I know. That's what I am saying though. He was a manipulator, he had no ideology, neither did the cult really. It was all in the service of manipulating marginalised people.
no, the US government & its many Janus-faced clandestine operations manipulated people & used Jim Jones to attack the left broadly
We know that Jim Jones was a glowie, but the important thing is that for a time, there was legitimate progress made in coalescing around these principles in a racially integrated & incredibly forward-thinking manner
anti-capitalism isn't just about eschewing past political attempts or calling everyone a cultist. there are real lessons to be learned in Jones' progression from charismatic Christian socialist radical to MKUltra death cult leader
I mean, the guy used to be obsessed with Hitler even before his death cult shit.
anti-capitalism isn’t just about eschewing past political attempts or calling everyone a cultist
Everyone? Jim Jones and his cult isn't "everyone". It was a few thousand people.
You say there was "legitimate progress", but progress towards what? Because if this was manipulation (which it was) then of course it would look like there is "legitimate progress". Otherwise it would fail as a manipulation. The extent to which the CIA was involved I don't know exactly, but it had its fingerprints on pretty much everything similar back then (btw the consequences of MKUltra and the manipulation of all the hippie shit in the US is part of the reason why the left in many other countries had and to an extent still has a pretty hard anti drug stance), so they were in all likelihood also involved in this, but that doesn't mean the whole thing wasn't manipulation in the first place.
If there is a lesson here, it is be wary of weird new age faith healing religious shit and communes. Pretty much everyone who ever decided to piss off from society and build their own little isolated collective failed at best. Note that I don't wanna collectively shit on all christian socialists or especially something like liberation theology or whatever, but this specific kind of new age stuff is almost always either an op or a grift, and spirituality is rarely the best thing to organize people around anyways.
" The Temple made strong connections to the California state welfare system.[42] During the 1970s, the church owned and ran at least nine residential care homes for the elderly, six homes for foster children, and a state-licensed 40-acre (160,000 m2) ranch for developmentally disabled persons.[43] The Temple elite handled members' insurance claims and legal problems, effectively acting as a client-advocacy group."
It's not New Age "faith healing", and reports stated that the Temple services regularly rejected Biblical dogma:
"Kinsolving reported on several aspects of church dealings, its claims of healings, and Jones's ritual of throwing Bibles down in church, yelling, "This black book has held down you people for 2,000 years. It has no power."[46] Temple members picketed the Examiner, harassed the paper's editor, and threatened both the Examiner and the Star with libel suits.[45] Both papers canceled the series after the fourth installment.[45] Shortly thereafter, Jones made grants to newspapers in California with the stated goal of supporting the First Amendment."
They also didn't "piss off from society" and were embraced by local and national political campaigns & left-adjacent candidates throughout this period:
"After the Temple's voter mobilization efforts proved instrumental in George Moscone's run for mayor of San Francisco in 1975, he appointed Jones as Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.[61][62] Jones and the Temple received the support of California political figures such as Moscone, Jerry Brown, Mervyn Dymally, Willie Brown, Art Agnos, and Harvey Milk.[63] Willie Brown visited the Temple numerous times and spoke publicly in support of Jones, even after investigations and suspicions of cult activity.[64][65] Jones and Moscone met privately with then-running mate Walter Mondale in San Francisco days before the 1976 presidential election.[66] Jones also met First Lady Rosalynn Carter on multiple occasions, including a private dinner, and corresponded with her in letters."
You want to distill everything down to the unfortunate & destructive end of the situation. But I think you are ignoring the commitment & real impact that the actual members made on their communities. If you wanted to, you could believe all the propaganda about "murderous" and "insurrectionary" Black panthers who were "filled with hate" or whatever, or you can acknowledge that it was a dedicated few who were mobilized to fight the system in any way they knew how. Of course it was infiltrated & wrecked from the inside over time. How many conscientious and effective Left or radical groups aren't infiltrated & effectively wrecked from the within in the US?
Can we say that Jim Jones was acting in bad faith? Overall, I think so.
"Brazilian Neighbors
Sebastiaco Carlos Rocha, a man who lived across the street from Jones, said that Jones would leave every morning at 6:00 a.m. with a leather briefcase, and return home around 7:00 p.m. Rocha and his family had many interactions with the Jones family. Rocha said that Jones told him that he was a retired U.S. Naval captain recuperating from the Korean War and that he was receiving monthly checks from the U.S. government for his military service. Several neighbors, including Rocha, said that they often witnessed a U.S. Consulate car in front of Jones’ home. Many also said that they witnessed the person in the car regularly delivering groceries to the family. Rocha said that Jones “enjoyed a very expensive lifestyle.”
