[throwaway128128]

The Moonies have woven themselves into the American right wing for decades. Reagan said the Washington Times, which is an organ of the Unification Church, was his favorite newspaper.

You can see Falun Gong attempting the same in the United States. The Epoch Times is Falun Gong's "media outlet" and it sponsors and shapes a lot of content online. It's all bankrolled by Shen Yun performances too. These rabbit holes go to strange places!

[timmytokyo]

Newsweek is basically owned and operated by the Moonies now, too [1].

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olive...

[throwaway128128]

Oh, TIL. I've noticed Newsweek's decline. Lots of flame-fanning.

[api]

Lately I’ve seen tons and tons of anti trans content that actually says sponsored by the Epoch Times. I’ve see it on Facebook and Xitter.

I don’t get why that issue is so important to them. Maybe scaring people about trans people is just broadly working.

Gotta fear monger or people might notice that most of our candidates are incompetent. Republicans are unelectable without scaring people about LGBT people and immigrants, while Democrats are unelectable without scaring people about Republicans. That seems to be the dynamic right now.

[throwaway128128]

Simple: grifting. Influence is what's important to them. They tap into wellsprings of conservative grievance to increase media outreach. They became antivax when antivax sentiment went up, they're here for the trans freakout, and they'll surely work to be in place for the next hot button issue, too.

[htss2013]

>Republicans are unelectable without scaring people about LGBT people and immigrants, while Democrats are unelectable without scaring people about Republicans. That seems to be the dynamic right now.

That was the dynamic. Now with NYC, Chicago, etc. being overwhelmed with migrant inflows, and Dem mayors like in NYC and Chicago declaring emergencies, do we really need Republican fear mongering to scare people about unregulated migration?

If politicians try to gaslight people that obvious problems aren't real, that can make the opposition electable all on its own.

[zdragnar]

Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falung Gong, views homosexuality as basically such a profound abnormal psychological state that it is among the worst of sins.

It is no surprise that their mouthpiece would be rabidly against acceptance of gender dysphoria as anything other than a perverse mental disorder.

[graphe]

What content are you seeing? I've never seen those.

[ftiona]

Every contribution helps get us one step closer to expelling this misogynistic ideology from policy and law. It would be preferable if such articles were penned only by women's rights organisations and allies with the same principles, but if other groups want to oppose this nonsense from other angles then that's useful too.

[paganel]

> which is an organ of the Unification Church

Big TIL for me this one, and I thought I was smart enough for knowing about the connection between Falun Gong and the Epoch Times (I also know about the direct connection between Gulen's movement and one of the best private schools here in Romania).

[earthboundkid]

Another one to watch is the MEK. Any US politician who speaks up for the MEK is a shill who will do anything for money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Mojahedin_Organizatio...

[Aloha]

Falun Gong at least makes no effort to hide its attachment to certain media outlets.

[phatfish]

Ha, that's what Shen Yun is about. Their ticket sales convoy pops up in an innocuous town in the UK a couple of times a year, looking rather out of place.

[marcusverus]

> The Moonies have woven themselves into the American right wing for decades. Reagan said the Washington Times, which is an organ of the Unification Church, was his favorite newspaper.

This is perhaps the flimsiest syllogism I have ever encountered.

[throwaway128128]

If you want more context[0], here's more:

But if you don't want to follow a link, here's a quote: Over the years, Moon’s hidden money has helped many Republicans through hard times. In the 1980s, the American Freedom Council defended North against Iran-Contra charges and distributed 30 million pieces of political literature to help elect George Bush in 1988. It was later revealed that the AFC was backed by $5 million to $6 million from business interests associated with Moon.

Moon’s organization also kept the right’s direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie afloat in the 1980s. At one stage, Viguerie profited from a big contract with the Washington Times for subscription solicitations, then, while facing a financial crisis that threatened his company’s future, Viguerie sold a building to a top Moon aide, Bo Hi Pak, for $10 million.

Yet, even as Moon has gained influence in GOP circles, the sources of his money have always been suspect. In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation tied Moon’s Unification Church to the “Koreagate” influence-buying scheme directed by South Korea’s intelligence service, the KCIA, against U.S. institutions. In 1983, the moderate Republican Ripon Society raised warning flags, too. Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), then Ripon chairman, charged that Moon’s church had “infiltrated the new right and the party it [the new right] wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well.”

But President Ronald Reagan embraced the Washington Times as his “favorite” newspaper and Moon’s newspaper returned the favor by defending the Reagan-Bush administrations at nearly every turn. In 1991, President Bush invited the paper’s new editor-in-chief, Wesley Pruden, to lunch “just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.”

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-nov-16-op-54375...

[akira2501]

> The Moonies have woven themselves into the American right wing

Our First Amendment specifically allows for freedom of association and religion. This used to be seen as an attribute, now it apparently has become cause for open prejudice.

> The Epoch Times is Falun Gong's "media outlet" and it sponsors and shapes a lot of content online. It's all bankrolled by Shen Yun performances too.

This is an intentionally misleading representation of the organization and it's structure, which combined with the above, seems designed to besmirch the papers reputation and reporting without actually addressing either in any meaningful way.

If the sword cuts both ways then your assessment is suggestively identical to the CCP position on the organization and on the religious views of it's founders.

[Aloha]

How is it intentionally misleading?

It's a newspaper given away for free in paper form, frequently.

I don't believe the Epoch Times to be a credible news source, in the same way that RT is not one. That doesn't mean its not a news source worth looking at on occasion.

I'm also skeptical of Falun Gong, first as a generally non-religious person, and then because they dont seem to like LGBTQ people very much - and I'm very much a member of that community.

I feel everyone ought to have a right to practice their religion in peace, however when the practicing of your religion potentially impacts the secular word, I get concerned - I generally believe in a strong separation of church and state, and anyone who starts to encroach on that, puts my hackles up.

[throwaway128128]

The First Amendment says that religion and government should remain separate. I have the right to freely observe that some religions are aggressively testing that boundary more than others.

But, "intentionally misleading"? Can you please explain the ways I've mislead people? Here are some essays which go into the claims in more detail.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-in...

As for The Epoch Times' reputation, its slant is immediately obvious upon reading the paper or seeing YouTube ads for it.