When I went to get the mail one day last week, I pulled a folded up copy of a newspaper out of my PO box.
When I saw the flag (or nameplate or masthead, depending on your preference) “The Epoch Times,” I groaned. WTF was this doing in my mail, I wondered.
So, I went to talk to the friendly woman behind the counter of the Coniston Post Office. “Everyone got one,” she told me.
“Have you ever heard of it? Do you know what it is?” I asked.
She answered, “No.”
I asked a few other people, too. “No” was the most popular answer. Allow me to fill you in.
The Epoch Times has been around since 2000, founded by Chinese American man John Tang and other Chinese investors, all of whom are affiliated with Falun Gong, a 30-year-old Chinese spiritual practice (started by a trumpet player, no less) that has been violently suppressed by the Chinese government, which calls it an “evil cult.”
Whether or not it is a cult is beside the point. (Aside: practitioners do believe it is a path to spiritual salvation, which is fine unless you’re an anti-religion communist regime, but also that the founder can levitate and walk through walls, so there’s that.)
The Epoch Times for most of its existence was used to criticize China’s oppressive totalitarian regime and spread the message about the torture and suppression of Falun Gong — a mission I fully support.
The oppression of Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, activists for freedom and democracy, the Taiwanese and, perhaps most of all, the Uighur Muslim population — the Chinese Government deserves to be condemned for the suffering of these people.
But around the election of Donald Trump in 2016 something changed. Some good reporting from MSNBC lays out that change.
In its drive to combat all things ‘communist’, The Epoch Times has become a right-wing firebrand, stumping for Donald Trump, backing far right politicians in Europe and, based on the content of the two issues that were mailed to me and presumably hundreds or thousands of other Canadians, it is trying to stoke the far-right movement in Canada, too.
Because, nestled between articles critical of Chinese government influence in this country, are articles warning that Canada’s social safety net is one step from socialism and socialism is one step from communism — which is, of course, utter nonsense.
It plays to other far-right boogeymen. First, the slogan, ‘Truth and Tradition’ plays to nativist tendencies among some who hold far right beliefs. A not-even-disguised-misogynistic column warns about male emasculation, while another equally misogynistic article calls for a return to the chivalry of old to keep our women happy and safe.
These mass mailings of The Epoch Times seem to be happening several times a year to random Canadians. Back in May 2020, the federal government told Toronto postal workers who felt the postal system shouldn’t be used to disseminate this kind of material that they had no choice but to deliver it.
Huh?
In 2019, the founders of Your Ward News in Toronto were convicted of promoting hate speech for the disgusting, anti-semitic, racist, misogynistic garbage they printed. The Epoch Times is less bellicose, more circumspect in its language and less confrontational, but the message it pushes about Canada, about the social safety net, about the place of the left in political discourse, is misleading, inaccurate and amounts to disinformation.
The Epoch Times certainly avoids hate speech, but it is propaganda with a hidden agenda disguised as a newspaper that appears to be legitimate — it isn’t.
I’m not arguing that The Epoch Times should be censored, but I am arguing that Canada Post should not be forcing this upon unsuspecting Canadians, especially when this rag attacks institutions, like the social safety net, that we as Canadians hold dear and equates Canada’s left as evil godless communists.
Using our mail system to disseminate this garbage is wrong and must stop. If you get it in your mailbox, don’t just throw it away. Do a bit of your own research on it and the kind of nonsense it prints. Forewarned is forearmed.
Then, pitch it.