The Rochas’ teenage daughter, Maria, said that she spoke to Marceline, who gave a very different story for their stay in Brazil. Marceline told Maria that they were in Brazil because she was suffering from a lung abnormality and her doctor recommended a better climate for her. The Jones’ daughter, Suzanne, told other neighbors that they were there to establish a branch of Peoples Temple. But Jones’ real job may have been something else. Rocha’s wife, Elza, a lawyer in Belo Horizonte who sometimes interpreted for Jones, recalled that her new neighbor told her that he had a job in Belo Horizonte proper, at Eureka Laundries. Sebastian Dias de Magalhaes—head of Industrial Relations for Eureka in 1962—said that Jones was not an employee of Eureka. Furthermore, Dias and two other Eureka employees said that “Jones lied in order to conceal what they believe was his work for the CIA.”
Another Brazilian resident, Marco Aurelio, said that he was “absolutely certain that Jones was a spy.” At the time, Marco was supposedly dating Joyce Beam, the daughter of Jack Beam, who himself was one of Jones’ top lieutenants. Jack and his daughter had reportedly traveled to Brazil with the Joneses. Marco claimed that a detective in the ID-4 section of the local Brazilian PD ordered him to keep an eye on Jones. The detective was certain that Jones was CIA, according to Marco. However, the detective mysteriously died before the investigation could be completed. Jones left the country not long afterwards."
But Jones' leadership & unscrupulous multiple identities & nefarious dealings with the world of CIA anti-communist trickery does not take away the real tenacity & effectiveness of the organization itself within the US left before the mid-1970s
It was though. They even sold pieces of Jim Jones' robes etc.
reports stated that the Temple services regularly rejected Biblical dogma
This is... Not surprising at all. That's the case with many of these cults.
I don't see what the charity stuff demonstrates, Golden Dawn did charity too to grow in power.
They also didn’t “piss off from society”
They did, when they decided to move to some remote settlement in Guyana. That was 1973.
Like, idk, maybe you could argue that it wasn't as bad before the 70s, and that this is when the really weird stuff started? But even before that, he preached a bunch of nonsense typical of cult leaders (making nuclear holocaust prophecies, claiming he was a manifestation of Christ's spirit, etc).
You want to distill everything down to the unfortunate & destructive end of the situation. But I think you are ignoring the commitment & real impact that the actual members made on their communities. If you wanted to, you could believe all the propaganda about “murderous” and “insurrectionary” Black panthers who were “filled with hate” or whatever, or you can acknowledge that it was a dedicated few who were mobilized to fight the system in any way they knew how. Of course it was infiltrated & wrecked from the inside over time. How many conscientious and effective Left or radical groups aren’t infiltrated & effectively wrecked from the within in the US?
I think it is pretty unfair to compare the People's Temple (a rather confused cult) with the Black Panthers (a very dedicated and important rebel group which, for some time at least, achieved great things and managed to be a significant force for many years with broad appeal). Despite their unfortunate ending, they weren't a weird cult from the get go, they actually knew what they were doing. I don't believe People's Temple was anything like that. I believe it was damned from the get go. I don't doubt that many if not most members were very well intentioned people, and they actually did some good things. But they were unfortunately duped into being part of something they shouldn't have been part of. Desperate people are often drawn into that sort of stuff unfortunately. You're trying to separate the organization from Jim Jones but you can't really do that, it was founded and chiefly controlled by him and his circle. You can separate the members, but not the actual organization, the structure of it. It can't be judged as anything other than a cult which appropriated leftist rhetoric and practice. Potentially it was a CIA honey trap meant to delegitimize leftist movements and eradicate people who could be radicalized in a more meaningful way.
You "don't believe it was anything like that"... sounds like a personal misgiving?
but I just told you that People's Temple fed children & housed the poor & treated the sick & gave outreach to elderly & disabled... exactly the sorts of community organizing & real work that BPP and others were engaged in. You can hand-wave about that and only focus on the last days of the project, but that's literally what people do with regard to downplaying and smearing Black Panthers too.
In fact there were alliances between Black Panthers and Civil Rights groups and People's Temple
"The Temple forged strategic relationships with the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers and progressive black churches. In counterculture San Francisco, the church organized around affirmative action, affordable housing, police brutality, South African apartheid and the 1978 Briggs Initiative, designed to bar gays and lesbians from teaching in California schools."
"Still, when people found themselves abused by the police, we stood by their side. When people felt themselves cut apart from the political establishment, we invited the establishment in the form of the mayor to come down to the ghetto to hear them. We were already working with the Black Panthers to create a safer, cleaner neighborhood"
But that doesn't mean that Jim Jones wasn't some maniac, or that he didn't cynically embrace the cult of personality that the real SUCCESS of the organization created. "“The bible is the thing that brought us, it’s what they used to rip us out of the rich land of Africa and put us into chains as they’re still doing four hundred years later. So I question their bible and…their god who says ‘slaves obey your masters.’”"
We can call that White savior complex, of course. But the message & the results obviously attracted more than just a passing disregard.
