San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities
by Michael Shellenberger · 11 Oct 2021 · 572pp · 124,222 words
Indiana University in Bloomington he was moved by a speech from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt about the suffering of black Americans. His name was Jim Jones.1 Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the
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for their campaigns. Jones had a complicated relationship to race and religion. He adopted several children of different races, naming his African American son Jim Jones Jr. But in 2012, Jim Jones Jr. described his father “manipulating black people” by giving him special treatment compared to Jones’s other adopted and biological children.3
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Jim Jones Sr. sometimes referred to himself as “mixed,” “Indian,” or “black,” and appeared to have believed he was a reincarnation of an African American spiritual leader
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and confidant.23 Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.”24 Angela Davis sent a
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community were warmly welcomed. Yet no matter how many people were fed, clothed, helped to find jobs, or rescued from drug addiction by Temple programs, Jim Jones ached for all those who still were not.”34 Jones and the Temple preyed on compassionate people who were also psychologically and spiritually lost, angst
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): 269–80, doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.01.006. 16: Love Bombing 1. Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People (New York: Penguin Books, 2008); Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple, produced and directed by Stanley Nelson, written by
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People’s Temple, and Jonestown (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 71; E. Black, “The Reincarnations of God: George Baker Jr. and Jim Jones as Fathers Divine,” Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple (blog), San Diego State University, July 25, 2013, updated May 20, 2020, www.jonestown.sdsu.edu. 5. Talbot, Season of the
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Jonestown: Jim Jones and People’s Temple (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 336. 17. Talbot, Season of the Witch, 284, 288–89. 18. James Richardson, Willie Brown: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 251. 19. Ibid. 20. Reiterman and Jacobs, Raven, 267. 21. Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, “Inside Peoples Temple,” New
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West, August 1, 1977, available at Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple (blog), San Diego State University, accessed April 1, 2021, www.jonestown.sdsu.edu; Jack Doyle, “Murdoch’s NY Deals
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, 1976–1977,” Pop History Dig, September 25, 2010, updated January 23, 2020, www.pophistorydig.com. 22. Marshall Kilduff, “Dark Days: How an Important Story on Jim Jones Went Untold,” San
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of Investigation, RYMUR 89–4286–2303, 11–42; RYMUR 89–4286–2375, 2–33; RYMUR 89–4286–2431, 3–35, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple (blog), San Diego State University, updated March 12, 2019, www.jonestown.sdsu.edu. 30. Ibid. 31. Richardson, Willie Brown, 252. 32. Talbot, Season of the
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, 93, 111, 191, 238 Britt, Harry, 228 Brown, Jerry, 148, 192, 221, 222, 248 Brown, Willie homeless population and, 14, 24, 26, 82, 113–114 Jim Jones and, 219, 220, 222, 223–224 Burton, John, 221 Bush, George W., 10 California companies’ leaving due to “poor business climate,” xiv demographic age of
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, 165, 172, 173, 175, 191–192, 208 Fonda, Jane, 184 Foote, Laura, 253, 254, 256 Ford, Gerald, 11 Foucault, Michel individual responsibility as myth, 141 Jim Jones and, 226 mental illness treatment and, 105–106, 108, 113 power of language and, 229–230 radical prison movement and, 182, 184–185, 190 sexuality
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, 124, 195, 289–290 Miami, 6–7, 29, 76–77, 225 Milk, Harvey cleaning city and, 2, 290 gay community and, 1, 147–148, 228 Jim Jones and, 223–224 legacy of, 285–286 shooting of, 145–147, 224, 227 Miller, Henry, 152 Mills, C. Wright, 214 Minneapolis, 165, 191, 205, 261
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, 85, 110, 118–119 Mondale, Walter, 221 Moral Foundations Theory, universal values of and progressive versus conservative interpretations of, 211–213, 224, 260 Moscone, George Jim Jones and, 219–224 shooting of, 145, 148, 224, 227 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 275 Murdoch, Rupert, 222 Myth of Mental Illness, The (Szasz), 106 Nadelmann, Ethan
Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
by Rick Perlstein · 17 Aug 2020
nation of Guyana. Ryan had gone to investigate a bizarre San Francisco minister named Jim Jones, who had recruited thousands of fanatically devoted followers—a mix of poor, uneducated African Americans and whites from the professional classes—to his “Peoples Temple,” whose doctrine joined Marxism with Pentecostal-style faith healing. Jones then impelled hundreds
