Propaganda or my experience?

It saddens me that I have to defend myself first to express how I feel about Falun Dafa

Minnesota Daily/December 8, 2005
By Lin Wang

I was not really surprised to read what people had to say about me in response to my Dec. 2 guest column on Falun Dafa.

Of course, like Sophia Bronwen said in her column, I am ignorant because I came from China and grew up with Chinese Communist Party propaganda, and as a result, I don’t know the truth about Falun Gong.

I have to admit it is a cheap but effective way to discredit someone, even though I said in my last column that I am not brainwashed by Chinese government.

Isn’t it ironic that I have to be told that I am ignorant about things that happened around me and witnessed in my own country by people who likely were not even there?

Feel the power of Chinese propaganda!

It saddens me that I have to defend myself first to express how I feel about things. To tell you the truth, propaganda works only to a certain degree.

It cannot change what you see in your real life, and it works better on people who don’t have the ability of critical thinking. If the Chinese government told me that my mom is actually a Russian spy, would I believe that? I think I can tell truth from lies through my personal experience, things that happen in front of my eyes.

As a matter of fact, if the original topic were about Christians getting arrested and tortured in China, I wouldn’t have said a thing. Because incidents like that indeed happened and I am ashamed about it (I had a Christian friend who got arrested in China and later deported; I’ve also seen an underground church get raided.)

Now, back to Falun Gong. Let’s forget what I have seen on television, because it could be staged like many have claimed. My hatred toward Falun Gong (there, I admit it, I hate it very much) was based on my own experience.

I’ve seen the change of my close buddy in high school who practiced it, when he transformed from a normal, outgoing person to someone addicted to so-called meditation and talking about a “wheel” (falun) inside his body.

I have read the original books of Falun Gong and got totally disgusted by its self-conflicting content and concepts stolen from other religions or practices, namely Taoism, Buddhism and Tai Qi Gong.

I have witnessed my co-worker lose his job because he would rather practice Falun Gong at home instead of going to work. And, I sincerely hope all that was not staged by Chinese government.

Still, I am not going to label anyone who claims that I am ignorant (e.g. Sophia Bronwen) as ignorant, because I do not know what they really know.

And I would rather focus on telling what I saw and how I feel instead of disrespecting and discrediting people who have different opinions.

At last, as I said in my last column, Falun Dafa today is very different from what it was in its early years.

I don’t think I would label it as a cult anymore, yet people have to understand its history and why it got banned in China.

Blaming everything on Chinese government and its propaganda is not always fitting.

Now, maybe I should follow Sophia’s suggestion and go speed up the recovery of my mind: This is the last time I am writing in on this topic.

To see the original article click here.