li Hongzhi's new scripture A Strong and Urgent Warning later on. The sneaky trick, pretending to be “ordinary people” to deceive the Americans and Canadians into supporting Trump, plus making fake news, ultimately unveiled the true color of Falun Gong’s "Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance." It is indeed a stinging slap across the face of this so-called “cultivation” group.