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his church in Ukiah, California, gave over an entire page to Jones to respond. In 1973, that newspaper had accepted a $300 gift from the Peoples Temple commending its “position on the First Amendment.” He had garnered a similar influence with public officials and media outlets, using similar methods, in his next
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named deputy district attorney, in charge of investigating election irregularities for which the Peoples Temple was in fact responsible. Ronald Reagan was asked about Jonestown in Bonn, Germany, where he was embarked on a weeklong European tour. He said Jim Jones “supported a number of political figures but seemed more to be involved in
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.” He was hammered from all sides. A tasteless political cartoon imagined the president as a brainwashed member of a cult, only the guru was not Jim Jones but Howard Jarvis. Bill Armstrong, the New Right senator from Colorado, emphasized the proposal’s projected $29 billion deficit: “To describe the budget as ‘lean
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, Anthony Lewis, responding to his piece about a famous Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist, Mark Lane, who turned up in the news as the late Reverend Jim Jones’s spokesman. “It is probably safe to say that over the years, had we compared notes, we would have found ourselves in disagreement on many
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their own problems,” and welcomed the fact that its citizens were finally suffering the consequences for “depending continually on automobiles.” California: home of the late Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple, the “I don’t like Mondays” teenage homicidal maniac the Hillside Stranger—and the former San Francisco city supervisor, cop, and fireman who had
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of bombings all decade, there “were 900 bodies lying in Guyana to indicate that, indeed, people were bent on murder, and of course, as to Peoples Temple, and I think it will be shown that was tied more to the liberal elements of San Francisco and not so much to the conservative
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, campaigning for supervisor, opportunistically recruited a black street gang to disrupt other candidates’ events. One community leader described his relationship with these enforcers as “like Jim Jones with his bodyguards.” Another said, “The whole thing was out of Clockwork Orange.” White had even won the support of local Nazis; four showed up
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Bureau—and not a few prominent politicians—would have undoubtedly preferred to leave in the closet.” It also might have opened up the fact that Jim Jones’s brainwashed minions had been instrumental in the mayor’s victory in 1975, and Harvey Milk’s in 1977. In sum, local boosters feared that
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liberation. Symbols of middle American normalcy kept rearing up and strangling America’s sense of itself as decent, prosperous, and safe. The Kool-Aid that Jim Jones used to poison his followers. The Twinkies that supposedly turned Dan White into a homicidal maniac. Family farmers invading Washington, D.C. A necrophile birthday
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Hall set off riots when his killer was convicted only of manslaughter 66. A DC-10 crash killed 271, revealing a trail of bungling 67. Jim Jones’s cultists committed mass suicide 68. A nuclear plant nearly melted down, and authorities seemed to have no idea how to respond 69. Toxic waste
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have never lost” AP, August 3, 1978. CHAPTER NINETEEN “little-noticed story” UPI, June 15, 1978, Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Twelve days after “In Response: Peoples Temple Disputes Guyana Article,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 27, 1978. In 1973, that newspaper “Church Gives Grants to Media,” Santa Rose Press Democrat, January 18
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, 1973. For Jonestown: Tim Reiterman with John Jacobs, Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People (New York: TarcherPerigree, 2008; Jonestown file, Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California–Berkeley. That Monday Index of ABC, NBC, and CBS
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’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, 697 “People’s Inaugural,” 53 People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, 237, 307 People’s Republic of China, 836 “Peoples Temple” Agricultural Project, 401–402 Pepples, Ernest, 602–603 “The Pepsi Syndrome” (Saturday Night Live sketch), 533–534 PepsiCo, 336 Percy, Charles, 45, 139, 148, 180
Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage
by Jeff Guinn · 24 Jan 2023 · 438pp · 126,284 words
telegram to McClennan County district attorney Feazell. It referenced the notorious religious leader of Peoples Temple, who only a few years earlier had led more than nine hundred followers to their deaths in the jungles of Guyana: Have Jim Jones type character in Waco Texas making death threats to me and family and proclaiming
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under widespread criticism in 1978 for ignoring warnings about the Peoples Temple outpost in the jungles of Guyana. More than nine hundred members of that group either committed suicide by ingesting poison or were forcibly injected at the order of their leader, Jim Jones. A congressman who had come to the community known as
