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My point is this. Had America dealt with its racial issues LONG, LONG TIME AGO, long before the 1960s, things might have been different.
Oh for sure, there should never had been any slaves brought to or taken in the new world to begin with, it's a stain against humanity and it should have been abolished much earlier along with discrimination. But it was abolished, and the 60's had many new laws to protect rights. In 2020-21 the oppression isn't there any more. Racism still exists among many individuals, but it's nowhere near what it was, and all people no matter the race or religion have recourse in the courts. The revolutionaries have to literally re-invent terms like systemic racism and euphemisms for communism like "equity" in order to get a whole new generation to go along.
The majority of his congregation was Black. How could Jim Jones convince alot of people to go along with him? Simply. Alot of those individuals felt oppressed and downtrodden by the current system they were living under. This was the 1960s and 70s. Jim Jones preached racial harmony and integration, and lived it. America was still grappling with race issues. Sounds quite promising to alot of people who in that time and historically were basically at the bottom of society. It resonated with those who were discriminated against and treated badly. He could have been Stalin and those persons would have followed him. Jim Jones promised them something American society was slow to give.
What I want to mention is not an endorsement of Communism or Marxism. I'm not for it. I just want to mention something. America was scared of the growing threat of Communism abroad. If Soviet Marxists wanted to start a proxy war, it could have easily happened in the United States. With growing anger within the Black American population during the 1950s and 60s, and some Blacks taking up Marxism on their own, the Soviets would have found plenty of willing recruits. One of the founders of the Black Panther Party (the original one) once served in the U.S. military, but got discharged for bad conduct. Marxism influenced the BPP of the 1960s. Alot of those who joined tended to be the Black urban poor. Black people were leaving the South during the years followed WWII to escape the dictatorial regime of Jim Crow and the lack of opportunities in the South. What many found in the urban areas outside of the South wasn't much better. A new underclass dominated by Blacks from the South started forming during the 1950s and 60s. New forms of discrimination and segregation took place. If the Soviets wanted to start a proxy war in America, it would have been easy. Marxist-influenced philosophies were something that appealed to some of the urban poor. It was viewed by some as the only way to deal with the problems many Blacks faced.
My point is this. Marxism appeals to those who see themselves as the oppressed. In Russia, it was the peasant class taking up Marxism. I really don't know any Black people who support Marxism. However, I notice that historically, Marxism had a larger foothold in the Black population relative to other groups. Why?
There was the proxy war too. You can read all about that in Dr. Dodd’s testimony:
You’re right that people fell prey to Jone’s manipulative tactics. He quickly recognized that he could use “social justice” to entice people into his little fantasy world. Like most psychopaths he realized all his little pets had to be kept happy but they would not be allowed to leave. All the usual cult tactics were carried out including isolating the people from any communications with the outside world. Gaslighting then to the point where he would have them practice their own suicides over and over and over while he had “actors” running around in the woods acting like they were seizing the compound because the federal government couldn’t have them being socialist. They used rubber bullets and when the act was over he told them all to go home a rest, nuts.
This is why these Utopian ideologies always fail. There’s always someone without morals at all willing to use people’s compassion and sympathy against them. The goal might be “resource extraction” or it could be a megalomaniac psychopath that enjoys people fawning all over them while they try to control every aspect of their lives. When the honeymoon is over and people want to leave the darkness comes out and the paranoid delusions of imminent danger overwhelm the psychopath and they start doing things like creating gulags and executing people on site and erasing all known information related to them including family members, children, associates. The promise to rid people of their abject miseries from a political messiah seems to be something built into the human psyche, like the need to operate as if we practice a religion even if we don’t believe in any gods. We still find things that we replace that religion with whether it be science or some other mysticism. Maybe even materialism…
At first I didn’t believe her when she told me that lack of opportunity was the only impediment that prevented her from coming out of the closet. Wasn’t it clear, after all, that she’d wanted to have an affair with her best female friend? She knew that Peoples Temple was “gay friendly.” What I didn’t tell her, perhaps because I didn’t yet recognize, was that PT and its master practiced what Herbert Marcuse, writing during that period, described as “repressive tolerance.”
Repressive Tolerance keeps coming up. It's a Totalitarian Manifesto.
Quote:
The author is fully aware that, at present, no power, no authority, no government exists which would translate liberating tolerance into practice, but he believes that it is the task and duty of the intellectual to recall and preserve historical possibilities which seem to have become utopian possibilities--that it is his task to break the concreteness of oppression in order to open the mental space in which this society can be recognized as what it is and does.
