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The New York Times’ Attack on Shen Yun Is an Attack on Arts and Culture

by Evan Mantyk
SCP Editor & President

In the last six months or so, the New York Times has completely lost its senses and run a series of articles, many on its front page, trying to derail the wonderful dance and music performance, Shen Yun Performing Arts. This is relevant to poets and artists because Shen Yun has championed the popularization of excellent dance and music and the reemergence of a beautiful classical aesthetic. With its eight large troupes touring theaters throughout America and around the world, Shen Yun has embraced a view of art that is based on excellence and not limited by the modern aesthetic that has cynicism, ugliness, and rule-breaking as its starting points. Each Shen Yun performance has around twenty acts, many of which draw from classical Eastern literature and traditional stories and mythology; often their pieces portray the writing and influence of classical poetry and show the high value placed on it in the Eastern tradition—one example of this is Poets of the Orchid Pavilion dance from the 2016 program (view part of it here).

Meanwhile, two New York Times reporters have done article after article trying to smear Shen Yun by talking to a small group of disgruntled former employees. Their reporting has endlessly distorted facts about performers and their lives. They cherry-pick and amplify negative quotes and have chosen to interview former performers who now have ties to the Chinese Communist Party.  Not surprisingly, among Western media, the New York Times proudly touts having the largest presence in communist China (source). Shen Yun, whose tagline is “China Before Communism,” is banned in China and performers and their families have faced persecution there for their peaceful spiritual practice, Falun Gong. Relatively speaking, over twenty-five years of persecution faced by Falun Gong practitioners, the New York Times has given almost no coverage to this human rights atrocity in China.

The recent conduct of the New York Times is nothing short of disgusting and represents a new low for the paper. Unfortunately, many American people and organizations treat the New York Times’ as nearly sacred, like a parish newsletter, as often pointed out by poet and professor Joseph S. Salemi. This means the New York Times’ virtually always distorted reporting on Shen Yun has been picked up by media across the country and around the world and created negative publicity for the Shen Yun performances taking place on four continents. This is unfortunate.

What is also disturbing is that this campaign by the New York Times coincides with a recent campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to go after Falun Gong overseas, leading to bomb threats in the United States, France, England, Poland, Taiwan, and other places; slashed bus tires; and other thuggish activities. It may not be a stretch to imagine that the New York Times was encouraged by Chinese Communist Party operatives. 

I invite poets of the Society of Classical Poets to write a poem about Shen Yun or what the New York Times is doing and post submit it to [email protected]. I also encourage you to submit to the Friends of Falun Gong Poetry Contest (which has no submission fee). See contest details here.

Finally, here is a video and news article with more details on the matter.

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State Department Condemns Intimidation Campaign Against Shen Yun, Urges Protection

(NTD TV)

The U.S. State Department has condemned the intimidation campaign carried out by Beijing and its proxies targeting a New York-based performing arts group, and is calling for measures to ensure freedom of expression.

Shen Yun Performing Arts’ mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture that’s been all but erased in China; Shen Yun also portrays human rights abuses taking place in China today targeting Falun Gong, a faith group the regime has been trying to eliminate for the past 25 years.

For portraying to the world what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to suppress, Shen Yun has faced nonstop efforts by the CCP to sabotage the company’s annual global tour. The Falun Dafa Information Center has tracked over 130 cases where Chinese diplomats and operatives linked to Beijing have tried to stop Shen Yun from performing.

Read the rest here

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NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.

13 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Traditional Chinese art and literature was something I enjoyed in my formative years. Part of the reason was my great uncle, Dr. Reno Backus, was a medical missionary to China beginning in the early 1930’s until the Japanese invasion of WWII. He returned to China after the war until the U.S. Army rescued him from his post as head of the Peking Presbyterian Hospital when Mao and the communists came to power. I still have letters he sent my mother about his work and prayers. The New York Times once upon a time was impartial and objective, but that reputation was lost for me decades ago. Exposure of mass media sycophantic ties to foreign interest groups should be on the agenda of the present administration, not as an attempt to restrain free speech, but as a duty to inform the American people. I look forward to the Friends of Falun Gong Poetry Contest that should shed additional light on the Chinese Communist perpetrations of atrocities and those who toady up to this odious regime.

    Reply
  2. Brian A. Yapko

    Thank you for posting this important information, Evan. I will gladly contribute a poem to blast the New York Times for promoting despicable propaganda. It’s what they do and I can’t believe there’s a soul alive who thinks they actually practice sober, respectable journalism.

