Danny Schechter's New Falun Gong Book Is Weak

Reading Danny Schechter's Falun Gong's Challenge to China it's difficult to determine whether the self-described "human rights journalist" is playing the fool or being someone's tool. After talking to him for almost an hour and a half, I am convinced that he has managed the difficult task of doing both in equal measure.

Schechter is not so stupid that he does not know a good thing when he sees one, and has put out this thin volume of "analysis" packaged with selections from primary and secondary sources just in time for the esoteric sect's showdown with the murderous authorities in Beijing. This conflict was highlighted two weeks ago when five alleged Falun Gong practitioners succeeded in immolating themselves (one actually died) in Tiananmen Square. Falun Gong denies any role in that incident. Instead, its spokespeople assert that dark forces in the Forbidden City have upped the ante in a massive conspiracy to discredit a benign spiritual practice that is followed by over 100 million Chinese.

All of which seems made to order for Schechter, who subtitled his work Spiritual Practice or "Evil Cult?" He is now guaranteed employment as a talking head for the foreseeable future, as tv and radio news programmers scramble to cover what promises to be a war to the death between Falun Gong and the geriatric Beijing regime.

That Falun Gong could attract millions of adherents in China after half a century of rule by the Communists is evidence enough of the failure of the atheistic regime. Although Schechter tries to downplay the archaic and obscurantist elements of the sect's theology, they are such an essential part of its theology that he is forced to note in print that practitioners believe that through intense study and practice they can achieve "supernormal capabilities and special powers," including levitation. And while claiming that Falun Gong's resistance to the authorities "is almost Gandhian in its breadth," he concedes later in the bowels of his text that the official biography of the group's leader, Li Hongzhi, has him bending metal telepathically as a child of eight.

Given this type of snake oil, it is difficult to accept Schechter's comparisons of Li to the likes of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Desmond Tutu. When asked about this, Schechter tries to make the case for Falun Gong as a kind of variant of liberation theology, albeit one culled from traditional Chinese sources. In our telephone conversation, he does a credible job of putting Falun Gong in an historical and social context, explaining that the decline of the old Maoist value system has left ordinary citizens adrift in a spiritual void amid a growing market economy that is characterized by rampant official corruption.

"So there has been a lot disaffection with what is happening, and that disaffection has expressed itself in a kind of revival of Qigong, the more ancient Chinese practices that include kung fu and other martial arts based on various kinds of exercise programs. What Li Hongzhi did was add to it a spiritual dimension. It was simple philosophy based on the principles of compassion, tolerance and forbearance, and a certain amount of mysticism. It caught on because people believed that the exercises led to good health, and partly as a purification thing. It was seen as a reversion to Chinese tradition and something that was purer than what is happening in the call by the authorities to get rich in the thrust towards a market economy."

That all sounds benign enough. Nothing that would raise an eyebrow among the new age types down at the health food store. Except, of course, it is not true. If you want to check out Li Hongzhi's "simple philosophy," go to www.clearwisdom.net and catch an eyeful of spiritual mumbo jumbo convoluted enough to bring the most desperate spiritual seeker to tears. Part apocalyptic prophecy, part baby Taoism, Li's theology is sufficiently esoteric to keep the unenlightened in a perpetual state of darkness. A typical Falun Gong pronouncement, entitled "Advance Towards Consummation Through Cultivation Within Fa Rectification," reads in part, "Born at the special historical moment when the entire universe is being rectified by the Fa [the law and principles of the universe] and fortunate enough to receive personal salvation from our honorable Teacher [Li Hongzhi]?this is an opportunity that is so precious that even 'occurs only once every ten thousand years' fails to describe it. Moreover, only by participating in this process of Fa rectification can one cultivate to become joined together with the Fa, otherwise one will have nothing to do with this occurrence of Fa rectification cultivation and then it simply cannot be considered a Consummation attained through Fa rectification cultivation."

Asked how he could possibly describe this type of utterance as containing only a "certain amount of mysticism," Schechter audibly bristles and responds, "Are there things about Falun Gong that I am not clear on or did not investigate fully? Yes."

That Schechter has not bothered delving into his subject's ideas (can you blame him?) beyond the introductory level forces him to pull out an old politically correct gambit. With veiled hints that questioning the integrity of Li's theology is somehow culturally chauvinist, he continues, "While I was writing the book the Pope came out with this whole thing about the Secret of Fatima. It was a whole dispute within Catholicism about why this statue was bleeding, but nobody investigated and asked if the Pope was telling the truth. They realized there was an element of faith and belief here. Nobody tried to discredit the Pope's statement, although those of us who are not part of that world found it pretty weird."

Schechter appears to be as knowledgeable about the intricacies of Catholic mysticism as he is about Falun Gong's: the Secret of Fatima has nothing to do with "a bleeding statue." If Schechter is grasping at straws here, it may be because he is so desperate to align Falun Gong with the world's more established spiritual hustles, to counteract the official Chinese line that portrays the sect as "suicidal" and compares it to the Branch Davidians and the People's Temple. He answers the question posed in his subtitle by saying, "My view of cults is people being sleep-deprived, worshipping leaders, giving them all their money, not thinking for themselves and just repeating in rote. The vibe I was getting from the people I spoke didn't give me the feeling that this guy [Li Hongzhi] was commandante numero uno. I didn't get the vibe that this was like the group of crazies in Japan who put nerve gas in the subways."

Falun Gong's lack of a lethal armory aside, one does not have to look much further than Schechter's own book to discover that Falun Gong is a little more than an exotic and colorful exercise club. Among the secondary sources he reprints is an article by Peter Carlson of The Washington Post, which recounts an interview with two American practitioners (Li emigrated to this country in 1996). They report among other things that Li texts emitted a strange energy that made them feel young; that reading a brief passage immediately cured one of them of smoking; and that doing Falun Gong exercises caused a nasty cut to completely heal within half an hour.

Schechter says he is neither a practitioner nor a supporter of Falun Gong. "I am sympathetic to them in one respect," he says, sounding prickly again. "I don't like to see old ladies tortured. Okay? I don't like to see them thrown in jail." Neither, of course, does the American public?not to mention the U.S. government, which is always up for a little Chinese-government-bashing these days. Resolutions against the repression of Falun Gong passed in both houses of Congress, and President Clinton sent the group a message of support.

Yet Schechter speaks as though the jailings of tens of thousands of Falun Gong faithful, and the hundreds who've reportedly died in detention, had gone unnoticed. "I seem to be one of the few people who seem to care about it," he tells me?a ludicrous contention.

Schechter's attitude seems to reflect a very American tendency to divide the world into good guys and bad. Apparently it really sticks in his craw that some people simply do not buy his view of Falun Gong as peaceful apolitical mystics who have become reluctant revolutionaries due to the irrational repression of an increasingly unstable regime. His contention that the group still wants to have a dialogue with their oppressors is belied by Li himself, who recently issued a statement entitled "Suffocate the Evil," which includes the insight, "Masanja Labor Re-education Camp is a dark den of evil forces. Most of the disciplinary guards there are reincarnated minor ghosts from hell."

Which indicates that things can still get quite a bit nastier between the two forces. Recent events in the Balkans should prove to anybody's satisfaction that today's human rights victims may well exact bloody retribution should the opportunity present itself in the future. But the final irony of Schechter's "human rights journalism" approach to this story is that when it comes time to sell the American public on an unworkable missile shield against evil empires like the Chinese Communists, his one-sided presentation of the plight of Falun Gong may be used as Exhibit A.