The Dangerous Cult Behind the Shen Yun Theatrical Show
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And finally, the season we are currently hurtling towards: Shen Yun season.
If you don’t know what Shen Yun is, congratulations! You’ve successfully avoided one of the most annoying marketing campaigns on the planet, something I had done for several decades before moving to the Bay Area. By the time my first October rolled around, I was surrounded, inundated, with billboards, posters, and mailers imploring me to buy $300 tickets to see the “#1 show in the WORLD” where a live orchestra plays along with beautiful dancers who demonstrate the rich history of China before communism.”
The sheer amount of advertising immediately tipped me off that this was a nefarious organization but at the time I had no idea how bad it actually was. It didn’t take me long to learn that the project was run by Falun Gong.
Falun Gong is, to put it bluntly, a cult. It was started in China in the 1990s by Li Hongzhi, who claims to have magical powers like levitation and psychic foresight, and likes to hint that he may be an alien. He says that people can achieve similar supernatural results by going through certain gentle exercises/stretches and meditation upon their various principles. The cult rejects much of modern medicine and insists that their exercises can cure incurable diseases.
If you live in a major city, you’ve probably seen Falun Gong adherents hanging out in public parks doing their stretches. They do that on purpose: unlike most cults, Falun Gong insists that adherents engage with the secular world as much as possible in order to attract new adherents. By hanging out in the park doing gentle stretches, they appear to be a placid, friendly group getting fresh air instead of a bunch of raving bigots who want you to do jazz hands as you die of a burst appendix.
Another way that Falun Gong maintains contact with the secular world and spreads propaganda is through the Epoch Times, which has become famous in recent years for being one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters. It’s funny how closely Falun Gong mimics the Church of Christ, Scientist, another cult that convinces adherents to avoid medical care and started a newspaper to spread propaganda. But while the Christian Science Monitor has now won several Pulitzer Prizes, the Epoch Times is peddling QAnon conspiracy theories in order to hasten the end times in which communists will be sent to hell.
Content retrieved from: https://skepchick.org/2024/08/the-dangerous-cult-behind-the-shen-yun-theatrical-show/.