    Along with pandering to Communist China and trashing Shen Yun, the Times is a full-throated promoter of antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda. They have done this for years — vaunting the virtues of Islamic terrorism while completely ignoring attacks on Israel by terrorists (or blaming all terror on Israel) not to mention attacks on Orthodox Jews at their doorstep in New York. They do not even try to report the news accurately. They follow the Joseph Goebbels/Leni Riefenstahl method of creating news and then reporting it to promote their toxic ideology. The NYT is a despicable and evil organization.

    Reply
  3. jd

    An important essay & video, Evan. Thank you. I will make an effort to attend a performance. It sounds like a production well worth attending.

    Reply
  4. James Sale

    What the NYT is to the USA, the BBC now is to the UK: an arrogant organisation full of smug bureaucrats distorting, perverting, and undermining truth as all ordinary people understand it (it’s only the likes of Pontius Pilate who can say, What is Truth?). Once they were great and respected; now they grub around in the mires and bogs of secular falsehoods. But – hope is coming – the real people are increasingly seeing them for what they are and rejecting their narratives. We must all of us not only vote with our votes, but also with our wallets and our choices: let’s always seek to feed what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful. As a sidebar, I wish I’d had a great uncle called Dr. Reno Backus: a magnificent name, and I feel as if such a person would always have had my back!

    Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    For many years it has been blatantly obvious that the New York Times is nothing but a mouthpiece for the Deep State, and has a longstanding sympathy with Communism going back to the lies of Walter Duranty, the coverage of the Alger Hiss case, and the slavish admiration for Fidel Castro.

    The New York Times is no different at all from the Soviet Union’s Pravda, or Nazi Germany’s Volkischer Beobachter, in terms of parroting government-approved lies. The paper is, in fact, nothing but an apologist for and defender of leftist and globalist policies.

    As an academic, I hear a great deal of chatter from New York Times readers (college faculty seem to worship the paper). Their contempt for Israel is steady, but the rage against Falun Gong and Shen Yun is absolutely savage.

    Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Shen Yun is beautiful. Even the billboards bring wonder and joy to thousands of people. The performances in full theaters lighten hearts with live classical music and stellar dancing that presents the soul of China in history, myth, and literature.

    Thanks, Evan, for this appalling news about the attempt of tyranny and dishonesty to darken a leading cultural light. My friends and I are not within the shadow of The New York Times, but we will be prepared from experience to contradict any ill said of Shen Yun wherever we might encounter such.

    Reply
  7. Jonathan Kinsman

    Shen Yun – the Light that will never go out.

    The Times is deluded, a gutted giant
    whose genitals are extremely pliant.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      If you think about all of this, you begin to understand the mentality of Stalinist Communism. Falun Gong is just an innocuous meditative religion, and Shen Yun is just a dance troupe.

      The hatred and viciousness of the CCP against these two groups are clear indications of the sheer terror than any independent thinking or action generates in the left, whether hard (Communism) or soft (left-liberalism). The thought that someone, somewhere, is acting or thinking in ways that do not comport with leftist ideology sends them into apoplectic fits.

      Just a related side-note: Our new Vice President, J.D. Vance, has given a speech before all of Europe’s major leaders, and he has torn the E.U. a brand new asshole. It is the most powerful, anti-leftist speech I have heard in years. Vance has excoriated them, individually and by name, for their betrayal of Western culture and their smug anti-Christianity, and their utter disregard for freedom of speech, and their political correctness, and their unexampled arrogance. He left those Euro-sods in stupefied, baffled silence, including the left-wing creeps who run the U.K.

      Reply
  8. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    It’s at times like these that Shen Yun need public support more than ever. It’s time to fill those theater seats. Having seen their stunning production on a beautiful night out in Corpus Christi Texas, I recommend their talent to all. The Texas theater was full. Let’s get the truth out there and ensure they remain just as popular in the face of lies.

    Reply
    • Evan Mantyk

      Thank you, Susan! Thank you to all who commented!

      Yes, go see the show. It’s a new program every year. If you have seen it before, bring someone new.

      This year’s program features a piece dedicated to a famous Chinese classical poet, who wrote in rhyme and the equivalent of meter.

      Enjoy the performance!

      Reply
  9. Margaret Brinton

    Thank you, Evan, for this revelation. I have seen a magnificent performance of Shen Yun in San Diego. Their freedom to create produces an exhilarating form of art.

    Reply
  11. Joseph S. Salemi

    Evan, I had a feeling that this was going to happen. It’s typical of the cowards in the CCP and their American supporters. They’re willing to practice risk-free terrorism (by sending in a bomb threat), knowing that it will scare away potential visitors to the Shen Yun performances.

    These anti-Shen Yun types are gutless scum.

    Reply

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