Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 447 - Falun Gong: The Cult Behind The Epoch Times and Shen Yun

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Have you ever been to one of those Shen Yun traveling traditional Chinese dance performances? Have you ever seen one of their blitz marketing campaigns? What about the Epoch Times - is that where you or someone you know get their news? Did you know that both of these companies are directly connect to the Falun Gong, a strange cult that originated in China in 1992, and is now based in a massive compound less than a 100 miles north of New York City? Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just ban a cult? Some of you have been listening to me talk about cults for over 8 years now. So I'm willing to bet there's been at least one time, probably many, when you've heard about the horrific abuse people have been put through with the hands of some charismatic dipshit, some grifting leader and thought, my god, just fucking throw this asshole in jail already. Maybe you've even thought something along the lines of, their due process, fuck their freedom of speech. If they are hurting and abusing people and almost all these groups are in some way typically to a large degree emotionally,

financially, sexually, physically, why not just get rid of them? Why not make it illegal to be a member? Put out a warrant for the arrest of the ringleader or ringleaders, crush the cult and call it a day. It's a really nice idea. But as many nice ideas are, it's one that's much more complicated than it may first appear. For one thing, there's the hairy issue of due process and freedom of religion and freedom of speech. If you're going to allow people to worship whatever they want to worship, inevitably,

some people are going to start believing a lot of shit the rest of us find bonkers. Crazy in some cases to a degree that truly horrifies many of us and invariably freedom of religion will lead to a lot of cults. Freedom of speech allows these cults to promote some really stupid harmful shit like QAnon conspiracy level of stupid and the right to do process Sometimes does lead to someone running an obvious grift to lawyer up avoid justice and keep on grifting freedom has its pitfalls Setting all that aside even if you could just arrest cult members and shove their freedoms up their asses

While it might be easy to toss a couple cultists in jail or even hundreds or even thousands, what about millions? And what happens if some of the cult members escape? What if they go to other countries and they're now able to continue to recruit new members, partially through stories about how they were so unfairly imprisoned? Damn it, now you've only made them seem that much more appealing to a certain type of person that likes to crusade for the little guy. Or the people they can lead to believe are the little guy. This is almost exactly what happened with Fei Lun Gong. In 1992, a lowly 40 year old grain clerk named Li Hongzhe began delivering lectures across China to introduce a new spiritual discipline

he called Fei Lun Gong, also known as Feilun Dafa. In some ways, it wasn't so different from the forms of meditation and inner cultivation that have been a staple of Eastern religions, including Taoism and Buddhism for many centuries. It followed in the tradition of energy-based exercises called Qi Gong that have roots in ancient Chinese culture dating back almost 7,000 years. And these exercises were surging in popularity in the early 1990s as part of a revival of religious practice after the death of Mao Zedong, who had tried to stamp out most of China's traditional culture as part of his cultural revolution. It's likely you've probably seen someone practicing Qigong in a park or in a public space.

People moving their arms and legs slowly, gracefully, maybe sitting in a lotus pose. Even Tai Chi is a form of qigong. And though these exercises might not look like much, many people have said that these exercises have improved their health dramatically, physically, mentally, spiritually, even cured their illnesses. Starting around 1995, Lee took

his new and improved Qigong, now called Falun Gong, lectures overseas to cities like Sydney, Australia and Paris, France, quickly building a global base of followers. And the Chinese Communist Party, well, they didn't like that. They began cracking down on Lee's new movement, arresting followers, having them harassed and surveilled,, just trying to completely eliminate a group, they deemed to be a threat to the hardline atheism inherent to communism. In April of 1999, more than 10,000 Falun Gong members held a peaceful rally in front of the Communist Party's leadership, their walled compound in Beijing. After the rally, the authorities banned Falunungong, labeling the group an evil cult and engaging in a relentless persecution that, depending on who you believe, may have claimed

the lives of thousands. And yet, Fei Lungong would flourish. Welcome by numerous governments abroad for its supposed health benefits and overtures of peace and harmony, Fei Lungong has developed over the past three decades into a sprawling, wealthy, politically powerful organization with a newspaper, news outlet, radio station, and its own opulent, sprawling headquarters slash compound in Deer Park, New York. It has a massive media branch, the Epoch Times, as well as a wildly successful performing arts group, Shen Yun, that sells out massive theaters internationally with a mix of interpretive dance, dramatic orchestral music, gorgeous pageantry, immersive set design, and uplifting peaceful seeming messages. This group seems at quick glance to be so good, so benevolent, but many have alleged that the group is not

nearly as innocent as it seems. That Li Hongzhe is treated as a god. That his teachings have gotten more and more apocalyptic. That he's told people to stop taking life-saving medicine leading to an untold amount of deaths. And Fei Lungong's response, well that's nothing but a bunch of CCP propaganda. So who's right? Is Fei Lungong an evil cult as the Chinese government says they are? Or just a bunch of persecuted spiritualists? If it didn't start off as a cult, is it possible that the persecution turned them into one? Is Li Hongjia a spiritual master or a megalomaniacal grifter? The strange, complicated, and fascinating story of Feilun Gong right now and how it

relates to the Epoch Times and Shen Yun dancers right here on another cult cult cult edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Well happy Monday and welcome to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suckmaster, neighbor, make-believe lover, guy who definitely didn't ever cry even a little bit, will work on the Mr. Rogers episode, so stop saying that! And you're listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lusifena, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. A couple quick things before I jump back into the story. If you want to see me do some stand-up comedy, my upcoming shows in Nashville are going to

be your last chance in all likelihood for quite some time. Possibly years. Just to be, you know, just too busy, excuse me, podcasting to tour. But I will be doing three shows at the Nashville Comedy Festival at Zany's, Friday and Saturday night, April 11th and 12th. I hope to see you there. And I keep forgetting to mention charity donations, which we have continued to do every month. And this month we sent $11,800 to the Associated Press. Founded in 1846, the AP continues to provide fact-based journalism and remains according to many sources. In my own

opinion, I've leaned on them heavily over the years for research on many of these episodes. They continue to be one of the most trusted, most accurate, most unbiased news sources despite what some say in the world. More than half of the entire world's population consumes news provided by AP journalists every day. We're excited to support journalists in over a hundred countries as they continue to report on the biggest stories that affect us all and to do so without a whole bunch of slant. To actually give you the story which is so important increasingly important in this age of disinformation.

To learn more about what the AP does, please visit APnews.com. Also adding $1,300 to the Cummins Family Scholarship Fund, thanks to all the spaces on Patreon who continue to make these donations possible. Okay. Understanding Fei Lung Gong. And sometimes it's pronounced Falun Gong, Fei Lung Gong. I've watched so many different videos and it feels like everybody says it a little differently. Understanding them, no small task. This suck has uh has taxed my brain, but I think thanks largely to uh the guiding research, initial research provided by Sophie Evans, uh through watching

what felt like 50 YouTube videos and reading about 50 additional investigative journalism articles. You can really get lost in a huge fucking true time suck with these guys, but I think I've got it. The most important parts. For the vast majority of new age movements, we can just go to their Wikipedia page to at least begin, to at least get the gist when it comes to their, you know, thoughts and beliefs.

We can find some specific controversies listed there, grab some names of people, disgruntle with them, appraise their claims. You know, is the disgruntled party in the right? Is the group predatory? What did the movement promise to deliver? How many lives have they truly harmed? From that we can link out to a handful of sources, usually assemble a pretty accurate picture of the group's MO, how they operate, where the money comes from, their capacity to do harm in the world, etc, etc. In the case of Fei Lungong,

fucking way more complicated. For starters, by far, the biggest disgruntled party when it comes to this cult is the Chinese Communist Party. It's unclear exactly why the CCP hates Fei Lungong so much. They've certainly never declared their reasons without a fair amount of propaganda. But given that many New Age spiritual practices were flourishing in post-cultural revolution China, we can gather that the CCP saw this group as a threat. Something that people might find themselves more loyal to. Something that might become the base layer of a resistance movement.

And something that threatened the hardline atheism, inherent to communism going all the way back to its origins in the works of Karl Marx. But unlike disgruntled individuals who might be able to mount a lawsuit or write a book or maybe garner up enough support to be on the, you know, some kind of speaking tour, the CCP has something else up its sleeve. It's vast, extremely well-funded, an authoritarian propaganda department. First, when it comes to Chinese media, the nation is notoriously restrictive,

you know, and not allowing truly free journalists to report on whatever they want and how they want to report on it is, you know, kind of a propaganda in its own right. China's General Administration of Press and Publication, GAP, G-A-P-P, has the legal authority to screen, censor, and ban any print, electronic electronic or internet publication in China. Because all publishers including internet publishers in China are required to be licensed by the GAPP the agency also has the power to deny people the right to publish and they can and they will completely shut down any publisher who fails to follow their dictates.

Similarly China's state administration of Radio, Film and Television tightly controls the content of all radio, TV, party's leaders or nation's leaders, significant political issues and policies. The issue notices informing publishers and editors what stories can and cannot be covered. They tell them what ideological standpoint should be used when discussing certain issues, and they even require editors and publishers to attend indoctrination sessions, where they are instructed on the proper ideological approach to use when reporting on politically sensitive topics. Sounds scary? It is. Any government that tightly controls what information about said government their citizens are able to access, that is a repressive authoritarian regime afraid of real truth and any government afraid of real truth is blatantly

corrupt. Every citizen of every nation in the world should support a truly free press able to criticize whoever they want to criticize including the nation's leader. Since its beginnings in the early 1990s, China has waged a massive war of information suppression and propaganda when it comes to Fei Lungong labeling them an evil cult that causes their members to literally go insane and attack their own friends and family. China has asserted that its fight against Fei Lungong is one for the good of public safety and order, even for non-Chinese citizens.

Just saying you are interested in Fei Lungong or that you'd like to write about them from an academic perspective can lead to you getting your travel or research visa in China denied. And it's not only written or spoken propaganda, in China, Falun Gong members have faced a brutal campaign of intimidation, arrest, surveillance, prison torture, possibly, depending on who you believe, even organ harvesting for decades, actually seems very possible, and fucking murder. However, just because

a group is unjustly persecuted, ruthlessly persecuted by tyrannical communist regime, that doesn't actually mean that that group is at the end of the day necessarily any better than the group that's persecuting them. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. That is something important to keep in mind as we unpack all this. The Falun Gong have used their persecution as evidence that they must be a righteous organization. That if you say anything negative about them, you are just falling in line with CCP propaganda, you horrible commie anti-humanist fuck.

But that's not true. And today I will try to cohesively lay out the truth about Fei Lungong, a truth that exists somewhere between the propaganda the Chinese government has leveled at them and the other propaganda that Fei Lungong has spread about itself. And I'll be looking to find out at this group, I've already called a cult, is a cult or not, but I think you already know where I'll land on that cult cult cult. I'm gonna start off With looking at what feilongong believes about itself and then in the time suck timeline We will go through founder Lee Hong-joo's early life and very

interesting supposed spiritual education. It's fucking batch a crisis and Blatantly made up before we get into China's repressive campaign against feilongong And then we'll check out how they have flourished in other countries Especially here in the US and how that might be a very bad thing Let us begin So, how are we gonna wade through all the propaganda on both sides a good place to begin might be what do they believe? according to its founder Li Hongjia, Feilun Gong, also known as Feilun Dafa, is, quote, a high-level cultivation practice that incorporates aspects of Buddhism, ritualized exercises,

and reading core texts to help its practitioners eliminate their attachments and to look inward instead of blaming others. Sounds pretty nice. Sounds mostly harmless. But also, high-level cultivation practice? That word even feels a bit culty, doesn't it? I mean, if somebody handed you a brochure and asked if you were interested in attending a meeting with a group that defines itself as a high-level cultivation practice. Are you going to be just at least a little bit trepidatious? I am. I want to be trepidatious as

fuck. Which I think feels like actually a fun quote for a bumper sticker. Trepidatious as fuck. I would at least smile if I saw that. The alleged end goal of the practice of Fei-Lung-Gong is enlightenment or consummation. The highest level of spiritual cultivation in Fei Lun Gong. To achieve consummation, which I gotta say sounds a lot like coming, Fei Lun Gong practitioners are told they need to increase their Gong, their cultivation energy, by developing their Xing Xing, which means their character. Easy peasy! You fucking put a little elbow grease on your Xing Xing, you get your fucking Gong all worked up and BOOM! You're coming! I mean, you're consummated. Something peasy. You fucking put a little elbow grease on your shing shing, you get your fucking gong all worked up and boom you're coming. I mean you're

consummated. Something like that. Just got power up your gong bro. Just gotta ratchet up that shing shing. Improving shing shing means relinquishing human attachments and notions like jealousy, competitiveness, hunger for fame, showing off, pursuit of material gain, anger, lust. All that sounds pretty culty to me. Don't be competitive. Don't care about money. Don't care about fame, says the organization

that's making hundreds of millions of dollars a year now. An organization where the leader lives in fucking lavish wealth like a king. Don't be angry, especially at us. Once you find out we've been financially abusing you for years. Sorry, getting ahead of myself out we've been financially abusing you for years. Sorry, getting ahead of myself. I've been immersed in this batshit fucking insanity for a few days now. Anyway, you are also supposed to eliminate bad karma through enduring tribulations and hardships, like maybe being exploited by a cult, and only then can you return to your true original

self and understand the truth of human life. Like with so many religious practices, Feilun Gong is loosely about becoming a better person and letting go of bad stuff. But also like with so many religious practices, the devil's in the details. And some of the details. Oh, wow. For starters, your Gong... I love talking about this as a serious thing, you know your Gong. For starters, your Gong doesn't actually get transformed by you with Fei-Lung Gong. It gets transformed by something called the Law Wheel, which exists inside of you.

And you can get more Law Wheels cranking around it if you try hard. Okay? In Buddhist texts and rituals, the phrase turning the wheel of the law refers to the act of teaching by the Buddha. But in Falun Gong cult speak, quote, the law wheel is an intelligent being consisting of high energy matter, one that automatically transforms Gong. It doesn't exist in our dimension. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Some kind of alien Gong, I guess. Some kind of, some kind of Holy Ghost, some kind of space ghost, coast to coast, wheel energy person, bean gong thing.

Also, this bean is something that your Falun Gong teacher can put inside you if you succeed in discarding the bat. Uh-huh. So you can have this space Holy Ghost alien gong thing shoved up your butthole or your hoo-haw. Or pushed down your throat maybe. I don't know. That I don't explicitly say. This definitely doesn't sound like a bunch of gibber jabber. Some knucklehead. Made up in the 90s. No, no way! Sounds very legit. Very true and righteous.

This wheel bean is golden yellow. Kind of. Its color doesn't actually exist in this dimension. But if it were to exist, they they think it would be golden yellow. Also the base color of the inner circle is apparently bright red and also people with a lower level third eye can see the law wheel rotating and it appears similar to an electric fan. Okay you follow me? But if you develop your mind and spirit through feilun gong exercises as you progress towards cultivation and the strength of your fucking gong increases, bro, more and more law wheels will develop inside of you. This info is not coming from some random website just making fun of feilun gong, by the way. This is coming from their website.

Feilundafa.org Continuing with this life altering, incredibly important truth. If you reach a level of cultivation that's very high, like as high as the founder Lee Hong-Ju's cultivation, well guess what? You get to develop stuff called law bodies, which sounds like a weird medical condition. Are you feeling okay? You look like, I don't know, look like you're in pain. Yeah, just, I don't feel good. My stomach, I think my stomach's backed up. I think I think I might have some law bodies just jamming up my colon. Here's how Lee explains this. He says, or he writes, why is there a field around images of Buddhas? A lot of people can't explain it.

There are some people who say the field around images of Buddhas? A lot of people can't explain it. There are some people who say the field around the Buddha statue comes from monks chanting scriptures in front of it. Or in other words, it's a field that's created by monks cultivated in front of the statue. Here he's saying basically that the spiritual atmosphere around sacred images in Buddhism, like the Buddha, are actually law bodies. Which are basically copies of the person whose actions are controlled by the principle being. Does that make sense to you? Huh? Doesn't have to. Might not make sense to anybody. Could be some shit that Li Hongzhe just pulled out of his ass or came up with in the midst of a fever dream.

I mean, part of the fun of entering the world of magical thinking is not needing to make fucking any sense at all. Li continues with his explanation saying, but a law body is also a complete independent and real individual life in its own right. And so it can do anything on its own. Law bodies continue with his quote, law bodies do the same things that the person's master consciousness would like to do, exactly the same things. The person would do it in the same way if he were to do it himself and law bodies do it however he would.

Okay. When I want to do something, he says, like adjust the bodies of disciples who truly cultivate, holy cult speak, I have my law bodies do it. Law bodies manifest in other dimensions since they don't have human bodies. And that being's form isn't fixed and unchanging. He can expand and shrink. Sometimes he becomes really large, so large that you can't see his whole head, and sometimes he becomes really small, so small that he's even smaller than a cell. Fucking holy cult, cult, cult. If I'm in a presentation, or I don't know, I get talked into going to some fucking convention, something, for some reason I'm listening to this. I don't know why

I would be, but I'm in a room with people listening to this. Unless I just want to keep listening to it for the sheer comedic entertainment, I'm just getting up and walking out at this point. If they say something, I'm just like, man, shut the fuck up. Just get out of here. I think I actually would do something like that at this point in my life, at my age. I was at a friend's funeral a while back, and I did not like how the pastor was turning it into this person's funeral, who was not a religious person, in my experience at all, and they kind of turned it into this like recruitment session and then just got like on and on about sin to a bunch of people who weren't part of this church. They're just coming to this friend's funeral. It took everything I had

not to just fucking get up and leave. Actually I did get up and leave in the middle of him talking once the main portion of the service was over. I was like what are you fucking doing? Anyway this word salad dri drivel. Definitely sounds like cult talk to me, right? When people say stuff like, when I want to do something like adjust the bodies of disciples who truly cultivate, I have my law bodies do it. Law bodies manifest in other dimensions since they don't have human bodies. Are you fucking kidding me? What is he even talking about here? This is nonsense. Why does he need to have a media conglomerate? Like the Epoch Times. Why does he need to have a touring performance company like Shen Yun

to make money for his quote-unquote religion? Why not just send an army of law bodies out there? I don't know. Have them go mine cryptocurrency or look into the earth and find out where large deposits of gold are. How the fuck...

