(This is part two; part one is here.) He broke families, he taught fear, he isolated people, he shamed and demeaned people to break their spirit, he made people dependent, he ran obedience tests with deliberate sadism to see who would take it. That’s it. Those are the tools. Again, all of this comes from Tim Reiterman’s book
That was some very impressive connection making...
After Trump won in 2016, I was astounded by the liberal descent into mass delusion. When Covid hit, and many a liberal started talking about punishing the unvaccinated, dehumanizing them, cheering authoritarianism, I was appalled. When Liberals cheered the weaponization of race and gender, cancel culture and character assassination, I knew war had started. When Russia started amassing at Ukraine's border, so very exactly timed when Covid receded, I knew something deeply nefarious was afoot, confirmed when I saw Liberals wailing and gnashing their teeth, their bloodlust hardly concealed. Now the leaked Roe v Wade decision, at the same time they are apoplectic about misinformation and the scourge that is Musk buying Twitter, while Biden institutes a Ministry of Truth to their cheers....
America is the one place to mount a defense against globalist authoritarians. Hence the psyops perpetrated against us here more than anywhere. It is not cultural succession as much the deliberate forced disintegration of Nation State America.
It's one thing when an abusive cult run by a megalomaniacal dark triad sociopath nucleates inside an otherwise relatively healthy society. It's another thing entirely when society as a whole becomes an abusive cult.
Great piece by the way. It didn't surprise me in the slightest that Jones availed himself if sexual access to the women under his sway, that's cult leader 101. It was eyebrow-raising to find out that he engaged in systematic buck-breaking. Now, with that in mind ... what to make of the lionization of homosexuality?
Thank you for writing these two essays, Chris, and for the book recommendations.
Unfortunately, a lot of "well-meaning" parents ruin their children using these and similar techniques, though not necessarily to the extreme degree that Jim Jones used them. I'm one of four children born to a pair of emotionally (or psychologically) sick parents. I'd say our spirits were certainly damaged, if not actually broken, by the bad parenting we experienced.
I'm painfully aware of how sick our parents were and how badly I was treated. I can't speak for exactly how my siblings feel about the parenting they received, though I'm pretty sure they're in a tremendous amount of denial about how damaging it was. I see this in their hideous sycophancy to our demented, sick, sadistic, egotistical, arrogant, unbelievably narcissistic father.
Our mother died over twenty-two years ago. I hated and feared her all my life, and I've never once missed her. I was emotionally distant from my father all my life, and at this point I hate him with a burning passion. He is a monster. I seriously considered running away from home when I was a teenager. To this day I honestly think I'd have been better off had I done so.
Great piece. I guess what stands out to me is that the insanity of Peoples Temple can still be traced to one deranged, but charismatic, individual: Jones, who was methodical and deliberate in his approach. But when you look at what's happening today, it feels a lot more distributed - it feels harder (at least for me) to trace the rot to a single source, and therefore is more difficult to deal with.
Maybe there is no single source, but some combination of 1) post-modernism (and attending decline in faith), 2) the internet providing endless content and frictionless distribution, and 3) wealth inequality and an increasingly entrenched elite class? Just thinking out loud, welcome any thoughts.
Having moved his flock to northern California in the 1960s, Jones began leveraging their labor toward political ends, volunteering them for protests or electioneering on behalf of friendly aspirants to public office. Gaining the respect of San Francisco’s political class, Jones became a player in his own right. Many gave him credit for Moscone’s tight victory in the 1975 mayoral runoff, and he was appointed head of the San Francisco Housing Authority. Praised as a hero of social justice and a crusader for racial equality, Jones became an important figure in Democratic politics.
Many powerful people—Governor Jerry Brown, columnist Herb Caen, and Vice President Walter Mondale, to name a few—sought Jones’s blessings and expressed admiration for his dedication to racial equality and a better world.
Seth Barron review of
Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco, by Daniel J. Flynn (ISI Books, 330 pp., $27.95)
It’s weird because my vaxxer friends would say I’m the cult member and been brainwashed but I think it’s them that are deluded. That’s the problem these days. We can’t point our fingers and go that place, that cult, that’s gotta go! because everyone is socially entangled. So perplexing but thank you for a wonderful, thought provoking piece. Well done!!
