r/Anticonsumption • u/Loner_Gemini9201 • 17d ago
Ads/Marketing Boycotting every establishment with a Shen Yun poster
So for those of you who don't know, Shen Yun is run by a far-right cult known as the Falun Gong. This cult is racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and does not deserve to be allowed in a sane society.
Thus, every establishment I see advertising it, I'm no longer going to purchase from. I don't care if it's a coffee shop, grocery store, etc. They won't get my money and I'll leave a bad review to let others know not to support them.
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u/Lower-Fact-8406 17d ago
A lot of places will allow posters in support of the community- they may not necessarily know what Shen Yun is, especially since they intentionally advertise themselves as a dance performance of sorts to obfuscate their purpose. I’ve spent 15 years explaining this to nonplussed people thinking they were supporting a cultural performance. Have you tried reaching out to the businesses to let them know?
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u/SkinConsulter123 17d ago
Can you tell us uninformed people about this group?
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u/Lower-Fact-8406 17d ago
Unfortunately, my edible hit right about two sentences into the response I began typing and this topic is more nuanced than I am capable of giving the respect it needs at this time. I’m sure someone will provide a well-rounded explanation in my stead, but in the meantime, I will share the very enjoyable read Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun from Jia Tolentino at the New Yorker and hope that it’s a good holdover for you.
“The dances continued, sleeves swirling, skirts rippling. A man came onstage to sing a song in Chinese, which was translated on the screen behind him. “We follow Dafa, the Great Way,” he began, singing about a Creator who saved mankind and made the world anew. “Atheism and evolution are deadly ideas. Modern trends destroy what makes us human,” he sang. At the end of the song, the row of older white people sitting behind me clapped fervently. In the final dance number, a group of Falun Dafa followers, who wore blue and yellow and clutched books of religious teachings, battled for space in a public square with corrupt youth. (Their corruption was evident because they were wearing black, looking at their cell phones, and, in the case of two men, holding hands.) Chairman Mao appeared, and the sky turned black; the city in the digital backdrop was obliterated by an earthquake, then finished off by a Communist tsunami. A red hammer and sickle glowed in the center of the wave. Dazed, I rubbed my eyes and saw a huge, bearded face disappearing in the water.
“Was that . . . ?” I said to my brother, wondering if I needed to go to the hospital.
“Karl Marx?” he said. “Yeah, I think that was a tsunami with the face of Karl Marx.”
She describes so many specific parts of my childhood experience with Shen Yun (thinking it was similar to Cirque du Soleil, for example) that I wonder now if those perceptions were a part of their marketing then too.
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u/Truth_Seeker963 17d ago
Isn’t it supposed to be the story of China before communism and that’s why the earthquake and red wave are symbolic of the end of their freedom?
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u/haribobosses 16d ago
Except none of the dancing is Chinese and the “story” bears zero resemblance to history. I saw the show. It’s a fantasy concocted by its Glorious Leader, who shows up in the first act as a towering Buddha with flowing white robe and tight forelocks.
The best part of the show is that the audience thinks this is somehow China.
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u/RoguePlanet2 16d ago
We need a simular show with some leftist propaganda, sounds like fun if the sides were reversed 😈
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u/AccompanyingCrow 17d ago
Here's a quick and dirty rundown, and I'm not gonna double check any of this so apologies if i get anything wrong. There's also a LOT of muddy info out there as the group is in an active propaganda war with the chinese government, so this is the most realistic sounding version I've found after doing a LOT of reading.
Falun Gong is the group behind Shen Yun. They were banned/kicked out of China a couple decades ago, after their leader started gaining too much influence for the CCP to be happy with. Their general thing seems to be Qi Gong as a cure to all your life's problems/also maybe cancer. They like to claim that the CCP will arrest their followers who stayed in China and harvest their organs. Shen Yun is based out of the group's headquarters in upstate NY, and while they do some really incredible dancing they also do 2-3 pieces per show thay are "story dances" if you will, and are all anti-CCP propaganda or are pushing religion/our way is the path to heaven. They also hand out a lot of religious materials in the lobby.
An interesting note related to this post, the company doesn't actually pay for their own advertising, each local branch of their religion pays for it. It's why they have SUCH a heavy ad presence compared to every other performance company, each local group needs to keep up with the others and get "karma points" if you will. And ShenYun stays in the black and is able to keep their 7 touring companies on the road without throwing millions of dollars into the advertising money pit.