I've been doing this for over eight years and it still makes me just as angry as it did in the beginning when I come across the shit. I'm like, why? Why is anyone listening to this? Anyway, I know because they've already listened to other magical thinking things in their lives and they're desperate and I don't know, fucking bored. And they want there's some spiritual hole inside of them to be filled and they're just I don't know they're just in a place in their life where Fuck it. Whatever. Is this is this you know? I am I gonna be get to be cool if I'm in your group do I get to have friends? Do I get to feel like I'm a part of part of a movement fine?

Then just say whatever gobbledygook you want and I'll sit I'll still sit here Lee has publicly claimed that if you manage to activate your law wheel This fucking language and develop some law bodies, you may be able to tap into some pretty crazy abilities. In a Time magazine interview, not some fringe fucking magazine, this is his moment to speak with a journalist for an interview in Time. In 1999, Lee said, he starts his interview by saying, you probably know that some people

have super normal capabilities. And he says, they are unique capabilities that are created during the course of the cultivation practice. In order to reach a higher level, we require people to reach the perfection or completion of cultivation. In Chinese, we call this the Tao.

I really like the way he sets that up. You probably know that some of us are like fucking powerful wizards who can shoot fireballs, right? Who can levitate? You probably heard that. Basically what he's saying. And I'm not being ridiculous when I mention levitation. The interviewer asks, in your book Joan Falun, or is it Joan Falun? You talk about people levitating off the ground You say they should not show other people. Why is that? And Lee in

a rare moment of candor answers, well, because it's not fucking true dummy. No one can levitate. Get out of here. It's fucking ridiculous. Sorry. Why'd you why'd you even ask me that? This is, you know this is a scam. You know that, right? No. Here's how Lee really answers the question. He says, it is the same principle that Western gods in paradise should not be seen by ordinary mortals because they cannot understand its meaning. Okay. I read that answer as him really saying, look, the people who made up all of today's more established religion thousands of years ago, they fucking talked about shit that literally never happens, that is crazy,

and then they don't get a whole bunch of shit, right? People just accept it. So fucking why can't you accept it when I talk about it? Uh, the interviewer. Then asks Lee if he's ever seen people levitate off the ground. And Lee says, quote, I have known too many. That's a weird ad. Too many! So much, bro!

It's become a huge problem, okay? It's kind of a sore subject, to be honest. We've actually lost a few followers. Because they got so good at levitating, and they just wouldn't fucking calm down about it, that they levitated up into outer space and they suffocated, okay? I've lost a lot of friends. Through space suffocation via levitation, alright? I'm constantly saying it, our compounds. Careful with the fucking levitating, guys!

Easy on the floating! Not that we can't lose another one to space! CAREFUL WITH THE FUCKING LEVITATING GUYS! EASY ON THE FLOATING! NOT THAT WE CAN'T LOSE ANOTHER ONE TO SPACE! Uh, the interviewer promptly to name someone he's witnessed levitating. He actually said quote, David Copperfield. He says David Copperfield, he can levitate. And he did it. During performances. Motherfucker, do you not know how magic works? What are you talking about?

David Copperfield is an illusionist, not a member of Falun Gong. He's never levitated. He has performed the illusion of levitation. He's done it on stage using a complex network of nearly invisible wires, right? In like low light. It's like Lee doesn't know what the word illusion means. Hello, he just watches magicians like, well like, well yeah, he's a fucking wizard. I wish you would have given an even more ridiculous answer. Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange puts on his cloak of levitation and there he goes, away he floats. I've seen a lot of drawings of him doing it in several comic books, so it's real. The interviewer then pushes him again, asking why the universe has revealed his path to spiritual enlightenment now and not earlier and Lee says

Mankind has many things that it never knew before. What I can tell you is that human moral values are no longer good. Oh, here we go. Totally. The old human values used to be good, but now they suck fucking jingo-jango. Ah, man, they used to be good before society went to shit, before all of everybody's morals collapsed back in the good old days. Things were great, you know, back when women couldn't vote or worked many jobs, back when rape and murder was way more common than now, back when workers had almost no rights, you know, back when body counts from military conflicts were exponentially higher, back when diseases, we now have vaccines for decimated millions of people every year, back when gay people were imprisoned and killed on a regular basis. Back

when slavery was rampant. Back when the Holocaust was happening. Back when our moral values were better. Only people who think that the like there's a fucking good old days a hundred years ago, the only people who think that are people who are fucking crazy ignorant when it comes to history. Just like the most basic understanding of human history. I know it's early in the episode, but fuck this guy. From all this, we can see that Fei-Lun Gong is not actually just a series of meditation exercises and Tai Chi moves. It's a way to supposedly cultivate your own superpowers, while also becoming completely consummated and enlightened and stuff with law bodies and law wheels and other nonsense. They also teach followers their spin on the history of the world. And what is the history of the world according to Fei-Lung-Gong?

Well, it begins with Buddhism. Buddhism is a faith that was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, more than 25 years ago in India. Supposedly, that's what the books say. Siddhartha means he who achieves his goal. As a non-theistic faith with no god or deity to worship, some scholars describe Buddhism as more of a philosophy or moral code than an organized religion. There are approximately 535 million Buddhists in the world today and many of these Buddhists do look towards the ideals or toward the ideals and teachings of the Buddha to replicate in their own lives.

Siddhartha, Gotama, and a lot of people say his last name differently. I've noticed too. Like, you know, really popular YouTube channels, educational channels. Some say Gautama, some say Gotama. Anyway, the founder of Buddhism later became known as the Buddha, Kutama. Anyway, the founder of Buddhism, later became known as the Buddha, lived during the 5th century BCE. He was born into a wealthy family as a prince in present-day Nepal, but even though he had a lavish lifestyle, he was moved by the suffering he saw in other people and he decided to give up his wealth to live in poverty. For nearly six years he undertook fasting and other austerities,

but these techniques proved ineffectual and he abandoned them. He eventually promoted the idea of the quote middle way, and I do like this philosophy, which means existing between two extremes, a life without indulgences, but also a life without deprivation. After fighting off Mara, an evil spirit who tempted him with worldly comforts and desires, said, Hartha reached enlightenment, becoming a Buddha, an enlightened one, at the age of 35. Very similar to the story of Jesus. Said to be 33 when he said to have died on the cross.

Buddha would live a lot longer, said to die around the age of 80. He spent the rest of his life from the age of 35 on teaching others about how to achieve this spiritual state of enlightenment. And when Gautama passed away around 483 BCE, his followers began to organize the beginnings of a massive religious movement. Buddhist teachings became the foundation for what would develop into, of course, Buddhism. Buddhism spread over the following centuries across Asia down into some of the Pacific Islands with different branches interpreting ideas differently than others, as is the case

with all religions, right? They always mutate and change over time. They're continually mutated and changing. Almost all Buddhists believe in the idea of Dharma, a catch-all term from Buddhist teachings, which prioritizes wisdom, kindness, patience, generosity, and compassion as one's most important virtues. Fei-Lung-Gong believes the earlier fabled years of Buddhism,

they represent a kind of golden age for mankind. Part of this, like the best part of this dharmic cycle. Going back to the Time magazine interview, Lee would say, when Buddha Shakyamuni, which is another name for the Buddha, was teaching his Dharma, there was no written language, so the Dharma was passed by word of mouth. After 500 years, human discourse changed Buddha Shakyamuni's original words and it came to an end. The ending of the Dharma means that the cultivation method began to become chaotic and could no longer enable people to practice cultivation. So because humanity got Buddha's words all twisted,

chaos began to reign and reigns these days more than ever. But worry not, Phelungong will restore order. New Buddha, Li Hongjia, will crank over the Buddha's Dharmic Wheel and begin a new era of prosperity for all of us. So why did the universe need to wait about 2,000 years to reestablish this order? Why not give some other special human important universal teachings two millennia ago instead of waiting until the 1990s for Li Hongjia to show up?

Well, who the fuck knows? Mysterious ways! Oh, the gods. They be so mysterious. Again, when it comes to magical thinking, nothing has to add up. 2 plus 2 doesn't need to equal 4. It can equal 6. It can equal 110. It can equal Donkeyfuck Clown 110, it can equal donkey fuck clown puss.

Or maybe the universe waited for Lee Hung-ja because things only got really messed up recently. Again, according to Lee. The biggest cause of society's change today is that people no longer believe in Orthodox religion. They go to church, but they no longer believe in God. They feel free to do anything. I love this misconception about people who aren't like, especially religious. That we feel free to do anything. Just have fucking dirty animals. Just out there raping in the streets.

It's such nonsense. I'm not religious at all. I don't ever go to church. And I'm not out there cheating on my wife. Not kicking my dogs. not beating my kids, not out there murdering, not out watching kiddie porn or poisoning the local water supply, just running around all who fucking cares? Nothing matters! I don't got a chance! So I don't fucking give a shit about anything! Woo!

Now, a lot of religions believe that without faith, humans are just inherently evil. Right? We're broken. We need to be fixed. It's not true. It's a good sales pitch. You know, helps, you know, sell an ideology. Hey, you're broken.

Luckily, I can fix you with my beliefs. Step inside here. Give me all your money. I'll get your soul all patched up. Anyway, Lee continues with, the second reason is that since the beginning of this century, aliens have begun to invade the human mind and its ideology and culture. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, what? You, you, what? Aliens? Huh? They started to invade the human mind? Is that what you actually said? Yes. There's a strong extraterrestrial component to Falun Gong beliefs, so hell yeah.

According to Lee, these aliens came from other planets obviously but also a lot of them came from other dimensions that we haven't even discovered and these other dimensional aliens well they've introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes to our dimension mm-hmm they started teaching mankind about modern science so that more people would believe more and more in science and end up being controlled because science is evil and not of this fucking dimension. Take that scientists so that more people would believe more and more in science and end up being controlled because science is evil and not of this fucking dimension. Take that, scientist, you evil Star Trek X-File fuckfaces.

Why don't you take your medicine and your TVs and internet, air conditioners and hot water tanks and Theragun massagers and cars and planes and trains and subways and thermal coats and sunglasses and video games and HVAC systems and super comfortable mattresses and gas barbecues and heated swimming pools and hot tubs and ski res mattresses, and gas barbecues, and heated swimming pools, and hot tubs, and ski resorts, and helicopters, and Taco Bell, and fucking porn, and get fucked! You take it back to your evil dimension! But please don't! Because I like a lot of that stuff. Anyway, according to Lee, everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own, when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. I would want to just punch him in the

face at this point in the conversation. It'd be so satisfying if there was just no laws no consequences Just as he's just you know sitting in like a lotus pose saying this is the hardest I can just punch him in his face anyway in terms of culture and spirit He says they already control man mankind cannot live without science The ultimate purpose is to replace humans if cl cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans. Why does a corpse lie dead even though it is the same as a living body? Yeah, exactly. That's like a deep thing to say. Why does a corpse lie dead? Well, because the fucking person's heart stopped beating

and pushing blood around their body and their lungs are no longer, you know, doing the same with oxygen. You dumb fuck. their body and their lungs are no longer you know doing the same with oxygen you dump fuck. Lee next says the difference is the soul which is the life of the body. If people reproduce a human person the gods in heaven will not give its body a human soul. Okay the aliens will take that opportunity to replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings. What? So the so the aliens are more powerful than the gods I guess is what he's saying here. They can easily trick the gods. He continues with, when such people grow up, they will help replace humans with aliens. They will produce more and more clones. They will no longer be humans reproduced by humans. They will act like humans,

but they will introduce legislation to stop human reproduction. What? He says the aliens use many methods to keep people from feeling themselves. Oh, just sorry. The aliens use many methods to keep people from freeing themselves from manipulation. They make earthlings have wars and conflicts and develop weapons using science. Which makes mankind more dependent on advanced science and technology. In this way, the aliens will be able to introduce their stuff and make the preparations for replacing human beings. The military industry leads other industries such as computers and electronics. The human body is the most perfect in the universe.

It is the most perfect form. The aliens want the human body. Does he have anyone to fucking workshop this shit with before he just like gives a presentation? How long do you think it took him to make all that up? An hour? Like 90 minutes tops? I don't feel like you put any preparation to that. Just like- he's just fucking stream of consciousness. Like he's doing mad libs. According to Lee, the aliens need the body because some of them quote look like a human, but ha- This is painfully stupid. I've already... oh my god. Okay, according to Lee, the aliens need the body because some of them quote look like a human, but has a nose that is made of bone.

Others look like ghosts, end quote. What the fuck is he talking about? These aliens? They're smart enough to trick gods into taking over humanity by cloning people and then stopping the non-clones from breeding, but They're not smart enough to figure out how to fix their noses or not look like ghosts Okay I feel like if you had an eighth grade class if you just gave them like your eighth grade teacher And you gave your class

I don't know one hour to invent their own religion. At least three or four of those kids are gonna come up with something better than this. Lee's role regarding saving humanity from being destroyed by aliens, how is this guy fucking wealthy? It makes me angry, is to quote, sweep them away. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's gonna sweep them. He'll sweep them. Don't't worry about it. Don't worry about the aliens. He's gonna sweep them away. Lee stresses that humans are perfectly capable of bringing about the end of society on their own, even without alien intervention though. In the same interview that he fucking completely blew in Time Magazine in 1999, where the interviewer must have

almost fucking drank themselves to death after leaving this interview. almost fucking drank themselves to death after leaving this interview. He said, if aliens are not able, if aliens are not to replace human beings, society will destroy itself on its own. Industry is creating invisible air pollution. The micro particles in the air harm human beings. You have normality in the climate today is caused by that pollution and it cannot be remedied by humans alone. The drinking water is polluted. No matter how we try to purify it, it cannot return to its original purity. Modern science cannot determine the extent of the damage. The food we eat is the product of fertilized soil.

The meat we eat is affected. I can foresee a future when human limbs become deformed. They've always been deformed sometimes. Then he says, the body's joints won't move and internal organs will become dysfunctional. Modern science hasn't realized this yet. He says this as if like it's gonna happen to everybody. As if like eventually we're all just gonna have like weirdly fucking long like you're gonna have your right arm's gonna be like eight feet long and your left arm's gonna be like six inches long and none of the joints will work you just have these weird stiff fucking like tree branches sticking out of your shoulders they're just locked and on your knees

will be all locked up just have tree branch legs like how we would just all be dead human because it wouldn't be able to fuck or find food or do anything if our joints didn't work. I hate this clown. I'm amused by him. I hate him. I was cursing so much when I went all, when I went over this the past few days. Like this again, one of those episodes, I just kept having to get up and just walk around like why fucking, why do I even fucking try to have a life in this world when these clowns become fucking wildly successful and influential with the dumbest shit ever.

Okay, so he's realized what the world scientific community collectively has not been able to figure out yet. 100%. He's enlightened. It's not only environmental disaster that threatens human society, according to Lee. In one of his talks given in 1998 called Teaching the Fah at the Conference in Switzerland, he asserted the following about homosexuality because he should definitely weigh in about that. He's a wise guy. He said, let me tell you, let me tell you, if I weren't teaching this Fah today, God's first target of annihilation would be homosexuals. It's a weird way to say that. Like, is he God? Is he saying like, listen, if I didn't have to give this speech right now, I'd go fucking annihilate

these people. He says, it's not me who would destroy them. Okay, he clarifies. Okay, it's not me who would destroy them, but God, he says. And then he says, you know that homosexuals have found legitimacy and that homosexuality was around back in the culture of ancient Greece. Yes, there was a similar phenomenon in ancient Greek culture. Boom! Mic drop! I know some history! And he says, and do you know why ancient Greek culture is no more? Well, because it just morphed into other cultures because it was a long fucking time ago. That's just the way all cultures have gone. And he says, why are the ancient Greeks gone?

Because they had degenerated to that extent and so they were destroyed. That's deep fucking crazy because the cultures who took them over also had a lot of homosexuality. He says, when God's created man, they prescribe standards for human behavior and living. When human beings overstep those boundaries, they are no longer called human beings, though they still assume the outer appearance of a human. So God's can't tolerate their existence and will destroy them. I want him to be destroyed. As I'm... I'm probably being too honest because I'm... it's a little bit late. I'm probably sharing too many

things right now that I might not only be like, no I should probably just filter that out. But as I'm reading that, I was just in my head just picturing him being shot and killed and maybe happy. Not gonna lie to you. I was picturing a sniper fucking shooting him in the head and him being dead and me just being like, yeah, that's good. So people who aren't straight aren't even human now according to this guy. Okay, all right. In the same lecture, he spoke about mixed marriages as in interracial marriages and said they were another reason for society's downfall.

Oh, sweet Buddha. Sweet, sweet, sweet Buddha. He said, quote, the races in the world are not allowed to be mixed up. Now the races are mixed up and it has brought about an extraordinarily serious problem. Races in the world have always been mixed up. Oh, God. He said once races are mixed up, one does not have a corresponding relationship with the higher levels and he has lost the route

Mixed races have lost their roots as if nobody in the paradise will take care of them They belong to he says the stuff with a straight face the belong They belong to nowhere and no places would accept them Therefore you find the place where the continents of Europe and Asia meet a desert in the past and a depopulated zone When the transportation means were not advanced, it was difficult to pass through it. Okay. With the progress of... That's because it was just mountainous, but okay, whatever. With the progress of modern means, all these are broken through. Thus races have become increasingly mixed up, which can lead to serious consequences. He's a fucking moron. He's talking about like some mountains where the continent of Asia meets the continent of Europe.

He acts like before people were able to climb over those mountains, they just couldn't find anyone of any other race. He says, of course I will not go into details. Okay. I'm just saying that the higher levels do not recognize such a human race. The issue I just mentioned is that human races have a corresponding relationship to the higher levels. The white people at higher levels constitute a small portion, a very small portion, the universe in this world and in this universe. You hear that people? Who aren't purely one race? Gods, do not recognize your existence you dirty mudblood mongrel fucks. You can be punished for your chalk cock and vagina fuckery, for your block and snowpuss treachery.

But seriously, literally all of us are mixed race. Literally every single person on earth. Trace the family tree back far enough, and it currently is believed by the scientific community, who I trust more than any other group of people on this planet, like everyone started out in Africa before spreading out from there. Which would mean that we're all one race. It actually means we're all black. Even some of you super pasty, to the point of nearly being translucent freckled fuckers, live in Ireland and Scotland. Anyway, all this horse shit.

Obviously pretty intense. It's hard to imagine dozens, much less millions of people subscribing to this. Like the 7-10 million people said to be practicing Falun Gong in China, and the 100,000 plus people estimated to be practicing in the US by one estimate. Estimates are all over the place. No one actually knows how many people buy this nonsense, but it is thought to be in the millions. Ugh!