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Koresh prescribed.” The article concluded that, to Koresh’s detractors, far from being “a charismatic Messiah,” he was “closer to being another Charles Manson or Jim Jones.” The FBI further irked the media by herding them to an assigned press area two miles from Mount Carmel. “We could barely see the compound
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at the O.K. Corral—and How It Changed the American West; Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson; and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, among other books. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. SimonandSchuster.com www.SimonandSchuster
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Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s Ten-Year Road Trip The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—And How
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–209 paramilitary groups. See militia groups/militia movement Passover holiday, 98–100, 120, 274, 275–276, 279 Peeler, Jim, 191–192, 195 Peerwani, Nizam, 303 Peoples Temple, 43, 123–124 Perry, Bruce, 251 Petrilli, Jerry at ATF meetings, 158 on change in date of Mount Carmel raid, 178 at Houston meeting, 1992
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell · 14 Jun 2021 · 244pp · 73,700 words
a point of extreme devotion, and keeping them there, is something we cannot see. Though “cult language” comes in different varieties, all charismatic leaders—from Jim Jones to Jeff Bezos to SoulCycle instructors—use the same basic linguistic tools. This is a book about the language of fanaticism in its many forms
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.” Moore comes to the subject of cults from a unique place: Her two sisters were among those who perished in the Jonestown massacre; in fact, Jim Jones enlisted them to help pull off the event. But Moore told me she doesn’t use the word “cult” in earnest because it’s become
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even those groups didn’t set out with murder and mayhem in mind. After all, Jonestown started out as an integrationist church. Things escalated as Jim Jones grew hungrier for power, but most “cults” never spiral as catastrophically as his did.) A feedback loop of scandal is created: Only the most destructive
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it was referred to as something you “played.” It turns out that this type of extreme “truth-telling” activity is not uncommon in cultish groups; Jim Jones hosted similar events called Family Meetings or Catharsis Meetings, where followers would all gather in the Mother Church on Wednesday nights. During these meetings, anyone
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me shudder.” Tim, Odell, and Teri have a unique perspective on “drinking the Kool-Aid,” because in the 1970s, they were all members of the Peoples Temple. The group went by many names—a congregation, a movement, a lifestyle, an agricultural project, an experiment, a Promised Land. This was not unintentional. Shadowy
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groups are expert rebranders, benefiting from the confusion, distraction, and secrecy a revolving door of puzzling new labels can incite. The Peoples Temple started as a racially integrated church in Indianapolis in the 1950s. A decade later, it moved to Northern California, where it evolved to become more
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of a progressive “socio-political movement.” That’s according to the FBI reports. But it wasn’t until 1974, when the Peoples Temple relocated to a remote stretch of land in South America, that it became the “cult” known as Jonestown. Mythologized by many but understood by few
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in northwestern Guyana that housed about a thousand occupants at the time of its denouement in 1978. The place was named after its inglorious leader, Jim Jones. He also went by many names. In Indianapolis, when the group still had religious leanings, followers addressed Jones as “God” or “Father” (“Father’s Day
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Socialism on for size, or because their churches back home were failing, or to evade the racist American police (sound familiar?). With the Promised Land, Jim Jones guaranteed a solution for every walk of life—and with all the right words delivered just so, people had reason to believe him. Jones, whose
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it was too late. In the beginning, more than one survivor swore to me, there seemed nothing not to love. Born and raised in Indiana, Jim Jones was a promising new pastor in his twenties when he created his first congregation there. A rock-ribbed integrationist, he and his wife were the
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when her mother, who was raising a house full of kids on her own and searching for support, joined the Peoples Temple in Redwood City. Since she was thirteen years old, the Peoples Temple was Leslie’s whole world. Jones was Father and Dad to her. He called her his “little Angela Davis.” Talk
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a Baptist preacher, the complex theorizings of an Aristotelian philosopher, the folksy wit of a countryside fabler, and the ferocious zeal of a demented tyrant, Jim Jones was a linguistic chameleon who possessed a monster arsenal of shrewd rhetorical strategies, which he wielded to attract and condition followers of all stripes. This