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 16d ago
To add to this, Falun Gong is one of the largest perpetrators of disinformation in America (and perhaps globally as they have outposts on different countries) through publications like the Epoch Times.
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u/wanderingallnight 17d ago
The TrueAnon podcast deep dived into it awhile ago. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0P8P1oad0UScpvdGgxrd3Y?si=0DD9GMw0QH-cNczbZMxPew
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u/Fine_Measurement_338 16d ago
When my son moved to campus, we laid wagers on how long it would take for a cult to approach him and which cult it would be.
It was the 2nd dayand was Falun gong. They presented themselves as a type of Chinese yoga and meditation. He thought it was pretty cool, and was into it, but he looked it up online and the cult information comes up right away.
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u/Loner_Gemini9201 17d ago
I remember going to Chinatown in Chicago and saw a Falun Gong demonstration in the town center... I was disgusted and left very shortly after that.
Also, a lot of the businesses that put them up? Guess... sadly they're Chinese-owned a lot of the time, especially Chinese restaraunts!
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u/bunker_man 17d ago
As much as shen Yun is a crazy cult, I can sympathize with Chinese people wanting something Chinese to have a place in American culture. Westerners aren't going to randomly join falun gong, So they might reason that the fact that it is a weird cult matters less than the fact that it is putting chinese faces into a well known place in the west.
Someone I know who was Asian explained to me that way. They made fun of the actual beliefs, But said that for personal reasons being an asian in a place where asians weren't common they wanted to bring people to it to feel like Asian coded stuff was getting bigger in the west. Maybe that's not a perfect justification, but I can understand someone thinking about it that way.
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u/fox_in_a_spaceship 16d ago
This is absolutely the wrong way to support Chinese culture though. Besides the fact its' not even bonafide Chinese culture, they take advantage of Chinese immigrants who don't know better, who then eventually fall into the cult and end out spending their days doing free labor and rejecting modern medicine. Plenty of Chinese people have family who are victims of them and hate them as well.
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u/RaindropsAndCrickets 17d ago
Just heard a podcast about this! It was from “Sounds like a Cult”! I was like, wait, they’re talking about a guy behind the pretty “Chinese Ballet” advertisements that I’m always getting? Turns out, many if not all of those ballerinas may be being terribly abused if not outright human trafficked! Here is the episode:
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u/MascZelda 16d ago
I just listened to that EP this week and it was very informative and so fucked up
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u/MysteriousPool_805 16d ago
Here's another article on the whole fucked up situation: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/nyregion/shen-yun-dance-abuse.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k4.gGeT.SQ0TI2vkb2Ag&smid=url-share
I think this could definitely be considered trafficking... I always thought it was just a dance performance.
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u/epreuve_mortifiante 17d ago
Please keep in mind that many people have no idea about this cult and allow the posters to be put up simply out of ignorance. My boyfriend is a co-owner at a cafe and his business partner didn’t know about Falun Gong and put up their poster when someone came in asking if they could put one up. My boyfriend had to explain it to him and take it down. It would be really upsetting if someone saw that during the brief time it was up and gave us a bad review because of a simple misunderstanding. And yes, businesses should do their due diligence about what they allow in their space, but these are often over-worked, extremely busy people who might not have the time or wherewithal to question every single person who asks to put a poster up. (My boyfriend’s partner also has a cognitive disability so sometimes these kinds of tasks can be overwhelming to him, but that shouldn’t even matter). Edited word choice.
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u/Max_The_Greatest 17d ago
in my neighborhood, i don’t think i’ve seen a business with a message board that doesn’t have a shen yun poster … i respect where you’re coming from, but people put those posters up constantly with or without the support of the business, and a lot of people just think it’s a dance performance. doesn’t necessarily feel deserving of a full boycott tbh. i doubt the owners of my local bakery/grocery store/whatever are dedicated supporters.
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u/diddledaddling 17d ago
They probably don’t know. They’re probably just chill and let anyone put anything up. Try first talking to them about it. Especially before leaving a bad review - like what the hell dude.
