Yahuda this week regails us with his views on “Scientology with Chinese Characteristics”. He awaits a hoarde of outraged Falun Gong members to protest outside his apartment with glee and specially-prepared marshmallows on sticks.
What I’m about to write will no doubt make me unpopular with the eternally effervescent “hooray for people power” crowd. It certainly won’t make me any friends in the “Bash China Now!” American media. But if it gets up the nose of a certain long-standing friend and political sparring buddy (who’s opinion on the matter is, in my opinion, the definition of knee-jerk), it’ll all be worth it. So here goes:
Wang Wenyi’s three minute tirade against Hu Jintao was neither a spontaneous nor courageous act. It was not a legitimate act of rebellion or even a meaningful kick against the pricks (like Cindy Sheehan’s Crawford camp-out). It was political theater designed specifically to embarrass China, processed for mass consumption by a willing media, and if not engineered by Bush’s neo-con brigade, than certainly done with their blessings.
The American media is presenting Wang’s act as justified civil disobedience, a desperate stand by a plucky, courageous Falun Gong practitioner designed to wake up a sleeping American public to the idea that Bush’s meeting with Hu is the worst knuckling under since Chamberlain met Hitler. Wang’s actions, they would have us believe, were completely spontaneous (albeit media-perfect). Not once in the mainstream American media have I seen it mentioned that whoever vetted Wang’s press pass must have known that Wang, a reporter working for the Epoch Times (widely acknowledged as being a mouthpiece for, if not wholly owned, by Falun Gong) might use her journalist’s credentials to launch just such a tirade. Except for an article in Britain’s Independent, I’ve similarly seen no mention of the fact that Wang did precisely the same thing four years ago, launching the same tirade against Jiang Zhemin on a visit to Europe.
It would be a stretch to expect the American media to connect the dots to their logical conclusion (that Wang was brought in precisely to embarrass Hu Jintao). However, they might have at least brought up the connection between Wang’s employer, Epoch Times, and Falun Gong. Wolf Blitzer’s dialogue with Wang the next day was the most kid-gloved interview since Rush Limbaugh called Donald Rumsfeld onto his radio love-in couch earlier in the week. Watching the interview on CNN, one might be forgiven for equating Wang’s act with Gandhi’s salt protest.
In the three minute interview, Blitzer called Wang’s action “a shot that was heard around the world.” He then got down to the business of serious journalism by asking Wang the most hard hitting question of the interview, namely if the organization that provided her with the credentials know of her plans, to which Wang answered “No.”
Wolf (and my disagreeable comrade) will forgive me if I now, in print, call “bullshit” on that.
I don’t have adequate space to get into my beef with Falun Gong (a philosophy that I have studied extensively enough to have come to the conclusion that its basically Scientology with Chinese Characteristics). Of the thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who have gone to jail for the right to practice their religion, I have nothing but sympathy and respect, even if I find their belief system, to put it mildly, goofy. But as far as I’m concerned, Li Hongzhi (Falun Gong’s L. Ron Hubbard) is a manipulative charlatan who sold out his Chinese base to gain global recognition. By instructing his followers to gather in Tian’anmen in 1999, he ensured that the Chinese government would respond in the most ham-fisted way. He threw his most devoted adherents to the lions in exchange for a global advertising campaign that no amount of money could buy.
Li Hongzhi — safe and sound on Manhattan bedrock — couldn’t have seen the outcome as anything but, and cynically swapped the well being of his followers in China to gain a slew of global adherents and the political leverage that he now enjoys. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this: Had you even heard of Falun Gong before the Chinese government, stupidly, heavy-handedly, and as if following a script, began persecuting them?
My other beef with Wang’s political theater is this: By using her press credentials to make (and not, as the job description entails) to report news, she further weakened the implied protocol that should exist between those who make news and those who report it. As a journalist living in an age when journalists are increasingly under fire, this strikes me as a dangerous and particularly short-sighted move, akin to shooting an enemy under the flag of truce, or using a Red Cross vehicle to transport weapons.
Intelligence is not necessarily a bulwark against manipulation; it should, however, afford one the eyes to spot when and how they’re being manipulated. The persecution — and yes, it is persecution — of Falun Gong has long been a favorite and easy topic for the American to use to paint the picture of China as some evil, monolithic government bent on enslaving it population in the name of Wal-Mart. Wang’s actions didn’t help jailed Falun Gong practitioners in China. It just gave America’s burgeoning anti-China brigade more ammunition, and obscured even further the already blurry line between useful protest and cynical political theater. It did more harm than good.
Original text from: http://www.cannedrevolution.com/littleredemail/06/email06-14.html
