Why We should remember Jonestown
Every thinking American should read Raven by Tim Reiterman, which chronicles the history of the Reverend Jim Jones, from his early life in rural Indiana, to his establishment of Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, reestablishing it in rural California, then relocating to San Francisco, and starting his rise to political empowerment in San Francisco. My readers should consult the outstanding videos about Jim Jones, available on YouTube.
Local periodicals in San Francisco eventually revealed the reality of Jones's Peoples Temple to the wider public. The lurid details of his cruel and perverse treatment of his followers led Jones to flee to Guyana in South America to avoid prosecution. He coaxed a thousand of his followers to move there with him. They travelled to Guyana aboard crowded charter flights.
Jones resettled them all in "Jonestown", his remote jungle commune. His followers remained with him under lock and key, watched over by armed guards, until he called on them to commit suicide. The followers either drank poison voluntarily, or Jones's hoodlums forced it on them, and let them fall where they stood, their wives and little children beside them.
People have wondered ever since how did this man dupe hundreds of people to follow him into the jungle, tolerate the terrible rations that Jones served them every day—mostly beans and rice—and not demand to be let out of there, to save themselves from his perverted leadership? He must have revealed his true intentions only gradually, starting out as Pentacostal Christian, mixed with some Marxism. He said mostly that his followers needed his leadership and caring, and they called him "Father".
After a time, however, he let the Christian facade fall away and indentified himself as a hardened Socialist. Jones organized the elite members of People's Temple into the "Planning Commission", or "p.c.". Jones was not particularly original. He obviously intended the "p.c." to denote a "privileged character". In p.c. meetings, "Jones probably devoted more time to catharsis than to business. The weaknesses of certain individuals . . . were explored in unsparing fashion." He justified this, saying it was "necessary to strip away the ego to become a good Collectivist."
Tim Reiterman interviewed survivors of Jonestown, who told him that Jones had a speaker system that reached acrosss the camp and blared out his voice almost continuously. He also dominated the endless Planning Commission meetings, speaking for hours. He hated having to interrupt himself, long enough to urinate, for instance. Someone held a bowl for him while he urinated and continued talking.
Jones understood that continuously speaking cemented his authority. At any rate, he built a system of government that cemented his authority with the spoken word. He created a nation, if you will. His nearly thousand followers depended on the sense of belonging he gave them to fill the void in their hearts and give them the spine to endure the everyday drudgery of life in the jungle.
Three or four times, individuals or small groups tired of the regimen and fled. Reiterman describes one group of young people who piled into a car and fled to Canada. The relished the freedom they had won but remained sort of captive in their hearts to Jones's brainwashing. Their departure from the familiar regimen and continuous orientation left them with a void. Anyone who has experienced the extreme orientation of a cult similar to Jones's will understand this.
Of course, a nation should gives its citizens the power to think for themselves, individual initiative to create a better life for themselves, and to improve the nation as a whole. A nation's leaders should take care of its poor but should concentrate on letting the main body of citizens associate creatively, pose what-if type questions, and give them as much independence as they can use constructively to create wealth.