Before I continue presenting more of Lee Hong-Ju's strange teachings, time for this week's first two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, if you want to help us with donations each month and more, sign up to be a Spaceletter on Patreon. Get the entire catalog ad-free and a lot more. Okay, now let's dig back into Lee Hong-Ju's batshit crazy teachings. Leading credence to the idea that it is, in fact,, Fei Lungong has a way of downplaying his more extreme messages and hiding them from new followers at least at first. As a way of making Lee Hong-Ju's idiotic insanity a little more

palatable to Western audiences for instance. Some of his more extreme talks have never been translated into English and then some of these talks have also disappeared from the internet entirely. But certain people have been able to find them thanks to Internet archives. Also, Fei-Lun Gong does this thing where when their messages get a little bit of bad press, they will often either try to say that what Lee was saying was just a metaphor that you don't understand, dang it, got lost in translation, or they try to bury some of Lee's more hateful and or ignorant teachings using secret rhetorical tactics that only Fei Lun Gong members will understand. Let's take their views on medicine as an example. By far

one of the most controversial views of Li's is that Fei Lun Gong does not encourage adherents to take medication since as a wellness movement essentially you should not need medicine if you do all of their exercises properly, if you have faith in their system. And, come on, medicine as we now know was developed by scientists who clearly are sick puppets of nefarious interdimensional beings. In the earliest book of Fei-Lung Gong, Li Hongzhe said, Taking medicine while cultivating implies that you don't believe in cultivation's ability to heal.

Why would you take medicine if you believed in it? You know what? That's a fair question. Get in or get the fuck out, Gongsax! No sitting on the fence no more. Yes, I am now going to sometimes refer to their believers as Gongsax. Fei-Lun Gong claims that sickness is actually sickness karma, a spiritual kind of sickness manifesting as a physical illness And the main method to stop sickness karma is to suffer and to search inward Basically endure the pain for as long as you are able and try to eliminate attachments until you feel better

Sounds like a great way to die if you ever get anything serious What's more you should not feel scared of illnesses because if you are afraid of getting sick, you're asking to get sick. Duh! Lee said in another lecture, a speech called Lecture 6, as a practitioner, if you always think that it is an illness, you are actually asking for it. If you ask for an illness, it will come inside your body. As a practitioner, your Xing Xing level should be high. You should not always worry that it is an illness, for this fear of illness is an attachment,

and it can bring you trouble just the same. I'm gonna say obviously it doesn't work for real sicknesses like cancer. How many people has this idiot gotten killed? Probably quite a few. Indeed, in 2020, ABC reported that a woman living in Sydney, Australia named Colleen decided to stop taking her blood pressure medication after joining Fei Lung Gong and then she died. Yeah, no, she died after a prolonged illness that she tried to manage through Fei Lung Gong meditation techniques and cleansing. Okay, guess that goofy gong sack should have either kept taking her medicine or

had a little more faith. Obviously this makes Fei Lung Gong seem pretty bad because they are. They're terrible. And I hate their belief system so much. But Li has a way of deflecting some of the criticism around his, don't go to the doctor when you're sick bullshit. Li has stated that he doesn't actually forbid practitioners from taking medicine, maintaining that quote, what I'm doing is telling people the relationship between practicing cultivation and medicine taking. An everyday person needs to take medicine when he gets sick. So what most readers will be unaware of here is that Lee is drawing a sharp distinction between practitioners and

ordinary people. What he's actually saying is that it's fine for ordinary schmucks to get medical treatment but true cultivators aka Golden Gong sacks, I mean Fei-Lun Gong practitioners, well they have a different standard applied to them. The standard being that if you take medicine, you're somehow weak or immoral because you know, you haven't followed through with the program. He even admitted this in the face of direct evidence that people were dying because of his advice. In a lecture published on another Fei-Lung Gong website, ClearWisdom.net, these slippery weasels have all kinds of websites, all kinds of YouTube, social media accounts. In May of 2015, Master Lee, yeah he's master if he didn't hear that, acknowledged that many deaths in the group, there have been many deaths,

and he laid the blame for these deaths squarely on the people who died. He said, there have been quite a few instances of sickness karma tests with many people even passing away. Like he says, yeah he just says many people. But truth be told, if I'm to put it seriously, you cannot tell from the surface how a cultivator is really doing. Of course, such a person will be doing dafa things like others, but what people see are the outward things,

while in reality there are many attachments deep inside which others cannot see. Oh, what a classic faith loophole that cults love to exploit. Oh, I'm sorry. very very bad happened to you Guess you should have had more faith Guess you should have prayed harder listen to me more, etc Ben Hurley was a former Falun Gong member in Sydney who left the group in 2014 or he is a former Falun Gong member He witnessed a woman he called Lin develop quite a quote bulge on the side of her head This is what led to him getting

out of the cult. He said in a 2017 blog post, she was probably questioning herself over and over again what attachments she had not let go of that were causing this sickness to spread through her body and endanger her life. Another part of me feared that by looking at it I was acknowledging it something you do not do with an illness in Fei Lung Gong because Master Li Hongzha teaches that his pupils do not get illnesses. This is pure madness. Later he learned that Lin passed away. Passed away while in extreme pain, most likely also believing it was all her fault that she died of cancer. After Ben went public with his experience, a range of stories poured in from other ex-members. Their stories expressed a

mix of excitement and fear. They were thrilled they can now do things like listen to pop music, eat sashimi, have a beer, have sex, hang out with non-believers aka ordinary people without feeling like filthy betrayers. But many were still anxious that Lee could still read their minds via his stupid fucking law bodies. And this leads me to challenging Lee to a fight to the death. Any time old man, you bring the law bodies, as many as you want. All I will bring is one aluminum baseball bat that I get to swing as hard as I want and we'll find out how magical you are. God, that really would be amazing. That would be the pinnacle of my existence. Anyway, some former members hadn't even dared to tell their parents or spouses that they had left the group fearing that they would

be exiled from their social network. One person who did reveal that they had left the group fearing that they would be exiled from their social network. One person who did reveal that they had left, they were ultimately locked in a car while their family members tried to convince them to join again. Another was locked in a relative's house while they tried to convince them to stay. Others had to cut off contact because their relatives became too aggressive, telling ex-members that they were going to be sent to the gate of no life. In other words, gong sack hell. Indeed, Lee has described what this pseudo hell is like in detail, comparing it to being boiled

alive in a pot of sputum, fancy word for mixed saliva and mucus, the kind you might cough up if you got a respiratory infection. And while the concept of something spits not hell for gong sacks might seem funny to us, very real, very terrifying for believers. But does that mean that phalaen gong sacks might seem funny to us. Very real. Very terrifying for believers. But does that mean that Falun Gong is a cult? Do they practice demanding unquestioned loyalty from followers? Do they isolate members from friends and family? Do they not tolerate questions or critical inquiry? Do they not distort the truth? Claim to have secret knowledge? Cultivate extreme devotion to their leader and practices? Let's dig in further. To understand how this group truly operates and how they will grow, let's to understand how hard

it is to figure out what the line between the two dueling propagandas of Fei-Lung-Gong and the Chinese Communist Party are, let's now dive into today's Time Suck timeline. For a look at Lee's early life, we have to rely on two sources. Sources that are not all that reputable, because they are Phelun Gong-Teks. Coal leaders. They almost always obscure their origins, don't they? Or rewrite them, or both? Oh, they sure do. An unofficial biography appeared in the first of Li's major publications, Zhanghua Feilun Gong, and was written by Zhu Huigong, a journalist working for the Chinese

Association for Scientific Research into Qigong. This piece was titled, The Wheel of the Law Revolves the New Cosmos. On Li Hangzhe and the Feilun Gong he founded. A second official spiritual biography appeared in early editions of Feilun Gong's primary text, Zhuang Feilun, and was written by the Feilun Dafa Research Society probably around 1993 or 1994. The official biography begins like this. The year of 1992 saw the spectacular appearance of a marvelous man with his miraculous cultivation way in the world of Qigong in China. Marvelous man? The marvelous man was of course Li Hongzhe. Says he was born May 13th 1951.

The book notes that this was the eighth day of the fourth lunar month of that year, the day on wouldn't you know it, the birth of the Siddhartha Kottama, or the Buddha, would be celebrated. So Li already aligning himself with some pretty powerful spiritual forces. And of course, he was not born on that day. That grifter was not even born that year. The official recorded birthdate for Li was either July 7th or July 27th, 1952. Why isn't there a clear answer there? Well, because China. Hard to figure out the exact truth about a pathological liar when they are from a nation

that pathologically lies. Fei Lungong has dueled with Chinese officials over the birthdate for many years alleging that China's claim of the official date is nothing more than propaganda to discredit him. We do know probably that Li was born in the town of Gongzuling in Jilin into an ordinary intellectualist family. In other words, his parents held white-collar jobs. From the outset, Li was apparently a gifted and compassionate child, of course according to his biography, helping his mom with her tasks and looking after his younger brothers and sisters. Li's spiritual training began, I mean it for sure didn't, but he'll claim it does,

at the age of four when he said he received personal instructions from Law Master Quan Ju, a name meaning complete enlightenment, the alleged tenth heir to the great law of Buddhist school, who first introduced him to the cultivation of the three-part morality of the Fei-part morality of the Feilun Gong. And these three values were grifting, lying, embezzling. I mean, truth, compassion, sometimes translated as benevolence, and forbearance. Apparently as soon as the Master saw Lee, he said, quote, I thought you'd be bigger. Wait, no, that's a line from Roadhouse. No, he said, quote, you are the one I've been looking for.

Which sounds like a quote from another movie, maybe Star Wars Episode 4, New Hope. I think I'm thinking of droids. And then instead of talking to him about the virtues, he mainly taught Lee by looking at him disapprovingly, quote, causing his hand to be cut or sending, quote, some big boys who would give him a good beating when Lee did wrong. There's a new Buddha in town, okay? Instead of gently delivering peace and tranquility through philosophical messes, this motherfucker's gonna beat some enlightenment into your little punk ass.

Lee said if he ended up confessing his wrongdoing, Master Quan Ju would smile upon him. Then when he was eight, quote, Mr. Lee suddenly felt something more in the corner of his eyes. What he felt turned out to be the words Jen, Shan, and Ren. Truth, compassion, forbearance. Which Master Kwanju, his Jedi fucking teacher, had planted there. They would just stuck words into the corner of the little kid's eyes. Seems like there could be a far less aggressive way to

get him to remember these attributes. Though they were invisible to other people, Li said he could see these words floating around in his fucking eyeballs at any time. Totally. He also attained, quote, the superb great law with great supernatural powers. Shang-shang-da-fa, ju-da, shang-tong, enabling him to perform feats beyond the powers of normal people. Mm-hmm, totally. That totally happened. He said he can now render himself literally invisible in games of hide and seek. That he could pull old nails out of wood with little effort. Weird to include that in a list of powers following invisibility. But okay, whatever.

That he could quote, rise high into the air, so levitate, and stop boys from fighting by preventing them from moving. Okay, he definitely should have dropped the pulling old nails out of wood detail from that story. Who is editing this? Oh, what powers did I have as a child, you ask? Well, I could turn invisible at will. I could melt my enemies with laser beams shooting out of my eyeballs. I could shape shift into the form of a dragon. And most impressive, I did not have to try too hard to remove old rusty nails from wood."

And now check out what he said he could do when he was in fourth grade. This is another quote. When he was in the grade. This is another quote. When he was in the fourth grade, from his unofficial biography, whatever, from his official unofficial biography. When he was in the fourth grade, once he left his school bag in the classroom after school. When he returned to Fetchit, he found the door of the classroom locked and the window shut. Then an idea came to his mind.

If only I could enter the classroom. Really? That's a fucking novel idea. Like that's written. Then an idea came to his mind. Who wouldn't have that idea come to their mind? Like you have something in a room, you want to go get it, and you show up and it's locked, and then you just sit there with like what? No thoughts in your head for a while, and all of a sudden this light bulb moment comes on. You're like, wait a minute. I know what I want to do I want to be in this locked room to get the thing I want back to his biography

With the thought flashing past he suddenly found himself already in the classroom with another thought he was out again Even he himself was amazed at what happened Once after this an idea suddenly occurred to him. How would I feel if I stopped myself in the middle of the glass? With such a thought, he really found himself in the middle of the window glass, feeling his whole body and mind filled with fragments of the glass. He felt so uncomfortable that he wanted to go out immediately. With this thought, he was out of the glass again. Holy shit! How impressive! I wonder why he doesn't do shit like that anymore. Probably because this is all made up.

Apparently none of young Lee's new superpowers that he never had ever gave him a big head either. He was powerful but also humble. Lee used his powers to perform good deeds. This is the list of good deeds he performed with his superpowers. Why? This is the list of good deeds he performed with his superpowers. Why? Three things. Clearing roads of stones so no one would have an accident, like no one would trip over the

stone or drive into the stone. That's one. Two, rescuing an adult from drowning. Okay, that's pretty cool. And then three, weeping at the sufferings of good characters in films or novels. Huh. Not expected that. I really thought he was gonna do a lot more with his powers. You can teleport through walls? Oh my god. Do you ever use that power to, I don't know, like help bring in contraband to wrongly incarcerated political prisoners,

since there's many of those in China, so that they can then escape? Oh, no. That's god damn... damn shit. That's a good idea. No, I haven't, not yet. I haven't done that yet. But what I have been doing a lot of is weeping at the suffering of good characters in books, you know. I have empathy. How the fuck is this guy successful? When Lee was 12, I wish he was killed, but he wasn't. Instead, when he wasn't. Instead, when he was 12 or around 1963, Master Kwan Ju informed Lee that another master would take his place to continue with Lee's instruction.

The second Jedi, I mean second master, was called Eight-Pole Immortal. Mm-hmm. Yes, they were actually called, that was their name, Eight-Pole Immortal. Sounds like some kind of hardcore cosplay porno. And Eight-Pole, oh And old Apehole taught Lee something called Daoist Gong Fu. And that largely consisted of physical exercises and gymnastics forms, including some with swords and spears. So that's cool. That's super cool. The first part of his biography now concludes. This riveting book with the departure of the second fucking poll master and then it picks up in 1972

Not sure what he was up to between 1963 and 1972 just a lot of a lot of pole shit playing with a lot of poles May of 1966 when Lee was a young teenager Mao's cultural revolution kicked off. We know that happened even though we don't know exactly happened Lee 17 years after his troops seized power Mao saw his latest political campaign as a way of reinvigorating the communist revolution by strengthening ideology and weeding out opponents. Quote, Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system. One early directive stated. On May 16th, 1966 party chiefs in Beijing issued a document known as the May 16th

notification. It warned that the party had been infiltrated by counter-revolutionary revisionists who were plotting to create a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Chinese students sprung into action setting up Red Guard divisions in classrooms and campuses around the country. This dictatorship must be stopped, sayeth the ruthless dictator. By August of 1966, so-called Red August, the mayhem was in full swing as Mao's allies urged Red Guards to destroy the Four Olds. Old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture. Party officials, teachers, and intellectuals were publicly humiliated, beaten, and in some cases murdered, or driven to suicide after vicious quote struggle sessions, aka torture

sessions. Nearly 1800 people lost their lives in Beijing in August and September of 1966 alone, most of them tortured to death. Mao assumed that China's amazing success with the Cultural Revolution would allow him to bring communism to the rest of the world, but fortunately that would not happen. Instead, chaos spread rapidly as more and more groups joined the fray, each with their own vision of how the country would embrace communism. Rival factions battled in cities across the country, almost like a civil war. By late 1968, Mao had realized that his revolution had spiraled out of control.

In a bid to rein in the violence, he issued instructions to send millions of urban youth down to the countryside for re-education. He also ordered the army to restore order, effectively transforming China into a military dictatorship which lasted until about 1971. As the army fought to bring the situation under control, the death toll soared. Between 1971 and the Cultural Revolution's official end in 1976, a semblance of normality returned to China, but the effects of the Cultural Revolution were still visible in the many, many deaths, destroyed cities and towns, and empty schools and churches. It is unclear what happened to Li's family in all of this. If his parents were white collar workers, they were probably interrogated, possibly tortured, forced to submit to Mao's Red Guards or sent to re-education camps later on.

Perhaps they were killed. We do know obviously that Li himself survived. In 1970 he began to work at a military horse farm in Northeast China. His official biography picks back up in 1972 when he was now gainfully employed at the age of 20 or 21. According to some sources, he was working as a trumpet player with the division of the Provincial Forestry Police. Odd. Also, what do you do? I play trumpet for the police.

He was also still studying spiritual enlightenment, according to his biography, now with a third spiritual master. And this master's name was Eight Pol for three holes. No, this man was quote a master of the Great Way School who went by the name True Daoist aka Jin Daozi. He came from the Chongbai Mountains near the Korean border. I mean he didn't but according to this guy never existed. Jin Daozi apparently wore normal clothes and taught inner cultivation rather than physical exercises or moral behavior.

In a rare reference to the historical circumstances of the time, the biography notes that, quote, at the time people did not dare to practice qigong openly, so Li practiced at night. Sometimes it notes his master would take his zu-yi-shi, the main consciousness, out for practice. In sleep, he could often feel his master putting something in his brain and celestial eye. God, I bet that hurt getting something put in his brain at night. I hope it wasn't his wiener. Actually, you know what I hope it was. I hope this idiot received further spiritual instruction by having some enlightened being skullfuck it into him. Why not? Make this even more ridiculous. This master stressed the importance of the cultivation of Jing Jing, which would come to be defined in

Fei-Lun Gong publications as mind or heart nature or moral character. Jen Dowsie left Li in 1974 and now his fourth master shows up an unnamed woman, quote, a female master of the Buddha school who chiefly taught Buddha school's cultivation principles and exercises to him. I mean, it's unnamed. She's unnamed in this one biography, but in the next one that's written, her name is Three Holes for Eight Poles. No, her name was Dirt Bike. No, no, we don't know. We don't know her name, of course. It kind of sucks actually that she didn't even get a name. We don't know anything else about her except the fact that by the time she came on the scene his quote energy potency

Had reached a very high level feels like he's talking about boners now. I think he might be talking about boners 1978 after the cultural team of the forestry police squad where Lee Hong just served was disbanded He stayed to work in the army's guest house Through an acquaintance. He now met Lee Rui who was working as a cashier at the Chaoyong Bathhouse. Apparently by this time, Lee Hong-Ju's family was not well off with divorced parents and a sick mother, plus many siblings. I don't know why he couldn't fucking cure his mom with his fucking wizard powers. Fortunately, Lee Rui did not mind his family's poor conditions. I mean, you know, his superpowers probably made up for that.

