Talk:Falun Gong

Tiananmen Square Incident needs to be properly referenced

Under the media campaign section, in the final paragraph, there's a line which reads "much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen in 1989". Since this is referencing the Tiananmen Square protests, please refer to it as such so as not to confuse the incident with the name of the square itself. Please change this line to "much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen Protests of 1989". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sheikh25 (talk • contribs) 10:48, October 1, 2020 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 17 July 2023

Please change, "Deerpark, NY" to "Deer Park, NY". In the first paragraph of this Wikipedia page, the headquarters for Falun Gong is incorrectly written as, "Deerpark, NY". In fact, the town is "Deer Park, NY". I am the source for this as I grew up in Dix Hills, NY, which borders Deer Park. Both towns are in Suffolk County, on Long Island, NY, just outside of NYC. Lostinnh (talk) 23:58, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. @Lostinnh: Please provide reliable sources that Falun Gong has moved from Orange County to Suffolk County. —C.Fred (talk) 00:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I guess I can get the URL of a map to show where Deer Park is and what its correct spelling is. I was simply correcting the spelling of the name of the town. I considered this a minor edit/detail so did not think a reference other then my own knowledge of 12 years living there would matter.

As far as Falun Gong having its HDQRs in Deer Park, NY, that was already on that Wiki page and, again, I was simply correcting the spelling, not stating a location. I guess I can use Wikis own page on Deer Park, NY, as a reference for its correct spelling. 2601:19D:C080:3D20:38DA:8AF0:7A70:B63D (talk) 05:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, please disregard my previous effort. My apologies. I just did a lot of reading on both Falun Gong and Deerpark, NY. I was very surprised to learn that there are two towns in NY state with that name, just with different spellings. There is Deerpark, NY, in Orange County, NY, where Falun Gong is and Deer Park, NY, in Suffolk County, NY, near where I grew up. I was amazed. In my defense, I just read a good part of a long piece on ex-Falun Gong members and they kept spelling the town as, "Deer Park", which is incorrect. Lostinnh (talk) 07:48, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

That is just probably because they were not actual ex-Falun Gong members but dummies or such or people paid for that story by the CCP. Just guessing. But why else would they not spell properly the place where they lived...? Marieke77 (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

LOL, if that were the only error in this Wikipedia piece. Anne Linstatter (talk) 01:36, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Sources from 2000 and 2003 presented as current need to go

Right now a significant amount of this article's discussion about the contemporary Falun Gong is cited to material from 2000 and 2003. A lot of this seems to be intended to claim that Falun Gong is some kind of decentralized spiritual movement rather than a full-blown new religious movement centered around whatever Li Hongzhi says. it also makes no mention of the entire org's hierarchy based out of Dragon Springs, which did not exist at the time. These sources need to be removed and replaced with contemporary sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The sections can be updated, but massive removal may be inappropriate, as the academically-cited parts removed shall remain true unless proven false, such as not charging fees, no system of membership, no rituals, no hierarchy to enforce orthodoxy, and the fact the Li doesn't intervene in practitioners' lives, among other things deleted. Li Hongzhi has been living in the New York area (not far from the current Dragon Springs) since 1999 or prior according to this WaPo article and U.S News & World Report article in 1999. Authors of sources published in the early 2000s (removed in recent edits) were unlikely to be unaware of this fact, as it was widely reported in 1999 that Li lived in NY at that time. Thus it would be inaccurate to say that these sources are outdated in terms of how Li influences the Falun Gong movement.

Dragon Spring is the campus of Fei Tian College, Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, and Shen Yun Performing Arts [1]. Having a physical campus for its performing arts troupe and affiliated schools doesn't necessarily change Falun Gong's organizational structure and the fact that Li communicates with his followers mainly through his teachings published on online. The decentralized structure of regional Falun Dafa Associations in the US and worldwide, as well as the voluntary nature of these organizations and their lack of hierarchy should remain true today, unless proved otherwise by reliable sources. Thomas Meng (talk) 02:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I just got around to reading Andrew Junker's book, Becoming Activists in Global China, which was published in 2019. It reignited an interest in the topic for me, and I think it is a good reference on this issue. bloodofox has a point about the old sources, but the content that was removed wasn't incorrect in my opinion and the new sources don't refute them. In cases like this, I think it's best to improve, not just remove (maybe a new slogan for me, haha). As a note, Junker doesn't focus on Dragon Springs in discussing the groups operations. The book takes a global look at how a diaspora community coordinates with each other, which I think provides good context. Li Hongzhi and the Falun Gong leadership (if that's the right term for anyone except Li Hongzhi in their group) have always been in New York, even before Dragon Springs, and I haven't seen any references to a significant shift in the group's dynamics after they moved there. Summary: this section needs some updates, but I don't think the new sources put forward anything contradictory to what was there before. —Zujine|talk 14:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Reality check: Thomas Meng is an adherent who haunts these articles and pushes the group's preferred narrative. He knows that coverage of Falun Gong has shifted to being extremely critical of the new religious movement over the past several years, and his edits are just more of a long line of adherents attempting to sculpt and obfuscate this page to echo the group's preferred narrative (scholars of this topic have even written about Falun Gong's repeated attempts at changing this page to exactly that). In reality, it's indisputable that Falun Gong is centralized around Li Hongzhi at their compouned at Dragon Springs. Pre-Dragon Springs sources are not acceptable on this topic. All these older sources in this article need to be purged as out of date. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:34, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Andrew Junker's book Becoming Activists in Global China (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which is probably the latest academic book on Falun Gong, mentioned Dragon Springs 15 times, and Junker even went to Dragon Springs himself for field research. But nowhere in his book did he say Dragon Springs changed Falun Gong's decentralized organizational structure. To the contrary, he said (p.186):