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in the same breath. “His vocabulary could change quickly from being rather backwoods and homey to being quite intellectual,” recalled Garry Lambrev, a poet and Peoples Temple vet from back in its Redwood City days. “He had an enormous vocabulary. He read an unbelievable amount. I don’t know where he found
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could be judged or persecuted otherwise. And then, in a kind of opposite way, code-switching can be used to connivingly gain trust. This was Jim Jones’s specialty. Like a Machiavellian version of my twelve-year-old self slipping into evangelicalese at my friend’s megachurch, Jones learned how to meet
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to know . . . like “Jack White preachers,” an in-group label used in some Black church groups to criticize scammy white televangelists. By the time the Peoples Temple reached Guyana, it had become about three-quarters African American, although Jones’s inner circle was almost entirely young white women (like Maria Katsaris), which
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that met Jim Jones’s five decades ago and thought, this man is onto something great. In retrospect, of course, she sees him more clearly: “Jim didn’t care about religion. He studied those people because he thought, ‘That’s the job I want and more.’” Laura Johnston Kohl found the Peoples Temple as
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activism full-time. “I wanted to live in a community that was a mix of all races, all financial levels, all economic levels. I joined Peoples Temple for the political part,” Laura told me on one of our many phone calls. She longed for societal equality, and was down to get experimental
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Leo Ryan, a California rep who’d come to investigate Jonestown, having caught word from members’ families that the place was suspicious. Still an enthusiastic Peoples Temple loyalist, Laura was sure to make a good impression. One hundred fifty miles east of Jonestown, she missed the carnage entirely. You’d think narrowly
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one day, one of your successors would carry that banner all the way to freedom. “Revolutionary suicide,” as Newton meant it, was a phrase most Peoples Temple followers could get on board with, so Jones slowly perverted it, using it in various contexts depending on what he wanted out of them. On
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the dozen or so meetings when people approached a microphone and declared their willingness to die—that very night, if necessary—for the Cause (the Peoples Temple term for living in service of the group, not the self). There’s also the story that White Nights were weekly events when Jones would
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kid who grew up on cult tales, so I’ve been tuned in to Jonestown stories ever since I can remember. My dad often compared Jim Jones to Chuck Dietrich, the manic leader of Synanon. Though Dietrich never led a “mass suicide,” my dad’s half sister Francie, who spent her elementary
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he and his by then deceased coleader, Bonnie Nettles (who passed away from liver cancer in 1985), were elevated, extraterrestrial souls temporarily inhabiting earthly bodies. Jim Jones had lost the loyalty of many of his nine-hundred-plus followers by the time of their deaths, but Applewhite retained his small congregation’s
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, he continues: “Our experiences may look like trauma or something horrendous. But no matter what we go through, there is knowledge to be gained.” Like Jim Jones, Ti and Do vehemently denounced mainstream Christianity and the United States government, calling both “totally corrupt.” They also shared Jones’s claim of being the
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“deposit of knowledge.” According to Heaven’s Gate teachings, mere possession of “the Truth” would make separating from the rest of society “inevitable.” In the Peoples Temple, “my children” was the coveted title Jones bestowed upon obedient supporters, while “outside forces” naturally applied to anyone who didn’t follow. Even more loaded
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,” aka Father Jones. But the words themselves only did half the job; the other half was the performance. As anyone who ever attended one of Jim Jones’s sermons remembers vividly, the guy had a flair for the dramatic. On the pulpit, he’d pound out short, hyperbole-laded phrases to get
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: Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Slovakia’s Vladimír Mečiar, Donald Trump. It would be irresponsible, I think, not to mention the oratorical similarities between Trump and Jim Jones, who shared the same love of coining zingy, incendiary nicknames for their opponents. (“Fake News” and “Crooked Hillary” were Trump’s analogs to Jones’s
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. Like how 3HO redefined “old soul” from a compliment to something dreadful. Or how the megachurchgoers from my childhood talked about being “convicted.” Or how Jim Jones warped the meanings of “revolutionary suicide” and “the Cause,” or how he defined “accidents” as “things that never happen unless we deserve them.” If Jones