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u/MysteriousPool_805 16d ago
Yeah, most people have no idea, myself included until I read the NYT article. Doesn't help that the people handing out the fliers are usually friendly, harmless looking old women at least in my city.
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u/New_Performance_9356 17d ago
Sometimes that cult will plaster their posters onto random buildings and stores without the owner's knowledge, this is a reason why I don't bat an eye when I see those posters in stores sometimes.
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u/Spaztor 17d ago
They are also behind the "Epoch Times" which is just propaganda they are trying to pass off as news.
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u/Loner_Gemini9201 17d ago
Not even close to surprised they're behind propaganda networks either. Typical cult activity :/
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 16d ago
That’s like their bread and butter
“The Epoch Times publishes in 21 languages and 33 countries,[12] and has print editions in eight languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian.[14] Special print editions have also been erratically published in France.[64]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times
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u/JiveBunny 16d ago
Oh, I used to see this in Chinatown in London but not so much in the Chinatown where I live now, so thought it had gone altogether.
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u/JesseofOB 16d ago
Pretty ridiculous stance, as small business owners may not have any idea what Shen Yun is covertly promoting. In fact, they may be well-intentioned and progressively-minded, misguidedly thinking that they’re helping to spread cultural connection. Why not try to educate them and see how they respond before boycotting?
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u/cornflakegrl 16d ago
Just be cool and tell the business what the deal is with falun gong. It’s not common knowledge. They just had a nice person come in and ask to put it up so they said sure. No need to harm businesses over that.
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u/cardie82 16d ago
I didn’t know until this post and am willing to bet many others wouldn’t either.
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u/Confused_Firefly 16d ago
"I am boycotting small businesses unless they take time to triple check every single advertisement they receive for hidden cults" just doesn't sound the same, does it.
Most people are not chronically online or generally curious enough to know about Falun Gong. They see a dance show flyer, they take it as a dance show flyer. What should clue them in that this one dance show, unlike the fifty before it, is problematic? What about informing them instead of leaving bad reviews, unrelated to their service, as if everyone knew the same things you know?
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u/funkiokie 16d ago
Lol the amount of activists I've met who pride themselves in being "well-informed" from just chronically online.
How dare the Chinese restaurant migrant workers don't educate themselves on the danger of alt-right fascism after a 14hr shift. How dare ESL immigrants aren't up-to-date on social justice info that was trending on Twitter last month. This is just well disguised classism.
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u/malatangnatalam 16d ago
Yeah I live in a majority Latino community and I’ve actually gone around giving posters for events in my area to small businesses (think bakeries or quinceañera dressmakers) since they typically always accept flyers compared to larger national chains.
I’ll often find Shen Yun posters up among all the rodeo and local concert flyers because most people think it’s just a Chinese dance performance coming to town. Not saying ESL people can’t do their own research, but I think the bigger problem is Falun Gong taking advantage of people’s kindness.
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u/Polybrene 17d ago
If you understand that many Redditors might not know that Shen Yun is an alt right cult, does it not stand to reason to extend that same grace to small business owners?
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u/heathenbstrd 17d ago
Yeah, at first I was sympathetic to the falun gong because of the persecution they faced from the ccp, but the more that came out about them, the more i realized this is a predatory cult just like any other.
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u/Loner_Gemini9201 17d ago
Their organization being made illegal by the CPC was frankly justified given their horrific actions. Their love of "China Before Communism" is a romanticized fantasy where practices like foot binding were legal...
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u/OrangeBlossomT 17d ago
This is so upsetting.
I have never met anyone that knows this.
I went to a show once more than ten years ago.
My fault I suppose for not researching. I agree that the businesses probably do not know.
I bet it would be easier to put up flyers that provides the truth and sources to learn more. Eventually a tipping point is reached once enough people know.
Also send it out to journalists and city chambers of commerce. It’s important to cite the sources of the information.
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u/Loner_Gemini9201 17d ago
To be fair, this was only revealed to me a couple of years ago during lockdown. I'm starting to notice they're advertising waaaaay heavier now, so I'm doing my part by at least getting people on Reddit to know this before booking tickets.
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u/OrangeBlossomT 17d ago
I do appreciate that!!
I think increasing awareness is the way! I still need to do my own research though too unless you can share some sources.