He's probably great in bed with his, you know, levitation visibility and stuff. I don't know. And the two got married. After their marriage, Lee Rui's family provided great support to Lee Hongjia, helping him secure a position at the Jilin Street Grain Office of the Chong Chun Grain and Oil Supply Company in April of 1982 through her father's connections. The couple's daughter, Lee Mage, will be born in June of the same year. It is at this point that his bio starts to get pretty vague. Over about a dozen years, the biography continues, he received instructions successively from more than 20 masters, holy shit, from both the Buddhist school

and the Tao school, with a different master teaching him a different level of cultivation. And yet, despite all this teaching, he's still working at the fucking Chongqing Grain and Oil Supply Company. Alright. Luckily, finally, his quote, energy potency had reached an extremely high level. Some of his supernatural powers are difficult for an ordinary person to imagine or understand. But still has a day job. Luckily for Li, a lot of his coworkers started taking up a new hobby around this time.

A hobby that was rising in popularity massively in China. And it was about to intersect with Li's spiritual interests quite neatly. And before I reveal the pivot that allowed Li to transform from a factory worker to a cult leader, time to take today's second in two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors and now let's find out what amazing opportunity falls in Li Hongzhe's lap. Guizhong is a Chinese practice of aligning breath and movement that goes back over 4,000 years, some say around 8 or 7,000 years. Sort of straddles multiple spaces as a means of exercise, healing, and a kind of martial

art training. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first forms of Qigong can be linked to ancient shamanic meditative practice and gymnastic exercises. Nearly 7,000 year old neolithic vessel depicts a priest shaman in a classic Qigong pose and these shamanic rituals including Qigong eventually were incorporated into traditional Chinese medicine. When Buddhism came over from southwest Asia to China around 200 CE the Buddhist practice of meditation dovetailed pretty neatly with Qigong paving the way for

Buddhism to become more widely adopted in Eastern Asia. The resulting transformation was the start of the Chinese Buddhist Qigong tradition. But that's a little reductive because it's not just one tradition, it's a whole bunch of them. For example, if you were an ancient Chinese warrior, you might be taught the version of Qigong that more aligned with martial arts. If you were a farmer though, you might be taught a version that lends itself to supposed healing. But because of its association with religion, in the 20th century, Qigong had one big enemy, Mao Zedong. Actually Mao didn't really know what to do with Qigong. On the one hand, it was something that was essentially Chinese, a foundational part of the culture that could be drawn on to bring

people together. But on the other hand, it did have religious elements. And Mao, not a big fan of anything that could draw people's allegiances away from him, religion being one of the top offenders in his mind. He eventually issued a proclamation, Chinese medicine is a great treasure house. You must make efforts to uncover it and raise its standards. And that both legitimized the practice of traditional Chinese medicine and created an impetus to develop a stronger scientific basis for it, something that would push China into the modern era. And so the more historical elements of Qigong were stripped away leaving something that was sort of a glorified aerobics class in

its place. This was embodied by a man named Liu Guizhen who in the 1950s supposedly used his family's method of Qigong to successfully cure himself of various ailments. And the Chinese government liked this. It didn't reek of superstition. It had practical application. So Liu promoted his method to his patients and eventually published a book that promoted his success. And it became a wild success. Or he became a wild success in its own right with his book here.

As a result, the first institutional support for Qigong was established across China but this practice remained under tight government control and the general public had very limited access to it. The end of the cultural revolution in the late 1970s and early 80s meant there was a new openness though in Chinese society. Now you can at least talk about anything you wanted. If it was folk medicine, you know, go for it. If it was superstition, that was fine. And in the absence of a government belief system to put their faith in, people started to flock to charismatic figures offering a comprehensive view of the world, even if that view didn't exactly have any hard evidence to back it up.

Guo Lin, a Beijing artist who claimed to have cured herself of uterine cancer in the 1960s, Lin, a Beijing artist who claimed to have cured herself of uterine cancer in the 1960s, was one of the first Qigong masters to start teaching Qigong openly to the general public outside of a government institutional setting. And scientists, rather than fighting this tide of, let's call it, non-fact-based medicine, were actually very curious about it. They'd been suppressed for decades too, told what they could and could not research, what was approved and what was off limits to even talk about. Among the new subjects of inquiry, they studied the effects of qigong and provided scientific foundations for qigong practice.

In 1979, Gu Hanson of the Shanghai Institute of Atomic Research first reported on the external measurement of qi, the supposed life force that qigong aims to contain in the channel, and this only reassured the public that qigong really was the comprehensive system it claimed to be. In the early 1980s, the enthusiasm for this research even led to the use of Qi as an explanation for paranormal abilities like extra-sensory perception, ESP, and psychokinesis. And now the government, which was still very repressive and is to this day, started to try to rein people in. They're like, whoa, weirdos. ESP, psychokinesis, let's walk them back a bit.

To do that, Chinese authorities created a national organization to oversee the great variety of Qigong disciplines that were proliferating across the country. The China Qigong Scientific Research Society was established in 1985. They convened their first meeting in Beijing in 1986. That's how serious this was in China.

That's how popular this was. They're having all these institutes sprouting up, you know, the government's, you know, putting together to study this. The organization counted among its leadership several eminent members and former members of the Politburo and the National People's Congress, as well as former ministers of health and education, a lot of big-wig politicians, a lot of big communist party members. In other words, this is serious shit. And by the middle of the 1980s, there were now more than 2,000 different Qigong organizations, and between 60 and 200 million Qigong practitioners across China. Almost a fifth of the Chinese

population at that time. A lot of people into this. You know, people who really needed something to believe in. Li, of course, was paying attention to all of this as was everybody else in China. Li still also had his day job. In 1988, Li was still working as a staff member at a state-owned grain and oil supply company in Chongqing, Jilin province. But when he wasn't working, he was undoubtedly thinking about how to capitalize on this Jigong frenzy. Apparently Lee made some new friends or followers doing some Jigong in 1990. And they would soon learn that their new guru was more than just an exercise teacher. That is if you believe Lee's biography again.

In July of 1990, according to Lee, he was outside practicing Qigong with some followers when the weather turned stormy, as dramatic black clouds rolled in and thunder echoed and lightning flashed, of course. And his fellow practitioners asked him if they could go back inside because they were scared. Lee continued, quote, as steadily as a mountain with no intention to waver or shrink back. And he promised that it would not rain for half an hour while he finished his fucking meditation. And you know what? It didn't. Half an hour later exactly the rain started. Yeah, in addition to being able to turn invisible while playing tag,

and to be able to pass through solid walls and sic his army of fucking minion law body thingies on whatever he wanted to do with those, this motherfucker, this guy who doesn't look visually like he was capable of cranking 10 push-ups out in one session by the way, can't control the weather! And this is where the second section of the biography ends, with Lee knowing all there is to know about the universe. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, mm-hmm. By the power of Grayskull!

I have the power! Hell yeah. Apparently the storm prediction confirmed he knew all the ways to know about the universe. According to the biography, from this point on, quote, He has been able to see the truth of the universe, many more beautiful things, which have existed there for a long time, as well as the origin, development, and future of mankind. Yes, he can see the fucking future. Wake up. And now with all this knowledge, Lee's able to develop his magnum opus, Phelund Gong, sometimes called Phelund Dafa. Those terms are used kind of interchangeably, but

from what we can tell Phelund Dah usually is referring to the exercise portion of the ideology, while Felungong refers to the entire spiritual belief system. Maybe. It's nonsense, for one thing, and hard to translate. And why did he make Felungong at all? Out of the goodness of his heart, I'm glad you asked. Out of compassion. For those who quote spirits, for those whose quote, spirits have been corrupted and whose bodies have been suffering. Lee wanted to develop a great law suitable for ordinary people to cultivate. Yeah, he didn't do it to fucking grift hundreds of millions of dollars out of people, okay? He didn't do it so he didn't have to work his shitty communist factory job no more.

He did it to raise humanity's collective consciousness. That's why fucking new Buddha did it. And Lee didn't develop some dumbed down regular guy version that you could do in your own home on your own time. Like just simple old exercise like qigong. Uh-uh, because that already existed. Now, Lee has insisted that he came up with something brand new. That he began to develop it all the way back in 1984

with his development of the Felun Budala. Felun Budala is basically the basis of Felun Gong, the practice of high-level cultivation according to the three values of truth, compassion, and forbearance. And if you can truly embody those three values, you can assimilate to the supreme nature of the universe! Yes! Oh yes! I have the power!

Lee has the power. Lee finalized his magical method of attaining ultimate enlightenment in 1989. And preempt accusations that he had just a bunch of different traditional mindfulness practices, packaged them together and act like what he came up with was something new, which is fucking definitely what he did. His biography claims that what quote, Feilun Gong contains is more than what belongs to Mr. Li or a few cultivation schools. It has assembled all the mystical powers, which are the essence of the whole cosmos. He did it. He fucking did it you guys!

He literally figured out everything. Like literally everything in the whole universe which means you can never one-up him. But actually what he really did was just become a predatory opportunist. Lee realized that an insanely popular fad was sweeping the nation like wildfire and like so many charlatans throughout history have done he saw an opportunity and he Capitalized on it, but unlike so many other charlatans Lee became wildly popular Like extremely what the fuck is happening? How are so many people falling for a grift this stupid popular in? 1992 when Lee is around the age of 40 he decides it's time to start selling his scam I mean vision and boy does he ever sell it. Li Hongjia and his Fei Lungong, they become

an instant star of the national Qigong movement in China and his teachings are welcomed into the government-administered China Qigong Scientific Research Society. From 1992 to 1994, Li travels all over China giving 54 lecture seminars on the practice and beliefs of Fei Lungong. His seminars typically will last between 8 and 10 days and by the end of his tour they are attracting as many as 6,000 participants per seminar. The practice grew rapidly based on its purported efficacy in improving health claims that are total bullshit and its moral and philosophical elements

which were more developed than those of rival Qigong schools. Again, people in China really needed something to believe in. They needed to believe that morality was not dead. They needed to believe that the Cultural Revolution had not killed it. Also important to point out that just because Li's his system exploded in popularity that does not mean he was some genius. Some, you know, it just means to me that he just had, you know, no integrity and a lot of confidence. I mean, I look at it like, imagine if you lived in a country that had no desserts, just for decades. No desserts. No treats. No one's been allowed to have a fucking sweet treat for 30 years. And then all of a sudden, the government doesn't care if you can have desserts or not.

And somebody shows up with a fucking bag of donuts. And people go ape shit. Everybody wants donuts. They're delicious. And all kinds of donut shops start popping off. And before the market gets too saturated, you jump into the donut game. And your donuts, yeah, they are delicious. But actually not any more delicious than any of your competitors.

However, your packaging is way better. Your donut boxes look a lot cooler, especially because inside each of them and you know and on them is written all these messages about how magical these donuts are. How they're super healthy. Your donuts or half the calories of other donuts. They're not, but you say they are. They're packed with vitamins that can cure cancer. They don't, but you claim that. They're literally made by angels and if you eat them every day you definitely go to heaven when you die. None of that's true. They don't, but you claim that. They're literally made by angels. And if you eat them every day, you definitely go to heaven when you die.

None of that's true. They're not healthy, they can't cure shit. They have the same amount of calories, fucking no vitamins, nothing to do with heaven. Don't even taste better than other donuts, but you're a fucking dirty liar. And you're willing to commit 100% to being a donut grifter, and you will never admit that you've lied,

and you will always act like you're telling the truth. This is what Lee did. He had some extra bells and whistles to a sales pitch for the same shit his competitors were selling. None of the things extra things he added were true, but he pretended they were, pretended this is like some kind of cure-all and he's you know, really good at lying. Just you know, never admitting, never tipping anybody off to the fact he's full of shit. Now let's examine his early 90s lecture tour in a little more detail. Just, you know, never admitting, never tipping anybody off to the fact that he's full of shit. Now let's examine his early 90s lecture tour in a little more detail.

May 13th, 1992, Lee begins public teaching at Fei Lun Gong, or the public teaching of Fei Lun Gong, at the number five middle school in Chongchun, Jilin province, lecturing to a crowd of several hundred people. His first seminar runs for nine days at a cost of 30 yuan per person. Back then, one US dollar equal to five and a half yuan. So seminar costs a little over five bucks, you know, per person humble beginnings. The following month in June, Li gets invited by the China Qigong Scientific Research Society to lecture in Beijing. That September, Fei Lungong is recognized as a Qigong branch under the administration of the state-run China Qigong Scientific Research Society. Like I mentioned, later that year, Lee has formally declared a Master of Qigong by the CQRS and receives a permit to legally teach it nationwide. And the Chinese government will come to regret that very soon. Also in 1992, Lee and several Fei Lungong students participate in the 1992 Asian Health Expo in Beijing,

the last from December 12th to December 21st. The organizer of the health fair will remark that Fei Lungong and Li quote, received the most praise of any Qigong school at the fair and achieved very good therapeutic results. Hmm. This event helped cement Li's popularity in the Qigong world and reports of Fei Lungong's healing power spread in newspapers across the country. No details on who he supposedly healed and of what. Did he have plants in the audience? Was it a sham? Was it a placebo effect? Did the physical aspect of what he was teaching help relax and de-stress some people, lower their blood pressure, reduce back pain, etc. It's possible. I mean Tai Chi does that. I thought I was going to have to have a second back surgery many years ago but then got turned on to

Tai Chi and a few weeks after doing the meditative you know exercises every morning, this gentle flowing movements, my sciatica was you know reduced more than months of physical therapy had previously been able to reduce it. There's definitely benefits to certain exercise and meditation regimens. It's just not going to allow you to warp through wolves, turn invisible, fucking control the weather, see the future, cure any and all diseases. By the end of 1992, Li had given five week longlong lecture seminars in Beijing, four in Chongchun, one in Taiwan, and one in Shandong.

No info on how much he made from those, but it went well. Following these seminars, Li sets his sights on publication now. In April of 1993, China Falun Gong, the first major instructional text by Li Hongxia, is published by the military Yiwen Press. The book gives an explanation of Fei Lungong's basic cosmology, moral system, and exercises. Meanwhile, in the spring and summer of 1993, a series of glowing articles appear in Qigong magazines nationwide, lauding the benefits of Fei Lungong. Several feature images of Li Hongzhe on the cover, and he now becomes recognizable on the path

to becoming a household name in China. And surprisingly gets more support from the government. July 30th, 1993, the Feilun Su Lian Dafa Research Society is established as a branch of the CQRS, an entire branch devoted to the study of Li's form, specifically of Qigong. And then Li will take his teachings to the police. In August, an organization under the Ministry of Public Security sends a letter to the CQRS thanking Li Hongjia for providing his teachings to police

officers injured in the line of duty. The letter claimed that one of the 100 officers treated by Lee only one failed to experience obvious improvement to their health. And again, stretching, meditating, consistent exercising, thinking more positively, you know, working on your breathing, all that stuff has proven health benefits. And placebo effect. Following helping to heal numerous police officers, the Ministry of Public Security decides to take their gratitude to the press. On September 21st, the People's Public Security Daily, a publication of the Ministry of Public Security, commends Fei Lungong for quote, promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people in safeguarding social order and security and

promoting rectitude in society. That's some fucking commie speak if I've ever heard it. What'd they do? They promoted the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people. They safeguarded social order and security. And they promoted rectitude in society. Right? And for the second year, Lee participates in the Asian Health Expo in Beijing

from December 11th to December 20th, this time as a member of the organizing committee. He wins several awards. The event is proclaimed the most acclaimed Qigong master. Uh oh, gonna go to his head. Fei-Lung Gong receives the special gold award and award for advancing frontier science. Frontier science, okay. Let's now fast forward a little bit. All of this will mean that Lee's star is not only rising nationally, it's gonna rise internationally too. On August This will mean that Lee's star is not only rising nationally, it's gonna rise internationally too. On August 3rd, 1994, the city of Houston, Texas,

hearing about all these fucking awards, they declared Lee Hong-Ju an honorary citizen for his unselfish public service for the benefit and welfare of mankind. Okay? And then something happens that might surprise you. As revenue from the sale of his publications grows, Lee ceases to charge fees for his classes

and thereafter insists that Fei-Lung Gong must be taught free of charge. The last full seminar will take place from December 21st to December 29th 1994 in the southern city of Guangzhou. Why would he do this? Well it appears Li caught on to another way to make money. January 4th 1995, Zhuang Fei Lun, the complete teachings of Fei Lun Gong Gong is published by the China Television Broadcasting Agency Publishing Company. And this is where the Chinese government has an oh shit what have we done moment. The government itself had been instrumental in popularizing Li as an example of a thriving

Chinese culture and science post-cultural revolution. Now it's looking like he's becoming too powerful. In 1995, authorities mandate that all Qigong groups establish Communist Party branches. And in February, Li is approached by the Chinese National Sports Committee, Ministry of Public Health and China Qigong Science Research Association to establish jointly a Feilun Gong Association, but he turns down the offer and he decides to take Feilun Gong abroad. Beginning with the invitation of the Chinese embassy in Paris, Li begins teaching Fei-Lung-Gong outside of China.

On March 13th, 1995, he gives a seven-day class in Paris for free, followed by another lecture series in Sweden in April for free, in Gothenburg, Stockholm, and Utevala. So he gives three different cities in Sweden. And then in 1996, he formally announces that he has done teaching Falun Gong in China This is a massive fuck you to China's communist government even worse for the government the book Zhu An Falun is listed as a bestseller by Beijing Youth Daily in January March and April 1996 Right and I think that free classes thing he's doing you know he squashed out his competitors

They're trying to make money on the actual classes. Why would people do that if they can go to this more famous guy's class for free and then they're all going to buy his book. He's going to make plenty of money doing that. He's going to really like blow his cult up to massive numbers. In March, Fei Lungong files for withdrawal from the China Qigong Scientific Research Society, another fuck you to the Chinese government. Li will later claim that he had not found the state-run CQRS to be engaging enough in genuine research, so he's shitting on him. Other reports will say that other Qigong leaders are so angry that Li is charging such low prices,

free, no price for his lectures, and undercutting them, but he refuses to charge more for whatever reason. He seems to want no ties at all with any other organization. And I would guess that because, you know, he doesn't need to, he can just take the whole pie at least direction administrators at the Falun Gong Research Association of China apply for registration with three other government organizations, including the government run Buddhist Association of China, the United Front Work Department, and a department of the CCP. All the applications are ultimately denied but Li has his major victory

already withdrawal from the CQRS so now Fei Lungong is entirely without government oversight. And as you can imagine the Chinese government not a fan of this at all. The first major state-run media article criticizing Fei Lungong appears in the Guangming Daily on June 17th, 1996. The article alleged that Fei Lun Gong represented a manifestation of feudal superstition and that its core text, the best-seller, Zhu An Fei Lun, is a work of unproven pseudoscience that's a con. It has swindled the masses. In response, right, shots fired here, in response Fei Lun Gong practitioners write in a barrage of letters complaining about these accusations.

