This is not a revelation, the guy was known for his socialist and Marxist writings and rantings. He viewed with suspicion church members that did not readily donate their wives for sexual congress - not giving their all, I guess. Read the book "Raven", it's freaky as hell.
I have read detailed accounts of the early history of Jamestown. Indeed, the roots of modern liberalism may be traced here primarily, along with many recorded early disasters. Coincidence?
My heart bleeds purple kool-aid for them (him)...
Hence the name: People's Church
Here is another important church of the religious left.
"Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez declared October 7, 1990, "Yahweh ben Yahweh Day."
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/yahweh_cult/index.html
I rememeber pictures of him and Rosalyn Carter.
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Jim Jones was a full-blown Commie.
ping
. . . Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey said that Jones’ work “is testimony to the positive and truly Christian approach to dealing with the myriad problems confronting our society today.”
. . . Joseph Califano . . . Walter Mondale . . . Jimmy Carter’s wife, Rosalynn . . . all had good words to say for Jones.
Funny how none of that made the headlines back in the day!
And his church was in San Francisco before it went to Guyana. He had many friends in politics up there.
Does severe mental illness really have a political ideology behind it? One does not have 900 of your followers commit murder/suicide without some pretty serious screws loose.
I put Koresh in the same category. More important that the followers die than to lose the power and authority he wielded over his followers.
"Holy?" Hardly. You can divide people into two groups: those who attempt to do things and those who aspire to authority based only on their ability to criticize those who do. Socialists are hypercritical second guessers of the doers.But socialists also are noteworthy for their proclivity to appropriate for themselves any expression which elates to people collectively, as opposed to government. Examples are "the people," "the masses," "public" - and, of course, the word "society" itself. The most obvious example is the conflation of "public" with "government. Thus, "the public sector" is a circumlocution for "government." "Public" schools are government schools, and so on.
But if "public" is the most obvious example, "society" is IMHO the most blatant. If a leftist says, "Society should" (do some particular thing) he means nothing other than that the government should do that thing. It will not matter how much the aggregation of all the individual people who make up society voluntarily spend on, for example, giving children lunch. If a socialists says that "Society should feed lunch to its children," he means the government should do it and "society" - the government - is not doing so.
That relates directly to the "holy" name of "socialism." What could be clearer than that what leftists call "socialism" is nothing other than governmentism? At its base level "socialism" is a lie. The socialist conflates "society" with "government" so thoroughly as to blind himself to the possibility of making a distinction between the two. So for any socialist who may see this, I will draw the distinction for you:
Society minus government equals freedom.Where there is no difference in fact between society and government, there is no freedom.
Just think, without Jamestown, we would not have the phrase, "don't drink the kool aid"
Thanks for posting this.
There is a bunch of revisionist history going on with this tragedy. A film has just been made, along with a play last year, that's trying to say "well there were some good things about Peoples Temple." Typical rationalization of socialism. Also, the director of this movie has an obvious left-leaning slant and is using the film to take veiled swipes at our government and how it's fighting the War on Terror. They came just recently to my area for a screening. There's a lot of unsavory things these filmmakers don't want to reveal, about corruption among S.F. clergy, politicians and the media who were all complicit in Jones rise to infamy.
http://maroonedinmarin.blogspot.com/2006/11/jonestown-filmmakers-ignore-sf-media.html
I wrote a term paper on Jim Jones in college.
He was one of the early adopters of the current crop of churches who teach, give, give, give, the rich won't go to heaven, Jesus would have been a communist, etc.
These reformist churches are more of the norm now, most non-orthodox jewish synagogues preach this, many christian and catholic churches have gone this route, too, politics is everywhere.