Brilliant piece. I look at the young people and what we've done and know that they'll be the ones wiping my ads when I'm 90. I expect a lot of bed sores.
Dang. House of Government is sitting there, waiting for me to get up the courage to crack it open. So now I have to add this one. I think some of you are more practiced at viewing the world in these contexts, so the rest of us have to proceed with caution or the brain’s self-protection instinct (denial) kicks in. 😆 My favorite line in The Burbs with Tom Hanks is where he’s described as not wanting to know what the neighbors are really up to, or he’d have to deal with it. There’s the mundane nothing’s-going-on view and the fantastical Satan’s-in-control view - but the truth is in the middle, and still way more disturbing than we want it to be.
Excellent stuff, yet again Chris! Loved Slezkine's House of Government as well, just ordered the book on Jones. Humans are increasingly vulnerable to this nonsense as families continue to be broken up, culture is atomized, and social media is forever pitting one group against another. Funny how they used to call it 'nudge' persuasion, why not just call it 'push'?
Willie Brown, who would become the speaker of the California State Assembly and then mayor of San Francisco, compared Jim Jones to Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Harvey Milk described Jonestown as “a beautiful retirement community” helping to “alleviating the world food crisis.” California lieutenant governor Mervyn Dymally actually made a pilgrimage to Jonestown that led to a gushing reaction typical of ideological tourists.
Ah. Melitha Harreth Perry. I would respect MSNBC progressives more if they'd just admit they're totalitarians who embrace critical race theory. Pretending otherwise is insulting and laughable. She was so far left, that they fired her. It appears Jim Jones is required reading for behavioural scientists.
CRT & woke genderqueer were built to sow chaos. Even the old school Communists call it out as corporate controlled means of subjugation. It’s being used to infiltrate societies around the world. Freighting on preexisting mental disorders it induces ideological possession in primary victims and provides an irrational sophist worldview enabling violence and furthering chaos. Lesbians, gays, women, liberal whites and progress made in race relations are some of its secondary victims.
I view this weaponized phenomenon as one feature of a global war on humanity itself both an intentional and emergent happening to the benefit of a parasite class.
Blessings🙏 and courage💗upon all who stand free, do not comply with and oppose this scapegoating madness.
That was some very impressive connection making...
After Trump won in 2016, I was astounded by the liberal descent into mass delusion. When Covid hit, and many a liberal started talking about punishing the unvaccinated, dehumanizing them, cheering authoritarianism, I was appalled. When Liberals cheered the weaponization of race and gender, cancel culture and character assassination, I knew war had started. When Russia started amassing at Ukraine's border, so very exactly timed when Covid receded, I knew something deeply nefarious was afoot, confirmed when I saw Liberals wailing and gnashing their teeth, their bloodlust hardly concealed. Now the leaked Roe v Wade decision, at the same time they are apoplectic about misinformation and the scourge that is Musk buying Twitter, while Biden institutes a Ministry of Truth to their cheers....
America is the one place to mount a defense against globalist authoritarians. Hence the psyops perpetrated against us here more than anywhere. It is not cultural succession as much the deliberate forced disintegration of Nation State America.
It's one thing when an abusive cult run by a megalomaniacal dark triad sociopath nucleates inside an otherwise relatively healthy society. It's another thing entirely when society as a whole becomes an abusive cult.
Great piece by the way. It didn't surprise me in the slightest that Jones availed himself if sexual access to the women under his sway, that's cult leader 101. It was eyebrow-raising to find out that he engaged in systematic buck-breaking. Now, with that in mind ... what to make of the lionization of homosexuality?
God Almighty! What a horrific nightmare!
Thank you for writing these two essays, Chris, and for the book recommendations.
Unfortunately, a lot of "well-meaning" parents ruin their children using these and similar techniques, though not necessarily to the extreme degree that Jim Jones used them. I'm one of four children born to a pair of emotionally (or psychologically) sick parents. I'd say our spirits were certainly damaged, if not actually broken, by the bad parenting we experienced.
