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What is Epoch Times?
Somehow I got on a mailing list a few months ago for an e-newsletter called "Epoch Times". Each issue is a list of headlines that you have to click on to see the content, and I've been reluctant to click on any of them for fear of getting onto even more such mailing lists, but from the headlines, "Epoch Times" seems to have the following core beliefs:
It's not news, of course, that the above beliefs are positively correlated with one another in the American political universe, but it's not obvious why. Yes, the current Chinese government is autocratic and fond of crushing the slightest dissent, but so are lots of other governments around the world, including Russia and some of its puppets that Epoch never mentions. And why is this correlated with anti-vax mania, or homo/trans-phobia, etc.?
One can understand how people might shy away from a message like "Jesus is Lord" when it's so closely associated with this kind of paranoid ranting.
On second thought, perhaps it doesn't matter whether the people at Epoch Times actually believe any of this; they simply believe (correctly) that they can sell clicks that promise to confirm other people's belief in this stuff.
- The Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate evil, and a plot to destroy America.
- Covid vaccines, if not vaccines in general, kill people and don't protect people; they're a plot to destroy America.
- Gender transition and homosexuality are plots to destroy America.
- Universal health care is a plot to destroy America.
- Environmental sustainability is a plot to destroy America.
- Democrats routinely steal elections from honest upstanding Republicans, in a plot to destroy America.
- Jesus is Lord.
- Sometimes people do kind, heartwarming things.
It's not news, of course, that the above beliefs are positively correlated with one another in the American political universe, but it's not obvious why. Yes, the current Chinese government is autocratic and fond of crushing the slightest dissent, but so are lots of other governments around the world, including Russia and some of its puppets that Epoch never mentions. And why is this correlated with anti-vax mania, or homo/trans-phobia, etc.?
One can understand how people might shy away from a message like "Jesus is Lord" when it's so closely associated with this kind of paranoid ranting.
On second thought, perhaps it doesn't matter whether the people at Epoch Times actually believe any of this; they simply believe (correctly) that they can sell clicks that promise to confirm other people's belief in this stuff.
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According to Wikipedia, "The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement."
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We live about thirty miles from Deer Park, NY. [Correction: we do, but there's also a Deerpark, NY a hundred miles west, and I think that's where Falun Gong is.] A few days ago we were having lunch at Shake Shack in Nassau County (halfway to Deer Park) and saw a parade of dozens of cars go by with rooftop signs saying "End the Chinese Communist Party". I figured it had something to do with one of the various political organizations to which the Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate evil, but wasn't sure which (and now it appears many of them are closely connected, so it doesn't matter). I puzzled aloud why there was such a demonstration going on in central Nassau County, whose residents wouldn't be expected to have much influence on the Chinese Communist Party (if anybody does), but
It may be relevant to mention here that I was brought up in The Local Church until I was eight years old, at which point my parents split up over it; my father and half-brother are still active in The Local Church. I've always thought of it as a cult, but it's not nearly as political or covert as Falun Gong. I don't know whether it has a "charismatic leader" since Witness Lee died 25 years ago.
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Oh, wow, I'd never heard of the Local Church. Wild. That sounds unpleasant to have grown up in. Thank you for putting it on my radar.
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Every Local Church had a map of the world with pins indicating the cities that had been saved for the Lord's Recovery. The Church would buy two large houses and a church building, tax-exempt, put single brothers in one house and single sisters in the other, while married couples found their own housing. Then the Church would grow and proselytize in that city for a few years, concentrating on the Chinese-American population, until it was big enough to "bud" and save another nearby city.
We lived variously in Lexington, Cincinnati, and Louisville until my younger brother was born in 1968 and we moved to Pittsburgh, around the corner from my mother's college roommate, who had a daughter a few months younger than me; we played together, they exchanged babysitting services, etc. One day in 1970, my father came home from work and told my mother "We're moving to Akron. I've already quit my job." My mother was Not Amused. But Akron is only two hours' drive from Pittsburgh, so we moved, forming part of the nascent Church in Akron.
Then in 1972, the Church decided they were ready for a real challenge and it was time to put a pin in Washington, DC. My father quit his job, took a civil-service exam and applied for some government job in DC, we packed up the house and sent everything to DC (although we didn't have a specific address there yet), and embarked on a nine-week summer road trip from Akron to DC by way of Louisville, St Louis, Los Angeles, and Portland, OR. Unfortunately, by the time we reached DC, there was a Federal-government hiring freeze, so there wasn't a job waiting. We had lived in a tent the whole summer, and continued living in a tent in a park in northern Virginia for a week or two until we found an apartment, where we lived for a few months as my parents' marriage finally disintegrated. He moved into the single-brothers' house in DC and got a job driving taxis while my mother and two kids moved to Reston, VA and she substitute-taught until she found a steady white-collar job.
The Church didn't want him to acknowledge that their marriage had broken up, so he never signed any papers about it, and it took about four years to finalize the divorce by court order. Within a year after the divorce, the Church had found him a new (Chinese) wife; they moved to New York City and had a son, my half-brother, around 1979. A few years ago we attended my half-brother's wedding, at The Church in Berkeley, CA, and
As I said, the Local Church is much less political than Falun Gong -- indeed, while it's fairly controlling of its members' lives, it seems to have no interest whatsoever in anything else. And I've never heard any allegations of physical or sexual abuse, or leaders becoming obscenely rich, associated with it.
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Fascinating – thanks for sharing that. Were you homeschooled? Or did you attend public schools? Or a congregation-specific private school?
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They're also associated with the Shen Yun traveling dance troupe which is so big out here on the Left Coast. Pity, that, because the dance performances look gorgeous in the TV commercials, but I am not gonna go there.
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