Look What Came in the Mail

A few days ago, my mail contained a 24-page, full-color printed tabloid of The Epoch Times:



In case you don't know, this is the propaganda arm of Falun Gong, an anti-Chinese-government publication based in the U.S. that has become part of the crazy right wing.

The fact that they can afford to print and mail something like this to who-knows-how-many people is kind of frightening. It contained an offer to subscribe and get the paper weekly (priced from $3/week to $2.67/week, depending on the subscription length).

Their return address appears to be a UPS store in Chicago.

Half the pages were devoted to "news" and half to alternative health and lifestyle articles. The latter ranged from maybe not wrong to bad (COVID lies). 

The news was all from opposite-world:

• "The UN declared rising temperatures no 'existential threat to humanity.'" Reading the story closely, it appears that headline takes what the particular person from the IPCC said completely out of context, and in the body of the article, he directly contradicts the words in the headline.
• "Nobel winner on climate agenda: 'We are totally awash in pseudoscience.'" The Nobel-winner in question is a quantum physicist — not anything close to a relevant field.
• "Jack Smith admits to making false claim to court in Trump case." Headline on a story that tries to make a run-of-the-mill, minor moment in a complicated case into a news story. This will have no effect on the outcome of Trump's case.
• "Eliminating fossil fuels will produce a crippling decline in human well-being" (headline on a column). More evidence that the The Epoch Time is a denialist paper about the effects of climate change on human well-being, let alone mentioning anything about the current effects of fossil fuels on human health.

The last news page contained this gem:



Yes, a member of Congress spent time reading a speech of praise for The Epoch Times into the official Congressional record on July 13. Norman represents the 5th district of South Carolina, which contains the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina. He was preceded in office by Mick Mulvaney, who resigned to become Trump's head of OMB and chief of staff.

Norman is a multi-millionaire and the 28th wealthiest member of Congress. His money appears to come from real estate development.

Here are a few facts about Norman I just learned from his Wikipedia page (all of which have sources there):

• In April 2018, about six months after he was sworn into his Congressional seat, he placed a loaded handgun in front of him on the table while talking with constituents from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
• In February 2021, he lied about skipping House votes due to COVID concerns, but was actually attending the Conservative Political Action Conference.
• Like many other Republican members of Congress, he criticized Biden's $10,000 student loan forgiveness plan, but has gotten a much larger COVID loan forgiven himself (more than $300,000).
• He was one a handful of Republican House members who tried to get the white supremacist Rep. Steve King of Iowa reinstated.
• Among many other actions he took related to the 2020 election, he sent a text on January 17 (January 17!) urging Trump to invoke martial law to prevent Biden's inauguration.

Norman, obviously, is a big Trump supporter, as is The Epoch Times. The paper was the biggest sponsor of pro-Trump advertising on Facebook after the Trump campaign itself. (source)

The only good thing about this free issue of The Epoch Times was that I didn't notice any QAnon content, but I understand it does go in for that as well, so maybe I missed it in this issue because I didn't look closely enough, or they moderate what they put into the free trial copy, saving the really crazy stuff once they've hooked a subscriber.