You want to imbibe the propaganda against the spirit of the organization, outside of Jim Jones' obvious & sickening embeddedness within CIA & MKUltra style nefariousness, but ignore where People's Temple actually took on the burden of what both Christianity & radical left politics preach.
And you're right, it probably was damned from the get-go. In the same way that so many other leftist orgs in the US & imperial core are. Does that really detract from the accomplishments before the self-annihilation?
"If my African American pastor peers had met the needs of the people, instead of just preaching about them, Jim Jones would not have flourished in San Francisco. The people of our community wanted their needs met, and they needed them met right then. They were not waiting for some eschatological heaven. There was a vacuum of services, and Jim Jones filled it. He acted much like the Black Panther Party in this town, which filled a vacuum."
but I just told you that People’s Temple fed children & housed the poor & treated the sick & gave outreach to elderly & disabled… exactly the sorts of community organizing & that BPP and others were engaged in
Do you think the charity is all that's important and the reasoning behind it as well as the general purpose it served are irrelevant? That's why I brought up Golden Dawn.
You can hand-wave about that and only focus on the last days of the project,
I expressly said I am not just talking about that, many, many, many times.
In fact there were alliances between Black Panthers and Civil Rights groups and People’s Temple
Strategic alliances that maybe weren't a great idea in the first place.
You want to imbibe the propaganda against the spirit of the organization, outside of Jim Jones’ obvious & sickening embeddedness within CIA & MKUltra style nefariousness, but ignore where People’s Temple actually took on the burden of what both Christianity & radical left politics preach.
The spirit of the organization WAS Jim Jones. You can't somehow judge it separately from him. Again, I am not talking just about the end. They moved into Guyana 5 years before they all killed themselves. Jim Jones was already saying they should probably eventually all kill themselves years before they actually did, before they even went to Guyana. They were a weird doomsday cult already from the 60s. They were a weird doomsday cult from their conception. They did charity, yes. Many members were well intentioned, yes. But do you really think they "took the burden of what radical left politics preach"? The death cult?? If what Jim Jones preached and did even years before the end and obviously the end result too doesn't serve to disqualify the People's Temple as a good leftist organization, what does? I seriously have no idea. If you consider Jim Jones, the founder and leader of the organization throughout its entire history, to be a glowie, then People's Temple was basically a CIA honey pot. The BPP was infiltrated eventually, but they never were that, and you can actually point to an era where you could say "yeah, these people knew what they were doing, and they left a positive legacy". Even to the bitter end there were actual great revolutionaries in the BPP trying to fix the mess while also fighting racism and capitalism in practice and helping people, whereas the People's church just moved to some remote settlement for 5 years and then they committed mass suicide.
You are drawing a false & cynical comparison trying to say that People's Temple is like the far-right Golden Dawn in Greece. The more likely & close comparison to be made is with other North American far-left radical orgs like BPP
Black Preachers literally admit that they didn't do enough to prevent these orgs from taking root & filling the social services vacuum. This is at the end of the day a failure of extant government & social organization to do their duties. You can downplay & disregard that as simply "charity", but it's so much more than that when offered with a radically progressive political underpinning.
You're only saying that the CIA's influence & control over the trajectory of the People's Temple (and many other such groups in this period) was its primary disqualification, something I agree with. But that doesn't mean the hundreds & thousands of organizers & community activists deserve to be called mindless cultists.
I didn't say that People's Temple was a "good leftist organization", but the extreme backlash and media distaste for economic/social alternatives is the prism we are viewing this history through.
BPP weren't the only ones try to "fix the mess" though, and others like Nation of Islam & People's Temple and more militant orgs were doing the same sort of outreach & community uplift. In competition with one another often, unfortunately. All of these orgs get unnecessary criticism and were violently attacked on the ground and in the press from their very outset. H. Newton and Angela Davis both supported People's Temple enthusiastically:
"“ First the voice of the Temple’s favorite black communist was carried from the United States to Jonestown and broadcast over the loudspeakers.
“This is Angela Davis. I’d like to say to the Rev. Jim Jones and to all my sisters and brothers from Peoples Temple to know that there are people here ... across the country who are supporting you. I know that you’re in a very difficult situation right now and there is a conspiracy. A very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle. And this is why I must tell you that we feel that we are under attack as well.... We will do everything in our power to ensure your safety....”
Jim Jones asked his people to respond. The crowd’s roar, audible even through the radio to San Francisco, lasted twelve seconds. “I guess you can hear the ovation of the people, Angela,” Jones broke in, “all races, all backgrounds, that appreciated this more than words could possibly [express].”