Maybe recommend giving a card where to learn more or just say respectfully “I saw the poster for Shen Yun, can I ask if you know the history of the group? If you knew you might not be okay with the advertising so please consider learning more.”
Ps- Sometimes businesses allow posters and don’t pay much attention to them if it’s community events and looks official.
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u/heathenbstrd 17d ago
I've heard anecdotes they can be quite pushy about displaying flyers. To a clueless business owner or even low paid employee, it's probably easier to let them put up the display than to argue. I wouldn't assume it's a true endorsement for a cult.
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u/VixyKaT 17d ago
Same. I thought they were letting the world know that many Chinese people are oppressed by their government and do not agree with it.
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u/heathenbstrd 17d ago
Well that's technically true. CCP does not allow free speech or freedom of religion. Falun Gong being a shitty cult and CCP being oppressive can both be true at the same time.
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u/funkiokie 16d ago
Yep. And for many new Chinese immigrants who are against CCP and looking for a community in the west, the established FLG unfortunately looks very appealing- just having Chinese native speakers is a huge plus for them. Similar to why many immigrants go to church to find communities despite being non religious.
Side note, OP made comment what CCP did to FLG practitioner is "justified". OP's also active in socialist subs and is likely pro-CCP.
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u/OrangeBlossomT 17d ago
Do you have sources for this?
Or is this a campaign to silence dissent?
Just checking as it is Reddit!
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u/trashed_culture 17d ago
I spent a decade seeing ads for that stuff and wanting to see it, but never did. I only recently learned they are an abusive money grab by a cult. So, i think it's a little harsh to punish pieces where it's posted, unless they are like, pushing it.
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u/cataholiccatholic 16d ago
I think leaving a bad review at every business in your community with a Shen Yun poster may do more harm than good. As other people have said in the comments, it’s very easy for the business to just put up a flyer thinking it’s a regular dance show going on in the community. It does not mean they are complicit in the cult.
Leaving bad reviews at EVERY place that has the flyer no matter what, even if it’s a small cafe or mom and pop shop, is not helpful to any cause and just hurts those businesses, and thus your community, unnecessarily. Speak to the owner or just take down the flyer.
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u/lobstamobinc 16d ago
A lot of these place are mom and pop shops who don’t know?
Even if they did, I’d rather support them than big box stores.
Insane take. There’s always one who takes it too far.
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u/Solstyse 17d ago
I would inform the business of some of the statements made by their leader. Just one off of the top of my head is that mixed race people don't go to heaven. I'll try to find a direct quote but I'm at work rn. I'll update this later.
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u/Sufficient_Sell_6103 16d ago
They are also known to be aggressive about hanging posters and sometimes do it without consent of the business
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u/BullsOnParadeFloats 16d ago
Chinese establishments are usually bullied into putting them up. The Falun Gong is a cross between an extremist right wing cult and an organized crime syndicate. They exist primarily to spread anti-leftist propaganda, which is why they're based in the US, and not China. Iirc, they also are the ones who own the far right rag The Epoch Times.
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u/freedinthe90s 16d ago
Education is more important. I promise you the average business owner has zero clue what is behind it, nor would they have any reason to be suspicious.
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u/actualchristmastree 16d ago
I agree everyone should boycott shen yun but just take down the posters when you’re there. Don’t boycott the businesses, they don’t know
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u/Opposite_of_grumpy 16d ago
I think the better option-especially for small businesses would be to let them know. As a child I would see the adds on tv and always wanted to go! I didn’t learn what they really were until I was in college, and many people simply don’t know. Why would anyone think that what seems to be a dance company would be a cult. Never attribute malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. (or in this case a lack of knowledge)
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u/Mabel_Waddles_BFF 16d ago
‘I’m going to boycott and give bad reviews to a bunch of small businesses for having (what they think) advertisements for Chinese cultural performances while happily giving money to supermarkets who stock brands with extremely bad track records.’
Have you tried letting these businesses know? Many don’t and if they’re asked to put up the posters up they think they’re being helpful. I’d guess not. I’m also very sure you don’t carry the same moral outrage to supermarkets stocking Nestle.
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u/Karena1331 17d ago
I remember when i first learned about their history and since then have blocked every ad I see of their’s and let people know when they haven’t heard.
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u/H3lls_B3ll3 16d ago
Imma have to look up this. I've never heard anything about it. I've seen the posters, and thought it was just dance theatre.
