Source:https://patch.com/south-carolina/myrtle-beach/why-should-falungong-media-fight-us-election-nodx
As the US election is about to kick off, Falungong media has acted frequently since last year, publishing false news and conspiracy theories for Trump to win the election, thus achieving ulterior political goals. This makes the Democratic Party passive, because the Democratic Party has no media resources like Falungong, which can invest huge advertising fees at no cost and can release any information without any bottom line. In fact, Falungong media did this for its own benefit.
Spending huge sums of money on false advertisements for the election
As the US election approaches, the contest between Trump and Biden becomes increasingly hot. In order to help Trump get re-election, “Falungong” has adopted a series of operations.
On the one hand, they use technology to steal social media platforms, fabricate netizens’ identities and groups to spread rumors on the Internet, and guide public opinion. On the other hand, they spend millions to publicize and beautify Trump, and try their best to promote his radical anti-China policy, so as to please the current US government.
Last August, the NBC news channel reported that Epoch Times spent $1.5 million in six months and put in 11,000 Facebook advertisements to support Trump, second only to Trump’s campaign team.
Facebook subsequently banned the newspaper from buying advertisements from its platform on the grounds of violating political transparency, and closed 600 special pages allegedly related to the newspaper. Facebook also labeled some content pushed in the name of “Epoch Media Group” as false information.
The video of the origin of COVID-19 produced by “New Tang Dynasty Television” was marked as false information by social media giant Facebook.
In response to Facebook’s advertising ban, Trump’s ally, Rep. Jim Banks, wrote a letter to Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg, accusing Facebook of becoming a tool of the Chinese government.
Banks wrote in the letter: “By prohibiting the Epoch Times from pushing advertisements, Zuckerberg indirectly helped the Chinese Communist Party to participate in the soft power competition with the United States and used the same censorship methods as Chinese leaders. “
Epoch Times, the Falungong media, went on to Youtube and put a lot of advertisements on Youtube. In February this year, The New York Times reported that the advertising cost of Falungong Epoch Times on Youtube reached 1 million US dollars. Some experts estimate that the Epoch Times spends more (advertising) than the familiar mainstream media such as The New York Times, CNN, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.
NBC News Channel reported that in 2016, the newspaper hired non-Falungong journalists for the first time and asked them to write a large number of reports. A former employee of the newspaper compared it to “Russian spammers”, and he told NBC News Channel: “The situation is like fighting against the so-called liberal propaganda through our own propaganda”.
American politicians prefer Falungong media?
On June 29th, 2020, Bannon, the former chief strategist of the White House, praised Epoch Times, New Tang Dynasty Television and Falungong practitioners for insisting on exposing the CPC and reporting the truth. Bannon said, “What Americans don’t understand is why the media in the United States and Europe didn’t ask the Chinese Communist Party after a large amount of evidence about Chinese virus was exposed by Gnews, Gtv, Epoch and New Tang TV stations. “
However, as early as the spread of the coronavirus, Australian News Network (News.com.au) and other media reported that Falungong spread false information to attack China during the epidemic, and many American media also reported this incident. On April 17, 2020, Jack Gramenz wrote an article saying that Facebook, the world’s largest social media website, marked the videos of Falungong cult as “false information” and “junk”, and quoted the views of Tim Blais, a popular Canadian science communicator on the oil pipeline, to explore the hidden secrets behind the video.
Bannon praised the role of Falungong media, perhaps hoping to use Falungong media to spread false information on the one hand, and help Trump’s general election to do a good job of public opinion propaganda on the other hand.
Why should Falungong media help Trump in the election
Previously, regarding the content of American politics, the Epoch Times of Falungong generally did not pay attention to it, unless it was closely related to China’s interests. The tax report of Epoch Times shows that the organization’s recent advertising strategy, on the one hand, integrates social media, and on the other hand, supports conservative politicians represented by Trump, which makes its income double, and at the same time, it also emerges in the wider conservative media circles in the United States.
In July last year, the US State Department held the second Ministerial Conference on Promoting International Religious Freedom in Washington. During the Trump Conference, US President met 27 people from many countries in the White House, including Falungong believer Zhang Yuhua. This was the first time Trump officially met with Falungong practitioners in the White House. This has greatly encouraged Falungong media.
Falungong invested heavily in the election of Trump
Last May, Laura, Trump’s daughter-in-law, had a 40-minute interview with the senior editor of Epoch Times at Trump Tower. For the first time, Epoch Times became the leading role of the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which made it easy for it to get interviews with congressmen, Trump cabinet members and right-wing celebrities.
With a large amount of false advertising expenses, Falungong media has received billions of page views on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which makes Epoch Times and other Falungong media the favorite of Trump family and an important tool for Trump to run for re-election. Since last year, Trump has retweeted Epoch Times reports on Facebook, and some articles were written by Trump team. Trump’s eldest son also retweeted Epoch Times reports several times.
There is a mutually beneficial relationship between Trump team and Falungong media. On the one hand, Falungong media has made full efforts to widely publish true and false news for the election campaign, and to create public opinion for the American election. If Trump is re-elected, the rewards they can get will bring great benefits to Falungong media, which will help them to continue to show their prominence in American conservative media.
For example, in July this year, the new york Times reported that Falungong’s allies are making efforts to promote the US Open Science and Technology Fund and the US State Department to provide funds for some software developed by Falungong. Especially, “Ultrasurf”, which was developed by a Falungong member about 10 years ago and can no longer play an effective role, has caused great controversy in American society.
On the other hand, after Trump’s re-election, Falungong, which provides the power of public opinion, will naturally provide Falungong with a broader space for activities, and even improve its viability in the United States, allowing Falungong to publish false information and other acts that violate American laws.
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