The next phone patch was with Huey Newton, the Black Panther leader whom Jones had visited in Cuba. Newton’s cousin Stanley Clayton was among the Jonestown residents listening as Newton delivered[…]”
You think that propaganda against People's Temple before the mass suicide is what singularly disqualifies it, but yet admit that anti-BPP propaganda is so obvious. All of these orgs had questionable elements that allowed media & PR campaigns to sully them. Still, I think you are being purposefully obscure or ignoring the extent to which any dissent or growing "movement" is poisoned from all sides in the US
Jim Jones was definitely connected to the CIA, yes. But the move to Guyana was not out of the blue, and was preceded by nearly two decades of resistance & concerted multi-generation consciousness-raising. These people were persecuted & actively attacked, both in the media & in street altercations
"Yet, although there have been numerous portrayals of Peoples Temple’s shrewd politicking, the racial politics of gender in the church have been marginalized. In White Nights, Black Paradise, Peoples Temple is not only symbolic of progressive black social gospel traditions but of a racially divided women’s movement. It is no secret that white women’s leadership was resented by some of the black rank and file. In both the church and the Second Wave women’s movement, the veneer of interracial “sisterhood” was compromised by the reality of white female racism. In the novel, black women actively question and challenge this dynamic.
Nonetheless, for some black women in Peoples Temple, emigration to Guyana was a positive act of self-determination. In the novel, Taryn and Hy leave segregated Indiana for segregated California. Taryn finds that she is unable to advance at her new accounting job because she is a queer black woman. Hy becomes disgruntled by the city’s limited job market and its climate of racist police violence. Frustrated by these realities, their appetite for change is whetted by the prospect of Guyana. Ernestine Markham, a middle class schoolteacher leaves because she believes Guyana is a better alternative for her troubled son. Devera, a Black-Latina transwoman writer, yearns to be a pioneer in the Guyana settlement. Each woman is politicized by the times, her experiences in the church and the context of being black and female in what bell hooks has described as “white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.”
We know that passive or magnanimous non-violent spirited resistance will attract a deadly reaction all its own. MLK was a charismatic leader who didn't always preach passivity, but it was only in preaching anti-capitalism that he was destroyed as well with clandestine State violence. Jim Jones is merely a reflection of the time period, and those who participated, regardless of the questionable motives of malefactors at the top, deserve some dignity & humanity, literally because they tried.
You are drawing a false & cynical comparison trying to say that People’s Temple is like the far-right Golden Dawn in Greece.
It's an analogy. Doing charity doesn't make you good. I think it's way more offensive to compare them to the BPP and other radical leftist orgs who actually (mostly) had their shit together.
You can downplay & disregard that as simply “charity”, but it’s so much more than that when offered with a radically progressive political underpinning
...as well as a creepy doomsday cult underpinning, which is my point.
But that doesn’t mean the hundreds & thousands of organizers & community activists deserve to be called mindless cultists.
No, but the literal cultists of Jonestown were... Literal cultists.
I didn’t say that People’s Temple was a “good leftist organization”, but the extreme backlash and media distaste for economic/social alternatives is the prism we are viewing this history through.
Are you saying the backlash is only because they presented an alternative and not because of the whole mass suicide thing? Because I think the mass suicide thing is a lot more important here. No one even really remembers the rest now.
H. Newton and Angela Davis both supported People’s Temple enthusiastically
So we're supposed to repeat their mistake despite they made while having much less knowledge about their inner workings than we do now?
The rest of your post I don't understand because I can't figure out what is a quote, what isn't, what the stuff quoted refers to, or any of that. But I really don't understand trying to portray People's Temple as a positive leftist movement or whatever. It was clearly disastrous and horrible from its inception, if not a CIA honey pot. The alliances they managed to build with leftist movements shouldn't elevate them, they should serve as a warning to future leftist movements to be wary of that kind of shit. Yes, many members were well intentioned, but manipulated, and any organization is judged structurally, not from the character of its members, who were really just victims driven to this by desperation.
Like, it's literally a cult. A textbook definition of a cult. Their leader pretended he had spiritual healing powers. He sold them pieces of his robe. He took them to some remote settlement in Guyana and 5 years later he convinced them to kill themselves and their children en masse. It is blatantly a cult. I don't understand why there is an argument about it.
I didn't say doing charity made them "good" or "bad". It's your insistence on creating boogiemen out of history that does this. But equating a leftist religious organization to literal Nazis in Greece is cynical and underhanded.
You again are deflecting and trying to regurgitate anti-leftist sensationalism to make the organization's members out to be unthinking or malevolent beasts incapable of making their own decisions. I put quotes within quotation marks, so that they are easy to discern as quotes.
If you want to imbibe propaganda and disconnect the context of the People's Temple from the rest of the era, then you are doing the same thing that most liberal & establishment historiographies do with the BPP & Nation of Islam and others. They call them cults & extremists too
I didn't say anything about "honey pot", because the CIA blatantly had its hands all over this, and in the larger context of Operation Condor & other anti-leftist meddling, they definitely forced them into this box and gave them little recourse. Maybe the "cult" members would've been able to see how going back to existing within capitalism & racist imperialist US culture was a better option if only they had you there to show them the better way
"It's literally a cult" is what is said about Maoism & Stalin era and BPP & so many other leftist political situations in recent history. You want to make People's Temple out as this politically inert or dastardly or completely disconnected fringe group, when it was a misleading & misled & historically misrepresented product of the larger radicalization & dissent of the 1960s and 70s.
