Jenna Ellis - China's Propaganda War: Influencers, Shen Yun, and the New York Times

And I'm speaking with Matt Palumbo, who is a an author and also a writer at Blaze Media. So you can find all of his pieces at theblaze.com and then search under authors. And you have kind of a repository here of of some interesting commentary about China as well. You know, beyond the tariff situation and, you know, some of the things that are more in the mainstream of the news. But this started, you know, back in in March with this piece, Why Communist China is Terrified of a New York based dance company. And this is kind of, you know, continued on, I think, in some of of your pieces. And this is a really fascinating story. So unpack Shen Yun and who they are and what's exactly going on here as it relates to China. Yeah, so they're a performance arts company. And I think I said in one of the pieces that whoever does their marketing definitely deserves a raise because you see their signs pretty much everywhere. And my now wife and I, I think it was our first month of dating, went to one of their shows and I liked it. And, you know, putting in the back of my head, I never thought it would be something I'd be writing about one day. But just a couple of months ago, I saw the New York Times had written some so-called exposés on it. And the one author in particular, I mean, there's a co-author, the woman named Nicole Hong was the main author. And it was the overwhelming majority of her articles from last year, since August of last year, were just fixated on this one thing. And I thought, all right, it's a little suspicious. And I looked into her history and her father happens to work for CCP, Tide Universities. He's part of China's Visiting Scholars Organization, which is part of the CCC and has been praised by President Xi. Now, back in 1999, China targeted a religion called Falun Gong, of which Shen Yun is associated with, for destruction. So they're going after any sort of linked entities. The website, the Epoch Times, actually is linked to them too, part of a similar group. But then I started looking into what is the factual basis of their articles. And they were alleging mistreatment of workers. And some of them have actually spoken out to say it's just not true, which leads to the obvious question of how did that get into the article in the first place? Or they'll make sort of apples and oranges comparisons by arguing that their wages are lower than similar dance companies. But they're not factoring in other benefits, like basically getting free housing if you're part of a traveling group or food. And those are non-caste benefits, but they were deliberately not accounting for them. So that's what I was going through. And then I also mentioned the New York Times actually has a very long history of whitewashing communism. There was a movie a couple of years ago called Mr. Jones about this, how the New York Times' correspondent in Moscow in the Soviet Union was denying in the press all the famines that were going on. And his source, like his journalism, was basically copying and pasting whatever Soviet authorities were telling him. And then a few years ago as well, China did a, or the New York Times did a series trying to offer a so-called alternative perspective on communism and romanticize it. And it was just, I mean, I always feel weird talking about it, but one of their arguments was that people were having better sex lives than their communism. And I'm thinking to myself, like, all the people you're quoting are 70 years old. Like, I'm not trying to make it awkward, but like, of course they would say that. They're all 20 back then. Like, it was just really bizarre arguments like that, or they liked the stability of it. And it's like, yeah, it's more stable, but you're also way poorer. That's the tradeoff. So I don't know. I just thought it was a ridiculous theory and I couldn't find much factual basis for it. And I think they had some ulterior motives there. That's a really interesting twist and, you know, and tie to this dance company. And then the New York Times gets involved. And one of your pieces is then, you know, why is the New York Times carrying water for the CCP? And they're waging war now on this dance company. But is Beijing pulling the strings? And we've known for a long time that, you know, even though, like, as you mentioned, you know, rightly, Epoch Times and, you know, some of their ties to their investors and their owners and all that. Obviously, we always want to know, like, what's the source of funding even for a reporter? Because they will have some bias or allegiances. That that readers need to be adequately informed on. It's not like the New York Times just exists in their own bias free vacuum. And we all know that. But the fact that the New York Times is getting involved in this, explain that, Matt. But also the question is, wouldn't they know that this would be transparent and not a really good look for them? Well, the thing is, I don't think they're expecting anyone to really dive into it too much. It's almost an obscure topic. And I actually only found one other writer who's spoken about this. But to also tie this back into what the CCP is doing, because they're doing much more direct, you can't call it activism, it's more terrorism. I actually did a separate piece on a website called Populous Times, where I was talking about other sabotage tactics. And at the time I wrote the article a couple of weeks ago, there had been 35 bomb threats against them to disrupt their organization. And if you look at the total number of bomb threats in the entire year of 2024, it was by February 20th that the 2025 number had eclipsed the entire 2024 number. And then 12 minutes later, after that happened, there was another bomb threat. So that has been one of the tactics. There was actually a man who was arrested carrying a gun outside of the Shen Yun event. China has been proven to pay influencers to go after the group. Tim Pool, who's very well known, said that they tried to pay him $200 to do an anti-Shen Yun video. And, you know, I've been to Tim Pool's house. He's going to need a heck of a lot more than 200 bucks to do something like that. But, you know, if they're doing that to him, they're doing it to a lot of other people as well. And it's a coordinated attack. And it's obviously potentially could cause violence. Yeah, wow. That's really interesting. In this last piece that actually just dropped yesterday, talking about Tim Pool and how he shared how the CCP unsuccessfully tried to recruit him. This kind of gets into a little bit broader topic even beyond the CCP. But when you have, I mean, when you have influencers and I, you know, I'm among them and I'll be the first to admit that I've partnered, you know, with different organizations and other groups to promote values and positions that I personally agree with. And so, you know, everybody knows, for example, listeners regularly to this show know that I partnered with Vote No on 3 in the state of Florida to say, no, I don't think that we should legalize marijuana. I saw what happened to my home state, former home state of Colorado, when we did the same thing with Amendment 64. And it's bad. And I'm going to post regardless of whether I'm paid or not. But then if somebody wants to partner with me to get their message out more, you know, fine, as long as it's a position I agree with. But, you know, we're very open about all of those things. And yet we've seen that some influencers are putting out position