The press conference was odd and full of misinformation, but that’s a familiar space for California gubernatorial contender Larry Elder. What was striking, however, was what the darling of the far-right had to say and who was called on for questions during his campaign’s first presser last week.
Elder, the leading GOP challenger in the Sept. 14 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom, made a clear attempt to exploit the genuine fears within Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and drum up support after a wave of increased hate crimes during the pandemic. His campaign selected exclusively Chinese language outlets for the Q&A portion, and when considering his relationship with The Epoch Times, it put forward another strange layer of Elder’s candidacy that needs to be considered.
In Los Angeles, Elder is known as the “Sage From South Central” thanks to his syndicated talk radio show on KRLA-AM. He made a name for himself as a Black man who calls out reverse racism and enables white victimhood. Elder was a mentor for Donald Trump’s senior advisor, Stephen Miller, who was the former president’s hatchet man on immigration.
But Elder’s profile has grown rapidly outside California thanks to his webcasts on The Epoch Times, a far-right international media company born out of the Chinese spiritual movement, Falun Gong.
Elder has nearly 600,000 subscribers on his Epoch Times YouTube channel and puts out three videos per week. The content is what you would expect. He attacks Democrats, demagogues every angle on race and repeatedly defends Donald Trump’s “big lie” about election fraud.
Elder even unleashed one of his signature right-wing rants when McClatchy’s California editorial boards interviewed him earlier this month. He downplayed the substantiated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to claim there’s a double standard between Hillary Clinton and Trump and their complaints about “stolen elections.”
Of course, only one of those people was impeached for inciting a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. But I digress. Elder’s tangents have a way of pulling you along for the ride.
During our interview, we asked Elder about The Epoch Times and its ties to Falun Gong. Interestingly, it was one of the few times he didn’t have a talking point at the ready and tried to scuddle past the question.
“I’ve met some of their executives, they seem like reasonable people to me,” Elder said. “And many of the articles that I’ve read in The Epoch Times seemed like reasonable articles as well. I don’t know anything about that organization (Falun Gong) that you mentioned. All I know is that they approached me. They gave me full rein to do documentaries that I think, videos that I think are sensible videos.
“I’ve done videos about crime, about homelessness, about systemic racism, about critical race theory, about reparations,” Elder continued. “I think they’re responsible videos.”
Over the last few years, investigations by The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, ABC News Australia and NBC News have examined the relationship between Trump, QAnon, The Epoch Times and Falun Gong. Thanks to this wealth of reporting, we know quite a bit about Falun Gong and how it used The Epoch Times to align with Trumpism and advance its anti-communist China agenda.
The Chinese government declared Falun Gong a cult over two decades ago and banned the group, forcing many members to flee under the threat of persecution. It’s estimated that millions of people worldwide still practice its principles of human detachment and the sometimes problematic teachings of Master Li Hongzhi.
“Falun Gong has come under scrutiny for what some former practitioners have characterized as an extreme belief system that forbids interracial marriage, condemns homosexuality, and discourages the use of modern medicine, all allegations the group denies,” New York Times reporter Kevin Roose wrote last year.
In 2000, The Epoch Times was launched in a Georgia basement by a Falun Gong practitioner, John Tang. When Trump rose to power, Falun Gong leaders saw him as their champion against communist China and revamped The Epoch Times under his ideological image. Their revenue has soared ever since, reaching $15.5 million in 2019.
By adopting Trumpism, The Epoch Times has also become one of the most insidious vehicles for conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda. It is a major force in the toxic online ecosystem that pushes skeptics down the QAnon rabbit hole toward far-right extremism. The newspaper gleefully promoted the rally that transformed into the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol; pushed false claims that China hacked the 2020 election so Joe Biden could spread communism; and helped sanitize QAnon’s “Spygate” conspiracy theory that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign.
Or, as Elder views them, “responsible articles.’‘
The Epoch Times did not respond to requests for comment about its contract with Elder, its editorial independence from Falun Gong or its response to investigations from credible publications about its weaponized misinformation strategies.
Elder can try to downplay The Epoch Times and be coy about Falun Gong, but his campaign is sending different signals. The first question during Friday’s press conference was given to a reporter with Sound of Hope, the Falun Gong-affiliated radio network. According to The New York Times, Sound of Hope shares ties with The Epoch Times via America Daily, a far-right website started by their executives that posts anti-vax propaganda, falsely claims that Bill Gates is “directing” the pandemic and that a “Jewish mob” controls the world.
Another Chinese reporter said he was “a longtime fan” since he first watched Elder’s interview with Dave Rubin on The Rubin Report, a popular YouTube show where white supremacists can enjoy a large platform to espouse their hateful beliefs without interruption.
Elder’s cynical attempts to draw a line between liberal criminal justice policies and anti-Asian hate crimes are vile. Putting aside how Trump’s xenophobic dog whistles (remember “Chinese virus”?) stoked violence against Asian Americans, there is no study or report that backs up Elder’s specious claims. However, there is a peer-reviewed study published by the American Journal of Public Health that showed how anti-Asian sentiments spiked after Trump’s tweets.
Elder has a real shot at winning if voters don’t turn out. If the recall is successful and he emerges from this motley collection of challengers, California will be empowering a man who plays fast and loose with facts, engages in reckless dog whistles, ducks the press and has alliances and influences we don’t fully understand yet.
That doesn’t sound like the type of leader California needs while it faces a pandemic, drought, wildfires and a homeless crisis. Elder would be better served complaining to his alt-right fans on YouTube, not 40 million Californians.