"Practitioners learned how to execute a petition, march through a major city, conduct lawsuits to protect rights, produce a newspaper, lobby elected officials, get motions through the US Congress, hand out leaflets on street corners, use local and national laws to protect rights, register a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the USA, issue press releases, coordinate transnational information and telephone campaigning, and so forth. All of this mobilization, especially because it was so decentralized and emphasized individual initiative, facilitated skill development and politically consequential forms of agency." (emphasis added)

In a 2019 book review, social science scholar Chengpang Lee summarized Junker's book in this way:

"First and the foremost, it is the decentralised organisational structure of Falun Gong’s mobilisation that is key to its success [compared to the democratic movement in overseas Chinese diaspora]." (emphasis added)

According to Junker (p. 99), Dragon Springs was established in 2002. Though the media only started reporting on it in the recent few years, it has been there for over 20 years. Media spotlight doesn't necessarily change its role in Falun Gong's organizational structure. Please be aware of WP:RECENTISM.

@Bloodofox: If you can specify which quote from which academic source published between 2000 and 2003 is refuted by which recent reporting, that would be more helpful (than WP:PAs). Then we can discuss either removing or updating it. Thomas Meng (talk) 09:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

The organization can be decentralized and still have a headquarters and a supreme leader. Those aren't contradictory as much as you'd like them to be, one certainly does not refute the other. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

The recent improvements should stay in the article. Too much WP:WEIGHT is assigned to outdated reports. The outdated stuff is shown to be wrong by Heather Kavan and James R. Lewis, especially the sentence "Students are free to participate in the practice and follow its teachings as much or as little as they like, and practitioners do not instruct others on what to believe or how to behave." More recent accounts show that practitioners are subject to intense peer pressure; not "free" to leave. Binksternet (talk) 14:56, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I've only seen an opinion article (not reliable for fact) that mentioned a few anecdotal accounts of family members trying to persuade their youngsters who had stopped practicing Falun Gong. But I haven't seen any WP:RS regarding "peer pressure" beyond familial contexts.

As for the work of Heather Kaven and James Lewis, can you specify which publication of theirs contradicts which removed sentence?

Additionally, please note that the late James Lewis was a faculty member at the Chinese government-funded Wuhan University. Such affiliations raise questions about conflicts of interest.Thomas Meng (talk) 11:58, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

There is no non-family pressure? Can you explain this then [2]? Specifically the lines which follow "But as soon as he loses the Fa, do you know what he faces?" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:25, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

That COI argument has been rejected again and again. You just cited Andrew Junker and Chengpang Lee yourself, and they're currently at institutions funded by the Chinese government - unlike Lewis, who was working somewhere else when the source in question was written. MrOllie (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Just came across this blatant instance of personal attack by Bloodofox against Thomas Meng. Bloodofox, lately I have seen editors [banned indefinitely] for lesser instance of WP:PA than the one you are committing and I warn you not to engage in such WP:PA again.

The two disputed paragraphs in this talk discussion has been stable for at least the past several months before it was deleted by Bloodofox on Sep 27 in two edits 1 and 2. When other editor restored to the previous stable version, Bloodofox reverted this restoration and restored his deletion of substantial stable content.

The alleged reason for this large scale deletion is that the content being deleted is outdated because as "being from 2000 to 2003". Without contesting this argument, in reality, some of the sources being deleted are as recent as 2019. One example is Andrew Junker's Become Activist in Global China 2019, which is a full blown scholarship published by the Cambridge University Press.

Ironically, I note the same 2019 Junker source was cited extensively in other parts of this article, bearing on a certain "secretive", New York compound. These editors have no issue with this source in those parts. The same editors, however, began to have issues with this source, when it speaks to decentralization of this religious movement.

In my respective view, we are witnessing a vandalization and clear POV-pushing on this page, committed by Bloodofox and Binksternet, and a few others. The previously stable content should be restored without delay. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Complaining about personal attacks while making personal attacks yourself in the same message is a strange tactic. MrOllie (talk) 21:43, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, it appears to be a willfully ignorant argument. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

On hindsight, vandalism is probably a strong allegation to make in the circumstances. But there's definitely a serious personal attack and POV-pushing by the editors that you support, and it's telling that you did not deny in your comment above.

And no - calling someone out for POV-pushing or vandalism is nowhere the same as accusing another editor for being a Falun Gong "adherent", who "haunts this article" and "pushes the group's preferred narrative", which is a clear instance of WP:PA, against an editor's perceived religious affiliation or belief.

You should not be defending such behaviour, regardless of whether you agree with the infringing editor's POV. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 02:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Hasn't Thomas Meng disclosed a COI? I believe they are a self described adherent, I agree that "haunts this article" isn't ideal but I will note that it was written during spooky season. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

He has indeed and everything I said was absolutely true. This article has and continues to have a serious problem with adherents attempting to sanitize the article and present the organization's preferred version. This is not and has never been a secret here. As for "vandalism", lol. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:51, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I have a question @HollerithPunchCard:, why is it POV pushing and vandalism when Bloodofox calls someone out for POV-pushing or vandalism but its not when you do it? How does that math work exactly? Thomas Meng engaged in POV-pushing/vandalism... Bloodofox called them out... You then called Bloodofox out for calling them out. Why aren't you calling out Thomas Meng's behavior? To quote a wise wikipedian "You should not be defending such behaviour, regardless of whether you agree with the infringing editor's POV." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm bad at detecting sarcasm so thanks for calling me wise.