And the government does not like this public show of support one bit. Authorities now banned Fei-Lun Gong books from further publication on June 24th, 1996. Saying that the organization has engaged in quote spreading superstition. Well, this doesn't seem to bother Lee too much. For one thing, he now has a massive number of supporters. He will claim 2 million adherents to his new ideology. The government will claim he has somewhere between 50 and 70 million. Complicating things, many of Fei-Lung Gong's adherents are members of the government.

And some branches of the government will not only denounce the teachings, they will not only not denounce, excuse me, his teachings, they will support them instead. Indeed, two years later, China's National Sports Commission will launch its own investigation to, you know, they'll conduct a bunch of interviews of over 12,000 Fei Lungong practitioners in the Guangdong province, and they find that 97.9% of the respondents say that Fei Lungong definitely improved her health. The report said, we are convinced the exercises and effects of Fei Lungong are excellent. It has done an extraordinary amount to improve society's stability and ethics.

This should be duly affirmed. So Li is getting pretty powerful in China, despite some people in the government wanting to squash him. That summer, Li kicks off another international lecture tour. This is the summer of 1996. He travels to Hong Kong, Sydney, Australia, Bangkok, Thailand, Houston, Texas, New York City, New York, and then comes back to Beijing. Between tours, he will live in Houston, then he'll live in New York on a permanent visa

status with his wife and daughter. It's unclear when they have this child or had that child. Back in China, pushback against teachings like Li's is starting to heat up again. A CCP document from 1996 contends that 500,000 people are under the quote deceptive influence of cults, though Fei Lungong isn't initially mentioned here. Meanwhile in 1997, attempting to resolve some of the controversy, the Ministry of Public Security launches an investigation into whether Fei Lungong should be deemed a heretical religion, a cult. But the report concludes that no evidence has appeared thus far. However somebody is about to

change that opinion. Somebody named Zhong Zumin. Zhong had joined the CCP while he was still in college. Early 20s, right after the establishment of the People's Republic of China back in 1949. Rising through the ranks over the following several decades, he was appointed as the mayor of Shanghai in 1985, then promoted to Communist Party secretary, as well as a member of the CCP Politburo in 1987. Then after CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyong is ousted after expressing his support

of the student movement that led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Zemin took his spot. Throughout the 90s, Zemin would consolidate his hold on power to become the paramount leader of the country. He coined the term socialist market economy to move China's centrally planned socialist economy, which did not generate much profit into a government regulated market economy to move China's centrally planned socialist economy, which did not generate much profit, into a government-regulated market economy. That basically meant that China would deregulate heavy industry while letting

go of small and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, essentially optimizing the economic sphere to make and produce more and more money for the government. To replace those small and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, the government also allowed foreign investors to come in and invest in a limited number of private companies. But a lot of those billions of dollars will mainly go to corrupt officials who justify their own private companies as, quote, enhancing competition and efficiency. Official reports put the figure on the percentage of China's GDP being moved and abused by corrupt officials at 10%.

That's a lot. And so as a result, unemployment rates skyrocketed. GDP being moved and abused by corrupt officials at 10%. As a result, unemployment rates skyrocketed. They rose as high as 40% in some urban areas. The stock market fluctuated greatly. Another result was that the scale of rural migration into urban areas was unprecedented and little was being done to address an ever-increasing urban-rural wealth gap. Things were not going well for Zemin. While the stressed-out failing leader tried to address rising economic issues, he was

merciless in his treatment of any form of political dissent or public protest. And both of those things, not just in Falun Gong but in Chinese society in general, were on the rise. A couple years later, the Chinese government would publish an unprecedented 308-page report criticizing corruption and failed policies within its ranks. The study addressed, quote, mounting public anger over inequality, corruption, and official aloofness. And it paints a picture of seething unrest, as bleak as any drawn by dissidents abroad. So China, not doing well. The document cited incidents of violent protests

involving tens of thousands of people way bigger than any Fei Lungong protests would be and sums up that relations between the Chinese government and the people were tense with conflicts on the rise. So Zemin now wants somebody to blame for rising dissatisfaction and unrest overall in China. And Fei Lungong will make a solid scapegoat. There was a simple fact that it was too popular for the government's liking, but also that it offered an individual-centered improvement philosophy, not a top-down collectivist approach that communists favor. It also suggested that intergrowth, cultivation, was more important than the progress of consumerism now promoted by authorities in Beijing. And so authorities increased monitoring and surveillance on feilun

gong members. And this surveillance will lead to violence. On April 22, 1999, several dozen Fei Lungong practitioners are beaten and arrested in the city of Tianjin while staged in a peaceful sit-in. The practitioners are told that the arrest order came from the Ministry of Public Security and that those arrested could be released only with the approval of Beijing authorities. And that will inspire what comes next. April 25, 1999, on this day, more than 10,000 practitioners of Fei Lungong converge on Beijing, setting out for the appeal office, two kilometers south of the main Xinhua Gate of the Zhongnan

High, the government compound, to appeal the treatment of those beaten and arrested in Tianjin three days before. According to Fei Lungong to a Fei Lungong report later, they quote, never even intended to go to the government compound. It was not a highly organized event but an organic outpouring of support, they said. Some people there reported that the police actually directed them to the government compound as though to encourage them to appear as a threat. Others will say the police directed them away from the government compound. Who knows who was told what?

What we do know is that at 8.30 a.m. Premier Zhu Rongji came out of the main entrance, the west entrance of the State Council, and crossed the street. It's unclear again if he was shouted at or harassed. Fei-Long Gong will say they actually applauded him. They had a brief conversation in which Zhu said they should write letters, not appear in person,

and a spokesperson argued that they had written letters and that all those letters had been ignored. Zhu then pimp slaps the spokesperson and said, Fuck you think you're talking to you fucking Gong-sack slut! And then when the crowd goes, oh my! and the gasp, he yelled, come on motherfuckers! Attack me with your law bodies bodies you fake wizard yoga clowns No, you didn't do that. I wish you did that but he didn't. He apparently moved on But Fei-Lun Gong will say they'll stay there for 12 hours meditating and reading their books And this is the first mass demonstration at the compound in the Republic's history and the largest protest in Beijing since 1989

And that was very unnerving to the Chinese government. It was even more unnerving that the authorization government had not, or that the government, excuse me, had not even heard an inkling about this protest before it happened. Something had to be done but leadership was divided on how to respond. Some, like Premier Zhu Rongji, they were sympathetic. Right? Zhu had met with them later that day, assured them that the government was not against Fei Lungong, promising that the Tianjin practitioners will be released. General Secretary Zhang wanted nothing to do with them. Indeed, he wanted to crush them mercilessly.

That very night, he issued a letter indicating his desire to see Fei Lungong defeated. At a meeting of the Politburo, June 7th, 1999, Zhang described Fei Lungong as a grave threat to Communist authority. Quote, something unprecedented in the country since its founding 50 years ago. And he ordered the creation of a high level committee to get fully prepared for the work of disintegrating Fei Lungong. And just in case someone like Premier Zhu tried to stop him, Zhong preemptively accused Zhu of being a secret Fei Lungong member and said that there was no way the group could have become so popular

without a lot of secret government help. And with that accusation, Zhang won the argument about what to do with Fei Lungong. The government was going to crush them. On June 10th, the party established a 610 office now, a Communist Party-led security agency responsible for coordinating the elimination of Fei Lungong. The office wasn't created with any legislation and there are no provisions describing its precise mandate. Nevertheless, the leaders of the 610 office were, quote,

able to call on top government and party officials and draw on their institutional resources and have personal access to the Communist Party general secretary and the premier, according to UCLA professor James Tong. In addition, local branches were established at each administrative level wherever populations of Falun Gong practitioners were present, including the provincial, district, municipal, sometimes even neighborhood levels. They were fucking serious about squashing this group out of existence. Agents working for the 610 Office were even established within large corporations and universities and soon they would mobilize.

Just after midnight, July 20, 1999, public security officers seized hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners from their homes in cities all over China. It's unclear exactly how many were arrested. Estimates range from several hundred to almost six thousand. Additionally, four Falun Gong coordinators in Beijing were arrested and quickly tried on charges of leaking state secrets. On July 22, the government then made the following proclamation. The Department of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China declares that the Falun

Dafa Research Society and the Feilun Gong Organization under its control are illegal organizations that should be banned. It is hereby prohibited for anyone in any circumstances to distribute books, video, audio tapes, or any other materials that propagate Feilun Gong. It is prohibited to hold gatherings or demonstrations that uphold or propagate Feilun Gong, such as sit-ins or appeals. It is prohibited for anyone to organize coordinate or direct any activities that go against the government. Damn. I'm no fan of Falun Gong but I'm less of a fan of this. Imagine if the US did this to

say Scientology just made it illegal and arrested hundreds or thousands of adherents and shut down all of their centers And for those of you thinking that'd be fucking awesome Well, what if they shut down all Baptist churches next after that all LDS temples after that all Catholic churches And for those of you thinking that'd be even better What if after that they made yoga illegal now CrossFit's out. What if they abolished Alcoholics Anonymous? Elks Lodges? Spas?

No more fucking bowling. This is why I despise communism. The government has far too much power over what citizens are allowed to do. But also, why didn't these weak-ass Falun Gong adherents have more faith and increase their Gong cultivation energy by developing their Xing Xing character through paying attention to their alien law will so they can use their law bodies to turn invisible and teleport the fuck out of prison. Come on! No one who's serious about Fei-Lun Gong should ever be captured, right?

Just be invisible, bro. Pretty easy. Just teleport to the fucking wall you dumbass anyway Zhong now demanded that Li Hongzhe be returned from exile arrested and put on trial immediately and I'm sure if this would have happened torture to death but Interpol refused to serve the warrants because there was no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing and because he couldn't catch him because hello invisible teleporter Li released a statement that said in part, we are not against the government now, nor will we be in the future.

Other people may treat us badly, but we do not treat others badly, nor do we treat people as enemies. We are calling for all governments, international organizations, and people of goodwill worldwide to extend their support and assistance to us in order to resolve the present crisis that is taking place in China. Very diplomatic. Makes Fei Lungong seems like a benevolent and righteous organization. Meanwhile, the communist crackdown on China continues.

On July 26th, the Ministry of Public Security called for the confiscation and destruction of all publications related to Fei Lungong. Three days later, the Beijing Judicial Bureau issued a notice forbidding lawyers from defending Fei Lungong practitioners in court. The National People's Congress would also amend a statute, Article 300 of the Criminal Code, to suppress, quote, heterodox religions across China. It prohibited any large-scale public assemblies, also prohibited religious or Qigong organizations

from organizing themselves across multiple provinces or coordinating with groups overseas. The government also looked inward. The People's Liberation Army was the first institution to try to purge Feilun Gong influence with troops, staff, and their families forbidden to practice it. The suppression campaign increased across China too, with millions of Feilun Gong books and videotapes burned. The army and the police rounded up practitioners, forcing them into detention wherever there were facilities available to hold them, even in stadiums. 35,000 people were arrested in the Beijing area alone between July of 1999 and December of 2000. Many outside observers now believe that

Fei Lungong would eventually be entirely stamped out, But as we know now, that would not happen. These gong sack cockroaches, even the ones without magical law body power, are very hard to eradicate. In September of 1999, Beijing was getting ready to celebrate the 50th birthday of the People's Republic, which would see some half a million people arriving to Tiananmen Square to dance patriotically amid parades of military equipment. The planned date for the official celebration was October 1st and then two days before a handful of Fei Lungong practitioners snuck into the square and performed a silent display of physical exercises. Immediately a swarm

of security guards surrounded them and dragged their asses off. Then two hours later another practitioner appeared and he'd be dragged off as well. Imagine that, being arrested and then probably tortured, possibly killed, for publicly exercising, for doing forbidden exercises. In response, 30 Falun Gong practitioners now hold a secret press conference for foreign media. But then 10 of these organizers are detained almost immediately afterwards. One of them, a 31-year-old hairdresser named Ding Han, was allegedly later tortured to death in custody, according to Fei Lungong sources.

The following month in November, roughly 500 Fei Lungong practitioners are sent to labor camps where they will be held for, or where they can, could have been held for three years without trial under Chinese law. Who knows what happened to them. China doesn't really release a lot of records about that kind of stuff. That same month the Supreme People's Court issued a notice to all lower courts in China saying that it was their political duty to resolutely impose severe punishment against groups considered heretical, especially Fei Lun Gong. Yeah, the whole government's like fuck these guys now. It also required the courts at all levels to handle Fei Lun Gong cases by following

the direction of the CCP committees, thereby ensuring that Fei Lun Gong cases will be judged based on political considerations rather than evidence. In response, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a report stating that the detention of Fei Lun Gong practitioners violated international human rights norms. Then on December 27th, four high-profile Fei Lun Gong practitioners will be put on trial for undermining the implementation of the law and the trumped-up charge of illegally obtaining states' secrets. They included Beijing engineer and prominent Fei Lunungong organizer, Ziwen Wang, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for practicing Fei Lungong, and Li Chong, an official of the Ministry of Public Security sentenced to 18 years.

Two months later, in one week in February, around 2,000 Fei Lungong practitioners were arrested during celebrations for the Chinese New Year. Yeah, man. A couple weeks later, the parents of two managers of a Beijing bookstore who had been given six and seven years in prison for six Feilun Gong publications wrote an open letter condemning the sentences. Our daughters were born and grew up in the military and we took care of them throughout their upbringing. They have good hearts and are generous to others. As we are both retired veteran cadres, we wonder what was the purpose of our revolution? Was it nothing more than

penalizing good ordinary people? What has happened to this society? Will this kind of judgment stand the test of history? By the spring of 2000, Lee Hong-Ju was asking the international community for help from New York. He said, I hope all the people who have a kind heart and the various governments will step in to assist the resolution of this issue. Why don't you assist them? Fucking teleport your ass over there. Grab them. Teleport back out. Easy peasy. Fucking wizard. Other countries did sort of help. During the 56th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights from March 20th to April 28th, 2000, numerous Western nations, including the US, criticized China's suppression of

Falun Gong. However, a proposed resolution condemning China's human rights abuses did not pass, largely due to China's diplomatic lobbying. But now some other groups tried to do what they could. Human Rights Watch criticized the crackdown as an illegal attempt to try and control all organizations in China. Religious, civil, social, economic. They pointed out that Fei Lungong's numbers and their use of modern communication made them especially threatening to the CCP. On March 23, 2000, Amnesty International in London released a detailed report that put Fei Lung Gong in context with broader crackdowns on so-called heretical organizations.

They released this statement, quote, Amnesty International is calling on the Chinese government to stop the massed arbitrary detentions, unfair trials and other human rights violations resulting from the crackdown on the Feilun Gong and other groups. All the information available indicates that the crackdown is politically motivated. Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained by police, some of them repeatedly for short periods and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs. Many of them are reported to have been tortured. Some have been charged with crimes and tried while others have been sent to labor camps without trial. China did not respond

to this. They instead took a different approach. Inside China, Li Hongzhe was demonized by a dawn to dusk slander campaign driven by propaganda TV shows and even by a comic book. Some newspapers compared him to Hitler. Images of Jim Jones' People's Temple was edited into footage of Falun Gong practices suggesting the government was only trying to prevent another Jonestown. This onslaught of negative press does not crush the movement though.

In April of 2000, Xinhua News, the official state news agency in China, acknowledged that government attempts to wipe out Falun Gong had failed, stating the cult group led by Li Hongzhe has not recognized its defeat and continues to cause trouble Causing trouble they're fucking rabble-rousers Government official reportedly said that the ongoing crackdown will be a long-term and complicated struggle They stated that 2,591 phaolum gong related cases were being processed in the courts while human rights groups said that at least 5,000 practitioners were being processed in the courts while a human rights group said that at least 5,000 practitioners were being held in labor camps.

Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson would investigate the charges and published the first in a series of articles on April 20th, 2000 including testimony from Fei Lungong members who had been detained and tortured. One of those testimonies read, The guards dragged all of us out while beating and kicking us madly. They dragged us to the yard downstairs and ordered us to squat down. They then ordered us one by one into a room and conducted a thorough body search. I was assigned to the sixth cell. One of the criminals immediately came over with a bowl of cereal and persuaded me to eat.

She said that this was a task assigned to them and they would be punished if they could not succeed in persuading us to eat. After a short while, the officer in charge of female prisoners came over and asked whether I had eaten or not and threatened to fill me with salt water. The officer then ordered four to five male criminals to come over. One of them carried a tool for filling salt water, which is a long glass tube attached with a soft and thin tube and some other stuff. I asked him why I was arrested since I had not committed any crime. He became extremely angry and kicked my right breast heavily, yelling, Who do you think you are? He then said to the criminals, fill her with salt water.

