What if Joe Biden had stolen millions of votes in the US presidential election?
What if the Covid-19 virus was created by the Chinese Communist Party?
What if Donald Trump were the victim of a giant plot orchestrated by Barack Obama?
For the Epoch Times and NTD, of the Epoch Media group, these theories are not far-fetched questions but facts, inscribed in "truth" and "tradition".
However, these platforms, published in around thirty countries and 22 languages, do not quite resemble so-called “mainstream” media.
Their niche?
Disseminate, via multiple channels on social networks, as well as more unofficial platforms, a lot of false information, ranging from non-contextualized facts to better capture an extremist public, to the most eccentric theories, pouring into conspiracy.
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A singular editorial line, linked to the beliefs of its founders and some of its editors: they adhere to Falun Gong, a group of Chinese origin mixing meditative practices and apocalyptic and ultraconservative beliefs, often assimilated to a sect.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, and the arrival of presidential elections in France, the media nebula has an important card to play in terms of influence.
And worries his detractors.
Meditation, exercises and magical powers
Go back, because The Epoch Times is not a new medium. It was born in the early 2000s, in the basement of John Tang, a Falun Gong practitioner based in the United States, who gathered other disciples to write news articles about China. In the process, its television counterpart, New Tang Dynasty (NTD), was created, intended to make “the voice of Falun Gong heard”, its president, Zhong Lee, told the Wall Street Journal in 2007.
At the time, the movement, with its millions of followers in China, suffered merciless persecution from the Chinese Communist Party, worried that a cult would gain weight in its territory. Fleeing repression, its leader, Li Hongzhi, went into exile in a town northwest of New York, Deerpark, where he laid the foundations of his empire. In a complex called Dragon Springs and nicknamed "The Mountain", he established his headquarters, endowed it with his own temple, his school, his university. There, he also trains the troops of the Shen Yun Company, responsible for promoting Falun Gong with dance performances all over the world.
Cult or not? “Falun Gong is a method of Qigong, a method of gymnastics, breathing and meditation based on Chinese techniques and exercises. But with this practice is associated a religious cosmology which revolves around the vision of the master, who is a quasi-divinity ”, summarizes a specialist in the history of China, who asked to be anonymized, fearing as much the intimidation of the movement. than being accused of participating in the Chinese government's violent propaganda against the sect. Few of the criticisms targeting the group. In France, at Miviludes, "no report or testimony allowing to suspect sectarian abuses within the Falun Gong movement in France", we are told. At Unadfi, an association for the defense of victims of sects, Pascale Duval, its spokesperson,admits to recognizing in the movement a doctrine having "enough to constitute a sectarian environment", even if the association has not, at this stage, received a report.
Falun Dafa members prepare for a sunrise protest on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia in 2003. AFP / William West WILLIAM WEST
Sports and meditation practice, spiritual movement ... But what is Falun Gong doing in the media? To understand this, one has to delve into the first editions of Li Hongzhi's manifesto, “Zhuan Falun”. According to him, the world is coming to an end because it has been corrupted by homosexuality, racial mixing (promoted by aliens), feminism, popular music like rock or disco, fashion, or still the fervor in football stadiums. “Only Falun Gong practitioners will be saved in this transformation during the apocalyptic era of the world. In this context, the forces of evil are embodied in particular by the Chinese Communist Party ”, decrypts a specialist.
Salvation goes through a host of rules: denying modern medicine, exercising as much as possible, reading and rereading the writings of the “Master”.
The more they are mobilized, the more likely practitioners are to earn supernatural rewards, such as the power to levitate, to transfer energies.
They could also develop a third eye to see through walls, clothing, or skin - to see time-spaces beyond our own.
An enemy: the Chinese Communist Party
With the appearance of The Epoch Times and NTD, the Chinese "Master" was able to add a new practice to his long list of virtuous activities: that of engaging in his propaganda media.
"The spiritual mission of all these projects is akin to a com-giant campaign to educate people about Falun Gong - not necessarily to convert them - and to turn them away from the Communist Party," said Ben Hurley, a former devotee, and ex-editor of the Epoch Times website, on his personal blog.
Members of Falun Dafa (the movement that practices Falun Gong) demonstrate at Place de la République, Paris, January 24, 2021. LP / Delphine Goldsztejn Delphine Goldsztejn
Most of the volunteers of these platforms are indeed Falun Gong practitioners. Lili, a Malaysian who works for NTD TV, says she saw her journalistic vocation born out of the shape of a golden pen, in a dream. "A month later, she felt a brain-shaped object fly out of her head screaming when she sent forth righteous thoughts," read a transcript of a lecture from the movement. It is thanks to these magical visions that the young woman, who did not go to higher education and had never watched the news, says she found journalistic qualifications.
To strengthen its ranks of editors, The Epoch Times also recruited aspiring journalists who thought they were dealing with a classic media, as revealed by several surveys published by NBC, the New York Times, The Atlantic or Atavist Magazine.