Why did I call Bloodofox out but not Thomas Meng? Because Bloodofox was the one who committed blatant WP:PA, twice: 1 2, against Thomas Meng, not the other way round.

As for POV-pushing and vandalization, the issue here between Thomas Meng and Bloodofox is that Bloodofox deleted swaths of content, which has been stable on this article for the past several months, as far as I can see. What Thomas Meng did was to restore that content, and restore the article to its last stable version. That's not vandalism.

Concerns of impropriety aside, it is not even obvious to me that Bloodofox and his supporters have the better argument, in terms of content.

As I mentioned, Bloodofox's alleged argument for "purging" the article is that the sources were from 2000 to 2002 which were "outdated". In reality, the sources he deleted were not all old sources. The Andrew Junker source that he deleted was published as recently as 2019, and was a serious academic scholarship no less.

What was more incredulous to me, was that while this source was deleted for its discussion that Falun Gong was "decentralized", Bloodofox and his/her supports took no issue with this source in other parts of this same article, that addresses that aspects of this religious movement.

Then it occurred to me that the sources deleted by Bloodofox were not so much common in being "outdated", as they were common in portraying Falun Gong as a decentralized, non-totalitarian religious movement.

This is why I believe that Bloodofox and his supporters are POV-pushing behind their edits in issue. Has Thomas Meng engaged in POV-pushing before? Maybe. I don't know. But in the case at hand, what he did was to restore stable content of the article, and reverting an edit that I agree was unmeritorious, for the reasons stated above.

Is Falun Gong decentralized or totalitarian? It doesn't matter what Bloodofox or Thomas Meng thinks. What matters is what the RS says. Respectfully, you can't delete a RS simply because it doesn't agree with your viewpoint. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 01:11, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Write all the essays you like, accuse me of "vandalism", claim the Falun Gong members here are being mistreated, whatever, but you're going to have hard time convincing anyone here that isn't a Falun Gong member that articles from the early 2000s should be presented as if they were contemporary reports or that Falun Gong isn't centered around Li Hongzhi's every whim. :bloodofox: (talk)

Seems to me that you have no argument to defend your deletion of numerous sources in your impugned edit that are not from the early 2000s, which is what I mainly take issue with. Sometimes a person's argument is revealing, not so much for what they say, but for what they omit to address.HollerithPunchCard (talk) 14:10, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

A convincing argument was made with the opening of this thread. Sometimes a person's argument is revealing - indeed. For example one might pile up personal attacks, incivility, and straw man arguments (POV-pushing and vandalization, alleged argument, This is why I believe that Bloodofox and his supporters are POV-pushing behind their edits in issue., you can't delete a RS simply because it doesn't agree with your viewpoint) - but that isn't going to convince anyone to come around to your point of view. MrOllie (talk) 14:17, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

A convincing argument was made with the opening of this thread - you mean this argument by Bloodofox above?

Right now a significant amount of this article's discussion about the contemporary Falun Gong is cited to material from 2000 and 2003. A lot of this seems to be intended to claim that Falun Gong is some kind of decentralized spiritual movement rather than a full-blown new religious movement centered around whatever Li Hongzhi says. it also makes no mention of the entire org's hierarchy based out of Dragon Springs, which did not exist at the time. These sources need to be removed and replaced with contemporary sources.

That totally explains Bloodofox's removal of sources from 2007, 2008 and 2019 (which is a scholarship published by the Cambridge University Press). HollerithPunchCard (talk) 15:21, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

As with most things the ideal version of the page probably exists somewhere between the two extremes. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree and I think all relevant RS should be incorporated, not because it supports one view point or the other, but because it's a RS that's relevant to the topic at hand. HollerithPunchCard (talk) HollerithPunchCard (talk) 01:14, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Below is a proposed edit of the first paragraph in the Organization section. Some relevant information about FG that academics have been consistent about for the past twenty+ years was lost in the removal of old content. In my opinion, it needed to be more clearly written with updated sources, and the one sentence that seemed to inflame people the most didn't actually offer enough details. It did feel editorial to some degree. I think the revised paragraph below gets close to what @Horse Eye's Back was talking about. It gives a more concise and clear description of the facts that @Thomas Meng was worried about losing, and it adds new sources (specifically Junker) to address the original concerns of @bloodofox. I'll leave it here for a little bit to see if anyone has additional improvements, but I think it is better than the original and better than what is there now.

Spiritual authority is vested exclusively in the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi [Palmer], but organizationally Falun Gong is decentralized [Junker]. Local branches and assistants are afforded no special privileges or authority. Volunteer "assistants" or "contact persons" do not hold authority over other practitioners, regardless of how long they have practiced Falun Gong.[Chou][Zaho][Junker] Practitioners of Falun Gong cannot collect money or charge fees, conduct healings, or teach or interpret doctrine for others.[Palmer] There are no administrators or officials within the practice, no hierarchy to enforce orthodoxy, no rituals of worship, and no system of membership. [Ownby][Palmer/Ownby][Chang][Tong][Porter][Noakes/Ford] —Zujine|talk 11:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Lol. This reminds me a lot of back in 2015, when you suddenly appeared to attempt to scrub this article's extremely well-sourced designation of new religious movement for ([3]) to instead reflect the group's preference of "spiritual movement" (this makes it much easier for the group to downplay the centrality of Li Hongzhi and claim it is instead somehow traditional to hang on to whatever Li Hongzhi has come up with lately).

