Posted on 11/16/2008 4:27:46 AM PST by CE2949BB
OAKLAND — Convinced Jim Jones was God, Garrett Lambrev was the first person to join Peoples Temple in Ukiah in 1966 after the group moved from Indiana. Ten years later — two years before the Jonestown tragedy — he was part of a wave of defectors, shaken to the core by tales of torture and wanting nothing to do with a god who could sanction such things. He was reviled as a traitor and lived in fear for his life.
Yet as Lambrev reflects on the enigma of Peoples Temple, his thoughts settle not just on the horrors of the final days.
"The media images — so many of them dwell on the piles of bodies, the rotting human beings in the jungle of Guyana," said Lambrev, a librarian who is semiretired from the Oakland Public Library, looking every bit the part with his glasses, white hair and goatee, and surrounded by stacks of books in his Oakland home.
"Without trying to reduce the impact of (Jim Jones') degeneration, because he was indeed a classic dictator gone mad, there was still a lot of significance to Peoples Temple that history overlooks," he said. "It spoke of hope. Of connection. All these races and cultures living and working together, very successfully for the most part.
(Excerpt) Read more at insidebayarea.com ...
In the first sentence, the obvious analogy just screams out.
JIm Jones and other cult leaders are popular because people can rely on them to do the thinking that they can’t face doing themselves.
For some people, the real world with all it’s complexities is ‘too much’ for some people to deal with and when someone comes along and promises to take care of them and sort things out for them, they (people, followers) usually end up being completely controlled, usually to the point where they end up dead.
I saw two documentaries and in one it mentioned how Jones was going down mentally and he was ready to take them (followers) with him.
Followers usually follow them to death because they have invested their entire psych and self in that person that they willingly go with them.
No, that was Mussolini. Hitler was the one whos vas a badt man, shure, but at least he luft docs undt schildern.
Certainly the ones that went to Auschwitz.
Iwould not believe Snopes if they said water was wet.
I guess you are unfamilar with “das akademische Viertel”?
Would Zero have the same powers on people that old Jim had?
I dare say, he probably could.
Until it is broadly recognized that the only purpose of state power is its own aggrandizement, at whatever human cost, we are condemned to endless mass murders.
On the bright side, none of these tyrannies last forever. ;^)
Guess I watched Die Hard once too often.
You are right but I don’t know why I am supposed to be familiar with it or why you are posting this to me.
I am presently reading “Children of the Flames.” I wish our children were made to study the holocaust more in depth. I was taught very little and I believe children today know far more about Woodstock than they do of the holocaust.
It kind of reminds one of that beast Hitler in the last days in his bunker.
The followers of totalitarianism want people to be ignorant so history can be repeated.
Because it belies the German reputation for punctuality.
Reminds me of the studio cafeteria scene in "Blazing Saddles."
"Hey Joey, how's it going?" (to a fellow actor in a Hitler costume)
"They lose me right after the bunker scene."
I know it’s false it just that slogan applied to Mussolini
Okay, so what does the academy teach and what dies viertel mean?
Trying to find a way to blame Republicans.
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