"Textbook definition of a cult" applies to literally any affinity group that attempts to chart its own course in society & revolves around a leader in any way. It's not really an adequate term for large and diverse groups that all have their own motivations and are created within real adverse circumstances and flourish on many political & social & productive levels.
But sure, BPP's unfortunate dissolution & disintegration isn't in any way similar to how the media & bourgeois histories treat People's Temple. Anti-communism and the need to tie historical tragedies to any future attempt to practice radical dissent isn't counter-revolution.
I know. That's what I am saying though. He was a manipulator, he had no ideology, neither did the cult really. It was all in the service of manipulating marginalised people.
no, the US government & its many Janus-faced clandestine operations manipulated people & used Jim Jones to attack the left broadly
We know that Jim Jones was a glowie, but the important thing is that for a time, there was legitimate progress made in coalescing around these principles in a racially integrated & incredibly forward-thinking manner
anti-capitalism isn't just about eschewing past political attempts or calling everyone a cultist. there are real lessons to be learned in Jones' progression from charismatic Christian socialist radical to MKUltra death cult leader
I mean, the guy used to be obsessed with Hitler even before his death cult shit.
Everyone? Jim Jones and his cult isn't "everyone". It was a few thousand people.
You say there was "legitimate progress", but progress towards what? Because if this was manipulation (which it was) then of course it would look like there is "legitimate progress". Otherwise it would fail as a manipulation. The extent to which the CIA was involved I don't know exactly, but it had its fingerprints on pretty much everything similar back then (btw the consequences of MKUltra and the manipulation of all the hippie shit in the US is part of the reason why the left in many other countries had and to an extent still has a pretty hard anti drug stance), so they were in all likelihood also involved in this, but that doesn't mean the whole thing wasn't manipulation in the first place.
If there is a lesson here, it is be wary of weird new age faith healing religious shit and communes. Pretty much everyone who ever decided to piss off from society and build their own little isolated collective failed at best. Note that I don't wanna collectively shit on all christian socialists or especially something like liberation theology or whatever, but this specific kind of new age stuff is almost always either an op or a grift, and spirituality is rarely the best thing to organize people around anyways.
" The Temple made strong connections to the California state welfare system.[42] During the 1970s, the church owned and ran at least nine residential care homes for the elderly, six homes for foster children, and a state-licensed 40-acre (160,000 m2) ranch for developmentally disabled persons.[43] The Temple elite handled members' insurance claims and legal problems, effectively acting as a client-advocacy group."
It's not New Age "faith healing", and reports stated that the Temple services regularly rejected Biblical dogma:
"Kinsolving reported on several aspects of church dealings, its claims of healings, and Jones's ritual of throwing Bibles down in church, yelling, "This black book has held down you people for 2,000 years. It has no power."[46] Temple members picketed the Examiner, harassed the paper's editor, and threatened both the Examiner and the Star with libel suits.[45] Both papers canceled the series after the fourth installment.[45] Shortly thereafter, Jones made grants to newspapers in California with the stated goal of supporting the First Amendment."
They also didn't "piss off from society" and were embraced by local and national political campaigns & left-adjacent candidates throughout this period:
"After the Temple's voter mobilization efforts proved instrumental in George Moscone's run for mayor of San Francisco in 1975, he appointed Jones as Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.[61][62] Jones and the Temple received the support of California political figures such as Moscone, Jerry Brown, Mervyn Dymally, Willie Brown, Art Agnos, and Harvey Milk.[63] Willie Brown visited the Temple numerous times and spoke publicly in support of Jones, even after investigations and suspicions of cult activity.[64][65] Jones and Moscone met privately with then-running mate Walter Mondale in San Francisco days before the 1976 presidential election.[66] Jones also met First Lady Rosalynn Carter on multiple occasions, including a private dinner, and corresponded with her in letters."
You want to distill everything down to the unfortunate & destructive end of the situation. But I think you are ignoring the commitment & real impact that the actual members made on their communities. If you wanted to, you could believe all the propaganda about "murderous" and "insurrectionary" Black panthers who were "filled with hate" or whatever, or you can acknowledge that it was a dedicated few who were mobilized to fight the system in any way they knew how. Of course it was infiltrated & wrecked from the inside over time. How many conscientious and effective Left or radical groups aren't infiltrated & effectively wrecked from the within in the US?
Can we say that Jim Jones was acting in bad faith? Overall, I think so.