For those of you who haven't followed Falun Gong's long-term strategy of attempting to manipulate this page, Falun Gong's attempts at manipulating this page has received scholastic attention, as discussed on this talk page several times. The fact is that on this article we constantly have to defelect attempts by a group of encamped Falun Gong adherents who appear in waves and attempt to manipulate the article. Their goal is often to downplay Li Hongzhi as the group's center, to try to claim Falun Gong as somehow 'traditional', and to try to avoid discussion of Dragon Springs and/or outright get coverage of it entirely removed from the article. This has so far failed, but they'll obviously keep at it until we see more serious attention to this issue.

But in short: no, obviously not (as you are well aware), this wording is outrageously misleading and not reflective of what these sources are actually saying. It also very conveniently attempts to ignore Dragon Springs, which just so happens to be exactly what the group desires.

In reality, any source that discusses the group also discusses how the entire org is based out of the group's Dragon Springs compound, where Li Hongzhi lives and where arms of the org like Shen Yun are based. Li Hongzhi commands the new religious movement, his word is law, and there's nothing 'decentralized' about that. Any source manipulation to portray 'decentralization' while ignoring or sidestepping the mountains of coverage of Dragon Springs as the group's compound headquarters simply isn't happening here. Literally just type in 'dragon springs falun gong' into any search engine and you'll find a tremendous amount of discussion about this as the group's headquarters and Li Hongzhi.

For those of you actually interested in an RS-compliant, accurate article that actually reflects what reliable sources say: Expect more Falun Gong-aligned accounts to suddenly pop out of the woodwork to attempt to ensure that the article reflects the group's preferences over RS, whether be manipulating sources or attempting to invalidate them by way of this or that. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Despite all of your comments in this discussion @bloodofox, you still haven't cited one source yourself or responded to questions of content, which is what this conversation is about. I tried to steer it back to edits. I suggest that edits are what we discuss. I can put together a list of direct quotes in the coming days. There is an entire section on the Dragon Springs complex, and the paragraph in question isn't in that section. I'm curious to hear what others think as the opinions of @bloodofox have been made abundantly clear and do not speak to the content itself. —Zujine|talk 01:39, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

As you know, I provided most of the contemporary sources on this article. I first brought up the matter of a certain group of encamped editor's attempts at erasing Dragon Springs from this article (which it had so convenientionaly neglected to mention before). I was also here defending against editors like you who attempted to remove the new religious movement designation, and I, with the help of other editors we're fortunate to have here, authored most of the Dragon Springs section.

Any attempts at turning this article into yet another Falun Gong propaganda arm certainly weren't happening then and they're not about to happen now. If you want yet another influx of source after source discussing Dragon Springs as the group's headquarters and hanging on Li Hongzhi's every word, be my guest.

So far all attempts at turning this article into Falun Gong's preferred version have backfired. Every time there's a concerted effort to turn it into more propaganda, it seems to improve—but not the way adherents intend. For example, the article now covers Falun Gong's various propaganda arms (Shen Yun, Epoch Times, etc) and Dragon Springs, and there's certainly plenty more we can and should add.

It's definitely time to start bringing in contempary sources like this 2021 report from The Gaurdian: "Falun Gong-aligned media push fake news about Democrats and Chinese communists." Right now we also lack any discussion of Falun Gong's Ultrasurf and its connection to the Trump administration (for example, this 2021 report form NPR: "Falun Gong, Steve Bannon And The Trump-Era Battle Over Internet Freedom"). :bloodofox: (talk) 20:16, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

The late James R. Lewis wrote in 2016 that he had been innocently ignorant of Falun Gong's dark side for 15 years, spending those years assuming that Falun Gong's own literature described the truth. He found it did not. In his 2018 book Spiritual Warfare and Martyrdom, Lewis says that Hongzhi stands as the central autocratic authority of Falun Gong, despite its flexible organizational structure.(p. 92) In The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Terrorism, page 239, Lewis writes that "The assertion of having no leaders seems to be based on the fact that the group has a non-traditional organizational structure." He notes that Hongzhi is in fact the spiritual leader, and that Falun Gong has working leaders at every level. Lewis says that Hongzhi is able to mobilize his followers into single-purpose action at any time, as he did in China prior to the group getting banned.

Lewis describes Falun Gong as espousing contradictory beliefs and practices. Hongzhi is described by Lewis as telling his practitioners to advance a simplistic story to hide the complexity from outsiders. Practitioners are observed "blatantly ignoring, downplaying, or whitewashing the most controversial of LHZ's teachings."[4] Part of this contradiction is the story told by practitioners that the group is structureless and leaderless, which is demonstrably false. Binksternet (talk) 04:13, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I see that instead of engaging on these edits, you guys decided to just bomb the page with even more. The contributions to the Beliefs and Practices section are blatantly malicious. The encyclopedia has an obligation to represent the beliefs of religious minorities without such aggression. There are ample religious and sociological papers on Falun Gong's beliefs that should be used to accurately portray them. The points from Lewis are worth including, but the whole introduction to the beliefs cannot be framed by this argument. Moreover, the phrasing of "According to the Falun Gong, the Falun Gong aspires ..." shows the editors' unfamiliarity with both the subject and good editing standards. —Zujine|talk 19:32, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. The framing of the Beliefs and Practices section is necessary for a complete understanding. This context is essential. As Lewis writes repeatedly in his various works, Falun Gong's professed beliefs are contradictory and contain falsehoods. The reader needs to know this at the beginning. Binksternet (talk) 21:00, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

"shows the editors' unfamiliarity with both the subject and good editing standards." does it? Don't we generally attribute controversial stuff like that to the religious group rather than stating it as a fact? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:03, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Falun Gong and its many propaganda arms in 2023

Since we'e seen a flare up of adherents attempting to sculpt the article to their preferred vision lately, perhaps it's time to revisit this article. Right now we have a lot of issues stemming from the earlier treatment of this article as if it were yet another Falun Gong propaganda arm. These include:

• Downplaying the role of the group's founder, leader, and commander, Li Hongzhi
• Attempting to hide his actual teachings versus a sanitized and 'palatable' presentation based on claims of 'tradition'
• Attempting to hide or downplaying the existence and centrality of Dragon Springs
• Attempting to bury discussion of the group's connection to Shen Yun, the Epoch Times, and any number of other propaganda arms opeated by the group, which the group denies yet is now well documented

It's high time this article has all old references excised. These were often essentially puff pieces for the group and echoed their claims. This is no longer the case. We need modern sources discussing what this organization is and how it operates. For example, we currently lack significant discussion about how the Falun Gong has evolved into an extremely wealthy conspiracy theory superspreader with deep US government connections. To get an idea of what's going here today, and especially how interlinked the Falun Gong is with sections of the contemporary GOP and certain far-right groups here in Germany, here's an article from October 2023:

• Zadrozny, Brandy. 2023. "How the conspiracy-fueled Epoch Times went mainstream and made millions". NBC News, October 13, 2023.

We're only presenting the tip of the iceberg of what this group actually is on this article. A lot has happened in the meantime as wel, like closure of the Falun Gong college at Dragon Springs ([5]), the "worldwide headquarters of the Falun Gong". :bloodofox: (talk) 20:59, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, this article is very biased towards uninformed people. Radically improving this article would require huge amount of efforts. Furthermore, most editors are speak english, so they are biased to what english authors write AAAAA143222 (talk) 02:12, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Recent Disruptions of this Article

On November 8 22:44 Bloodofox deleted 5066 characters, essentially 3 entire paragraphs out of 5 paragraphs of the lede of this article. Most of the content deleted by Bloodofox has been stable on this page for months if not years, representing the consensus of many editors from both sides, over the course of a decade, debating almost every line and sometimes word.

The content deleted by Bloodofox includes the following:

1. How Falun Gong emerged - Source: Freedom House 2017 report.

2. What Falun Gong is - a meditation, slow moving exercises. Self-identifies as a practise of the Buddhist school. With moral psychologies/philosophies. Source: Freedom House 2017 report.

3. What happened to Falun Gong - Initially supported by the Chinese government. Later alleged to be a heretical organization by the Chinese government. Finally subject to "a nationwide crackdown", "a wide range of human rights abuse", with estimated "hundreds of thousands" to be "imprisoned extrajudicially", "torture". "As of 2009, human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had died within China as a result of abuse in custody." Sources include: Amnesty International 2000, Freedom House 2014, New York Times 2009, China Quarterly 2015.

4. Subsequent developments in Falun Gong movement - "Millions continued to practise Falun Gong there [in china] in spite of the persecution", and "practised in over 70 countries" with "40,000 to several hundreds of thousands" of adherents. Source: Telegraph 2009, China Quarterly 2015,

Bloodofox replaced all of the above content with essentially one statement:

Falun Gong practitioners operated a variety of organizations in the US and elsewhere, known for opposing the CCP and for ant-evolutionary views.

With the latter assertion sourced from a single opinion piece by Tolentino Jio, a staff writer at New Yorker.

No one can reasonably argue that the sources deleted by Bloodofox are unreliable per WP:RS, no such arguments have been made. No one to date (except presumably the Chinese government) has suggested that all the content deleted by Bloodofox is not true, especially the part concerning the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

A WP:Lede is intended to introduce the article, and summarize its most important content, including any prominent controversies.

Is there controversies to Falun Gong? Yes. But Falun Gong is not just a controversy. It's also a religious and human rights phenomenon.

To delete all of the above context, background and history, distilled from two decades of journalism, human rights reports and scholarship on this serious topic, in preference of a single opinion piece of a New Yorker staff writer, which does not even contradict the content deleted, strikes me as severely lacking in neutrality (WP:NPOV), and a clear case of POV-pushing, censorship and disruption.

This is not the first instance by Bloodofox (see similar edits here and here), who, when challenged on the merits of his edits, repeatedly and straightly called whoever who challenged his edits "Falun Gong adherents", justifying his edits on the ground of not allowing these alleged adherents a platform for their views. See recent Bloodofox's comments here and here.

For the above reasons, I'm reverting Bloodofox's edits. If this pattern of disruption continues, external assistance will be inevitable.HollerithPunchCard (talk) 18:11, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Article talk pages really aren't the place to discuss behavioral issues, please focus on content and avoid making things overly personal... If thats what you wanna do WP:ANI is thataways. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:47, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

What amounts to a lengthy personal attack on Bloodofox is not a reason to revert well-reasoned changes to the article. I agree, this is becoming a matter for WP:ANI. MrOllie (talk) 21:07, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I note the rather ominious threat of "If this pattern of disruption continues, external assistance will be inevitable" (my bold). External? Are you threatening to physically harm me if I don't stop adding RS about Falun Gong that you don't like? It sure reads that way. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

If all that you gather from my post above is that I'm committing a "lengthy personal attack", or even threats of "physical harm", you have either not read my post, or are confounding its content. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 22:57, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

So was that or was not that a threat? Because it wouldn't the first threat I've received for editing this page and scholars routinely receive threats for covering the Falun Gong. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:26, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@HollerithPunchCard: Well documented and argued, especially the summary of deleted content. Academic research on Falun Gong is centered around its main body of adherents—those in China (7-20 million according to this DoS report [6]) and the persecution. The WP:LEAD should summarize the most important points covered in an article and emphasis given to material should reflect its relative importance to the subject, according to published reliable sources. Clearly, our lead in its current state does not summarize the points covered in the body sections (but rather, just one section), and it does not reflect the academic research dedicate to Falun Gong (but rather, it reflects a few recent news reports and opinions).

