Posted on 11/16/2013 10:29:11 AM PST by ReformationFan
It’s been 35 years since 918 people, including 257 children, died on Nov. 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple massacre in Jonestown. The mass murder inside the South American jungle commune in Guyana was engineered by Jim Jones, a murderous cult leader, and was the only time in American history a member of Congress, Leo Ryan, D-Calif., was killed in the line of official duty.
Most of the victims were forced to commit suicide by drinking a fatal cocktail of poisoned punch spiked with a Valium tranquilizer. In the days that followed the slaughter of the innocents, Jonestown became a widely reported global event whose media coverage rivaled that of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
As a result of the massacre, “drinking the Kool-Aid” entered the popular lexicon to describe blind acceptance of a belief without critical analysis. Some of the Jonestown dead were not suicides; they were killed against their will, and the actual drink of death was, in fact, something called Flavor Aid.
The charismatic Jones, an ordained Indiana minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), established the “Peoples Temple” in San Francisco in 1956. His primary recruitment targets were the poor, mostly people of color, and idealists who sought an egalitarian community of economic justice and spiritual fulfillment.
Jones promised a utopian society that provided for the common welfare of its members. But like most cult leaders, he became a tyrannical leader, and he exercised that power in a dangerous megalomaniacal way.
In 1973, an increasingly paranoid Jones moved Temple members to Guyana and named the Peoples Temple compound in honor of himself. Once free of U.S. law, Jones became a brutal dictator in his isolated and heavily guarded compound, where he controlled his devotees’ lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at charismanews.com ...
yep ole Revrant Jim was an evil bustard!
I could swear this is Urkel in white face.
“Mr. President, the actions of Mr. Stoen need to be brought to a halt. It is offensive to most in the San Francisco community, and all those who know Rev. Jones to see this kind of an outrage taking place.”
Mr Stoen was our assistant D.A. here in Humboldt county for a while. One of the local papers did a story on him
Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/092503/cover0925.html
You are right, it was mass murder by the us police force at Waco.
The Milk/Moscone murders occurred 9 days after the Guyana tragedy.
Thank you for a very interesting article.
Yea it kind of bounces back and forth between local politics and The Peoples Temple but it is quite informative. I remembered it when I saw this thread.
“...poisoned punch spiked with a Valium tranquilizer”
It was cyanide and the deaths were horrible and prolonged and involved great suffering.
Wow. I cannot imagine how horrific it must have been for her. Dear Lord.
Dear God.
It was pretty good for a made-for-TV movie.
Boothe deserved that Emmy. He did one hell of a job.
I’m amazed Jones was even able to get his hands on the cyanide.
He's always good. I love him in Extreme Prejudice. And of course as Curly Bill in Tombstone. He was fabulous.
I love this movie but the sound is crappy. I have seen it numerous times and there were two or three scenes in which I could not understand what he was saying.
Filming this movie must have been a very interesting experience for Boothe.
That is funny.
I love the part in which Curly Bill stumbles out of the opium tent and starts firing his pistols.
Sodomy can boost confidence? Interesting.
"I feel ... capital!"
And he was creepy as hell. How did people not notice that?
Well....Bye. ;)
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