Ryan Cook

For new religious movements, is the absence of evidence of the potential for violence ever sufficient evidence of its absence? This article examines the process through which Chen Tao was inaccurately portrayed as potentially suicidal by the news media. After a review of the group’s cosmology and migration fromTaiwan to the United States, it describes the group’s interactions with news media personnel at several key points between the mid-1990s and the 2010s. The article then marshals the scholarship treating minority religions, inwardly-directed violence, and the media to understand why this happened to Chen Tao. From early on, journalists consistently wove rumors about and interpretations of group members’ acts and statements into a narrative of risk that, while unsupported by evidence, resonated with a pre-existing “suicide cult” topos in reporting.

It is usually accepted that whether or not indirect discrimination is a form of immoral discrimination, it appears to be structurally different from direct discrimination. First, it seems that either one involves the agent focusing on different things while making a decision. Second, it seems that the victim’s group membership is relevant to the outcomes of either sort of action in different ways. In virtue of these two facts, it is usually concluded that indirect discrimination is structurally different from direct discrimination. I argue against the notion that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination have significantly different structures. I first argue that both kinds of discrimination involve similar decision-making processes. Second, I analyze how being in a social group affects personal identity, and from there argue that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination are about group membership similarly. In virtue of these two arguments, I conclude that direct and indirect discrimination are structurally similar.