The criminals came over, dragged her to the ground and shackled her. They squeezed her nose shut so she had to swallow the salt water as it was pumped into her for three to four minutes. Four days after that, every time she tried to drink or eat she'd throw up. And I'm not sure why it switched from first person to third person here because I think they're talking about the same lady. But that's the quote. Those who were not sent to camps or detained were sometimes required to make daily reports of their activities to local police stations or they would be assigned guarantors usually family members who were held responsible if the individual tried to attend a Falun Gong protest. Yeah they're

not fucking around with this now. As the crackdown progressed authorities came up with a new tactic throwing those arrested into mental hospitals. New officials state quote-unquote statistics reported that 10% of all Chinese mental patients suffered as a result of practicing Qigong exercises. Yep, it made them fucking go crazy Before they were like, oh man, this shit really works. It's great. It'll make you feel so much better And then once they hate feilun gong, they're like these exercises will make you literally lose your mind Treatment for these mental patients was of course horrific

Those arrested would be beaten, strapped to beds with only patients who had been there quote a long time, ever being let outside for fresh air. Detainees were forced to take random medicine, receive random injections, had no idea what was being pumped into their bodies. In August of 2000, Sir Nigel Rodley, the UN special rapporteur on torture, reported that his office had received information on the widespread use of torture against detained Falun Gong practitioners. He expressed a lot of concern over deaths and custody, but for the moment nothing more was going to come of it. Then in November of 2000, China's Vice Foreign Minister, Wang Guangya,

and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson Robinson signed a memorandum asserting that the Chinese goal of harmonizing its domestic laws or signed a memorandum asserting the Chinese goal of harmonizing its domestic laws with its international commitments. Basically, it was a memorandum designed to help China comply with the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights as well as the Covenant on Political and civil rights which China had signed but not ratified. One of the ways in which they were not complying was their continued torture and imprisonment of the Falun Gong. The persecution of Falun Gong also violated other human rights measures it had ratified,

like the Convention Against Torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. In addition, China's membership in the UN constituted a pledge by the Chinese government to promote the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR, which China had signed in 1998. The various articles of the UDHR proclaim the universal right of everyone to be free from torture or other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment. So they're not doing that at all. Luckily for China, this pledge was coupled with the caveat that China could develop or would develop only those rights that

suited its historic situation. And while the international community waited for China to get in line, their next move would be even more dramatic. On January 23rd, 2001, just days after Zhang Zemin intensified his anti-cult media campaign, there was an alleged emulation incident in Tiananmen Square. The government reported that four Fei Lungong members literally set themselves on fire, and Chinese police rushed them to hospitals. It'll take weeks before the official video footage is released, leading some to think it was a false flag operation, something to make it look like the Fei Lungong were even cultier than they may have been. Indeed, CNN's footage of the incident was confiscated,

it was never aired. Instead, what would be aired was footage of a tragically disfigured 12-year-old named Liu Xing, who explained that her mother had told her to set herself on fire in order to get to the heavenly golden kingdom. The government claimed that the girl had received a tracheotomy, but a pediatric surgeon pointed out that was not true.

She wouldn't be able to talk to the media so soon if it was. What's more, CNN producers would later say they hadn't seen children in the area, but they did see those four fucking dudes set themselves on fire. And why? Why would they set themselves on fire? Why aren't none of these guys just turning invisible or teleporting yet? Come on Fucking get with the fucking powers you guys have As a follow-up in February 2001 the Chinese government began applying pressure on party officials to step up their crackdown further against the Falun Gong

2,000 party leaders gathered and seven top leaders delivered extensive condemnations of the practice Meanwhile Li Hongjia, he's in the background for most of this year following the crackdown, hiding out in New York. But early in 2001, he becomes more assertive and proactive. He gives a few talks at, quote, experience sharing conferences organized by U.S. practitioners, and he issued a statement titled Coercion Cannot Change People's Hearts. He posted this in March on a Fei Lungong website,

innately declared, never in history has someone who persecuted those with upright faiths ever succeeded. I'll fucking teach him. And I'm sure China was like, OK, all right, well done. You got us. You got our number. Indeed, Fei Lungong had by now developed

an extensive infrastructure to promote its resistance abroad. Followers worked secretly to provide information, housing, and moral support to the faithful, typically through hundreds of websites and email chains, but at the cost of living on the run, being forced to sever family ties and friendships and abandoning jobs and communities in China. This makes it a little hard to believe later when Li claims that Fei Lungong has no real organizational structure. They also staged protests in cities across the world like

one in Los Angeles on February 17, 2001 drew more than a thousand practitioners in March of 2011, or sorry, March of 2001. While speaking with the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Li's spokesman and translator Erping Zhang now outright claimed that Fei Lungong stood in direct opposition to the Chinese Communist Party because goodness has challenged the party's evil nature. Those in American politics seem to agree. In an address to the American Jewish Committee in April of 2001, President Bush said, We hear alarming reports of the detention of worshippers and religious leaders in China. Most importantly, adherents of the Fei Lun Gong spiritual movement have been singled out for arrest and abuse. This persecution is unworthy

of all that China has been a civilization with a history of tolerance. And this persecution is unworthy of all that China should become. An open society that respects the spiritual dignity of its people." I don't know if I'd refer to Falun Gong as spiritual dignity, but you know, I like the gist of what he's saying there. That same month, the US attempted to introduce another resolution condemning China's human rights record, including its persecution of Fei Lungong and the UN Human Rights Commission. As hearings got underway in the UN, Fei Lungong released statements by female practitioners describing how China's police had singled them out, subjected them to sexual harassment

and sexual abuse. A 165-year-old woman said that she was electrocuted twice and ended up in a coma for a day and a half during her 20-day arrest period May of 2000. Another woman was called in for questioning, only to be shown the bruised and battered body of her dead husband, who was then cremated without her permission. One man was detained, beaten, and died in Shandong labor camp, known to many as hell on earth. Left behind a widow and an eight-month-old baby. His death was reported as a suicide in the media. ABC's Nightline ran specials interviewing Sophie Hsiao, spokeswoman for the Fei Lungong in Hong Kong. And she reported that, quote, thousands of Fei Lungong followers have been sent to labor camps and

mental hospitals. A campaign that reminds her of the hysterungong followers have been sent to labor camps and mental hospitals. A campaign that reminds her of the hysteria during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. People fired from their jobs, publicly humiliated, forced to confess. On April 9th in Geneva, Switzerland, China responded to the UN with its own human rights report. Characterizing its crackdown on the group as quote characterizing its crackdown on the group as quote safeguarding social stability and people's lives and property and said that human rights in China maintain positive forward momentum. Once again they ultimately succeeded in blocking the resolution and China again kept with their media campaign against the group. In July it opened a vast anti-cult exhibition in Beijing

called Oppose Cults, Uphold Civilizations. Featuring shockingly graphic photos of alleged members of the group who had allegedly committed suicide, mutilated themselves, or viciously attacked other people. They also claimed that 10 practitioners in the Wanjia labor camp had all killed themselves. So fucked up with these, you control the media what you can just say. There's a whole bunch of people get tortured death. No, no they didn't. Nope, they took themselves out.

They tortured themselves. Uh-huh. That's what they did. They're crazy. By September of 2001, at least 270 fucking week, no magical power using gong sacks, had died in government custody due to hunger strikes or torture according to the Falun Gong. A 58 year old woman named Chen Zixiu was beaten and tortured then forced to run through snow barefoot until she died. Jesus Christ. Another person, a man, was reportedly cremated when he wasn't even dead. He was in a coma. November 20, 2001, a group of 35 Falun Gong practitioners from 12 different countries gathered at Tiananmen Square to meditate under a banner that read, Truth, Compassion, Tolerance.

Fei-Lung-Gong's court moral tenets, supposedly. They were arrested within minutes. By 2002, Fei-Lung-Gong practitioners had almost completely abandoned protesting in Tiananmen Square. Instead, they were now trying different approaches, like establishing a vast network of underground so-called material sites to distribute group literature and tapping into television broadcasts to replace them with Fei-Lungong content. So doing some hacking. One such incident was a 50 minute pirated broadcast before the city of Chongchun went

black from a power outage when they cut off the electricity of the whole city just to stop this broadcast. And then the six people found responsible for this broadcast were quickly tortured to death. In response, Fei Lungong practitioners in New York established New Tang Dynasty Television, a Chinese language station created to present an alternative to state-run Chinese media. Fei Lungong practitioners across the world would also attempt to file many lawsuits against Zhang Zemin, alleging crimes against humanity. But you know, these are largely symbolic.

It's not like he gave a shit. He's not going to get in trouble for this. During the 58th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights held from March 18th to April 26th, 2002, the US once again tried to introduce a resolution condemning China's human rights abuses, including the persecution of Fei Lungong. And China again successfully blocked the resolution. Same thing would happen in 2003.

Annual Fei Lungong deaths in Kusti continued to grow throughout 2003 and 2004, according to reports published by Fei Lungong sources. The Western coverage of Fei Lungong declined. That didn't mean China was done with them, however. Indeed, they had networks of spies in many countries whose jobs it was to monitor and harass Fei Lungong members abroad, even in places like the U.S. and Australia, where, you know, being part of the Fei Lungong is obviously perfectly legal. In response, Fei Lungong will step up its criticism of China, now not only holding

Zhong Zemin responsible, but, you responsible but the Communist Party in general. And this would from now on become a core tenet of Fei Lungong teachings. That communism is fucking evil. On February 15th, 2005, Li Hongzhe issues a statement renouncing his earlier membership in the Communist Youth League. A few months later, on June 16th, 2005, it is revealed that Gao Rongrong, an accountant and Fei Lungong practitioner who had been sent to the Longshan Forest labor camp in 2003 had died. In a torture session, electric shock batons had been used on her face for six to seven hours straight. After that, she had somehow managed to escape. She was able to jump out of a second floor window,

but injured herself in the fall. She was taken to a hospital then, but she was able to escape. She was able to jump out of a second floor window but injures herself in the fall. She was taken to a hospital then, but she was able to escape from that hospital. But then she was re-apprehended in March of 2005, tortured some more, died on June 16th while in custody at the age of 37. Now she was one of the estimated 2,500 Fei Lungong practitioners who had been killed by the government via torture since the beginning of the crackdown. And things were about to get even more horrific. In March 2006, former Canadian member of parliament David Kilgore and human rights lawyer David Matus published a report alleging that Fei Lungong practitioners were being targeted for forced organ harvesting in Chinese hospitals. The report alleged that Feiun Gong members were being held to provide organs for people needing transplants and executed

on demand. That's fucking terrifying. They believe the practice started at least six years earlier back in 2000. Indeed China does have one of the largest organ transplant programs in the world. It was estimated that as many as 20,000 organ transplants were performed in 2006 alone, which is weird because as a matter of cultural custom, China has an extremely low rate of voluntary organ donation, meaning most are sourced from prisoners. You know, were the organs taken from people against their will? Well, very possibly. The Chinese government approved regulation in 1984 to allow the removal of organs from executed criminals provided they gave prior consent if no one claimed their body.

Or excuse me, provided they gave prior consent or if no one claimed their body. So if you really wanted somebody's organs, you could just schedule an execution. Is that what the Chinese government did? China's wait times for obtaining vital organs are some of the shortest in the world. Mere weeks for kidneys, livers, and hearts. So it seems plausible. On March 2005, a whistleblower, the wife of a surgeon at the hospital,

claimed her husband performed numerous operations to remove the corneas of Falun Gong practitioners for transplants. Representatives of the US State Department were dispatched to the Sujatoon Hospital to investigate the claims, apparently found no proof, which led to David Kilgore and David Matas taking over the investigation. And then they were denied travel visas to China, which is a bit suspicious. They managed to complete an analysis of stats on organ transplants in China

anyways, and they conducted interviews with former Fei Lungong prisoners, and they recorded missions from Chinese hospitals about the availability of Fei Lungong members' organs. And they found that from 2000 to 2005, the source for over 41,500 organ transplants was unexplained. That's sketchy. They felt that Fei Lungong political prisoners were the most plausible explanation for the source of all those organs. Their report concluded their vital organs including kidneys, livers, corneas, and hearts were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries. It's worth noting that many experts have disputed whether or not Falun Gong were

the source of these organs and also how many Falun Gong members have died in Chinese prisons, mental hospitals, and labor camps. So hard to know what's really gone on when both organizations, the Chinese government and the Fei Lungong, not known for truthfulness. But still this looks real bad. In 2017, a lawyer who has defended hundreds of Fei Lungong members told the Washington Post that he knew of only three or four members who died in prison and That he had never heard of organs being harvested from live prisoners as Fei Lungong is claimed China of course has denied the organ harvesting allegations or at least denied that they harvested them from Fei Lungong members specifically now let's return back to a Fei Lungong for a second institution and Li Hongjia not the people allegedly suffered in torture camps

Li Hongjia as we know moved to the U.S. in 1996, settled in New York where he has continued to be living we think. A little bit secretive but it is assumed that he is still living in New York. He would obtain certificates of recognition from several government bodies in the U.S. including honorary citizenship awarded by the state of Georgia and city of Atlanta. He received a prestigious International Religious Freedom Award from the Freedom House, was nominated for the 2001 Sakharov Prize by over 25 members of European Parliament, even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 and again in 2001. Get the fuck out of here. Also in 2000 Lee helped to found the Epoch Times to disseminate Falun Gong talking points to American readers

John Tang a follower is listed as its founder. He was a graduate student in Georgia at the time He began the newspaper as a publication from his basement despite humble beginnings by 2003 the Epoch Times website and its group of newspapers had grown into one of the largest Chinese language news sites and newspaper groups outside of China. The first English edition launched online in September of 2003 and I will return to share more info about the Epoch Times very soon. Li meanwhile continued standing against the Chinese government throughout the early 2000s but now decided to try a different approach to resistance, dance. In 2007, Fei Lungong, with Li's direction, established Shen Yun Performing Arts, a classical

Chinese dance troupe. Shen Yun, according to Shen Yun, means the beauty of divine beings dancing. It can also be translated as the rhythm of a divine spirit or more simply to God's melody. Oh it would grow to have eight large performing ensembles with approximately 480 performers and began touring internationally in 2007 and though dance might sound like a fucking weird method for countering communism makes perfect sense to Fei-Lung Gong. You know try and revive classical Chinese traditions that existed before communism and the Cultural Revolution flattened the cultural landscape. Early shows were titled Chinese Spectacular, Holiday Wonders, Chinese New Year's Splendor,

and Divine Performing Arts. And their advertising was everywhere, and still is when they tour. On billboards, commercials, public transit, you know, people handing out flyers, you've probably seen some of this. Here is a description by New Yorker writer, Ja told Intino about a 2019 Shen Yun show. After we took our seats, two hosts with animatronic smiles speaking both Chinese and English began introducing a series of dances, which were called things like, Goodness in the Face of Evil, and The World Divinely Restored. The female dancers moved in hypnotic swirls. The male dancers jumped and flipped. Behind the stage was an enormous screen upon which

digital backdrops, ancient temples, royal gardens, the cosmos appeared. The host started talking about a spiritual discipline called Feilun Dafa and then introduced a dance in which a beautiful young follower of Feilun Dafa was kidnapped and imprisoned by communists who harvested her organs. Would everyone like to learn a little Chinese? one of the hosts asked. He intoned a phrase and asked the audience to repeat it. And that phrase means, I love Shen Yun, he said. A man came on stage to sing a song in Chinese, which was translated on the screen behind him. We follow Dafa the great way, he began, singing about a creator who saved mankind and made the world anew. Atheism and evolution are deadly ideas. Modern trends destroy what makes us human he sang. Okay do we mention that Fei Lungong is anti-evolution now?

They are. You know it's part of the rejection of communism and anything that does not point to life having a primarily spiritual meaning. Back to Ja's summary of the show. In the final dance number a group of Falun Dafa members, who wore blue and yellow and clutched books of religious teachings, battled for space in a public square with corrupt youth. Chairman Mao appeared. The sky turned black. The city in the digital backdrop was obliterated by an earthquake. Then finished off by a communist tsunami with the face of Karl Marx. A red hammer and sickle glowed

in the center of the wave. Communism. Evil. Bad. Fei Lungang. Glory is peaceful. Got it? Also during each performance, the host explained that the dancers are doing classical Chinese dance, which seems to resemble both ballet and gymnastics, but in fact ballet and gymnastics actually borrowed from Chinese dance. One of the overall claims of the show is that the dancers are showcased in a tradition that is thousands of years old, a tradition that has been single-handedly rejuvenated by Shen Yun, but that's not quite true. Emily Wilcox, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Michigan, says that the

ballet gymnastics thing is not true at all. In fact, the kind of Chinese traditional dance Shen Yun dancers are performing was created in the early 1950s as part of a desire to recreate a unique Chinese culture that would ban the country together. What? The guy who claimed to turn invisible as a kid and teleport through walls? Is making up shit about fucking dance routines? Go figure.

Despite the performances, positing that Shen Yun and Fei Lungong are the opposite of communism, that's also not true when it comes to how members are treated. In 2024, 25 former dancers, musicians, and instructors spoke openly to the New York Times about their experiences in Shen Yun. And they described a pattern of abusive behavior by Shen Yun's leaders that spanned nearly two decades and occurred as hundreds of performers cycled in and out of the dance company. To start with, many of the former dancers and musicians said they pushed themselves to their physical and mental limits because they were taught that performing a flawless

Shen Yun show could literally save the audience's souls from an approaching apocalypse. No pressure. Often they said they worked grueling 15-hour days rehearsing, performing, even setting up, breaking down heavy orchestral equipment for low pay or no pay. In fact, they toiled under the impression that it was actually they who owed Shen Yun money for the cost of the schooling, food, and lodging the movement provided. Many former Shen Yun dancers told the New York Times they were not paid at all for their first year on tour and then by their early to mid-20s they would make up to 12,000 a year. Being paid 12 grand a year for being one of the fucking best dancers on the planet. Just a bit shady. In many cases it was not even their choice to join the production.

Instead they've been sent to upstate New York where Shen Yun is headquartered by parents and relatives. Sometimes as young as 12 years old to audition for the troupe. They were unable to leave the compound without special permission. Were typically limited in how they could see their families once they got there. Some of them had to live full time on the compound well into their 20s. When they did push themselves to the limit, ended up with injuries. They were of course not given medical treatment, right? Just told to have more faith in Falun Gong. You'll be healed. Cult, cult, cult. Some former dancers recounted performing through dislocated kneecaps, sprained ankles, other serious injuries.

When they did want to quit, they faced threats and intimidation. Their managers would tell them they would literally go to hell and burn or face mortal danger if they left because they would lose Lee's magical protection. Seven former performers said they were also told they would have to repay the full cost of tuition if they quit Shen Yun, a tuition they had never agreed to pay, never been told about initially. But now they're told they owed the organization

up to $200,000 each for their education. Even those who did not dance still worked in dangerous conditions. A former musician said he frequently sliced his hands on metal instrument cases when packing up the group's cargo trucks after performances. One cut was so severe he had to stitch it himself with a hotel sewing kit. You know he didn't had to stitch it himself because he couldn't go to say an urgent care you know because the teachings of Fei Lungong cure all. Cure all ills. After playing in Shen Yun's

orchestra for about four years, another musician, a violinist named Joshua Lin, began to feel sharp pains in his right shoulder. He was brought to see Li, who quickly touched his shoulder and told him he was healed. Boom! You fucking welcome, you lowly Gong sack piece of shit! The enlightened one! He's fucking healed your ass with his law fucking monkeys or bodies or wheels or whatever. But he wasn't healed at all. Because no faith healer has ever truly been proven to like kill shit like that. The pain persisted for years. A sign his classmates told him of his weak faith.