It's also the playbook the left is using right now. Tolerance towards anything Left and intolerance towards anything Right. Back then it would have made more sense. The left had the government and unions but most of the institutions were conservative or right leaning. Unfortunately Marcuse wrote a how-to manual for totalitarians. Our problem, right this second, is people who are using this playbook do not seem to understand they have all of the institutional power. If they practice "discriminatory tolerance" while having all of the power they will be exactly what they are supposedly against, the majority with all its institutional power oppressing the minority.
Quote:
In the United States, this tendency goes hand in hand with the monopolistic or oligopolistic concentration of capital in the formation of public opinion, i.e., of the majority. The chance of influencing, in any effective way, this majority is at a price, in dollars, totally out of reach of the radical opposition. Here too, free competition and exchange of ideas have become a farce. The Left has no equal voice, no equal access to the mass media and their public facilities - not because a conspiracy excludes it, but because, in good old capitalist fashion, it does not have the required purchasing power. And the Left does not have the purchasing power because it is the Left.
*link above*
Any sane person can see where this will be a problem. All the conditions are lining up for something truly horrific to pop off.
My point is this. Had America dealt with its racial issues LONG, LONG TIME AGO, long before the 1960s, things might have been different.
Civil rights movement could have happened in the 1920s. However since black folks were economically doing well. Many did not feel tehy wanted to do a civil rights movement and were caught up on booker t Washington ideology. By the election of FDR. He started to integrate blacks in employment during thr 1930s.mkre integration will take place after such as military in the 1940s. America could have done away with him crow within the 1920s.
And yet, he got close to 1000 people to go along with his insanity. Presumably 1000 people who were by and large not mentally ill, but instead easily manipulated as so many are today on the left, especially those so self-traumatized by the caricature of Trump that they have joined the Woke cult.
People who don't stand on principle and don't think critically (in the actual sense of the word), are doomed to be manipulated.
Look at all the people duped by the MEDIA and Democrats into wearing masks and drastically limiting their lives for the past year and a half. They just blindly go along with it. Mass Indoctrination. Propaganda works.
Checks and balances exist to keep psychopaths, sociopaths, and various mentally unstable people from getting too much power, because the one thing supporters of wanting to control what everyone else does have in common is they tend to be mentally unstable or hurt in some way.... say they lost their true love or never found love or had a bad upbringing. This leads them to have extremist views such as supporting communism and wanting a hive mind collective of like minded people and to kill everyone else, which is what it takes to make communism work. There is no independent thought, freedom of speech, personal growth... you must do what the state says or else. Basically misery loves company.
Do we now get to pick a capitalist mass murderer as if it proves anything? What a fun game.
I know it's do hard to come to grips with how dangerous woke thinking is so the best way to deal with it is just to deflect and say what about the other guy.
It's also the playbook the left is using right now. Tolerance towards anything Left and intolerance towards anything Right. Back then it would have made more sense. The left had the government and unions but most of the institutions were conservative or right leaning. Unfortunately Marcuse wrote a how-to manual for totalitarians. Our problem, right this second, is people who are using this playbook do not seem to understand they have all of the institutional power. If they practice "discriminatory tolerance" while having all of the power they will be exactly what they are supposedly against, the majority with all its institutional power oppressing the minority. .
Oh they understand all right, because for them it's all about power. They will misframe and lie about everything to claim victim status. But you are correct, Marcusa is the father of today's dichotomy and asymmetry. That's not just a problem for injustice and true inequality, but it keeps pushing this completely bogus narrative that everything lies on a straight left right line and if you keep going right you eventually hit Adolf. Conservatives could not be further from Nazis, far leftists are much more like Nazis than conservatives will ever be. If there's to be "repressive tolerance" it should be for anything approaching collectivism, utopianism, and conformity (totalitarianism)
Look at all the people duped by the MEDIA and Democrats into wearing masks and drastically limiting their lives for the past year and a half. They just blindly go along with it. Mass Indoctrination. Propaganda works.
They started off the entire ordeal wearing Orwellian vagina hats and ended wearing Orwellian mask.
And yet, he got close to 1000 people to go along with his insanity. Presumably 1000 people who were by and large not mentally ill, but instead easily manipulated as so many are today on the left, especially those so self-traumatized by the caricature of Trump that they have joined the Woke cult.
People who don't stand on principle and don't think critically (in the actual sense of the word), are doomed to be manipulated.
Many didn't "go along with his insanity" as you state. Many were injected against their will and many drank poison against their will. He had shooters surrounding the compound. That was one big misconception about Jonestown, that they drank it voluntarily. The children surely didn't choose either.
I'd say T has some commonalities w/ other cult leaders, he seems to bring out a susceptibility in others, based on his "personality." T didn't lead for the common good, but for himself and his big fat ego.
But, I agree that critical thinking will get you further than following any politician or their views.
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