"Brazilian Neighbors
Sebastiaco Carlos Rocha, a man who lived across the street from Jones, said that Jones would leave every morning at 6:00 a.m. with a leather briefcase, and return home around 7:00 p.m. Rocha and his family had many interactions with the Jones family. Rocha said that Jones told him that he was a retired U.S. Naval captain recuperating from the Korean War and that he was receiving monthly checks from the U.S. government for his military service. Several neighbors, including Rocha, said that they often witnessed a U.S. Consulate car in front of Jones’ home. Many also said that they witnessed the person in the car regularly delivering groceries to the family. Rocha said that Jones “enjoyed a very expensive lifestyle.”
The Rochas’ teenage daughter, Maria, said that she spoke to Marceline, who gave a very different story for their stay in Brazil. Marceline told Maria that they were in Brazil because she was suffering from a lung abnormality and her doctor recommended a better climate for her. The Jones’ daughter, Suzanne, told other neighbors that they were there to establish a branch of Peoples Temple. But Jones’ real job may have been something else. Rocha’s wife, Elza, a lawyer in Belo Horizonte who sometimes interpreted for Jones, recalled that her new neighbor told her that he had a job in Belo Horizonte proper, at Eureka Laundries. Sebastian Dias de Magalhaes—head of Industrial Relations for Eureka in 1962—said that Jones was not an employee of Eureka. Furthermore, Dias and two other Eureka employees said that “Jones lied in order to conceal what they believe was his work for the CIA.”
Another Brazilian resident, Marco Aurelio, said that he was “absolutely certain that Jones was a spy.” At the time, Marco was supposedly dating Joyce Beam, the daughter of Jack Beam, who himself was one of Jones’ top lieutenants. Jack and his daughter had reportedly traveled to Brazil with the Joneses. Marco claimed that a detective in the ID-4 section of the local Brazilian PD ordered him to keep an eye on Jones. The detective was certain that Jones was CIA, according to Marco. However, the detective mysteriously died before the investigation could be completed. Jones left the country not long afterwards."
But Jones' leadership & unscrupulous multiple identities & nefarious dealings with the world of CIA anti-communist trickery does not take away the real tenacity & effectiveness of the organization itself within the US left before the mid-1970s
It was though. They even sold pieces of Jim Jones' robes etc.
This is... Not surprising at all. That's the case with many of these cults.
I don't see what the charity stuff demonstrates, Golden Dawn did charity too to grow in power.
They did, when they decided to move to some remote settlement in Guyana. That was 1973.
Like, idk, maybe you could argue that it wasn't as bad before the 70s, and that this is when the really weird stuff started? But even before that, he preached a bunch of nonsense typical of cult leaders (making nuclear holocaust prophecies, claiming he was a manifestation of Christ's spirit, etc).
I think it is pretty unfair to compare the People's Temple (a rather confused cult) with the Black Panthers (a very dedicated and important rebel group which, for some time at least, achieved great things and managed to be a significant force for many years with broad appeal). Despite their unfortunate ending, they weren't a weird cult from the get go, they actually knew what they were doing. I don't believe People's Temple was anything like that. I believe it was damned from the get go. I don't doubt that many if not most members were very well intentioned people, and they actually did some good things. But they were unfortunately duped into being part of something they shouldn't have been part of. Desperate people are often drawn into that sort of stuff unfortunately. You're trying to separate the organization from Jim Jones but you can't really do that, it was founded and chiefly controlled by him and his circle. You can separate the members, but not the actual organization, the structure of it. It can't be judged as anything other than a cult which appropriated leftist rhetoric and practice. Potentially it was a CIA honey trap meant to delegitimize leftist movements and eradicate people who could be radicalized in a more meaningful way.
You "don't believe it was anything like that"... sounds like a personal misgiving?
but I just told you that People's Temple fed children & housed the poor & treated the sick & gave outreach to elderly & disabled... exactly the sorts of community organizing & real work that BPP and others were engaged in. You can hand-wave about that and only focus on the last days of the project, but that's literally what people do with regard to downplaying and smearing Black Panthers too.
In fact there were alliances between Black Panthers and Civil Rights groups and People's Temple
"The Temple forged strategic relationships with the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers and progressive black churches. In counterculture San Francisco, the church organized around affirmative action, affordable housing, police brutality, South African apartheid and the 1978 Briggs Initiative, designed to bar gays and lesbians from teaching in California schools."
"Still, when people found themselves abused by the police, we stood by their side. When people felt themselves cut apart from the political establishment, we invited the establishment in the form of the mayor to come down to the ghetto to hear them. We were already working with the Black Panthers to create a safer, cleaner neighborhood"
But that doesn't mean that Jim Jones wasn't some maniac, or that he didn't cynically embrace the cult of personality that the real SUCCESS of the organization created. "“The bible is the thing that brought us, it’s what they used to rip us out of the rich land of Africa and put us into chains as they’re still doing four hundred years later. So I question their bible and…their god who says ‘slaves obey your masters.’”"