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conditioning to automatically trust the voices of middle-aged white men. Over the centuries, we’ve been primed to believe that the sound of a Jim Jones–type voice communicates an innate power and capability—that it sounds like the voice of God. In fact, during the heyday of television broadcasting, there
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can be deeply traumatic for patients. But Swan’s unique vocabulary of “Tealisms” helps her establish herself as a trustworthy spiritual and scientific authority. Like Jim Jones, who could use the Bible to preach socialism, Swan invokes Eastern metaphysics to diagnose mental health disorders. She blurs mystical talk of “synchronicity,” “frequency,” and
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could ever do for [Leslie’s] type of vibration.” Not her, not anyone. Perversely aligned with her reputation as the “suicide catalyst,” Teal Swan, like Jim Jones, also became a sex symbol. There have been countless articles written about her “goddesslike” beauty—her long dark hair, her piercing green eyes, her skincare
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to victims of cultish violence; but importantly, they do not “brainwash” them—at least not in the way we’re taught to think about brainwashing. Jim Jones certainly tried to use language to brainwash his followers. Among the techniques he studied was Newspeak, the make-believe language George Orwell created for his
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amplifying their voices above those of the white (often unwelcoming) second-wave feminist activists, as well as the civil rights movement’s mostly male leaders. Jim Jones, who had ties to all the right people (Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the reactionary Nation of Islam, many left-leaning
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to gain from a movement that turned out to be a lie. Laura Johnston Kohl readily admitted that no one forced her to buy what Jim Jones was selling; she willingly heard the buzzwords and thought-terminators she wanted to hear and tuned out the rest. “I was [in Jonestown] for political
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less mesmerized by [the] words somebody says,” she told a reporter in 2017. Still, Laura never stopped searching for a way to achieve what the Peoples Temple originally promised. Even after all the violence, hope remained. “If there were any way for me to live in a community today, I would do
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life, but I don’t want to sit with people who have had my same kind of wildness. So I did really love living in Peoples Temple. Jonestown was the highlight of my life.” Frank Lyford, who lost his entire early adulthood and beloved partner to Marshall Applewhite, doesn’t stew in
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’d collected over the course of her wild life. I can think of so many motives explaining why someone might enter a community like the Peoples Temple or Heaven’s Gate. Maybe it’s because life is hard and they want to make it better. Because someone promised they could help. Maybe
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of freaky power games: He made them climb inside coffins and strung them up on gigantic wooden crosses, where they’d dangle all afternoon. Like Jim Jones, Chuck Dietrich, and (to a lesser degree) Jeff Bezos, he also forced them into “group therapy” sessions where they verbally tormented each other for hours
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to Silicon Valley. This language is pervasive and troublesome, no doubt, but its motives and impact are also importantly different from those of figures like Jim Jones, L. Ron Hubbard, and Rich DeVos. In the case of these leaders, the goal was not so much to reinforce the problematic power structures of
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to decide there’s something naturally, defenselessly malevolent about the everyday “cults” to which most humans belong. SoulCycle is not Scientology. Instagram influencers are not Jim Jones. And as we’ve learned, invoking sensationalized “cult leader” comparisons to denounce any group that rubs us the wrong way can create confusion surrounding what
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Enthralled by His Skills as a Speaker,” CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/11/13/jonestown.jim.jones/. his “little Angela Davis”: Sikivu Hutchinson, “No More White Saviors: Jonestown and Peoples Temple in the Black Feminist Imagination,” The Jonestown Institute, San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies, October 5, 2014 (updated May
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-Members Describe Jim Jones as a ‘Real Monster.’” Known for quotes: Fielding M. McGehee III, “Q932 Summary,” The Jonestown Institute, San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies, June 16, 2013, https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=28323. Laura Johnston Kohl: Joseph L. Flatley, “Laura Johnston Kohl and the Politics of Peoples Temple,” The