I wonder what else I don't know about...
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u/ChooksChick 16d ago
Twelve Tribes? Yellow Deli? Epoch Times? Lots of fun stuff out there.
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u/JiveBunny 16d ago
It's advertised on the tube (London Underground) and it was only recently that I read up on the show and realised it was more than just an acrobatics/dance show but actually propaganda for Falun Gong itself. Most reviews I've read have been bemused, rather than anything else, at what they ended up seeing.
The other issue is that Falun Gong is seen as a religious/cultural group repressed by the Chinese government and not allowed to freely practice - that's the sum total of my knowledge and like most people I'd be thinking 'well, let them do their thing' without knowing the background or whether it's a different situation to, say, the Uyghurs.
I'd really appreciate someone pointing me to decent resources that explain the background on this. The polarisation of anything related to China's government/CCP makes it hard to assess whether or not what they're trying to outlaw is also bad, if you see what I mean.
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u/Fearless-Guess-8476 16d ago
I wouldn't leave the business a bad review, they may not even be aware of this
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u/bat_shit_craycray 16d ago
I've already commented but now I'll ask: to boycott a business because you have automatically judged that they are in alignment with it when dozens of comments have been posted here of folks being unaware of this...does that change your stance at all that perhaps these businesses genuinely don't know?
Also, now that you are aware that most folks were NOT aware that this is a bad thing, beyond boycotting and posting here, will you take any other action to educate folks on it? I have a feeling a lot of these businesses would take those posters down once they knew. As I commented previously, I absolutely trust my friend will as soon as he knows and will look into this a lot more closely.
This is the problem with a blind boycott and a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach. You may be boycotting businesses who do actual good in their communities and who do not support it and did so innocently.
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u/kristencatparty 16d ago
Yeaahhh maybe check with the staff owner and make sure they understand that before you go blasting local biz publicly? A lot of people have no idea about what it actually is.
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u/carlj1975 17d ago
Racist, homophobic, misogynistic. Sounds perfect for the new board at the Kennedy Center.
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u/Silent-Bet-336 16d ago
Happened to my restaurant owner friends. They thought i would be going because i study Chinese, and have been to Chinese shows, lantern, moon festivals and have Chinese friends. I filled them in on it. But i know only because i study Chinese.
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u/thYrd_eYe_prYing 16d ago
The founder says he is a being from a higher dimension here to help save us from the aliens who have infiltrated our world and are trying to take over humanity.
No watching TV or using technology because it was all inspired by aliens trying to brainwash us.
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u/Potato-chipsaregood 14d ago
Well, the technology is being used to brainwash us, but not by aliens.
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u/99-dreams 16d ago
Time to boycott the nyc MTA /s
But honestly, it's so weird to see Shen Yun ads when I'm taking the subway. And I feel like they should know better than a random store agreeing to share flyers and doing no research into the group.
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u/lngfellow45 16d ago
What?! I had no idea! I thought it was a huge American dance company…..
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u/DocFossil 16d ago
Everybody does because it’s marketed that way. It’s not only a front for a cult, they apparently aren’t even good dancers.
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u/hellstarvermina 16d ago
i would for sure talk to the businesses first because i had no idea this was a far right cult thing at all until this post. i literally just thought it was like a traveling dance troupe or something lol i’d bet most small businesses have no idea wtf it is and just let a bunch of posters/business cards in there
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u/DisciplineBoth2567 17d ago
I had no idea, i went several years ago and I thought it would be this wonderful cultural experience but it was really off putting. felt very much like propaganda.
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u/queensnuggles 16d ago
It’s funny- I have a friend I lost to MAGA , and she told me she had to leave the show at intermission because the could tell it was a cult.
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 16d ago
A lot of MAGA misinformation originates from Falun Gong so that’s interesting
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u/saltytothegrave 16d ago
they put up their posters without asking anyone at my work. we took them down when we realized. i would softly educate the business if you feel comfortable to do so, they don’t always know what is up and the people who are putting the posters up are sneaky
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u/bat_shit_craycray 16d ago
Has the thought occurred to you that they are not aware of the history of this? I was not, and I know someone who I’m positive doesn’t either who does exhibit these signs. I will be sure to tell him.