Finally when he went to see a doctor, he was told he had a severely bulging disc. Shen Yun of course claimed that all these forward dance troupe members saying all this kind of stuff are lying. You know, commies got to them, you know, made them, you know, push this bullshit propaganda. They'd say that about, you know, just detractors in general. Now let's back up again to 2007 when Shen Yun is first expanding. Lee Hong-Ju needs some place for the dancers, musicians, and presenters to congregate, rehearse, and live. Back in 2000 Lee had purchased a 400 plus acre chunk of land in New York near Deer Park about 90 miles north of Manhattan and had slowly been adding buildings since 2001,

including a temple in the style of the Tang dynasty with a 75 foot tall pagoda and statue of Buddha. This compound would become known as Dragon Springs and is described according to its own website as follows. Nestled in the rolling hills of Orange County, New York, Dragon Springs is a 400-acre campus that combines the natural beauty of New York State with ancient Chinese architecture, performing arts, academic learning, and spiritual practice. Dragon Springs temple grounds include a collection of buildings built following the Tang ideal, blending the man-made with the natural. With barely a screw, nail, or metal joint to be found in the building's magnificent

all-timber structures, Dragon Springs Temple is one of the few in the whole world built with genuine Tang methods and in the authentic Tang style. Every aspect of the temple is created with serenity and meditation in mind. Two schools, and I use that word very loosely, operate in or around Fei-Lungong's Dragon Springs compound, Fei-Tian College, a private arts college, and a middle and high school combo

called Fei-Tian Academy of Arts. Fei-Tian College acts as a feeder for Shen Yu, and both the college and high school initially operated out of the Dragon Springs compound before expanding into nearby Middleton, New York in 2017 or Middletown. The college offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Classical Chinese Dance and Bachelors in Music Performance, and student facilities include an on-site basketball court and a gym. Students come from all over the world to attend, and what they find is less of an academy and more of a boot camp. That does not care about their education or health as long as they're performing. At the age of 11, former student Kate Huang dropped out of school in Kaohsiung, Taiwan,

traveled 8,000 miles to enroll at the Fei Tian Academy of the Arts. Kate had no dance experience, but she'd grown up around Falun Gong followers who had told her to seize her opportunity to be closer to Lee. Her grandmother had practiced Falun Gong every morning at 4am. Mom sold tickets to Shen Yun shows. Soon she was in a dance class lying on her back for a flexibility exercise. Hovering over her, a teacher gripped her ankle, started pushing it towards her head, pushing it further and further until Kate heard a fucking snap in her thigh, echoed across the classroom.

Our teacher then notified Lee and the school principal who touched her leg to see if anything was broken. Uh, you know, he healed it, he touched it, and she was never taken to a doctor. Instead she just limped around for weeks, untreated with a serious injury. Few years later, before Shen Yun, uh, before a Shen Yun performance in Seattle, Huang was landing a front flip when she felt a searing pain in her right leg. She dislocated her kneecap. A classmate popped it back into place. Again, not taken to a doctor. One of her managers gave her a bag of ice, asked her if she could still perform. She danced in excruciating pain for the next two hours.

if she could still perform. She danced in excruciating pain for the next two hours. At the age of 17, she apparently became too heavy, according to the dance instructors, was reassigned to a warehouse job on campus now, where she would design patterns for Shen Yun costumes on a computer. Near the end of high school, she was notified she would not be accepted into the post-secondary school in Dragon Springs, Fei Tian College, and would have to leave the compound and thus she was just booted out of the country. Otherary school in Dragon Springs, Fei Tian College, and would have to leave the compound and thus she was just booted out of the country. Other than scattered stories like these, we don't know a whole lot about what life is like

on the compound. At one point it was asserted that Lee doesn't even live there. At another point Fei Lungong apparently confirmed he did live there and the students were taught to address him as fucking master and stuff. Students are taught to address him, you know, as a fucking master and stuff. Students are taught to greet Huang as Shi Fu, yeah, the Chinese word for master, while also clasping their hands and bowing. Indeed, according to a Russian female disciple who visited Dragon Springs Temple, the main hall houses are not Buddha statues, or the main hall houses not Buddha statues, but statues of Li Hongzhe, his wife Li Rui,

and their daughter Li Maizhe in what is known as a living shrine. To look deeper what goes on in the compound let's dive into the story of a former follower going by the name of Anna. As with many followers Anna's family first encountered Fei Lungong by seeing a group of people meditate in a park. One of them handed her dad a flyer explaining the movement's philosophy. Soon afterwards her mom bought some of their tapes and books, learned more about them. And then Anna's mom will get in fucking deep with this group. She will later share a favorite memory of her daughter with other Falun Gong practitioners. This is about how when Anna was four, she saw her in the backseat of the family car playing with phantom lights, danced in the air.

They were those awesome mysterious law bodies, her mom explained. Small physical manifestations of the Fei Lun Gong emblem. Anna watched as her mom gradually became more and more absorbed into Fei Lun Gong. She pulled in and her sibling out of a Catholic school. She quit her job in the family business to sell books for Fei Lun Gong instead. Her time was increasingly spent doing exercises, meditating, reading the movement's teachings. As a young child, Anna came to believe Fei-Lun Gong's teachings too, but there were some teachings that you know were problematic for her. Among them was the group's idea that she was different

to other children less than because her mom was Chinese and her dad was European. She was fucking mixed. She's mudblood. Anna learned that because of that she didn't go to go to a heaven According to least fucked up idiotic teachings There was no there was no heaven for her The family started spending weekends and holidays at Dragon Springs flying across the US to be closer to the movement's global base nevertheless, though Then soon and his mom would want her to do a dance audition By this time around 2008 and his family had moved across the US to the East Coast and his mom wanted her to live at the complex which involved auditioning for Shen Yun, but Anna didn't want to.

She started having crushes on female friends and classmates which also ran against Lee Hong-Ju's teachings that homosexuality was wrong and created negative karma. Holy shit! Fucking dirty mudblood mongrel lesbian! A bicycle who wants to ride other bicycles off of ramps and down to ditches even if they're different colors How did she live long enough to share the story? How have the gods or God or angry enlightened Buddha or whatever fucking shit they currently believe at this point not destroyed her And also didn't like it when master Lee made an appearance in Dragon Springs and the believers immediately stood like they were in the presence of a god, weirded her out, as it should have, in response to mounting pressure and concerns about god and her family hating her for being

mixed race and homosexual and had developed anorexia and was hospitalized at the age of 13. But her mom, who sounds like a serious dipshit, forced her to go audition in Dragon Springs anyway, and sat on a dark carpet in the music rehearsal hall under a ceiling painted with clouds into blue sky as other dancers lined up, full Chinese girls whom Anna knew were better dancers than her. Master Li was the judge of their talent. Anna purposely flubbed the audition and her mom was furious. With family tensions mounting, Anna and her dad now moved back across the U.S. to the West Coast while her mom stayed behind in Dragon Springs. But then on a

visit back in 2009, now 14-year-old Anna is brought to the Tang dynasty-style temple by her mom for a special appointment with the master. How cool! Everything will be taken care of after this, she tells her daughter. They both know what she means the anorexia And Anna had been battling for a while now Anna came reluctantly her mom had tricked her saying that they were just gonna run some errands together and then Anna realized the car was Heading towards the compound. Oh, no, you cannot show your shoulders a woman at the temple told her when she arrived You cannot show too much of your chest because master is coming the fuck Well, they worried about him perving out attacking her

At the temple Anna waited a few minutes later master entered the room He spoke first to the woman who walked her into the room then to Anna's mom then he looked at Anna Raised his arms started fucking waving around in the air like a silly jackass Started chanting some bullshit. She couldn't understand and then the magic show was over. And she was cured. That's what Anna's mom thought. She said, you're all better. You're normal now. Now I love you. Fuck! I hate how many idiots have children.

Is there a bigger problem in the world overall than dumb parents? Seriously. If for one generation, all the world's parents could just be decent and intelligent with strong critical thinking skills and skeptical of magical thinking, what a better world we'd have. Anna, after her mom said what she said, just looked out the window. Nothing had changed. She was still lesbian, still anorexic, still thought her mom was fucking crazy. Meanwhile, the persecution of Falun Gong continues in China. On February 6, 2008, 11 days after being taken into custody in Beijing, popular folk musician

Yu Zhou, a Falun Gong adherent, is tortured to death. His wife, artist Su Na, sends to three years in prison for possessing some Falun Gong literature. And in the first six months of the year, over 8,000 Falun Gong practitioners are abducted by security forces under the pretext of preventing protest during the Beijing Olympics. In March of 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passes a resolution on recognizing and condemning the ongoing persecution of Fei Lungong in China. Still the persecution continues, with hundreds more being arrested, tortured, and killed. This is pretty crazy.

In December of 2012, a random woman in Oregon finds a letter written in both Chinese and English in a box of Halloween decorations she had bought at Kmart. The letter stated that the decorations were assembled in Unit 8, Department 2 of the Ma Sanyi Forest Labor Camp. It went on to describe forest labor conditions in the camp, noted that many of the detainees later estimates later estimates would say about half were Falun Gong practitioners being held without trial and China's a fucking terrifying country. In 2013 the central 610 office dedicated to dismantling Falun Gong launches a new three-year campaign calling for the ideological transformation of Falun Gong's

practitioners. That same year Chinese officials also began dismantling a nationwide network of re-education through labor camps in a supposed attempt to reduce human rights violations. Human rights groups expressed skepticism at the scope of reforms, noting that other forms of extralegal detention were still being used to detain Fei-Lung-Gong practitioners and political dissidents like mental institutions. Let's fast forward to 2016 now. In 2016, the Shen Yun Turing performance troops report more than 75 million dollars in assets and more than 22 million dollars in annual revenue. A lot of money and a lot of profit because they're not paying the dancers that much or paying taxes. That same year Fei-Lun Gong will also take

the publication of their newspaper, The Epoch Times, to a new level. For years, The Epoch Times was a very small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-communist slant that was handed out for free, you know, New York street corners for the most part, outside its digital space. But in 2016, the paper makes two changes that transformed it into one of the country's most powerful, excuse me, and most profitable publishers. First, it embraces Donald Trump and his MAGA campaign 100%, treating him as an ally in Fei-Lung-Gong's scorched earth fight against the CCP.

It's previously relatively lukewarm coverage of U.S. politics suddenly becomes much more partisan. Paper takes a hard shift to the very far right, embracing MAGA with more articles, explicitly supporting Trump and criticizing any of his opponents and any of his detractors. hard shift to the very far right, embracing MAGA with more articles explicitly supporting Trump and criticizing any of his opponents and any of his detractors. Uh, not surprised, you know, far right groups like Fei-Lung-Gong, you know, people like QAnon believers, like the hardcore heart of the wildly conspiratorial MAGA crowd.

Well, they fucking love Trump, obviously. Uh, around the same time, the Epoch Times bets big on another powerful American institution, Facebook. The publication and its affiliates employed a novel strategy that involved creating dozens and dozens of different Facebook pages, filling them with feel-good videos and viral clickbait, using them ultimately to sell subscriptions to drive traffic back to its partisan news coverage. In an April 2017 email to

the staff, the paper's leadership envisioned that the Facebook strategy could help turn the epoch times into the world's largest and most authoritative media. It could also introduce millions of people to the teachings of Fei Lungong, fulfilling the group's mission of saving sentient beings. Since then, the publication has been one of the most prominent promoters of Spygate, this fucking nonsense conspiracy involving claims that Obama administration officials were spying on Trump's 2016 campaign illegally. There's been no evidence of that, just speculative tweets and pundit talk for the most part.

The Epoch Times have also heavily promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, spread distorted claims about voter fraud, distorted claims about the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm guessing many of you have relatives that have bought these conspiracies, hook, line and sinker. And then things would get crazier in September of 2018. Epoch Times photojournalist Samira Bowe entered a restricted area of the White House and handed President Trump a folder. He opened the folder, quickly closed it. Samira would later not say what was in the folder or why she gave it to the president, but according to a former Epoch Times reporter, Fei-Lun Gong, practitioners believe Trump was literally sent by heaven to destroy

China's Communist Party. And so the folder was somehow related to that. Very similar to the QAnon beliefs that Trump has been putting in the White House to save us from Satanic liberals who want to harvest kids adrenochrome and work with reptilians to fucking feed on humanity in some kind of matrix plot line. Also, how does heaven work in a belief system based loosely in Buddhism instead of Christianity? There's no heaven equivalent in Buddhism. You keep being reincarnated, you know, until you reach nirvana. Total enlightenment here in this world. And then when you die while also being fully enlightened you enter parinirvana

which is the end of the cycle of rebirth and said to be a state of both existence and of non-existence. So more nonsense. And that's why we have cults. Because the religions they're based in don't make much more sense than the cults do. Fuck me. Meanwhile, the following year things would come to a head back in upstate New York as Dragon Springs seeks to expand. It wanted to build a hundred thousand gallon per day wastewater plant which neighbors feared would ruin surrounding waterways since once the water was treated it would be discharged back in local rivers. It also aimed to build a 72,800 square foot new music hall and a new parking garage with almost 1,100 car spaces

and 42 bus spaces and also modify a meditation hall into a massive residence hall. People worried that the plans were gonna harm the environment, ruin the town's rural atmosphere. Probably also worried about, you know, the coal compound expanding, didn't like that. In also worried about, uh, you know, uh, the cold compound expo expanding didn't like that. In April of 2019, a construction contractor told the local planning board and 600 attendees of this meeting that he was terrified when he met

security, the compounds gate, because, uh, there was a bunch of them armed with AK 47 machine cuts, uh, drags definitely sounds like a cold compound. Dragon Springs president, Jonathan Lee emphasized his group is considerate to its neighbors, noting that the setting for the group's compound nestled amid mountains and lakes holds great cultural significance, especially for Buddhist reflection. He said, it is good feng shui. Well, there you go. Case closed. Hey, everybody, let the Dragon Springs people do whatever they want.

Why? It's good feng shui. You heard the man. On 2020, several Epoch Times employees and Falun Gong practitioners were contacted by the New York Times, said they were instructed not to divulge details about the news outlet's inner workings. They said they've been told that speaking negatively about the Epoch Times would be tantamount to disobeying Mr. Li, who is known by disciples as Master. June of 2024, the CFO of the Epoch Times, Bill Guan, was arrested for allegedly engaging in a multi-multi-million dollar, many-year money laundering scheme that federal prosecutors say helped drive the company's skyrocketing growth

in revenue in recent years. Federal prosecutors alleged he directed a team in a foreign office known as the Make Money Online team that would use cryptocurrency to buy prepaid debit cards that were loaded up with fraudulently obtained funds. According to the federal indictment, the Make Money Online team and other scheme participants moved the crime proceeds into accounts belonging to the media organization by using tens of thousands of layered transactions utilizing, among other things, prepaid debit cards and financial accounts that were open using stolen identification information including the personal identification information of many U.S. residents. Days after the CFO's arrest the founder and CEO John Reng resigned

and an interim management team is now running the media organization. Then in a bizarre twist Lee Hong-Ju appeared to publicly scold the Epoch Times for their alleged financial wrongdoing and told them to stop embracing partisan politics. Lee wrote in a piece posted June 5th, 2024, You were thinking that it's hard to fight the CCP's persecution without funds and wanted to make money for this cause, and that the U.S. government would be understanding if something wasn't handled quite right. but that was your own thinking. Okay maybe this message hit a little harder in Mandarin. Despite this setback,

Falun Gong still expanding, practically taking over Middletown, New York located just 20 minutes away from their giant Dragon Springs compound. Through its various arms, Falun Gong has acquired over 18 million dollars in real estate in this working-class town of about $30,000, not counting the many more properties its adherents and their companies have purchased in recent years. These days, the new Middletown Shopping Center sells shelves and shelves of Feilun Gong literature, a variety of imported goods and kitchenware products, many of it from China, as well as jewelry, stationery, accessories and apparel from East Asia,

next to the new Middletown checkout counter are promotions for Gung Jing World, a clean content app that steals videos from fucking YouTube. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about this, people are like, yeah, there's my shit on there, never gave them the authority to do it there. And they'll like take people's videos and slightly alter them and it's new content but yeah it's all clean content they spliced YouTube videos with NTD, Epoch and Shen Yun content. Ganjing World's headquarters is a squat four-story office building a five-minute walk from the store facing a fossilized factory plastered with chiropractor ads.

One of the startups vice presidents moved to Middletown from San Francisco where she had worked as president of Epoch's branch there. Earlier this year, Ganjing World assured an inquiring reporter that the company is just friends with Epoch, not formally affiliated, bullshit. Most investigative journalists who have looked into the relationship between all these companies

don't believe that one bit. An executive from Epoch's Texas office hopefully undercut this claim by filing incorporation paperwork for the Feilun Dafa Ganjing World Foundation at the apps new Middletown digs in 2023. All these companies are related. That entity in turn bought two adjacent properties

from Universal Communications, another Feilun Gong company, storage facility that today provides extra parking for the apps employees, a defun Gong company, a storage facility that today provides extra parking for the app's employees, a defunct Honda dealership that is now a sound stage called GJW Studios. Meanwhile across the street from the new Middletown Center is Day's Coffee Roasters, another f**king cult business. Trademark record show Day's belongs to a firm called World Fortune Incorporated, which is a former CEO of the Epoch Times, Bill Guan and Epoch Times founder,

John Tang's company that they opened in 2015. And the Epoch Times extols the brand's enzyme fermented brew, supposedly free from toxic mold that festers allegedly in regular coffee, it doesn't. Yeah, the Epoch Times, a lot of the things they advertise the Epoch times are various companies like all these different companies that are somehow linked to you know Falun Gong. Interestingly under the leadership of Mayor Joseph de Stefano Middletown continues to buy abandoned structures from the state and transfer them to Falun Gong linked entities. For example the city sold off a former community center in 2021

that now serves as a recording studio for EPOC-affiliated Sound of Hope radio network. They got so much shit. They're taking over this area. Even the campaign headquarters of the Orange County Democratic Party is housing a freshly renovated property opposite the shopping center owned by a Flushing-based Fei Lungong activist who has been interviewed by the Epoch Times many times. So they're getting the libs too. Today by far the most Fei Lungong related commerce takes place not in New York but online though. Day's Coffee sold on a site called bestgift.com controlled by yet another Tang founded company based in the epoch offices. Bestgift calls itself an official retail partner of the epoch times, offers discounts

to the paper's paying subscribers. Besides job at hawks garden products, decorative mailboxes, soaps, joint pain supplements and more. So many fucking companies. They're so protected, you know, just like if somebody sues one, they can't access money to the others from the others. Meanwhile, World Fortune's the owner of Days, also operates Beauty Within, a website, which a pair of 30-something podcasters or influencers push various skin products for young women.