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, San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies, July 25, 2013, https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=32381. the Death Tape: Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple authors, “The Death Tape”, The Jonestown Institute, San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies, July 25, 2013, https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29084
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. ii. Jonestown mass death: Lauren Effron and Monica Delarosa, “40 Years After Jonestown Massacre, Ex-Members Describe Jim Jones as a ‘Real Monster,’” ABC News, September 26, 2018, https://abc news.go.com/US/40-years-jonestown-massacre-members-describe
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with Populism,” Guardian, February 17, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/17/problem-populism-syriza-podemos-dark-side-europe. similarities between Trump and Jim Jones: Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019). zingy, incendiary nicknames: Caroline Howe, “Exclusive: Fake Enemies, Loaded Language, Grandiosity, Belittling Critics: Cults
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“brainwashed”: Alla V. Tovares, “Reframing the Frame: Peoples Temple and the Power of Words,” The Jonestown Institute, San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies, July 25, 2013, https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=31454. Jones enforced a “quiet rule”: Lesley Kennedy, “Inside Jonestown: How Jim Jones Trapped Followers and Forced ‘Suicides,’” History.com
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, February 20, 2020, https://www.history.com/news/jonestown-jim-jones-mass-murder-suicide. iv. known style of delivery labeled “the voice of God”: Jessica Bennett, “What Do
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”: Steven Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1988). the reason why Black women: Sikivu Hutchinson, “No More White Saviors: Jonestown and Peoples Temple in the Black Feminist Imagination,” The Jonestown Institute, San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies, October 5, 2014 (updated May 30, 2020), https://jonestown
City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco
by Chester W. Hartman and Sarah Carnochan · 15 Feb 2002 · 518pp · 170,126 words
sect had in a few years become a potent force among the city’s black and politically progressive populations, and its charismatic leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, had been a political figure of no little weight, capable of delivering his thousands of members virtually as a voting bloc.† Moscone had appointed Jones
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literature, billboards, and statements was that approval of the recall would be a victory for anarchy and chaos, that the forces of darkness (echoes of Jim Jones and Dan White) would prevail, that the city would be leaderless. Feinstein chose as her recall election campaign manager Clint Reilly, who had managed Quentin
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, from 1978 to 1988. She clearly was a calming influence at a time when the city, virtually traumatized by the city hall assassinations and the Peoples Temple mass suicides, needed that touch. In terms of the transformation of San Francisco, her biographer, San Francisco Chronicle city editor Jerry Roberts, writes: “Feinstein . . . oversaw
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Seas Development Corporation, which over the next few years aggressively sought to evict the tenants. Neighborhood, ethnic, and church groups (including massive contingents from Reverend Jim Jones’s People’s Temple) rallied to prevent the evictions, with demonstrations as large as five thousand people. The political pressure was so intense that Sheriff
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of Life and Death in the People’s Temple (New York: Anchor Books, 1998); Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People (New York: Dutton, 1982). 30. Larry Liebert, “Feinstein Dined, Interviewed, Praised in N.Y.,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5 April 1984. 31. Jeff
Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias
by Kevin Cook · 30 Jan 2023 · 277pp · 86,352 words
and roll musicians, and Satan worshippers.” If Vernon wasn’t stopped, George wrote, there could be “a Jim Jones–type massacre” at Mount Carmel. This was the first reference tying Branch Davidians to Jones’s Peoples Temple, a sect that had established a commune in Guyana a decade before. In 1978, with federal agents
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to a leader’s idea. Soon there were morbid jokes about the mass suicide at Jonestown. One asked, What do you call a picture of Jim Jones? Answer: the Last Sipper. In fact, Jones never drank the Flavor Aid. He watched more than nine hundred of his poisoned followers until he was
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mind on the Psalms.” Was he contemplating suicide? Van Zandt told the negotiators that their commanders thought the crisis was “developing as in Guyana with Jim Jones.” Park Dietz, the UCLA professor and FBI advisor who had diagnosed Koresh as a psychopath without meeting him, informed the Bureau that Koresh was “suicidal
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about the possibility of a mass suicide.” There was no cyanide at Mount Carmel. Koresh told the negotiators again and again that he was “no Jim Jones.” He wasn’t going to go all Rambo on them, either, he said. He had no desire to commit suicide by FBI. He had too
