Lies | Faluninfo.TV

How do you get over a billion people to believe a lie that they know is a lie? And if they don't really believe the lie, how do you strike such fear into them that they become so petrified they won't question it or even speak out about it? Well, that's the exact question the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party was trying to answer about Falun Gong in the summer of 1999. And their conclusion unleashed a brutal To understand this, let's first have a look at one important pattern in recent Chinese history. The Chinese regime seized power in 1949. Since that time, about every 10 years, the regime initiates a violent event to strike fear into the hearts of the Chinese people, which strengthens its power over them. In the 1950s, the regime destroyed traditional religions like Buddhism and Taoism, crushing Tibet. In the 1960s, the regime massacred cultural and intellectual elites in the anti-rightist movement. In the 1970s, we saw a catastrophic cultural revolution, which tore apart traditional Chinese culture from its seams, turning moral principles on its head and leaving millions dead. Then, in the 1980s, we all witnessed the Tiananmen Square Massacre, where tanks and bullets crushed the peaceful students. You see the pattern, right? So imagine now it's the late 1990s, and the Chinese Communist Party makes a decision to take on their next violent struggle, one that continues to this day and targets 100 million people with illegal jailing, torture, and killing. But there was something unusual about this new target and the events leading up to it. Let's take a look at the Chinese regime's latest victims, Falun Gong. The meditation practice called Falun Gong was introduced to the public in China in 1992 by Mr. Li Hongzhi. The health and moral benefits of the practice made Falun Gong immensely popular, and by 1999, it had grown to become the largest and fastest growing spiritual practice in Chinese history, if not in history of the world. It was shared across China mostly by word of mouth, and in just seven years after its introduction, 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong. During this time in the 1990s, many central government agencies endorsed Falun Gong. Mr. Li Hongzhi, the teacher and founder, was honored and awarded for his contributions, and his principal book, Zhuan Falun, became a bestseller. In a February 22, 1999 interview with U.S. News & Report, an official from China's state sports commission praised the practice for reducing the state's medical costs, saying, Falun Gong and other types of Qi Gong can save each If 100 million people are practicing it, that's 100 billion yuan saved per year in medical fees. This all seems like a very good thing, right? So, who would be evil enough to find fault with these peaceful people? This guy, former Communist Party leader Zhang Zemin. Zhang disliked Falun Gong because of its immense popularity, and in particular, he grew jealous of Falun Gong after observing so many people admire the practice, including the high-ranking party members who worked around him. Zhang also feared how Falun Gong had sparked a desire among the public for traditional culture, including belief in the divine, which the party had tried for decades to eradicate. And so, in the summer of 1999, Zhang issued a directive to eliminate Falun Gong and ordered the entire state apparatus to defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically. Thus started what would become Zhang's personal cultural revolution. To pull off this complete 180 in the government's position of Falun Gong, in July 1999, the CCP launched what can only be described as propaganda marathons throughout the entire country. State-run television piped vilifying propaganda into homes across the nation and around the clock, branding Falun Gong a menace to society. Zhang ordered Falun Gong to be eradicated in three months. By the end of the campaign's first month, the People's Daily, the voice of the party, had carried a staggering 347 articles denouncing Falun Gong. So you might be wondering, did this work? Well, at this time, one out of 13 people were practicing Falun Gong in China. So the general public knew that it was good and knew that the people practicing Falun Gong were good people because they knew them. They were a teacher or a friend or even a relative. So the propaganda at this point really wasn't paying off. Despite the CCP's best efforts by the middle of 2000, a full year after the persecution campaign started, many throughout the country who knew Falun Gong was a positive healthy practice remained unconvinced or at the very least unmotivated. Zhang was furious and desperate to find a way to mobilize the rank and Their solution unfolded in early 2001 when the Chinese regime staged an event that would turn the tide against Falun Gong, a true propaganda turning point. On January 23, 2001, five individuals allegedly set themselves on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The entire scene was caught on camera from multiple angles. How TV crews from state-run media knew exactly where to place their cameras just before the impromptu protest is highly suspect. Within hours, state-controlled media inundated the public with false reports that the self-immolators were Falun Gong practitioners. These reports included grisly footage of the victims and portrayed Falun Gong teachings as directly responsible for the tragedy. Branding Falun Gong as dangerous and evil. All this was done despite the fact that Falun Gong's teachings strictly prohibit killing, including suicide. In the weeks following the event, a wealth of evidence was uncovered that demonstrate the entire incident was staged by the CCP using movie techniques. For example, the Washington Post published an investigation about two of the self-immolators that found that neither have ever practiced Falun Gong. Faced with the grisly footage of badly burnt individuals backed by carefully scripted narratives, people across China began to change. Many who once respected and sympathized with Falun Gong started rejecting and even attacking the practice. Hostilities against practitioners increased and the CCP escalated its persecution with intensified arrests, torture, and killing. They even established a human trafficking network to kill Falun Gong detainees so that their vital organs could be extracted and used to fuel a booming organ transplant business. Given all this, you might now be asking yourself, why haven't I heard about this? Well, in the first few years after the persecution started, the Chinese regime realized that all of their internal propaganda campaigns were getting way too much attention from the West, where people with freedom of thought were openly challenging their lies. After all, the Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize covering this persecution in 2001. So the regime needed a new strategy, one that would allow them to ramp up the persecution in the years to come. That strategy? Complete silence and complete censorship. People inside China would no longer hear anything about Falun Gong in the state-run media, but they could also not reach any information about Falun Gong themselves. All websites and online channels for finding out more were blocked and the regime constantly monitors WeChat and all social media to make sure no true information about Falun Gong gets to the Chinese people. And so 20 years after a time in China when Falun Gong was a household name and widely respected, we find many of the 1.4 billion people living in the shadow of the Chinese regime today have either been convinced that Falun Gong is dangerous or have been scared into submission to not speak out. And all the while, for the past 20 years and continuing to today, tens of millions of people who practice Falun Gong inside China continue to practice their faith despite the dangers of jailing, torture, or death. What's also disturbing about this story is that the dangers of Chinese regime's propaganda are no longer limited to China's shores. Over the years, the Chinese Communist Party has managed to silence or even control the narrative of Falun Gong in some western media outlets. We'll dig into this alarming situation in a future video, but for now, to help lend your voice to the voiceless, share this video with your family or friends, and you can also sign the petition at faluninfo.net slash act now.