standpoints. Like there was this whole topic, you know, Matt, that I know you're very familiar with, of like Big Soda and how, you know, some influencers were paid to post things that weren't necessarily their opinions. It was just based on a brief and some talking points. But users aren't necessarily or followers aren't necessarily aware that this isn't their position and they're being paid for it. We're used to traditional advertising where everybody knows when you turn on the Super Bowl, you see the commercial, you know, Coker or whoever it is, they're paying for that advertising spot. In your mind, is there an ethical difference here with influencers and especially when you have something like the CCP trying to recruit somebody like Tim Pool, who has a massive audience, when there isn't a disclosure? Like, to me, that's the ethical question. Yes, to me, it's way worse than when it's a journalist, because it's their job to be credible. When it's, you know, someone who's making TikTok videos, they're not disclosing that, I don't know, the coffee brand, you know, or drink in their videos is paid for, you know, that's just, you know, a much more low stakes thing. And also, not to go off topic, but you brought up the soda example, and I was researching for something else. And it's like, the left just makes that proportional harm argument with everything. But it was just funny, like the levels of desperation that some of these people will go to without disclosing in any way. Sorry to go slightly off topic there. And so they're framing it in a way that basically, it is an advertisement, but without calling it that. So, you know, this does become a bigger ethical issue. And how, and to kind of circle back into our original topic, how much of this has China, to your knowledge, successfully done? I mean, Tim Poole is raising the flag on it, and he's being public about it. But if they're going after him, definitely they're going after other large influencers as well. And full disclosure, I haven't been approached by China. So, you know, I guess I'm not cool enough, like, like Tim Poole to, you know, be recruited. Well, for a fact, they have, you know, direct ties to that sort of thing with Tim Poole. They have bot armies on Twitter that are, you know, pretty easily provable to come out of China. But they also, with those bomb threats I mentioned, because, you know, you could ask the question, like, well, how do you know they're in China? I mean, if they're about someone else. And actually, since I published that piece, there was another one in Taiwan, which was the first one there, obviously disputed territory that China claimed. Again, in my opinion, not disputed. But they were all kind of from Huawei, which is a Chinese-based company. And, you know, sort of gives away where it was really coming from. As for others, you know, I would, I should do an article on this, I guess, just look at all the anti-Qin Yun videos and try to see if, you know, there's a similar script. Because someone on Twitter put together a compilation of travel YouTubers showing off certain areas in China, and their language on certain things would be identical for being them. So I guess I'm just sort of making a note to self here as I'm looking through that. Yeah, that'd be an interesting article. And when you publish that, we'll have you back on and talk about it, Matt Palumbo. No, I'm writing one down right now. Excellent. Well, so see for the listeners, this is sometimes how, you know, the brilliant ideas are generated just through conversation about different topics. That's often how I get inspiration for articles as well. But, you know, but it is fascinating to look at how similar talking points are. And we know that this happens even, you know, in the Republican Party, the Democrat Party in politics. I mean, talking points are very well known inside the Beltway that everybody kind of gets the memo, hey, push this. And most people aren't creative enough or just take the time enough to change it a little bit. So it's not as obvious that this is the exact same perspective, just like what the Democrats were doing right after Trump was inaugurated. And they were all talking about the price of eggs, like literally every single one. It's like, OK, somebody somewhere sent a memo to everybody, hey, let's focus on this. And we need to get this topic trending on X and all this. And so I think overall, though, the key takeaway message for listeners here to understand is that these things aren't just natural and spontaneous occurrences often. And so you need to be aware that what is trending is often intentional. And there are a lot of dollars behind that type of advertising to get things trending. Even to try to have that is semi organically. I mean, there's a network of influencers on all kinds of different levels for various parts of things. And I'm part of some of those where people will send things to me and say, hey, please amplify this. If I think it's worthy, I will. And I'm not paid for it. But it's like, sure, we'll put this out into the ecosystem. You have to be aware, though, that this type of manipulation of the algorithm and of trending topics and then of the news media does occur. And so, Matt, as a writer and as someone who is who is on that side of it, but also obviously a reader wanting to expose this, how would you advise listeners to just be more aware of this? Because, you know, I don't see a problem ethically with, you know, trying to trend topics or boosting a friend's post that I agree with and all of those things to try to make that happen more or less or maybe or not or organically. But I think just the awareness factor is what's missing for a lot of consumers. I mean, the number one for me, and this isn't always the case, some things organically go viral, but something just appears to come out of nowhere and everyone is praising it as this great, shocking thing or whatever. There's usually something behind it. And sort of to what we were both saying earlier, when, you know, OK, suppose, I don't know, there's a new article out, new movie out from someone, et cetera. They will send out a script to the influencers, will give maybe 10 plus bullet points and say, tweak a few words. And most people are just lazy and basically take the exact same script. So you could even on a post just copy and paste the caption into Twitter and see if anything similar comes up there. Or look, you know, one thing that happened to me that was funny was I wrote a series about George Soros, the New York Post, and their media person wrote a thread attacking me. And I don't know, she had maybe 3,000 followers, but the thing blew up. It got tens of thousands of likes on it. And I was going through the people who retweeted it. And it was like a who's who of all the people I criticized in the book. So it just made it obvious. OK, there was an email blast that went out that said we need to attack this guy because we didn't like his writing. But it's one of those things that once you start seeing it a couple of times, it just becomes naturally easier to do it. And it's kind of hard to explain like that. But if you see it at once, you'll just pick up on it. Sort of the language they use is overly hyperbolic. Everything is the most incredible thing ever, the most damning thing ever. You just got to see it, read it, that kind of language. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the big bombshell, whatever, you know, that's one of the favorites. We're almost out of time here. Matt Palumbo.