In 2017, Stefanie Albrecht, an investigative reporter for German broadcaster RTL, was in the midst of what would become a prize-winning investigation of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party that would go on to shock the world by winning seats in parliament on an anti-immigrant and anti-Islam message.

Much like their alt-right peers in the United States, supporters of the AfD distrust traditional media, preferring to consume the work of alternative news sources typically shared through Facebook. One of their principal sources of information is an online newspaper little known outside of far-right circles. And that’s how Albrecht, armed with a hidden camera, came to spend several days filming inside the Berlin offices of The Epoch Times.



What Albrecht got was a rare look into the strange and secretive world of the newspaper, which was founded by practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline that originated in China. The Times’ staff members Albrecht met in the Berlin office were all devotees of Falun Gong. Every day at 6 p.m., a bell rang, and everyone in the newsroom stopped what they were doing, sat at their desks, and meditated.



Even stranger were the topics of discussion. “The conversations were so weird,” Albrecht told me over the phone from RTL’s offices in Germany. “I was there for half an hour and they talked about so many conspiracy theories. It was raining outside and they started talking about these machines that can change the weather. ‘Have you recognized that it was raining the day before the Brexit election? Maybe somebody wanted to influence that?’”



In the United States, the Times bills itself as the newspaper that President Donald Trump views as “the most credible” and the only one he trusts. The U.S. version of the newspaper is a far tamer version than its German cousin, but it has won over fans in the far-right with its exhaustive coverage of “Spygate,” a theory pushed by the president who claims the FBI “spied” on his campaign and a “criminal deep state” sought to undermine his presidency. Revenues for the newspaper have doubled since Trump took office, according to the group’s tax filings.