We can call that White savior complex, of course. But the message & the results obviously attracted more than just a passing disregard.
You want to imbibe the propaganda against the spirit of the organization, outside of Jim Jones' obvious & sickening embeddedness within CIA & MKUltra style nefariousness, but ignore where People's Temple actually took on the burden of what both Christianity & radical left politics preach.
And you're right, it probably was damned from the get-go. In the same way that so many other leftist orgs in the US & imperial core are. Does that really detract from the accomplishments before the self-annihilation?
"If my African American pastor peers had met the needs of the people, instead of just preaching about them, Jim Jones would not have flourished in San Francisco. The people of our community wanted their needs met, and they needed them met right then. They were not waiting for some eschatological heaven. There was a vacuum of services, and Jim Jones filled it. He acted much like the Black Panther Party in this town, which filled a vacuum."
Do you think the charity is all that's important and the reasoning behind it as well as the general purpose it served are irrelevant? That's why I brought up Golden Dawn.
I expressly said I am not just talking about that, many, many, many times.
Strategic alliances that maybe weren't a great idea in the first place.
The spirit of the organization WAS Jim Jones. You can't somehow judge it separately from him. Again, I am not talking just about the end. They moved into Guyana 5 years before they all killed themselves. Jim Jones was already saying they should probably eventually all kill themselves years before they actually did, before they even went to Guyana. They were a weird doomsday cult already from the 60s. They were a weird doomsday cult from their conception. They did charity, yes. Many members were well intentioned, yes. But do you really think they "took the burden of what radical left politics preach"? The death cult?? If what Jim Jones preached and did even years before the end and obviously the end result too doesn't serve to disqualify the People's Temple as a good leftist organization, what does? I seriously have no idea. If you consider Jim Jones, the founder and leader of the organization throughout its entire history, to be a glowie, then People's Temple was basically a CIA honey pot. The BPP was infiltrated eventually, but they never were that, and you can actually point to an era where you could say "yeah, these people knew what they were doing, and they left a positive legacy". Even to the bitter end there were actual great revolutionaries in the BPP trying to fix the mess while also fighting racism and capitalism in practice and helping people, whereas the People's church just moved to some remote settlement for 5 years and then they committed mass suicide.
You are drawing a false & cynical comparison trying to say that People's Temple is like the far-right Golden Dawn in Greece. The more likely & close comparison to be made is with other North American far-left radical orgs like BPP
Black Preachers literally admit that they didn't do enough to prevent these orgs from taking root & filling the social services vacuum. This is at the end of the day a failure of extant government & social organization to do their duties. You can downplay & disregard that as simply "charity", but it's so much more than that when offered with a radically progressive political underpinning.
You're only saying that the CIA's influence & control over the trajectory of the People's Temple (and many other such groups in this period) was its primary disqualification, something I agree with. But that doesn't mean the hundreds & thousands of organizers & community activists deserve to be called mindless cultists.
I didn't say that People's Temple was a "good leftist organization", but the extreme backlash and media distaste for economic/social alternatives is the prism we are viewing this history through.
BPP weren't the only ones try to "fix the mess" though, and others like Nation of Islam & People's Temple and more militant orgs were doing the same sort of outreach & community uplift. In competition with one another often, unfortunately. All of these orgs get unnecessary criticism and were violently attacked on the ground and in the press from their very outset. H. Newton and Angela Davis both supported People's Temple enthusiastically:
"“ First the voice of the Temple’s favorite black communist was carried from the United States to Jonestown and broadcast over the loudspeakers. “This is Angela Davis. I’d like to say to the Rev. Jim Jones and to all my sisters and brothers from Peoples Temple to know that there are people here ... across the country who are supporting you. I know that you’re in a very difficult situation right now and there is a conspiracy. A very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle. And this is why I must tell you that we feel that we are under attack as well.... We will do everything in our power to ensure your safety....” Jim Jones asked his people to respond. The crowd’s roar, audible even through the radio to San Francisco, lasted twelve seconds. “I guess you can hear the ovation of the people, Angela,” Jones broke in, “all races, all backgrounds, that appreciated this more than words could possibly [express].” The next phone patch was with Huey Newton, the Black Panther leader whom Jones had visited in Cuba. Newton’s cousin Stanley Clayton was among the Jonestown residents listening as Newton delivered[…]”
You think that propaganda against People's Temple before the mass suicide is what singularly disqualifies it, but yet admit that anti-BPP propaganda is so obvious. All of these orgs had questionable elements that allowed media & PR campaigns to sully them. Still, I think you are being purposefully obscure or ignoring the extent to which any dissent or growing "movement" is poisoned from all sides in the US
Jim Jones was definitely connected to the CIA, yes. But the move to Guyana was not out of the blue, and was preceded by nearly two decades of resistance & concerted multi-generation consciousness-raising. These people were persecuted & actively attacked, both in the media & in street altercations
"Yet, although there have been numerous portrayals of Peoples Temple’s shrewd politicking, the racial politics of gender in the church have been marginalized. In White Nights, Black Paradise, Peoples Temple is not only symbolic of progressive black social gospel traditions but of a racially divided women’s movement. It is no secret that white women’s leadership was resented by some of the black rank and file. In both the church and the Second Wave women’s movement, the veneer of interracial “sisterhood” was compromised by the reality of white female racism. In the novel, black women actively question and challenge this dynamic.
