Jim Jones' son remembers the tragedy

sf gate ^ | Monday, November 17, 2008 | Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer

[Perdogg]

The radio call came before the suicides began.

On Nov. 18, 1978, Jim Jones Jr. was 18 years old and living in a Peoples Temple compound in Georgetown, Guyana, 150 miles from the Jonestown settlement. The previous night, he and his teammates on the Peoples Temple basketball team had played in a tournament, narrowly losing to the Guyanese national team. That afternoon, via shortwave, the Rev. Jim Jones, the boy's adoptive father, contacted him with a chilling order: All 60 Temple members living in Georgetown should immediately "get knives, wire and scissors and take our own lives."

The son tried to argue.

"Dad, this doesn't make sense. Isn't there another way?" he remembers saying. "Dad said the avenging angels would come and get our enemies, but we needed to lay down our lives 'as a revolutionary suicide.' "

[Perdogg]

America drunk the kool aide on Nov 4th, 2008.

[Malsua]

all things considered....Jim Jones was NOT 18 when he directed folks to drink Koolaid He was 47.

[Perdogg]

ping

[WayneS]

Still deluded after 30 years.

[Red Badger]

I used to work with a guy that was Jim Jones best friend in Indiana up until he graduated HS. This was in 1978 when this happened. He said JJ was always a little weird even as a kid......

[healy61]

This was Jim Jones Jr, age 18, the adoptied son of Jim Jones the leader.

[Star Traveler]

You said — “all things considered....Jim Jones was NOT 18 when he directed folks to drink Koolaid He was 47.”

The article is talking about “Jr.” not “Sr.”....

[ETL]

From wikipedia, with references at site:

"In 1951, [Reverend Jim] Jones (Jonestown) began attending communist meetings and rallies in Indianapolis.[4] Jones became flustered at harassment he received during the McCarthy Hearings,[4] particularly, regarding meetings between Jones and his mother with Paul Robeson.[5] This, among other things, provoked a seminal moment for Jones where he asked himself "how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."[5][4]"

"In the summer of 1977, Jones and most of the 900 members of the People's Temple moved to Guyana from San Francisco after media pressure built.[25] Jones left the same night that an editor at New West magazine read Jones an article by Marshall Kilduff to be published detailing allegations by former Temple members.[25][16] Jones named the settlement Jonestown after himself.

Jones purported to establish Jonestown as a benevolent model communist community stating, 'I believe we’re the purest communists there are.' [26] Jones' wife, Marceline, described Jonestown as "dedicated to live for socialism, total economic and racial and social equality. We are here living communally."[26] Jones wanted to construct a model community to show others and stated that Prime Minister of Guyana Forbes Burnham 'couldn’t rave enough about us, uh, the wonderful things we do, the project, the model of socialism.'[27] In that regard, like the restrictive emigration policies of the then Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea and other communist republics, Jones did not permit members to leave Jonestown.[28]

Jones and several members argued that the group should commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape flavored Flavor Aid (often misidentified as Kool-Aid) along with a sedative.[39]

One member, Christine Miller, dissents toward the beginning of the tape.[39] When members apparently cried, Jones counseled "Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity."[39] Jones can be heard saying, "Don't be afraid to die" and, regarding death as "just stepping over into another plane" and that "[death is] a friend."[39] At the end of the tape, Jones concludes: "We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."[39] Children were given the drink first and families were told to lie down together. The mass suicide had been discussed in simulated events called "White Nights" on a regular basis, while members drank liquid Jones first told them was poison during at least one of those White Nights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones

[Red in Blue PA]

I watched the CNN special on Jonestown last night and didn’t realize that many of the victims did NOT go along willingly. People went around injecting cyanide into those who would not drink the Kool-Aid (Flavor Aid)

[Michigan Bowhunter]

I am 41......I still remember the pictures from television and magazines. What a whacko. Hopefully Obama orders similar measures for the Demonrat party. He is the Chosen ONE. Drink the kool-aid you donkey shadowed sheep !!!!!

[Red in Blue PA]

Jones was such a coward that he didn’t even drink the stuff himself. Someone was ordered to shoot him in the head.

[Corin Stormhands]

bookmark

[ETL]

I watched the CNN special on Jonestown last night

Did they make any mention that it was set up as a communist community?

[xzins]

I remember the protests at calling 9/11 a “tragedy.” Many rightly pointed out that it should be considered an “atrocity.”

A tragedy is a terrible occurence that BEFALLS people that is outside their control and contrary to their intent.

That does not describe Jonestown and Jim Jones.

Proper title: “Jim Jones’ son remembers the abomination.”

[rintense]

I saw the movie with Powers Boothe and he was brilliant in the role. See it if you can. The movie is pretty darn accurate and shows those who did not want to go willingly. I did a report on this madman in high school and was sickened bu everything I read. He and David Koresh had a LOT of parallels.

