I have lately had a morbid fascination towards the story of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple cult (which quite infamously ended in the murder-suicide of over 900 of his followers, including himself, in the so called Jonestown massacre). I have written about this once before in this blog, but I think it deserves a more in-depth look.
Why have I been morbidly fascinated by this tragic event? Because of the eerie and uncanny resemblance of what Jim Jones believed in and preached, and the modern far-leftist "social justice" ideology and movement. Indeed, much of what Jim Jones preached in the 1960's and 1970's, before the massacre, would have in no way been out of place in the current political climate, and would have fit perfectly into the far-leftist "social justice" activist narrative.
Jim Jones's cult arose and rode on the wave of the civil rights movement of the 1960's in the United States, tapping onto the unrest, protests and sentiments of that time.
Jim Jones was a hard-line Marxist socialist who hated and loathed capitalism and the United States government, and he made this amply clear in his sermons and his doctrine. He considered capitalism to be utterly destructive and exploitative and the cause of all inequalities and oppression in the world. He considered socialism to be the ultimate perfect solution to this problem, and that true socio-economical equality could only be achieved by Marxist socialism. He believed the Soviet Union of the time to be the perfect Utopia of Marxist Socialism, which was in every way better than the United States. He constantly preached about this to his congregation, to the cheers and approval of his followers (there are many videos of this that have survived).
He believed the United States to be fundamentally and irredeemably racist to its core, for the entire country and its social structure to have been built upon racism and racial discrimination. In fact, the more time passed, the more radical (and outlandish) his views on this became.
Indeed, quite soon after he established Jonestown in the Guyana and most of his followers moved there, he started claiming that the United States government was literally constructing concentration camps for black people, and that the police, white nationalists and members of the KKK were in increasing manners patrolling the borders of the country, and the streets of cities, assaulting, attacking and even killing black people. Many of his followers just believed him wholesale, because they had no reason not to (as attested by ex-cult members who managed to survive the massacre and escape Jonestown).
Jones and his followers established Jonestown in the Guyana and moved there in order to escape the perceived persecution of their members (a majority of whom were black) by the United States government and its law enforcement. He intended for it to be the perfect Socialist Utopia where everybody is equal and there is no capitalism, no discrimination, no racism (an idea that's eerily similar to other similar purported modern projects by far-leftist social justice separatist activists...)
It lasted for about two years (before the infamous massacre), and Jones's rhetoric became more and more paranoid by the month, especially towards the end. He started to preach more and more about how the United States government was plotting against them and planning in invading Jonestown and take all the black people (especially the children, which there were over 300 of them) back to America, to be taken to the concentration camps, the children taken away from their parents and the parents either locked up in the concentration camps or killed outright.
He started organizing more and more frequent battle drills in preparation for this inevitable invasion by the American government. At one point, when the government of Guyana was threatening to launch some kind of investigation on Jonestown, Jim Jones deployed all the adult people of the town with firearms to the edges of the town to prepare for what he claimed to be the soon upcoming joint assault by the Guyanan and American governments. During this, loudspeakers blasted propaganda. At one point during this he made radio-telephone calls to black activists in the United States, and broadcast their speech through radio and the loudspeakers. Among others, one of them was one Angela Yvonne Davis (who I consider one of the most evil people still alive today, who holds important positions in academia), who confirmed that indeed, there was a conspiracy by the United States government against Jonestown and its people, and that they should indeed be prepared for an assault. (Rather obviously there was no such conspiracy.) No doubt this helped fuel the paranoia of Jim Jones and his followers.
The very impetus of the eventual mass murder-suicide of over 900 cult members was triggered by a visit of congressman Leo Ryan who came to investigate the situation, and was precisely this persecution paranoia, this idea that the United States government was just about to invade the town and take all the black people and their children away, and to incarcerate or kill them. Some of the cult members submitted to the suicide willingly, fully believing this to be the case. Others were more hesitant and even doubted, and they were murdered by being forcefully fed or injected the poison by armed guards. Most eerily and sadly, all the 300+ children in the town were murdered by poisoning first.
What makes all this eery and scary is how well Jones's rhetoric fits the modern social justice narrative in the United States. Most of what he preached would fit perfectly well on a modern far-leftist social justice protest rally. Pretty much everything he said about Marxism, socialism, capitalism, the inherent systemic racism of the United States, the persecution of black people, especially by the police, the alleged prevalence of white nationalism and lynch mobs... Everything. Even his very idea of creating a separate independent socialist Utopia is eerily similar to such ideas and actions by modern far-leftist activists. (For example, if you look at the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" incident, it looks almost like a mini-Jonestown all in itself. Not to talk about plans like "Black Hammer City".)
Perhaps the most striking difference between Jim Jones's rhetoric, and the modern social justice rhetoric, is that, quite ironically, he didn't hate white people nor consider them an inferior race (as far as I understand). He considered all races to be equal, without distinction. Which, in a completely twisted, morbid and ironic way, makes the modern social justice rhetoric worse than that of Jim Jones. If one thing can be said about Jim Jones, at least he truly was not a racist (unlike the modern social justice ideology).
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