Attended one of the shows in France, a few months ago. They politicized it right from the beginning, by having some bozos with English language fluency critize the Chinese government (not that they don't deserve it, but the way it was done sounded like far right American rhetoric). The show itself was vomit inducing, so I left after the first half an hour. As I was waiting outside for someone to exit, at the formal intermezzo mark, I couldn't help noticing lots of other people leaving the avenue. Doesn't surprise me to learn about the relationship with falun gong cult.

The tagline on their flyers used to be "5000 years of culture reborn"

And I guess they rethought the subtlety because now it's "China before communism"

In Toronto (probably also everywhere) FG tend to hijack parades by having 100s of marchers, regardless of what the parade itself is celebrating. I find it quite obnoxious, since it makes every parade except for Pride look like it's Falun Gong Day.

They must pay a lot into the parades in order to even be accepted in such large numbers.

They do 4th of July all over the US. It's quite impressive actually. Saw them recently in DC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqHvBqLZghI

Impressive because of the numbers. They don't care about July 4, just like they don't care about Canada day. They do care about taking up half the parade to make sure you notice them and are impressed by their numbers, though.

There is no other reason they constantly try to outdo and outnumber everyone in parades that have nothing to do with religions or cults. That's why I refer to it as hijacking. It's not about them, but they absolutely make sure they are the ones you remember.

I read what I think is the Zhuan Falun years ago when the cult was newer and they posted documents online[*]. One of their beliefs that jumped out at me was that they believe that David Copperfield is an actual magician who is only pretending to be a stage magician, and was actually doing magic during his stage shows.

edit: The Falun Gong have three OTA broadcast channels in Chicago, but Iranian official government news is too dangerous for me to be exposed to.

* Looks like they still do at https://en.falundafa.org/falun-dafa-books.html

Wow I did not know they did that Chinese ballet. I will be sure to never attend that now. I had checked the prices before and was amazed at how unexpectedly expensive it was.

>They are apocalyptic/UFO/meditation cult

I didn't see anything like you describe[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Central_teachings

>through a process of moral cultivation, one can achieve Tao and obtain special powers and a level of divinity

If you read their books (e.g. https://falundafa.org/eng/eng/pdf/flg_en.pdf, just search for "David Copperfield"), they elaborate a bit more on the potential supernatural abilities that one can achieve through meditation.

Nothing they do is unique or substantially different than many of the Asiatic religions that have existed. People tend to fear what they don't understand.

You don't have to trust them, the organ harvesting is well documented and criticized by human rights organizations. Don't make the mistake of being agnostic about their victimization just because they are an usympathetic right wing person cult.

Most people that are criticizing FG here are either natural born Chinese who are taught to hate them or unknowing westerners that have been swayed by CCP propaganda (I am willing to bet there is some on this very thread). I don't see any valid attacks on here other than ad hominem.