[NordP]

Not ALL of us!

Sarah and I prefer...

...course Sarah likes Diet DP and I prefer regular... :-)

[Boiling Pots]

I caught bits and pieces of the one on MSNBC...did any of them happen to mention Jones’ extreme left politics?

And how he was acquainted with Walter Mondale and several other liberal politicians?

[Carley]

I recall with horror the first news reports about the shootings at the airport. That a congressman was among the dead.

That was the beginning of the nightmare. A greater scale than Koresh, but similar in that people are looking for some kind of saviour instead of looking inside themselves for answers.

Very tragic for those who so wanted to believe these people had the answer.

A chilling reminder of those who mindlessly voted for O, disregarding all the warning signals.

[Reeses]

You never read from the MSM how in deep Jonestown was into socialism and communism and how strongly supportive Jimmy Carter, Mondale, and other Democrats were. And I'm amazed the leftist operatives haven't rewritten the Wikipedia article yet.

[NordP]

MSNBC??? LOL...That would mean that they would not only have to REPORT THE TRUTH for a change, but actually DO THEIR HOMEWORK....don't count on it.

[meandog]

: Red in Blue PA I saw the movie with Powers Boothe and he was brilliant in the role. See it if you can. The movie is pretty darn accurate and shows those who did not want to go willingly. I did a report on this madman in high school and was sickened bu everything I read. He and David Koresh had a LOT of parallels.

What scares me is that there is a man who was just elected president of the United States that shares those same parallels! Then again, seeing all the 0bama diehards ending up the same way as the Jonestown crowd, might not be so scary after all...

[Charles Bronson Forever]

Guyana D.C.

[TeleStraightShooter]

I saw the movie with Powers Boothe and he was brilliant in the role. See it if you can. The movie is pretty darn accurate and shows those who did not want to go willingly. I did a report on this madman in high school and was sickened bu everything I read. He and David Koresh had a LOT of parallels.

Koresh and Jones shared a homicidal messiah complex but their goals were quite different. Jones was a communist who saw religion as the opiate of the masses, or a "gateway drug" to Marxism.

It's chilling listing to Jones plea/order to his followers to take the cyanide for the good of the group, it is sacrifice they must make.

Jones, Mao, Stalin... they all insisted on literal personal sacrifice to "improve" their of society.

[A Texan]

I watched it and to answer your question, they sort of did. They repeatedly mentioned that Jonestown and The Peoples Temple was a socialist society both while the “church” was in SF and once they moved to Guyana.

As for the politics, they mostly mentioned the “church” being actively involved in local SF politics. One example is that they stated something along the lines of “when any group needed a 100 demonstrators / protesters they would call Jones and the Peoples Temple would bring 500 demonstrators / protesters.” They also mentioned no one working with the City would look to hard into the “church” because everyone used Jones and the “church” in one way or another.

[ETL]

Rev Jones' story sounds a lot like Rev Wright's.

"I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church. So I consciously made a decision to look into that pro— that prospect."-Rev Jim Jones

Source: Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Transcripts
Tape Number : Q 134
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/TapeTranscripts/Q134.html
________________________________________________________

From "45 Communist Goals":
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
________________________________________________________

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
________________________________________________________

Catholics for Marx
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD

[DocH]

Jim Jones’ son needs to warn all Kool-Aid Drinkers that voted for Hussein, that they have just f’d us all for the next 4-8 years, and with court appointments, for YEARS to come.

[Issaquahking]

Up until the mass suicides, he said, he had been pretty much of a "true believer" in his father.

Is this a commentary on the demorats, and expected future actions???...

[Jhender24God]

If your saying that hes bad because of what his father did you have no right to did you follow your dads example

[Issaquahking]

Let's try this again, with a fuller explanation.

Up until the mass suicides, he said, he had been pretty much of a "true believer" in his father.

Is this a commentary on the demorats, and expected future actions???...

If you're saying that he's bad, because of what his father did, then you have no right to. Did you follow your dad's example?

Nope, not even in the same ballpark.

Up until the mass suicides (idiots voters voting for Obama), he said, he had been pretty much of a "true believer" in his father (comparing father to "The One").

More simply put: -

I can't believe there were enough damn fools in America, that voted to kill my nation.

[OnTheDress]

Odd what you see……I just got home tonight….popped on the tube and started surfing to the Simpson’s rerun.

I caught a glimpse of Jim Jones and stopped. I saw the last 30 sec of a cBS story about a woman whose mother died at Georgetown.

This woman remarked about how people were so drawn to Jones’ message of racial harmony. How in a time as bad as it was then, people would be more susceptible to such a message.

Then she continued: Like now, if the right man came along with that message it could happen again.

Bart was still at the chalkboard when I got to the Simpson’s.

[mojojockey]