Far-right newspaper turns up in local mailboxes
‘This is nothing but hate speech and American propaganda’
Laura Bierema said she was “disgusted” to recently find a copy of The Epoch Times — a far-right, Falun Gong-related newspaper that reports glowingly on former U.S. President Donald Trump, delivered unbidden to her home in Peterborough.
“I was so insulted and angry that a piece of garbage like that was put on my porch ... This is nothing but hate speech and American propaganda,” she said. Bierema wasn’t alone: she said all her neighbours in the Kawartha Village Co-Op in the city’s east end received a copy of the paper and that many were just as upset as she was.
The Examiner also heard from other Peterborough residents this week who received the paper, though they are nonsubscribers: people living in the north end, downtown and the old west end.
Some Peterborough County residents got the paper, too. North Kawartha Mayor Carolyn Amyotte said she got a copy, and that everyone in the township with a post office box received The Epoch Times on Jan. 11. “Given what happened in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, I was shocked and disgusted to find it in my mailbox,” she wrote in an email to The Examiner. “After a brief look through it to determine that it was ‘fake news,’ I threw it in my kindling box.”
It’s part of a mass mail out of the publication, which has both Canadian and American editions. In spring, CBC reported that households in Ontario and B.C. received a special edition of The Epoch Times suggesting the coronavirus is a bioweapon and calling it “the CPP virus,” a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.
Other media outlets in Canada reported the Epoch Times was subsequently delivered in Alberta, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, too. It was unclear on Friday how many copies of the paper were delivered earlier this month to the Peterborough area: emails to the Epoch Times were not returned.
But Canada Post confirmed their mail carriers delivered the papers in Peterborough — and that it’s obliged to deliver all mail that’s been paid for.
“The courts have told Canada Post that its role is not to act as the censor of mail or to determine the extent of freedom of expression in Canada,” wrote spokesperson Sylvie Lapointe in an email to The Examiner.
“This is an important distinction between Canada Post and private sector delivery companies. Any views we may have about the content do not change our obligation to deliver.”
Meanwhile, some mail carriers in Toronto had concerns about The Epoch Times and sought to be relieved of delivering the special issue by order of the federal government.
But on May 1, CBC reported that the feds had turned down a request from a group of unionized postal workers in Toronto for an order stopping delivery because the special edition of The Epoch Times doesn’t meet the criminal threshold for hate speech.
Bierema said it was hard to miss the anti-China stance and sexism in the copy delivered to her home at the co-op in Peterborough. “It’s pretty much targeting China in every story,” she said, adding that there was also an article exploring the idea of the emasculation of men.
Bierema also wondered if the paper is being delivered now to keep stoking far-right sentiment as Trump leaves office.
“Yeah — we don’t need that here,” she said.
Prof. Liam Mitchell, chair of the cultural studies department at Trent University, received a copy of The Epoch Times at home in Peterborough.
He said the paper was started in 2000 by a group of ChineseAmericans who wanted to spread the word about the Falun Gong, “which is sometimes portrayed as a new age, mystical religious group, and other times derided as a cult. I think it’s much fairer to describe it as a cult,” he said.
By 2010, the paper was still a free magazine that Falun Gong adherents were handing out in New York City, Mitchell said.
But then the paper “really took off” in 2016, he said, when it “latched itself onto Donald Trump’s candidacy.”
Those who published The Epoch Times liked Trump, Mitchell said, because they shared with Trump an anti-China stance. “Because they are virulently anti-CCP in their orientation, they saw Trump as not just an ally, but a semidivine figure who would come and rescue the Falun Gong from the clutches of the CCP,” Mitchell said. “They’ve been very, very pro-Trump, and very adherent to right-wing ideology.”
“They’re obviously incredibly biased. They don’t disclose where their funding comes from — and it comes from a cult,” he added. “It doesn’t look like journalism to me.”
Lesley Wimbush, an automotive journalist who lives in Peterborough and freelances for the Toronto Star’s Wheels.ca and other publications, shuddered when she received a copy of The Epoch Times at home on Prince Street recently.
She said she accepted paid work from The Epoch Times a few years ago and the editor asked her how much she knew about Falun Gong.
Wimbush said she quit when she realized the paper wanted to allow carmakers to read her reviews and approve them prepublication — and then later she found out more about what The Epoch Times stands for.
“I knew they were affiliated with Falun Gong. But I didn’t realize they’re the hugest backers of fake news — and of Trump,” she said. “They’re really quite vile and dangerous.”
Some local politicians said this week they received concerns from constituents about having received The Epoch Times in the mail.
Women and Gender Equality Minister Maryam Monsef, the MP for Peterborough-Kawartha, said her office got feedback from concerned citizens.
“We have been in close contact with officials from (Public Services and Procurement) Minister Anita Anand’s office, who are looking into the matter,” Monsef stated in an email.
Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith said he only heard from one constituent about it: Amyotte.
Smith said he’s never read The Epoch Times, but understands it to be “garbage propaganda” and that anyone unhappy about having received it in the mail should use it to start a fire in their fireplace.
Unless you enjoy reading lies, he said. “Whatever floats someone’s boat. But for the rest of us: throw it in the recycling bin.”