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u/reefered_beans 16d ago
I used to run a space and we let community members put flyers in our windows. Shen Yun was one of them until years later when I stumbled across an article about why they shouldn’t be supported. You have every right in your decision but I think you’re being incredibly harsh and unfair.
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u/Clear_Lettuce_9741 16d ago
And beware the newspaper "Epoch TImes" is run by Shen Yun cult too. I complained and got the paper banned from several local stores. It promotes anti-gay, anti-vax, pro-Trump etc.
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u/Low_Lavishness_8776 16d ago edited 16d ago
You should inform them first, lots of people don’t know that it’s a cult and think it’s just some dancing thing. Every shen yun ad you see online should be reported though, I do the same even though it probably does nothing but it keeps getting pushed on me
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u/crazycatlady331 16d ago
Last year, the people with the posters came around and gave one to my office to put up. I didn't do anything as it was the landlord's decision not mine.
But they literally send people to downtowns handing out posters. 90% of the time, I'm betting some low level employee knows nothing about it.
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u/hellp-desk-trainee- 16d ago
I think you give people way too much credit for what they advertise. Especially stores that might just let anybody put up something in their window. If it doesn't immediately give a red flag why would they look more into it. You're seeming like you're being super over the top and insane.
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u/Irish_Fiddler 16d ago
Do you think these businesses are getting a pitch from Falung Gong and actively saying "yes please, I love your cult and all the things it stands for! Give me a poster so I can show my support for yout cult"
Or do you think that maybe the poster designed.to hide the real beliefs of Shen Yun and Falung Gong also hides those beliefs from the business owner?
Were you instantly aware of Shen Yun's association when you first saw the poster? Or were you, like all other human beings in the world, ignorant of of a topic till you were educated about it?
Try acting like an adult, and communicating. Send an email to the business owner. Tell the manager or staff on site. Pull down the poster yourself. Do literally anything except act self righteous on Reddit, it does a lot more good in the world.
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u/DocFossil 16d ago
This. I’ve seen their posters and billboards for years and always assumed, like everyone, that they were just some sort of dance company. Everybody does because it’s marketed that way. I strongly suspect virtually everyone who put up those posters and billboards had no idea who was really behind this. I think it would be much better to educate the businesses rather than boycott them unless you actually know if they support the Kooks that are behind it.
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u/UnTides 16d ago
does not deserve to be allowed in a sane society
Context matters: Falun Gong members were imprisoned in China for their beliefs and allegedly (there is lots of real reporting on this) their organs were harvested and sold by these prisons. Partially because the cult promoted a very healthy lifestyle which made their organs more desirable for this trade. Some people see them as representative of fighting the Chinese Communist Party.
I have a lot of issues with Epoch Times and Falun Gong, but they are also refugees of serious crimes against them. Their viewpoints sucks, but they "deserve to be allowed" in our society just like any other racist lunatic. They are America
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u/Careless_Ad_9665 16d ago
I had no idea. I’ve let them hang flyers in my business before. A couple of years ago I just had a strange feeling about it and started refusing. I couldn’t even say why it was just off to me.
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u/ediblesleeve 16d ago
I’ve had them come and try to hang up stuff where I work, they’re very quick and try to put many of them up there, when I told the lady that came In that we don’t have a bulletin board she tried to put them on a display shelf, when I told her again no we don’t do that, she then handed me a handful of flyers and posters and left before I could refuse them
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u/roland-the-farter 16d ago
In my town, those little posters the size of a sheet of paper in the window are put up by a third party in the windows of businesses who allow the service (I would assume they get paid but idk) and other businesses/events pay to have their poster as part of the bloc of posters so the business itself typically doesn’t really pay attention to the posters. The 3rd party company even installs and deinstalls the posters. Just fyi, could be the case.
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u/Embarrassed-Wallaby6 16d ago
Thanks for posting this! I literally had a flier and told my husband I wanted to go see the performance and held onto the advert until I found out through Reddit that it’s a far right organization giving money to asshat Trump. So thank you for informing me. Keep up the fight against the scum.
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u/Cthulhu_6669 16d ago
I wouldnt boycot. I worked for a place where a shen Yun person would come in and ask if we can just lay their pamphlets on our counter. We had other pamphlets and just said sure. Not like it's well known. Maybe if you see a poster, inform the management instead of boycotting
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u/BackgroundPoint7023 16d ago
I knew they were abusive to their performers, but did not know about the Falun Gong connection.
