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 ...
“I’ve said since Clintoon, their guy could mow down a Girl Scout troop on the front steps of the Whitehut with a machinegun and there would be Kool-Aid drinkers like Juan Williams making excuses for them.”
Juan was totally unbelievable yesterday morning while trying to defend his beloved Obozo and his crappy ACA.
Juan has lost his little bit of sanity, he had after he got fired.
When there is conspiracy to commit murder, I've been told to look who has the most to gain to determine the suspects...
And there were SF "Jim Jones" related murders following the mass suicide/murder in Guyana. Survivors and the like.
Leftists insist that Jonestown was a CIA plot. 100+ million dead from Marxism in the 20th century and it’s always someone else’s fault when it results in mass death and suffering.
He was able to get it by claiming he had a jewelery business and needed it for cleaning.
Well it does take away that fear of getting a prostate exam.
Incredible. It was Potassium Cyanide, right?
He was scary as Cy Tolliver in “Deadwood” too.
Yes. Mothers poisoned their babies with this. Jesus wept.
It’s sickening.
It was definitely Flavor Aid. Kool Aid got a bum rap.
Jim Jones was an atheist Communist who decided to cloak his Marxism under the guise of religion.
I have not had orange Kool-Aid since then.
I’m serious.
The mothers were giving this to their own children.
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