Nonetheless, for some black women in Peoples Temple, emigration to Guyana was a positive act of self-determination. In the novel, Taryn and Hy leave segregated Indiana for segregated California. Taryn finds that she is unable to advance at her new accounting job because she is a queer black woman. Hy becomes disgruntled by the city’s limited job market and its climate of racist police violence. Frustrated by these realities, their appetite for change is whetted by the prospect of Guyana. Ernestine Markham, a middle class schoolteacher leaves because she believes Guyana is a better alternative for her troubled son. Devera, a Black-Latina transwoman writer, yearns to be a pioneer in the Guyana settlement. Each woman is politicized by the times, her experiences in the church and the context of being black and female in what bell hooks has described as “white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.”
We know that passive or magnanimous non-violent spirited resistance will attract a deadly reaction all its own. MLK was a charismatic leader who didn't always preach passivity, but it was only in preaching anti-capitalism that he was destroyed as well with clandestine State violence. Jim Jones is merely a reflection of the time period, and those who participated, regardless of the questionable motives of malefactors at the top, deserve some dignity & humanity, literally because they tried.
It's an analogy. Doing charity doesn't make you good. I think it's way more offensive to compare them to the BPP and other radical leftist orgs who actually (mostly) had their shit together.
...as well as a creepy doomsday cult underpinning, which is my point.
No, but the literal cultists of Jonestown were... Literal cultists.
Are you saying the backlash is only because they presented an alternative and not because of the whole mass suicide thing? Because I think the mass suicide thing is a lot more important here. No one even really remembers the rest now.
So we're supposed to repeat their mistake despite they made while having much less knowledge about their inner workings than we do now?
The rest of your post I don't understand because I can't figure out what is a quote, what isn't, what the stuff quoted refers to, or any of that. But I really don't understand trying to portray People's Temple as a positive leftist movement or whatever. It was clearly disastrous and horrible from its inception, if not a CIA honey pot. The alliances they managed to build with leftist movements shouldn't elevate them, they should serve as a warning to future leftist movements to be wary of that kind of shit. Yes, many members were well intentioned, but manipulated, and any organization is judged structurally, not from the character of its members, who were really just victims driven to this by desperation.
Like, it's literally a cult. A textbook definition of a cult. Their leader pretended he had spiritual healing powers. He sold them pieces of his robe. He took them to some remote settlement in Guyana and 5 years later he convinced them to kill themselves and their children en masse. It is blatantly a cult. I don't understand why there is an argument about it.
I didn't say doing charity made them "good" or "bad". It's your insistence on creating boogiemen out of history that does this. But equating a leftist religious organization to literal Nazis in Greece is cynical and underhanded.
You again are deflecting and trying to regurgitate anti-leftist sensationalism to make the organization's members out to be unthinking or malevolent beasts incapable of making their own decisions. I put quotes within quotation marks, so that they are easy to discern as quotes.
If you want to imbibe propaganda and disconnect the context of the People's Temple from the rest of the era, then you are doing the same thing that most liberal & establishment historiographies do with the BPP & Nation of Islam and others. They call them cults & extremists too
I didn't say anything about "honey pot", because the CIA blatantly had its hands all over this, and in the larger context of Operation Condor & other anti-leftist meddling, they definitely forced them into this box and gave them little recourse. Maybe the "cult" members would've been able to see how going back to existing within capitalism & racist imperialist US culture was a better option if only they had you there to show them the better way
"It's literally a cult" is what is said about Maoism & Stalin era and BPP & so many other leftist political situations in recent history. You want to make People's Temple out as this politically inert or dastardly or completely disconnected fringe group, when it was a misleading & misled & historically misrepresented product of the larger radicalization & dissent of the 1960s and 70s.
"Textbook definition of a cult" applies to literally any affinity group that attempts to chart its own course in society & revolves around a leader in any way. It's not really an adequate term for large and diverse groups that all have their own motivations and are created within real adverse circumstances and flourish on many political & social & productive levels.
But sure, BPP's unfortunate dissolution & disintegration isn't in any way similar to how the media & bourgeois histories treat People's Temple. Anti-communism and the need to tie historical tragedies to any future attempt to practice radical dissent isn't counter-revolution.