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u/lyralady 16d ago
I worked for the campus theater while in college and shen yun was the fucking weirdest show. Half the audience left before or during intermission. Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun is an accurate essay about it lmfao.
Was that . . . ?” I said to my brother, wondering if I needed to go to the hospital.
“Karl Marx?” he said. “Yeah, I think that was a tsunami with the face of Karl Marx.”
I was inside the house (theater) for part of the show and it was....absolutely bafflingly bad. Extremely obvious cult vibes too. Deeply earnest cult propaganda lol. But so many people left because they genuinely didn't know it was a cult. Most people don't.
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u/Jitenshara 16d ago
I'm sorry to say but they are renting one of my companies pianos 😔 I wish I could turn them away 😔
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u/theeggplant42 13d ago
Do you know that a lot of places just have community message boards and/or let a third party flyer service post flyers? Because it seems like you have a lot of misplaced blame.
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u/tecpaocelotl1 17d ago
Shen Yu post their stuff everywhere regardless. I think the typical person doesn't know who they are and allows them to post a poster.
Why not boycott businesses that support the CCP/CPC?
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u/Strawb3rryJam111 17d ago
“China before communism.” Idk colonialism here seems to have erased culture pretty well.
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u/space________cowboy 17d ago
You should protest apple products too while your at it
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u/Loner_Gemini9201 17d ago
False equivalency.
My most recent phone was bought refurbished (#FreeCongo) via a third-party seller.
Who says I wasn't already boycotting Apple? Haven't bought anything from them in years!
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u/TrainingWoodpecker77 16d ago
Their new commercials elude to being oppressed and “what you’ve heard in the media isn’t true”.
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u/Glittering_Move_5631 16d ago
Just heard about them on Sounds Like a Cult. I've always seen the posters but never knew anything about it nor had I ever seen it. I always thought it was similar to Cirque de Soleil.
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u/Due-Afternoon-7051 16d ago
They are not only a cult, but an abusive cult. Making their members work long hours without pay.
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u/whitebreadguilt 16d ago
Years ago I was on my local community college newspaper and we had a young lady who was….odd on the ‘staff’. We would assign stories to people, including her, but she never turned in a single story. Except for one, and it was literally gobbledygook. But she showed up for every meeting and would always take over the meeting pushing covering nice things like Shen Yun, family things like Shen Yun. Obviously, in retrospect she was a Shen Yun plant? She spoke in an odd manner, very much like Trump, using weird flowery language and wouldn’t engage with you in an authentic way. She had a ton of lip filler before it was commonplace (this was 2016ish). Super odd and now that we know this about Shen Yun it makes total sense.
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u/momo88852 16d ago
They got me once, had no idea who they were and I worked as a cashier, and we let locals post ads.
Once I found out I took them down.
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u/Alarming-Tradition-6 16d ago
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12442518 If you want to read more about Falun Gong.
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u/LadrilloDeMadera 16d ago edited 16d ago
When I research about Falun gong I can only find articles about how they were prosecuted and oppressed in china.
Can you send some articles about how they're far right?
Edit: nevermind, found them already
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u/chrism2s309 16d ago
I went into my local vape shop and they had a bunch of leaflets and I just took them all and just walked outside and threw them in the trash
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u/Afraid_Ad_8216 16d ago
I got a youtube ad for their show and was surprised, random small business I'd give the benefit of not knowing what it is...biggest video platform should know better tho
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u/S0ME0NEMANLY 16d ago
You realize most cities have people constantly putting flyers out in all businesses, regardless if the business supports them. Would be pretty naive to boycott them vs educating people what Shen Yun really is
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u/Darkchurchhill 16d ago
I have a lot of family (uncles and cousins) in the Falun Gong organization. They are basically a daoist religious sec/ cult who have beef with the CPP for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons. They were religiously persecuted in China and expelled, and operates globally and targeting vulnerable Chinese diaspora looking for community. Idk too much about them, but like a lot of religious groups they continued to operate/ hold in person meetings during covid and even required my uncles' family to fly to Taiwan for a conference during summer of 2020 (which caused a huge fight between my father and his brother).