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Austin American-Statesman’s April 20 front-page story referred to “Monday’s mass suicide,” and quoted “cult experts” comparing Koresh and Mount Carmel to Jim Jones and Jonestown, but the American-Statesman also ran photos of protesters waving signs outside the Texas State Capitol (ARREST THE GESTAPO CULT ATF, one read
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Baylor. Koresh recalled his first impressions of Rachel Jones and his “vision” in Israel during phone calls with FBI negotiators. The last days of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple in Guyana were widely reported, including in Jeff Guinn’s The Road to Jonestown. Bonnie Haldeman described the Davidians’ time in Palestine, Texas, in
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! (TV show) Jeremiah Jerusalem Jesus Jews Johnson, Daryl Johnson, Gary Johnston, Bill John the Divine (John of Patmos) Jones, Alex Jones, Dave Jones, Heather Jones, Jim Jones, Kevin Jones, Mark Jones, Michele Jones, Perry Jones, Rachel Jonestown, Guyana, mass suicide Jordan, Glenn Jordan, Montana, standoff of 1996 Joseph Judgment Day Justice Department
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raid of 1989 Paramount TV Pardo, Mary Parkland Hospital (Dallas) Passover Patriot movement Paul the Apostle (Saul of Tarsus) PBS Peeler, Jim Pence Mike People Peoples Temple. See Jonestown, Guyana, mass suicide Persia Phoenix Project Pitts, Bill polygamy presidential election of 1976 Presley, Elvis Proud Boys Proverbs Psalms Purvis, Melvin QAnon Quantico
Coastal California Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet
the popular imagination, from modern pagans to new-age healers. California made national headlines in the 1960s with gurus from India, in the 1970s with Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple and Erhard Seminars Training (EST), and in the 1990s with Heaven’s Gate UFO-millennialist cult in San Diego. The controversial Church of Scientology is
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such as Alcatraz. Across the Bay the Berkeley Repertory Theatre has launched acclaimed productions based on such unlikely subjects as the rise and fall of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. By the Book Californians make up the largest market for books in the US, and read much more than the national average. Skewing the curve
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
by Lawrence Wright · 17 Jan 2013 · 684pp · 173,622 words
the order burned themselves to death in Quebec, making a total of seventy-four deaths. In contrast to the Branch Davidians or the followers of Jim Jones, who were predominantly lower class, the members of the Solar Temple were affluent, well-educated members of the communities they lived in, with families and
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where Hubbard spent his last months in uniform. Under an undistinguished headstone rest four hundred bodies out of the more than nine hundred followers of Jim Jones who perished in Jonestown in 1978. The caskets had been stacked on top of each other on the side of a bulldozed hillside, then the
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in, grass was planted, and the tragedy of Jonestown was buried in the national memory as one more inexplicable religious calamity. The members of the Peoples Temple, as Jones called his movement, had been drawn to his Pentecostal healing services, his social activism, and his racial egalitarianism. Charisma and madness were inextricably
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, in May 1977, the entire movement disappeared, virtually overnight. Without warning, leaving jobs and homes and family members who were not a part of the Peoples Temple, they were spirited away to a jungle encampment in Guyana, South America, which Jones billed as a socialist paradise. There he began to school them
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, Michael Paul the Apostle PC-815, USS Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on Pecoraro, Yolanda Peeler, John, 11.1, 11.2 Pentecostalism, 4.1, epl.1 Peoples Temple Perkins, Jeremy Persian Gulf War Pfauth, Stephen “Sarge” Phenomenon Pignotti, Monica Portland Crusade, 5.1, 10.1 Port Orchard, Wash., 2.1, 2.2, 2
Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia
by Adrian Shirk · 15 Mar 2022 · 358pp · 118,810 words
to build communities in Mountain West deserts. But that was not what I was asking. In fact, as I asked the question, I thought of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple, perhaps the largest purposefully multiracial commune from that decade, and I felt queasy. Because the more my own search for commune building continues, the
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racially integrated communitarian movement of this scale, though unfortunately a smaller and more famous one is the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones’s community in Guyana, which was multiracial as a central part of its project and theology. Jim Jones and Father Divine had actually met and been in contact during the years Jones’s church was
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still in Indianapolis and not yet a death commune. In the late sixties, after Divine had passed away and as the Peoples Temple was growing, Jones publicly claimed to
