(Clearwisdom.net)

Part 1: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/7/5/49867.html

10. An irrational way of thinking: "An individual's infringement means the whole group is at fault."

If an individual has done something wrong, it is his individual behavior, but Jiang's regime accuses an entire group of people simply because of one individual's act. This is totally illogical. However, many people do not detect the irrationality of the logic, and they cannot see the relationship between an individual's act and the principles abided by the whole group, or whether the individual act is the result of the group's belief as a whole.

If a Christian commits a crime, a judge outside of China would not indict Christianity for this individual's wrongdoing.

Similarly, Falun Gong does not tell people to kill; on the contrary, Falun Gong's teachings prohibit killing. Therefore, it is ludicrous for the Jiang regime to attribute a mental patient's behavior, such as murder, to Falun Gong. What is more ludicrous is that the patient had not even heard of Falun Gong, and yet his crime was used as an excuse to ban and persecute Falun Gong. In fact, belief in gods can help people cherish life even more.

The manipulative method of accusing a group, based on a wrongdoing committed by an individual, called "guilty by association" in the West, allows Jiang's regime to fabricate lies and slander Falun Gong by consistently using different individuals.

People in a democratic society are used to finding out the facts of a certain event through different sources; however, after being subjected to decades of a single voice system, along with brainwashing, people in China are used to hearing only one opinion, that of the government. Jiang's regime used nationwide propaganda to slander Falun Gong before people had the opportunity to gain a clear understanding of Falun Gong, so people were deceived, and they thus formed a bad impression of Falun Gong. As a result, they became unwilling to learn the truth about Falun Gong. Some people are so used to the government propaganda attacks against Falun Gong that they even reject emails from Falun Gong practitioners who try to tell them the truth. They feel annoyed.

What's more, Jiang's regime slanderously uses the terms "fools, stupid, and mentally unstable," in an effort to ruin Falun Gong practitioners' reputations. As a result, the public becomes unwilling to listen to Falun Gong practitioners.

There are indeed some "evil cults" in the world that cause society great harm. Jiang's regime takes advantage of people's fear of these cults, and repeatedly refers to Falun Gong in the same breath with "evil cults" in their propaganda attacks. For example, when Zhou Yongkang, Minister of Public Security, talked about "controlling a large-scale fire accident" he deliberately mentioned "strictly control Falun Gong" at the same time, which easily creates a wrongful association between the two in people's minds.

The political movements by the Chinese Party have caused chaos in society and as a result the people live in a state of constant insecurity. The more fearful people are about their security, the more they fear chaos, and the more they agree with the government's claim, "stability above everything else." The Jiang regime capitalizes on the public's fear and calls everything not to its liking an "unstable element," asking the people to take the so-called "interest of the whole country" into consideration. Such a mentality makes some people easily cooperate with the government. They believe the government when it tells them that a "peaceful appeal" is "a group attack on the government" and "upholding one's human rights" is "disturbing the social order."

The consequences of atheism also cause some people to feel insecure, and they subconsciously seek protection from the government. Thus, they tend to agree with the government's policies, right or wrong. There are also some overseas Chinese community leaders, who in order to make personal gains, have played the role of hatchet man, and helped Jiang's regime to stir up hatred of Falun Gong overseas.

Respect for national leaders, support for a political party, and love for a country are completely different concepts. And yet people who promote extreme nationalism mix up these concepts and claim that whoever criticizes the government heads is against the Party and therefore they are committing treason. Jiang's regime claims Falun Gong "conspired with foreign forces," while foreign governments and civil organizations abroad support Falun Gong out of a sense of conscience and a sense of justice. The Jiang regime also claims Falun Gong practitioners are staining China's world image by exposing the Jiang regime's violations of human rights. They try to equate China with Jiang. Some people were deceived by the Jiang regime's lies.

"Why would the government suppress you for no reason? You must have a problem in the first place." People with such mentality tend to nit-pick faults with the victim instead of investigating the Jiang regime's countless lies. For example, through slow motion video images we can see in the Tiananmen "Self-immolation" video that the police beat one of the self-immolators, Liu Chunling, to death right then and there. However, when presented with such crystal-clear evidence, some people suspect that the scenes might be "acted out" by Falun Gong practitioners. When practitioners ask these people to get a copy of the original videotape made by CCTV and investigate it themselves, they refuse to do so. They have developed a prejudice against the victims based on the faulty logic that "there has to be something wrong with them, because the government says so."

Nowadays many people have become more mature than in the past, and aren't as easily led to believe something as before. However, the media is also much more advanced and sophisticated than before, and the scale and scope of the propaganda from the Jiang regime, in their attack on Falun Gong, is unprecedented and is even worse than the political propaganda during the Cultural Revolution. All of a sudden, slander against Falun Gong flooded all TV channels and took up a large portion of the air time; articles defaming Falun Gong were given priority space in newspapers, and the same slanderous articles are posted on almost all Party-controlled websites. All kinds of meetings were held, such as criticizing meetings, accusation meetings, and "taking a clear-cut stand" meetings, etc. In the face of such rampant omnipresent propaganda, offensive from top to bottom, many peoples' fortress against lies collapsed.

In contrast, some people who were able to observe with a disinterested eye were able to remain calm and rational. One young woman in China is a member of an underground church. When asked what she thinks of the information claming Falun Gong practitioners commit suicide she said she didn't believe it, because people who believe in eternal life would not commit suicide.

This persecution is still ongoing. Jiang's regime has done what no government has done before, by exploiting all kinds of mentalities and by manipulating these to his advantage in defaming a peaceful civil group.

Slanderous accusations hurled at Falun Gong that appeared in the Party media include the terms "superstition, ignorance, anti-science, bogus science, qigong psychosis, evil cult, suicide, self mutilation, murder, group attack, political involvement, accumulation of wealth, being cheated, conspiracy with anti-China forces, advocating Consummation through suicide, bringing shame to China's image, disturb social order, brutalizing lives, anti-humanity, destroying the Party and the country," etc.

If people realize that they have prejudices that Jiang's group has taken advantage of, and that "disagreeing" does not necessarily lead to "opposition and hatred," and if people can calmly learn about Falun Gong and take an objective attitude toward it, maybe the world will be a better place, with more sincerity, kindness, and tolerance, and will be a better and happier place to live because of it.

Posting date: 7/20/2004
Original article date: 7/20/2004
Category: Truth Clarification
Translated on 6/29/2004
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/6/20/77424.html