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u/Topic-Salty 16d ago
From my understanding, the play is about showing the traditional Chinese culture before communist rule. What's wrong with that? Or do you prefer communism?
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u/HatsOffGuy 16d ago
They don't ask before putting up posters too. So maybe you can bring it up to the establishment before not spending money.
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u/triponsynth 16d ago
I’m late but I have been haunted by Shen Yun posters for over 10 years but always forget to look up what it is and why it’s always running in theaters so thank you! This explains why seeing the posters and fliers everywhere felt so off to me.
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u/MetalPandaDance 16d ago
i see ads all the time and it always looked suspicious. almost like a money laundering scheme that's a front for criminal org. genuinely not surprised, but thanks for the heads up.
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u/zedplanet 16d ago
It’s about time. This cult have been enriching itself for decades on the naïveté of Americans
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u/guitarenthusiast1s 16d ago
why are the falun gong worse than any other cult? what do you have against them specifically?
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u/sunflwryankee 16d ago
Living in NYC years ago I’d see the Falun Gong in their yellow outfits performing on the streets, in parks, etc… with these handouts and super busy explanatory boards. That was my first introduction to them and as they explained it they were political refugees and something about their religion being banned - they’d compare it to Buddhism. Then I saw a documentary a few years ago about FG and wow did their street information handouts have selective info.
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u/Citriina 16d ago
Unfortunately I have been to shen yun. Nothing against Chinese culture/ aesthetic but dance/acrobatic type performances just aren’t that captivating for me. For all I know it might be top notch talent and choreography when it comes to dance shows. But anyways, it was pretty boring for me until about 55% in when it became rapidly accelerating (though probably truthful) very heavy handed anti CPC propaganda and repeated donation requests. The donation requests were the most offensive part to me. So there was no good part, it’s first boring and then mildly offensive. Like how dare you charge people to get propagandised and also keep asking the customers for more money?! I don’t know what has changed since I saw it but there was nothing homophobic or racist (unless overt bragging about traditional Chinese culture could be considered racist to other cultures) the whole point is to disparage the Chinese govt or maybe it’s to pretend that’s the point and the real point is just getting donations. I’m sure who ever is dealing with getting those posters up is well trained at asking nicely and replacing removed posters; it’s a sophisticated scam so I wouldn’t blame the small businesses.
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u/mute-ant1 16d ago
they also put out a completely biased “newspaper “ that they hand deliver to houses in my suburb. full of misinformation
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u/SnooGoats5767 16d ago
I had no idea myself until a week ago, I looked it up after a friend told me. It came up because my mom just bought us tickets 🤦♀️
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u/Zarocks136 15d ago
I remember getting a pamphlet in my mailbox a few years ago, and thought it looked interesting; dance and culture and what not, but as I read through the brochure just tiny red flags were pinging in my brain. Looked into it further and learned what was really going on.
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u/SadCatLadyHours 15d ago
This would be hard for me and most of the Boston area, as the MBTA in Boston has advertisements on the Red Line 😅
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u/CaptainIntrepid9369 15d ago
Representatives of the cult took pictures of our audience during the performance. DEEPLY weird vibes.
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u/Potato-chipsaregood 14d ago edited 14d ago
China hates them too. Edited to add that a woman at work went to the show and thought it was great. Subtle anti-Chinese themes but beautiful. Not sure about the cult part. We can’t say much.
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u/WeissTek 14d ago
Shen Yun is not even really traditional Chinese but advertised as their selling point.
Grew up in Taiwan and have seen REAL trad Chinese stuff, shen yun is really expensive for western dances that look Asian.
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u/GordonRammstein 14d ago
My parents own a bakery and every year, they come by and just slap a couple posters up on our window without asking or saying much at all. Being mostly run by clueless teens in the afternoon, we’d let them do it because we were too stunned to say otherwise. For a long time we didn’t know what it was, the posters look like an ad for a Chinese version of cirque du soleil, so sure we’ll support the arts! It wasn’t until many years later I discovered Falun Gong and started removing them as soon as they walked away.
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u/Jaeger-the-great 17d ago
I think a lot of places don't really know what Shen Yun does and let people post stuff so long as it's not directly inappropriate. Like how they let people post flyers and business cards for pyramid schemes and such