Doomsday cult cracked#

The last cartoon I saw before I continued on my way showed a group of men talking about what happens in the halls of official power in Beijing-a fairly common occurrence in a year like this. It turned out, according to the poster, that they were вЂњforming secret ties and an underground gang to cause trouble and destruction.вЂќ Another panel showed a man running around town, posting what was described as вЂњreactionary slogans and banners and counter-propaganda on front doors, and in bicycle sheds, and mailboxes.вЂќ One more cartoon showed a woman at a computer, where she discovered that cults will вЂњuse computer networks to create and spread all manner of rumors, and throw social order into disorder.вЂќ One cartoon showed a smiling trio of women. (The groupвЂ™s status was the subject of a hearing this week before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.) But China maintains a fierce opposition to the group, and the posters provided a sense of how the government perceives that kind of threat.

Doomsday cult cracked#

ItвЂ™s been thirteen years since China cracked down on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, arresting practitioners and pressuring them to renounce their beliefs. The new posters contained a set of instructions: вЂњCountermeasures for the Falun GongвЂ™s Everyday Tricks of Trouble-Making and Destruction.вЂќ In addition to the Confucius Temple, it is home to the Lama Temple (BeijingвЂ™s largest Tibetan monastery) and it has several blocks of fortune tellers. The association seems to be especially busy in our neighborhood because itвЂ™s ground zero for spiritual activity of one kind or another in the capital. This was the latest offering from the government body known as the Beijing Counter-Cult Association. They were cartoons with big-headed smiling figures and puffy comic-book writing, beneath the title, вЂњBe On The Lookout for Cults, Build Harmony.вЂќ In my neighborhood the other day, I was walking down a hutong that hugs the eastern wall of the Confucius Temple, when I came upon a new set of official posters on the bulletin board. At times, it can feel like half the people at a dinner table are trying out a new guru. But these days the Party is especially uncomfortable with obscure religious beliefs because, in the post-Socialist era, many in China have begun to hunt for something to believe. Police in the province of Henan, where a man, last Friday, attacked a school with a knife, injuring twenty-two children, said that the suspect had been inspired by вЂњdoomsday beliefsвЂќ peddled by a local woman who predicted, as the state press put it, that вЂњthe end of the world is coming and the earth will explode.вЂќ State television also used it as an occasion to mention that it would step up вЂњour anti-self-immolation fight,вЂќ a curious reference to the nearly one hundred Tibetans who have set themselves on fire since 2009 in protest of Chinese policies.Д¬hina has a long history of religion-infused political rebellions, dating at least to the nineteenth century, when a group called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom attempted to overthrow the emperor. Once the group was in the crosshairs, doomsday threats were being mentioned everywhere.

The group-which teaches, among other things, that Jesus Christ returned to earth in the form of a Henan woman named Deng-was known to call China вЂњa fortress of demons,вЂќ and it exhorted its followers вЂњto destroy the great red dragon.вЂќ But it was the Almighty GodвЂ™s more pointed message that really caught the PartyвЂ™s attention. China is more taken with doomsday talk than you might expect the thoroughly middlebrow Mayan-related thriller вЂњ2012вЂќ was such a box-office smash in China that it came back for a 3-D run.