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Divine has left this plane and there are only twelve old people left and someone as horrifying as Jim Jones tried to usurp the legacy. I asked Rydant if he knew that story about Jim Jones claiming to be the reincarnation of Father Divine. “Sure, I know that story,” he said, smiling. “I’m
Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows You How to Identify and Protect Yourself From Harmful People
by Joe Navarro and Toni Sciarra Poynter · 6 Oct 2014 · 261pp · 71,798 words
“magical” place for children and adults to enjoy themselves—which would become Disneyland, Disney World, and Epcot. The narcissist’s grandiosity is entirely different. Consider Jim Jones, whose vision for Jonestown in Guyana was to create a place where people would pay tribute to him as a supreme individual. The price of
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the leader at the followers’ expense. As for cults, I’ve never studied one that didn’t have a pathologically narcissistic individual as its leader. Jim Jones (Jonestown, Guyana), David Koresh (Branch Davidians), Charles Manson, Shoko Asahara (Aum Shinrikyo), Joseph Di Mambro (Order of the Solar Temple, also known as Ordre du
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massacre in Guyana, a small group of FBI profilers gathered at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, to look at the events surrounding Jim Jones and his cult, the Peoples Temple. It was a sobering day for me because even though I had read about the event over the years, seeing the actual crime
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scene photographs of the bloated bodies of children and babies gave me a new perspective on the massacre, the Reverend Jim Jones, and his narcissistic personality
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.gov/jonestown/jonestown/). If you read the thousands of pages from this online FBI report or from one of the many books written about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, some lessons prominently stand out: A striking number of people can be made to unconditionally put their lives in the hands of one individual
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have been warnings to prospective members. Only a handful of sect members may see the sect leader for what he is. Only a few saw Jim Jones as a toxic and dangerous narcissistic personality. Once vested and committed to the cult leader, followers are reluctant or unwilling to see the looming peril
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occur when the paranoid personalities decide to isolate themselves with their children within the confines of a cult, as we saw with those who followed Jim Jones to his compound in Guyana. Exposing their children to the squalor of a dengue-infested jungle and the paranoid rantings of a narcissistic megalomaniac wasn
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-laced Kool-Aid (November 18, 1978). Nine hundred eighteen died that day because they—or, in the case of innocent children, their parents—believed. Like Jim Jones’s followers in Guyana, everyone who associated with David Koresh, head of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, in the 1980s and early 1990s
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also, as he truly believed he was divine, that only he had all the answers, and that an apocalyptic end was coming. Both he and Jim Jones demanded blind and unconditional obedience; anyone who was against them was in peril. Remember, if you’re not with them, you’re against them. THE
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understand. COMBINING THREE OR MORE DANGEROUS PERSONALITY TYPES Now let's consider individuals with three or more traits. When I look at the behaviors of Jim Jones, the cult leader of Jonestown, Guyana, I find that he certainly had narcissistic traits. His need to be worshipped is clearly narcissistic. But he also
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studying leaders in hate groups or cults. Recent history gives us several. David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians, was similar in many ways to Jim Jones: narcissistic and paranoid, with traits of the predator. But then so is polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs. Until his arrest, Jeffs’s cult had been
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ways of achieving that, including using guilt or shaming your friends and family), just be aware that dangerous personalities use isolation for control. Everyone from Jim Jones to Ted Bundy used isolation to control their victims. Avoid it if possible. This also includes avoiding getting into vehicles with strangers or with those
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Power: History of Communism in Kampuchea, 1930–1975. London: Verso Press, 1985. Kilduff, Marshall, and Ron Javers. The Suicide Cult: The Inside Story of the Peoples Temple Sect and the Massacre in Guyana. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. Kilgannon, Corey. “Hedda Nussbaum Promotes Her Memoir on Life with an Abuser.” New York
A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Writings
by Richard Dawkins · 1 Jan 2004 · 460pp · 107,712 words
Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History
by Peter Houlahan · 10 Jun 2019
The Narcissist You Know
by Joseph Burgo · 239pp · 73,178 words
Hollow City
by Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg · 1 Jan 2001
The Knowledge Illusion
by Steven Sloman · 10 Feb 2017 · 313pp · 91,098 words