Our lead now fails WP:WEIGHT, WP:LEAD and WP:RECENT. Reading how this Freedom House article [7] introduces Falun Gong and contrasting it with this Wiki article's current lead—one shall easily see the unprofessional state of our version. Thomas Meng (talk) 00:05, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I guess it's no surprise that you left out above that these reports are from the Falun Gong ("According to Minghui, a Falun Gong-affiliated publication...", "Falun Gong sources estimate that tens of millions continue to practice privately...", "The Falun Dafa InfoCenter said...", etc.). You know, the same new religious movement that runs the Epoch Times.

The article also cites the 2017 Freedom House article. The 2017 Freedom House article reads like a puff piece, taking pains to avoid terms Li Honghzi/Falun Gong hates (and which are overwhelimgly used by non-Falun Gong-affiliated scholars). A good example is new religious movement, which you've also attempted to scrub from the article. It appears this NGO's source is probably just, you guessed it, the ever-reliable Falun Gong. An independent and neutral source it is not.

So nope, you know that's incorrect. Since 2016, coverage of Falun Gong has focused on the tremendous amount of money flowing through its various propaganda arms and its efforts to influence the United States government and the GOP, the various issues surrounding Dragon Springs and the community that existed before the development of the compound/Falun Gong headquarters, and/or the abuse its former adherents claim to have received or continue to receive. We have a mountain of reliable sources on this from the last half decade.

We're not here to produce Falun Gong-approved versions of this article. And that's why we're not sweeping everything aside to smokescreen Falun Gong operations by emphasizing at every corner how evil the Chinese government is and how very persecuted Falun Gong is.

Newsflash: The Chinese government persecutes religious groups of all kinds, including Christians. Where it differs from others is that the Falun Gong is centered around the whims and words of one man—Li Hongzhi—and he now operates a bonafide propaganda media empire in the United States that openly attempts to influence US elections and spreads vast amounts of misinformation there and here in Germany.

Again, unlike Falun Gong, we're not here to carry out Li Hongzhi's orders. Stick to contemporary, reliable sources. And that doesn't mean directly or indirectly citing Falun Gong. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:27, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Falun Gong is a persecuted religious minority in China, and the adherents or "practitioners" are generally both an ethnic and religious minority in other countries. The efforts by @bloodofox and @binksternet to revise this article to match their individual understandings of Falun Gong based on selective sources is unreasonable and goes against the purpose of Wikipedia. This isn't the way to edit an article. —Zujine|talk 01:21, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Complain all you want but Wikipedia works like this: find reliable sources and report on what reliable sources say. Wikipedia does not count the propaganda arms of either the Chinese government or Falun Gong as reliable sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

You are selectively choosing sources that agree with your opinion and giving them undue weight. You are deleting well sourced material. And you are making massive, frequent changes without discussion on a topic that deserves much better attention to detail. —Zujine|talk 18:16, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Thats an interesting opinion, I take it you are a Falun Gong adherent? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:00, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I have a PhD that gives me a certain respect for academic resources above news outlets writing reports on competing news outlets. As for me being an adherent, I think that anyone who really knew me would see just how far away I am from being a practitioner or adherent of Falun Gong. It isn't just Falun Gong adherents who think you're wrong and who disagree with the sources you think should dominate the worldview on this group. This group of editors don't get to own this subject and force every reader in the world to see Falun Gong through your lens. —Zujine|talk 19:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

So now I'm included in a "group of editors"? Wonderful. Prior to your (singular) participation it was actually just Falun Gong adherents arguing for the position that Falun Gong is just a misunderstood and persecuted minority with none of the negative aspects attributed to them by the RS here. Perhaps I misunderstand what you're arguing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

My apologies, I had assumed you were new to this talk page because you haven't participated here significantly since I began editing but looking at the talk page history I see that you are one of the all time top commenters. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:11, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I echo Zujine's point about this current version being based on selective sources. There is decades of academic research done by University professors in the social sciences on Falun Gong, and yet the current lead relies almost exclusively on news articles and opinions, ignoring such quality research. Consider how the following peer-reviewed articles and books introduce Falun Gong and see how they contrast with our current lead—per WP:SOURCETYPES, they should carry much more weight than the currently cited news articles.

• Cheung, M., Trey, T., Matas, D., & An, R. (2018). Cold Genocide: Falun Gong in China. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 12(1), 38–62. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.12.1.1513, p.39

Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a body-mind-spiritual practice which started in China in 1992 and was widely practiced in the 1990s. It is a self-cultivation practice, which upholds the principles of “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.” The practice comprises five sets of meditative exercises. The teachings of Falun Gong emphasize cultivation of the mind, without adherence to religious formalities. The tenets of Falun Gong trace back to those traditional Chinese cultural beliefs grounded in Buddhist and Taoist philosophies. From the beginning of its introduction to the Chinese populace, Falun Gong was popularized in China as a form of qigong—the cultivation and exercise of the body’s vital energy.