Also tied into all this, Gingyong World, meanwhile, offers not just app content, but a subscription service called GJW+, which streams low-budget looking animated programming and documentaries, and a Ganjing campus product that provides Falun-flavored educational videos. Even more ambitious is one of the last ventures Guan launched before his arrest, Epoch Studios. They produced their first feature-length film starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Kevin Sorbo. It's called Firing Squad, loosely based on Indonesia's 2015 execution of a group of drug traffickers, some of whom had converted to evangelical Christianity.

And for the future of Fei Lung Gong, whether they do succeed in taking over Middletown, we'll just have to wait and see. Lee Hung Je, 73 years old, seemingly slowing down. His wife, Lee Rui, in her 70s as well, seems to be spending most of her time playing card games All night sleeping all day apparently According to an article in the African Times both Lee Hong-ja and Lee Rui are addicted to card games Those familiar with card games know that without stakes simply playing cards cannot sustain interest especially not for elderly people in their 70s Whether Lee Hong-ja and his wife use card games to induce some project managing disciples to kick back to them is not beyond possibility given their nature. Okay, African Times. Presumably both of them will die sometime in the next two decades.

And then who will take over their empire? How will they keep fighting the CCP? Or do they even care about fighting the CCP anymore? I mean, they're doing pretty fucking well in the US. Making so much money that they pay almost no taxes on because we love to help grifters here in this country. As a nonprofit, the Epoch Times is exempt from most federal taxes. Its mission, according to tax filings, is independent journalism, which is, it doesn't do that.

Uh, and this nonprofit took in $121 million in 2021. Its revenue that year was up 685% from two years prior. I can't find revenue disclosures from the past few years but I bet it's more than 120 million, 121 million dollars a year. Also Shen Yun, technically a nonprofit, nonprofit that reported almost 46 million dollars in revenue and almost 230 million in assets in 2022 that they don't pay again taxes on. Fei Lungong recognized as a religion here in the US so they don't pay taxes. Not even on their 427 acre Dragon Springs compound which is called a church. Fei Lungong local chapters they use their religious tax-free status and then

pay for all of the Shen Yun advertising, the blitz marketing you see. And they also, you know, skirt labor laws by using part-time church volunteers to do all the fucking grunt work for these organizations. And I can't prove it, but it seems as if a great deal of all the money these groups make, you know, and who knows how much more money so many affiliated groups you probably don't even know about are making, all funnels back to the leadership, to Li Hong-Ju a fucking con artist who claims to be a fully enlightened being a guy who claims to have his alien law will bullshit rotate at maximum creating the most law bodies levels a

guy who does not believe in evolution thinks all scientists have been manipulated by extraterrestrials from other dimensions a guy who financially exploits Followers gets people killed to encourage them to avoid modern medicine, a guy who says homosexuals will end up in the same hell as communists, a guy who claims he can turn invisible and teleport and levitate. As much as I don't support China's policy of persecution, kind of do wish they had caught and tortured this one gong sack to death. Let's get out of this timeline. and tortured this one gong sack to death. Let's get out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

Before wrapping up this episode, just a quick ad from the Shen Yun dance troupe. Hello. It is I. from the Shen Yun dance troupe. I want you to grab your gong, increase your gong. Stroke it, stroke your big old gong. Suck on it, lick it, put it inside you. Raise your xing xing. Your gong needs a little Xing Xing love Consummate, Cultivate, Enlighten, Relinquish Lust But you like it don't you? You like the lust You want the lust inside you You want your gong to throb don't you?

You dirty little piggy You want to consummate your gong to throb don't you? You dirty little piggy You want to consummate your gong You want to fill your heart gong with xing xing you dirty piggy Feel it Feel the Falun Gong inside you Now you've done it Now you've reached Nirvana. Now you've consummated and rid yourself of lust. It's our secret. I won't tell if you don't. Now you can be invisible. Teleport.

Consummate. Shen Yun. Come to a performance. Come. It'll change your life. If you come, just come, just keep coming. Consummate Shen Yun. Wow. What the fuck was that? That was fucking, that was weird. That was, hmm.

They're taking their, taking their dance troupe in a very new direction, I guess, in, you know, 2025. That was hmm, okay. All right. Well, you know, got to change things up, I guess, you know, hold people's attention. I didn't realize Shen, you'd got so spicy. Anyway, Fei-Lun Gong, such a different first half and second half of that timeline, right? Aside from the insane walk into walls, turn invisible, levitate in bullshit that Li Hong-Ju

claimed to be able to do when he was still a kid, the movement seemed to have started off as the expression of maybe a genuine desire to return some spirituality to China following the Cultural Revolution. You know, when all that was stamped out so viciously, when you can be tortured or have your family killed for expressing a faith that wasn't a pure faith in communism? No, no wonder people wanted something seemingly good to believe in. Something that would help them feel like the best version of themselves. Physically, mentally, spiritually. That at least partially explains the massive popularity of the exercise known as Qigong during this time.

You know China was in a spiritual desert and Li Hongzhe offered many in China something to drink. Something really fucking weird and ultimately terrible for you like Mountain Dew, Major Melon. But still something to drink nonetheless. Did Li Hongzhe actually train in spiritual arts during his childhood or was he just one of the many people that got into Qigong when it started to spread? I think he just jumped on board. Saw an opportunity to make money as a teacher instead of continuing to be a practitioner. At some point he figured out that he could become a big wig by putting a new twist on an existing and popular ideology, the hallmark of all cult leaders.

He took something people already loved, Qigong, added his law body's clone selves supernatural bullshit to it, spiced it up, kept adding more bells and whistles as he started to gain more traction. Was it all a cultist organization from the very beginning? Was he ever into just wellness? Was he ever legitimately trying to help people? And then in the brutal crackdown of the CCP, did he become like the CCP itself? Did the crackdown push him into becoming the kind of authoritarian leader he was fighting?

I doubt it. I'm guessing he was a grifter right from the jump, but who knows. There's a lot we don't know about Fei Lun Gong because the two sides, the organization and the CCP both engage in so much propaganda. Fei Lun Gong claims it's nothing more than a well-intentioned community of believers who value health and personal spiritual development. The CCP says it's an evil cult whose members will lose their minds and threaten the foundation of society. I don't think that's true. But is Fei-Lung Gang a cult?

Yeah, I would say it is. You know, they're not all living together in the same compound, but it's highly structured. You know, even if that structure among its various companies is hard to truly suss out. Their authoritarian, you know, founder Li Hongzhe is the fucking master, a deity like person at the top. They isolate people from their friends and family, try to control what members think, how they spend their time, especially when it comes to the Shen Yun performers, you know, how they should treat their bodies. Doesn't accept questioning, believes in an absolute truth or law wheels or law bodies and all kinds of other

insane bullshit. Their whole cult speak. All told it's a shame that the Chinese propaganda machine has distorted this claim of Fei Lungong being a cult. It's a shame that it's hard to see Fei Lungong outside of this continual push and pull because real people have died out of their adherence to Fei Lungong's anti-medicine beliefs. Real people have locked their family members who wanted to leave the group in cars or trapped them in houses to try and force them to stay, you know, truly thinking they were doing the right thing. And that's very important because it appears that Fei Lungong is more intent than ever on becoming an empire, a commercial empire now, and we should not support them. I don't actually know how bad the epoch times is when it comes to, you know, balanced reporting. But do you think you should trust a news source when it originated from this belief system?

I don't. So you'd buy a ticket to some beautiful Shen Yun dance performance knowing that your money is eventually funneling back to these guys? No. Stay away from Fei Lung Gong. Do Chai Chi, right? Similar movements, meditative breathing, no extra bullshit. Stay away from the epoch times. Get your news from the AP or from Reuters

or from the BBC. They've all gotten high marks for years for not being biased and being good, honest, trustworthy news sources who are not backed by a cult. Stay away from Shen Yun, right? The dancers you're watching, they're being brainwashed, exploited, abused. Just stay here. Right now, listen to today's takeaways. Number one, Li Hongzhe went public with Falun Gong or Falun Dafa in 1992 after years of spiritual development supposedly or after a few weeks of making some bullsh** up. Falungong is a Chinese spiritual practice that combines meditation, qigong, and various religious beliefs to on the surface advocate for truth, compassion, and benevolence. Became wildly popular in China with some estimates saying up to a hundred million people practice

it. Number two, aside from the purported spiritual development and wellness aspects, Fei Lungong has some very strange beliefs. Beliefs like extraterrestrials coming to Earth so they can take over our bodies, rampant homophobia, being opposed to mixed-race marriages, belief in alien law bodies that are copies of yourself, they can act independently but also you can control them or maybe they do act independently, it's complicated. By far one of the most controversial beliefs is their rejection of medicine, which has led to the deaths of who knows how many followers, who refused to get treatment for serious illnesses.

Number three, Fei Lungong has faced brutal repression from the CCP. This began in the late 1990s when Chinese society began experiencing increased unrest due to the opening up of the economy and subsequent widespread corruption, and Chinese President Zhong Zemin found a perfect scapegoat in this group. For decades and still now, Fei Lungong members have been harassed, surveilled, detained, tortured, executed, even had their organs harvested in prison according to some. But that doesn't mean Fei Lungong is not a shitty cult. Number 4. The most successful arm of Fei Lungong is definitely its performing arts

group Shen Yun. For now, Epoch Times might eclipse them soon. Shen Yun complains to be the revitalization of an ancient Chinese tradition even though it is not. Instead, it's a hallucinogenic technicolor display of gymnastics and ballet, any with a tsunami, currently with the face of Karl Marx. It's reportedly a terrible place to perform with many dancers reporting injuries that don't get treated, low wages or no wages, and other dangerous conditions. Number five new info I cannot

verify this but according to one website some Fei Lungong who live at Dragon Springs are eunuchs. The article is about Lee Rui, Lee Hung-Ju's wife and it shares the following information. Disciples serve Lee Rui, Li Hongzhe's wife, and it shares the following information. Disciples serve Li Rui food while kneeling on one knee. Whether this action is voluntary on the part of the disciples or demanded by Li Rui, herself was not specified. However, the source mentioned that within Falun Gong there are instances of Li Hongzhe and others spiritually castrating disciples, and some disciples are indeed eunuchs making his claims credible. So what's going on here? Are they taking their dicks for real?

Or do they show up with no dicks but maybe they still have their spirit dicks and then somehow their spirit dicks get taken on a spirit plane by the law body goblins. I don't know maybe some some spirit dicks stealing low-down dirty law body goblins, I don't know, maybe some some spirit dick stealing, low-down dirty law-body goblins, the worst kind of law-bodies, doing some some dick thieving here. I'm making about as much sense as the fucking founder of this cult right now, Lee Hong-ja, so I'll just push this button. The Fei-Lung-Gong, the cult behind the epoch times in Shen Yun has been sucked. What a weird The Shuck Top 5 Takeaways Fei Lungong, the cult behind the epoch times and Shen Yun has been sucked. What a weird fucking story, right?

God, just all of these businesses being based, it all can be traced back to all these massively profitable businesses. Can be traced back to a guy who told stories about being invisible playing tag as a kid And how if you do his exercises your alien law will will create law bodies that will make you in life It's just it's it's a crazy world. Oh boy Thank you to the bad magic productions team for help making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic Lindsey Cummins Thanks to Logan Keith to help him publish this episode sign a merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thank you to Sophie Evans for her awesome initial research here. Thanks to the all-seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page,

the Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. Starting off with an awesome message from an awesome sack, Derek Richard, who sent in an email to Bojangles at timesluckpodcast.com with the subject line of dammit Dan, you missed my favorite story about the goat, Mr. Rogers. Derek wrote, good, whatever time of day it is for you. I was very concerned when you started this episode and brought up the head warlock in

a coven. As most people on the planet, I loved him growing up and grew to respect him more as I aged like a bad cheese. But as always, you did him justice. That being said, you missed a great story about Fred. To be fair, the story may only be known to people who grew up in Pittsburgh. Mr. Rogers, this is so great. Mr. Rogers was a humble man his entire life. So much so that he drove a very non-descriptive Impala

and would park on the street outside of WQED. One day, his car was stolen. KDKA, our local news outlet, found out about it and ran the story. The next day, the car was replaced to the same spot in which it had been stolen and had a note on the dashboard that read, We are sorry. If we had known it was your car, we wouldn't have stolen it. That's the man he was. He broke through to harden criminals.

I was lucky enough to tour his studio when I was in grade school. Even got to meet the man who played Mr. McFeely. That'll be fair. When he came out and Mr. Rogers did not, you could hear an audible level of disappointment from my class. That's all that you... Thanks for all that you do. Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. Derek Richard, here's a dick for you if you couldn't find another one for the episode. Well, mr. Dick. Thank you We did need some dick in this episode Thank you for an awesome. Mr. Rogers story. God is cool and also poor mr. McFeely, but he had to have expected that

That wasn't the first time he walked out and said instead of Fred people like no Okay But what a guy man just incredible Just incredible, so heartwarming. Next up, well-read sack Jessica Ross heard my call for people sharing good boss stories because Fred Rogers' dad was such a good boss and sending the message with the subject line

of great employers. Hi team. On the I didn't cry, it's allergies episode of Mr. Rogers, Dan asked folks to write in if they had similar stories or great employers I'm an assistant librarian in a small rural library in Arkansas every year our board of directors and the friends of the library group are Kind enough to give us a Christmas bonus some years. It's not much though. Anything is appreciated this past year However, the combined bonuses were equal to a full paycheck. Talk about grateful.

Looking forward to this Christmas, assuming the state or federal governments have not succeeded in their attempts to shutter libraries. The world could use Mr. Rogers today. Thanks for all your hard work, especially this not at all emotional reflection of a big part of my childhood, Jessica. Jessica, thanks for sharing. And what a great place to donate to if you can. Your local library.

Books, librarians are so fucking important. I hope the support continues, Jessica. And thank you. Thank you for doing what you do. I appreciate you, neighbor. And no, I did not suddenly move to Arkansas. You're all neighbors now. Next up, more solid employer news from an Idaho neighbor, Alex Campbell, who sent in

an email with the subject line of Christmas at work. Hey Dan, I figured since you had asked I'd share. You can use my name, but keep the others' names in the shop out of this if you would please, just letting you know in case you wanted to look up our website. I've been in this shop in Ampa, Idaho for about 12 years now. It's a sheet metal fabrication and machine shop. I also do a lot of powder coating for the semiconductor industry. There are parts I've worked on that are in outer space.

Needless to say, pretty cool place to work. Not only does it pay pretty well enough to where my wife really doesn't need to work, but they also pay for my health insurance. I have 401k profit sharing they pay and do. I'm definitely glad I fit in here. As for the Christmas generosity, every year we have a party where the owner will cater some restaurant or he will grill up some steaks with all the things on the side, but they also will give gifts to the employees. New TVs, DeWalt drill, impact sets, hoodies, etc. But we also always get a Christmas bonus check. Check that equals two weeks pay. The owner is a

pretty cool guy. He is definitely a great guy to work for. Have a great summer you guys and hail fucking Nimrod. Wow, Alex. Yeah, hail fucking Nimrod is right. That's awesome. That is very generous. That is great to hear. I looked up your company. Very cool website. You guys have some awesome high-tech looking robotic tools. Massive well-designed warehouse. And I'd love to see all that right here in Idaho. And now one more from a hurting sucker. robotic tools, massive well-designed warehouse. And I love to see all that right here in Idaho.

And now one more from a hurting sucker. We did get some other positive boss stories, but I'll switch it up for a hurting sucker, Justin S, who could use your positive thoughts, prayers, chi, whatever you believe in right now. He sent in a message with the subject line of, a heartbroken meat sack. Dear Dan and the Time Suck crew,

I'm gonna go ahead and apologize for the email. I have a heavy heart and you, sir, have gotten rest area in the middle of nowhere Illinois, sitting here listening to Time Suck. I know there's strength in the Time Suck community and the power of Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod.

Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod.

Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. Hail Nimrod. I'm a truck driver on the road right now at a rest area in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, sitting here listening to Time Suck. I know there's strength in the Time Suck community and the power of Nimrod, hail Nimrod. I'm asking that no matter what it is that people believe, whether it's an omnipotent being, a higher power, just good vibes, if y'all can find it in your hearts, please send some love for our daughter. She was crying on the phone after sending me a pic and and said I finally had my baby girl. I had to pull over after that

because I couldn't see anything. Just hearing her say that tore my heart into pieces. I know that with time things will get easier but damn this hurts. I love you all. Love that you've put together what you put together to bring joy, laughter, knowledge and those earworms from Triple M. They're always playing to my speakers while I travel, whether it's time suck or scared to death, and I feel like we're best friends. Or at least that's what I'm told when I tell the family what Dan said today. You have put together some pretty damn amazing, something pretty damn amazing. I'm thankful I get to be a

part of this, taking the encouragement you constantly give. Sorry for the length of the email, for being a downer, but I couldn't think of a better way to get it out than this email. Keep on giving me the endless knowledge and I'll keep sucking it. Thanks Justin. Fuck Justin. Sorry to hear about what happened. That's brutal. Glad that at least your daughter is physically okay but yeah that's that hurts. So please everybody take a moment right now as you hear this to think about somebody you don't know. Somebody you've never met met you don't even know their name the mother of little Claire Therese and put some energy into helping her mom heal and her grandpa too think about how maybe her energy is being transformed reused somehow her soul spirit Adams

energy whatever you want to call it might come back to this world or move on to a better one hail Hail Nimrod. Love you too Justin S. Well thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death, Time Suck each week. Short Sucks, a nightmare fuel, and the Time Suck and Scared to Death podcast feeds twice a month now. Please don't worry about your law wheel or your law bodies this week. I think some type of spiritual belief system could be very real. Not that one. Keep on sucking. Add Magic Productions

Mmmmm... Shen Yun... You should come. You should watch watch you dirty little piggy. Watch the flexible dancers. Listen to my German accent for this Chinese show. Oh, they're so fit, so Chinese, so tight. Law wills, so full of lust. Help them reach Nirvana. Send your law bodies to them. Penetrate their law bodies with your law bodies. Consume them.

Cultivation is consummation. Turn invisible. Enter their bodies. we heal them. Let them enter you as well. Let everyone be entering everyone. Everyone's been entered, feel the chi. Touch the Xing Xing. Grab the gong and make it hard.

Make it big, bold and righteous gone, please the master create nirvana, that is Shenyoon, that is consummation, that is the sound of rejecting communism. This is the feeling of entering, penetrating, coming into nirvana. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, I think that was the right amount of weird and uncomfortable to end this episode with.