Let's don't bring them on the table. Just like you don't bring Peoples Temple or Branch Davidians or any other cult onto the table when you talking about such topic.
I actually knew some people who was practicing Falun Gong before the crack down (And some still practicing it after). If you want to paint a portrait of those people, just image an uneducated man/woman at age around 40~50, who probably encountered some misfortunes in their life and became vulnerable enough to take anything into their head without a thought, and act upon that thought.
They're those people who would also actually believed they can receive superpower from a tinfoil hat (Well, not actually a tinfoil hat, but guess what, they have upgraded version of that [0]), meditation, or, maybe, killing themselves/others.
Oh, also, do you know the "Eastern Lightning"[1]? Don't bring them as well.
A person of 40-50 at the time of the height of tha Falun Gong had been through some serious shit in their lifetime. Their childhood and formative years would have consisted of Mao's self-genocidal economic policies and then the cultural revolution, then a complete repudiation of those communist ideals in the subsequent opening to the west.
> been through some serious shit in their lifetime
That's for sure. Somebody actually hoping Falun Gong can be the cure for their cancer.
It's not actually a problem about economic policies and cultural revolution, I think the main problem was the government has failed to develop the infrastructure needed to educate and help those people. No, government was just let those people wander around by themselves without give them enough help, no wonder why they found such way to "help" themselves.
> Their childhood and formative years would have consisted of Mao's self-genocidal economic policies and then the cultural revolution, then a complete repudiation of those communist ideals in the subsequent opening to the west.
I don't think this is a thing, because I don't believe many people in China was that obsessed with communism to begin with. Lots of bad thing actually happened during cultural revolution and the great leap, enough for most of people to have realized.
There is a misconception many (if not most) westerners have, that is China and Chinese people are communist. WRONG. In reality, most Chinese people are just normal people who lives under the communist ruling, and that's all.
CCP of course always trying to push their ideology to the public (by education and censorship etc), but isn't that's an indication of "Not everyone believes communism in China"?
Let's don't bring them on the table. Just like you don't bring Peoples Temple or Branch Davidians or any other cult onto the table when you talking about such topic.
I actually knew some people who was practicing Falun Gong before the crack down (And some still practicing it after). If you want to paint a portrait of those people, just image an uneducated man/woman at age around 40~50, who probably encountered some misfortunes in their life and became vulnerable enough to take anything into their head without a thought, and act upon that thought.
They're those people who would also actually believed they can receive superpower from a tinfoil hat (Well, not actually a tinfoil hat, but guess what, they have upgraded version of that [0]), meditation, or, maybe, killing themselves/others.
Oh, also, do you know the "Eastern Lightning"[1]? Don't bring them as well.
[0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/undersound/23239355 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Lightning#Zhaoyuan_McD...