• TREPANIER, LEE. Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought, Lexington Books, June 2020, [8] p.59

At the heart of Falun Gong’s moral philosophy are the tenets Zhen, Shan, Ren (truth, compassion, and forbearance), which represent the fundamental nature of the universe—the ultimate manifestation of the Buddha Law, or the Dao. This force represents the divine ground of being: it is the source of order in the universe, animating and giving rise to all things. The cosmos itself, and all that is contained in it, are thought to embody this quality of Zhen Shan Ren. Whereas Voegelin’s gnostic believes that the order of being is corrupt and must be overthrown, Falun Gong holds that it is inherently just and benevolent. Not only that, but the purpose of human life, and the means of salvation, lies in assimilating oneself to this divine nature and relinquishing the self. In Falun Gong’s core text Zhuan Falun, Li writes “This characteristic, Zhen Shan Ren, is the criterion for measuring good and bad in the universe… No matter how the human moral standard changes, this characteristic of the universe remains unchanged, and it is the sole criterion that distinguishes good people from bad people.” In other words, Falun Gong maintains there is an immutable and unchanging truth that exists independent of human experience, society, and culture. The CCP rejects the notion of a moral law standing above mankind. Instead, truth can only be grasped through social practice. As Mao Zedong wrote in 1963, “Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice and from it alone. They come from three kinds of social practice: the struggle for production, the class struggle, and scientific experiment.” In this respect, Falun Gong’s teachings are at best irrelevant, if not downright subversive, insofar as they suggest that the party is subject to judgement by a higher authority.

• Penny, Benjamin. The Religion of Falun Gong. The University of Chicago Press. p.124 [9]

In addition, in Falun Gong cultivation adherence to the code of truth, compassion, and forbearance is not just regarded as the right and responsible course of action for practitioners; it is an essential part of the cultivation process. Lapsing from it will render any other efforts in cultivation worthless.

• Ownby, David. Falun Gong and the Future of China. Oxford University Press. p. 93. [10]

Falun Gong is profoundly moral. The very structure of the universe, according to Li Hongzhi, is made up of the moral qualities that cultivators are enjoined to practice in their own lives: truth, compassion, and forbearance. The goal of cultivation, and hence of life itself, is spiritual elevation, achieved through eliminating negative karma—the built-up sins of past and present lives—and accumulating virtue.

• Peter Hays Gries, and Stanley Rosen. State and Society in 21st Century China. Routledge, 2 Aug. 2004, [11]. p.40

"The challenge posed by popular religious beliefs and practices like those of Falun Gong cuts right to the heart of the Chinese state’s own logic of legitimation….[Falun Gong’s teachings] stand in the profoundest possible opposition to the present political order. They assail the ethical truths on which the entire political construct is meant to rest. However peacefully they practice their meditation exercises and however much they may regard “politics” as being beneath them, those swept up in the Falun Gong phenomenon never had a chance of remaining “apolitical” in China. With its slogan, “Zhen, Shan, Ren” (真, 善, 忍) – “Truth, Goodness, and Forbearance” – Falun Gong makes almost a perfect counter-hegemony. Truth! – but not the state’s narrow empiricist truths. Goodness! –but not the state’s dubious versions of benevolence. Forbearance! – but not the state’s vulgarly assertive “wealth and power” concept of what it means to attain transcendent glory. Precisely because Falun Gong does represent such an absolute challenge – a challenge to the very foundations of the state’s authority and legitimacy – government officials insist on complete extermination of the threat."

Thomas Meng (talk) 18:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

You are wasting your time attempting to whitewash this page. Dig up all the old books that paint a flattering portrait of Li Hongzhi all you want, that ship has sailed. On Wikipedia, quality media coverage is very much WP:RS, and we have absolutely no lack of such sources. There's no lawyering out of that. As is crystal clear today to anyone who isn't an adherent, Falun Gong is simply whatever Li Hongzhi says it is. It's entirely centered around his words and whims at Dragon Springs. That's ultimately all there really is to it. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Do you actually have anything to say about these sources? Sennalen (talk) 13:37, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, all but two of them aren't even from the last decade, and the other two echo Falun Gong's self-descriptions. I doubt you'll find any editors here surprised by these cherry-picked items. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:43, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Freedom House directly citing Falun Gong literature and adherents as sources

This article has recently seen an injection of lots and lots of sources to Freedom House. Especially this 2014 article has been getting plastered by single-purpose accounts here, often burying mention of the group's many propaganda arms, attempts at influencing elections, and/or any mention of the world of Falun Gong rotating around the words and whims of its commander and leader, Li Hongzhi.

Giving this Freedom House report a quick look, it raises some serious alarm bells. For one, Freedom House seems to be pretty cozy with Falun Gong, so much so that they're not only echoing the group's preferred self-definition over non-Falun Gong-affiliated media and scholastic sources (the phrase new religious movement being a big no-no in Falun Gong circles), but also—if you can believe it—directly citing Falun Gong websites for claims about government suppression.

For example, Freedom House here cites http://www.faluninfo.net ("Falun Dafa Information Center"), this is one of Falun Gong's many websites. It contains the usual claims of "a direct and authentic connection to genuine traditional Chinese culture" that Li Hongzhi just "introduced to the public", with links to where to get books etc. Freedom House treats this site as reliable source, claiming that it shows evidence of government crackdowns and mass signatures, among other topics. They also use data from interviews with adherents, the same group that actively attempts to whitewash this page into yet another Falun Gong propaganda arm.

Here's another undated example—only the second report I've even looked at—where Freedom House cites faluninfo.net for demographic information on the Falun Gong (ref 31, p. 126), among other data points apparently taken from Falun Gong sources. Are we even certain there are millions and tens of millions of contemporary Falun Gong adherents in China, all hanging on the word of Li Hongzhi? That's a big claim of a lot of people.

It's no secret that the Chinese government persecutes religious groups of all stripes. Yet we don't consider the Falun Gong to be a reliable source for anything around these parts, and any source that takes the group's word uncritically and at face value needs to go from this site and arguably Wikipedia as a whole. That's a clear violation of WP:RS. Remember, this is the group behind The Epoch Times we're talking about here.

But it also begs an important question: is this typical of Freedom House? Are they just echoing what they're told by the Falun Gong? What exactly is Freedom House's relationship to the Falun Gong?