They often describe an exhausting pace of work, encouraging people to post as much as they can to capture a large audience, "like a Russian troll farm, but legal," according to author Steven Klett, who worked for The Epoch Times at New York.
Objective: "to dominate the media," said Li Hongzhi in a conference congratulating employees of NTD and The Epoch Times.
Affinities with the far right
To establish this domination, the Epoch Media group has made itself the spokesperson for "alternative facts" and the demands of the conspiratorial far right. Both camps have the advantage of sharing the same fanciful ideology, comments a historian specializing in China: Falun Gong “is a sect which has a cosmology, which sees invisible forces, demonic and negative, which operate in the world. We are in paranoid cosmology ”.
In the United States, the group likes to praise the merits of Trump by relaying the conspiracy theories of his supporters, while putting aside the slippages yet known of the leader. The whole mixed with factual or viral information to better credibility and extend its speech. Eager to establish itself as the media benchmark for the
American
alt-right
, The Epoch Times has also invested $ 1.5 million in pro-Trump ads on Facebook in six months, revealed the NBC channel in 2019. Sprawling, the group is also replicating itself in Europe, as in Germany, where, according to a study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), The Epoch Times has mainly been the relay of the extremist party AFD.
In France too, he found his audience.
On Facebook, the French page of the Epoch Times has nearly 1.5 million subscribers.
NTD Français can, for its part, boast of having 135,000 subscribers on YouTube, with more than 35 million cumulative views.
Among his guests, we find figures far to the right, such as Henry de Lesquen, Stéphane Ravier, Jean-Frédéric Poisson, but also Richard Boutry, presenter at France Soir, star media of covidosceptics.
"Their content is regularly relayed in certain yellow vests groups, and throughout the conspiracy sphere, as well as in the QAnon France movement, which is very fond of it", underlines Tristan Mendès France, associate lecturer at the University of Paris, specialist in digital cultures and conspiracy theses.
A French-speaking nebula
In addition to the French-language versions of The Epoch Times and NTD, several channels ideologically close to these media are swarming on YouTube. Since December 2020, at least six French-speaking accounts have been broadcasting videos almost daily using the same graphic codes and the same speeches as the Epoch Times and NTD - without ever displaying a possible affiliation. "Crossroads of the world", "Crossroads", "New look", "Exploring the facts", "New Angle" ... These accounts with cryptic names all display the same editorial line: a prism marked far right, pro-Trump (by denying his defeat in the election), anti-China (accused of being at the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic), with very conservative values.
Several French-speaking channels, deploying the same discourse as the Epoch Times and NTD media, are swarming on YouTube. Screenshots / YouTube
One of the most popular channels, “Front Cover”, is hosted by Hélène Tong, wife of Alain Tong, president of the French Falun Dafa Association (the other name of the movement). The latter is prolific on the Internet: her name appears in the magazine "Taste of Life" (affiliated with NTD), she manages the Falun Info site, and offers videos relaying the principles of Falun Gong on the "Educate Wisdom" account. Hélène Tong also works in a Parisian "school" called "the school of the sacred lotus", which offers Chinese lessons, posture, Qi Gong, but also awareness of "traditional values" . Contacted several times by Le Parisien, she was unable to answer our questions.
How can such a little-known sectarian movement have such a presence on the Internet? Certainly there is the unwavering devotion of his volunteers: "We were all paid in 'virtue', a white substance of another dimension that one gains when one does good deeds, and which leads to blessings in our next life, ”recalls Ben Hurley in his early days at The Epoch Times. But it seems that the newspaper, and the NTD channel, have means comparable to those of recognized media. Steven Klett tells Atavist that he was employed in New York for $ 2,500 a month - with a bonus if his articles exceeded 100,000 weekly clicks. It is impossible to know where this income comes from. The Falun Gong group claims to live on proceeds from Shen Yun performances and donations from wealthy members.
To these large sums can be added the advertising revenues of all its publications, the editorial "niche" being profitable: after the election of Trump, the revenues of The Epoch Times have quadrupled, from 3.9 to 15 , $ 5 million, according to the Axios website.
Now, the new goose that lays golden eggs is the Covid-19, an ideal new weapon in their propaganda arsenal against the Chinese government.
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Loud online, their editors and presenters are however discreet in the media - contacted several times, the majority of them did not respond to our requests.
Only Isabelle Meyer, editor of the Epoch Times, expressly refused our interview requests, explaining in an email that "it is difficult to trust the total objectivity of certain colleagues" since the publication of an article by Liberation criticizing the practices of its media.
"We can understand that the editorial angle that we defend is not dominant in the French media sphere, yet it seems to us that it deserves to be more respected because it is, in the end, the diversity of points of view that makes the wealth of information that we offer to readers, ”she defends.
At the dawn of a new presidential campaign in France, the Epoch Media Group strike force has something to intrigue. “It raises questions,” says Tristan Mendès France. “What is the legitimacy of a foreign media to come on national soil, to try to influence the national debate, with very little transparency? "