Or maybe the question ist, what was Freedom House's relationship to Falun Gong? It seems like that around 2016-217, when Li Hongzhi and Falun Gong went all in with an apocalyptic narrative around supporting the Trump administration and the 'Epoch Times became all but omnipresent pushing misinformation and gained special government access, it appers they saw a lot less coverage from Freedom House.

Did something change? :bloodofox: (talk) 03:04, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there a substance to your complaint aside from these sources not being as hostile to the subject as you would like? Sennalen (talk) 05:10, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

You seem to be oddly confusing "questions" for "complaint" but the answer is WP:RS. :bloodofox: (talk) 05:39, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

RS is a low bar. The report you linked meets it easily, even if it is WP:BIASED. If there are other views you think the article should give priority to, it would be better to focus on adding them than on removing others. Sennalen (talk) 14:46, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Ignoring your initial snide response (you might've saved that for later), citing the Falun Gong through another source is essentially source laundering. That's obviously not going to fly here or anywhere else on the site. If a claim came from a Falun Gong website, it came from a Falun Gong website. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:56, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Even assuming Freedom House is an RS, if it's "burying mention" of more prominently covered aspects of this subject, we have an NPOV problem. If the source is WP:BIASED, we should consider using in-text attribution. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:58, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Those are reasonable measures. However, total extirpation of any source suspected of being influenced by Falun Gong is not reasonable. Falun Gong's views about itself are due considerable weight on its own page. If there are sources that challenge those views, that's great. Challenge them. But don't censor them. Sennalen (talk) 17:34, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

We're not here for "fair treatment" or to "give equal parts", we're here to cover what secondary WP:RS say and this is a deeply WP:FRINGE topic. As with any WP:FRINGE topics, the subject is not a reliable narrator about what it claims to 'believe' and what it is doing. We have numerous sources discussing how the Falun Gong hides views it considers unpalatable to the public. Stick to secondary WP:RS. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:03, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Some of Falun Gong's views about itself are due for this article. Even without sources challenging their views, we should not lean too heavily on self-description. Trimming self-description is not necessarily censorship. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:45, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I notice that Bloodofox did not just delete Freedom House for alleged reliance of Falun Gong "self-description". Among the sources deleted were also:

Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, David A. Palmer, 2007, Columbia University Press

Falun Gong and the Future of China by David Ownsby, 2008, Oxford University Press

China Still Presses Crusade Against Falun Gong, 2009, New York Times

Falun Gong Growing in China despite 10 year ban, 2009, The Telegraph

The Religion of Falun Gong, Benjamin Penny, 2012, The University of Chicago Press

The Cold Genocide of Falun Gong, 2018, International Journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention

Trimming self-description is not censorship - yes. I think there is more than self- description being trimmed here. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 19:08, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Same old same old from this account. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:03, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

You give the impression of having a personal vendetta against Falun Gong that is far in excess of what any Wikipedia policy requires. Sennalen (talk) 02:19, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

So far your few contributions to this page have been to complain that I and the WP:RS I've provided are far too criticial of the Falun Gong and the Epoch Times and implying that we shouldn't be questioning NGO coverage of the Falun Gong, even though we have sources noting how uncritical and cozy some of these NGOs have been in their treatment of the Falun Gong as a source.

Now, if you were familiar with my edit history, you'd know I regularly edit new religious movement and fringe topics, especially when they dip into folklore studies areas. And if you were familiar with editing in these corners yourself, you'd know it is typical for adherents to step in and try to block sources they don't like by a ariety of means. And that's why at every corner, it's all about WP:RS. If you think those sources are too tough on the Falun Gong's misinformation efforts, then perhaps you should write them. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:27, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm just going by what I have seen since finding your screed on the fringe noticeboard, so no I don't know the history of you or this dispute. While I've been here though, no one has said that anything you added was too critical, because you haven't added anything. You have been removing things. Part of my advice to you was to stop trying to remove what you don't like and focus on adding the points of view you feel are neglected. Sennalen (talk) 03:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

News flash: I've added most of the sources on this article dated to the past five years. As for "screed", you'll have to ask yourself why you find that offensive. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Fringe Noticeboard

There's an ongoing discussion of Falun Gong adherents and WP:SPA accounts attempting to influence this page over at [[Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Adherents attempting to whitewash Falun Gong]. :bloodofox: (talk) 05:46, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Can we please remove the WP-mention from the WP:LEAD? Article content on it may be WP:PROPORTIONal (I haven't looked) but having it in the lead appears very WP:NAVELGAZING (that essay is an essay). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it should be removed from the lead. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:30, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Seems quite appropriate for me for the lead as part of the group's general strategy. It is after all about this article. A comparable situation is something like Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's inappropriate on its face, but I do think that there is so much content that is reasonably appropriate for the lead that this bit doesn't make the cut. To use your example, Church of Scientology does not mention attempts to influence Wikipedia. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:46, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

You may be right. As an aside, in the latter case, the Church of Scientology's organized attempts at dictating coverage on this site should really be covered in that article, but I am definitely not stepping into another hornet's nest on here anytime soon. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:58, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Wise. I'm inclined to leave this for a while and see who else chimes in. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:03, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Both FG and CofS may deserve a mention at List of political editing incidents on Wikipedia. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:20, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I think we can make the final lead paragraph more about how FG tries to change media perceptions generally, including their propensity to sue for defamation and to deliver personal threats to individual scholars and journalists, citing documentation by Kavan and Lewis at minimum. The Wikipedia campaign can be woven in more adeptly in such a paragraph. Binksternet (talk) 05:08, 16 November 2023 (UTC)