I'm painfully aware of how sick our parents were and how badly I was treated. I can't speak for exactly how my siblings feel about the parenting they received, though I'm pretty sure they're in a tremendous amount of denial about how damaging it was. I see this in their hideous sycophancy to our demented, sick, sadistic, egotistical, arrogant, unbelievably narcissistic father.
Our mother died over twenty-two years ago. I hated and feared her all my life, and I've never once missed her. I was emotionally distant from my father all my life, and at this point I hate him with a burning passion. He is a monster. I seriously considered running away from home when I was a teenager. To this day I honestly think I'd have been better off had I done so.
Great piece. I guess what stands out to me is that the insanity of Peoples Temple can still be traced to one deranged, but charismatic, individual: Jones, who was methodical and deliberate in his approach. But when you look at what's happening today, it feels a lot more distributed - it feels harder (at least for me) to trace the rot to a single source, and therefore is more difficult to deal with.
Maybe there is no single source, but some combination of 1) post-modernism (and attending decline in faith), 2) the internet providing endless content and frictionless distribution, and 3) wealth inequality and an increasingly entrenched elite class? Just thinking out loud, welcome any thoughts.
Having moved his flock to northern California in the 1960s, Jones began leveraging their labor toward political ends, volunteering them for protests or electioneering on behalf of friendly aspirants to public office. Gaining the respect of San Francisco’s political class, Jones became a player in his own right. Many gave him credit for Moscone’s tight victory in the 1975 mayoral runoff, and he was appointed head of the San Francisco Housing Authority. Praised as a hero of social justice and a crusader for racial equality, Jones became an important figure in Democratic politics.
Many powerful people—Governor Jerry Brown, columnist Herb Caen, and Vice President Walter Mondale, to name a few—sought Jones’s blessings and expressed admiration for his dedication to racial equality and a better world.
Seth Barron review of
Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco, by Daniel J. Flynn (ISI Books, 330 pp., $27.95)
https://www.city-journal.org/jim-jones-san-francisco
It’s weird because my vaxxer friends would say I’m the cult member and been brainwashed but I think it’s them that are deluded. That’s the problem these days. We can’t point our fingers and go that place, that cult, that’s gotta go! because everyone is socially entangled. So perplexing but thank you for a wonderful, thought provoking piece. Well done!!
Brilliant piece. I look at the young people and what we've done and know that they'll be the ones wiping my ads when I'm 90. I expect a lot of bed sores.
Spot on! I know cults and I know the Left, and this is all right on target.
I never hated anything so much in my life and still agreed with it.
Dang. House of Government is sitting there, waiting for me to get up the courage to crack it open. So now I have to add this one. I think some of you are more practiced at viewing the world in these contexts, so the rest of us have to proceed with caution or the brain’s self-protection instinct (denial) kicks in. 😆 My favorite line in The Burbs with Tom Hanks is where he’s described as not wanting to know what the neighbors are really up to, or he’d have to deal with it. There’s the mundane nothing’s-going-on view and the fantastical Satan’s-in-control view - but the truth is in the middle, and still way more disturbing than we want it to be.
Excellent stuff, yet again Chris! Loved Slezkine's House of Government as well, just ordered the book on Jones. Humans are increasingly vulnerable to this nonsense as families continue to be broken up, culture is atomized, and social media is forever pitting one group against another. Funny how they used to call it 'nudge' persuasion, why not just call it 'push'?
Willie Brown, who would become the speaker of the California State Assembly and then mayor of San Francisco, compared Jim Jones to Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Harvey Milk described Jonestown as “a beautiful retirement community” helping to “alleviating the world food crisis.” California lieutenant governor Mervyn Dymally actually made a pilgrimage to Jonestown that led to a gushing reaction typical of ideological tourists.
Ah. Melitha Harreth Perry. I would respect MSNBC progressives more if they'd just admit they're totalitarians who embrace critical race theory. Pretending otherwise is insulting and laughable. She was so far left, that they fired her. It appears Jim Jones is required reading for behavioural scientists.
CRT & woke genderqueer were built to sow chaos. Even the old school Communists call it out as corporate controlled means of subjugation. It’s being used to infiltrate societies around the world. Freighting on preexisting mental disorders it induces ideological possession in primary victims and provides an irrational sophist worldview enabling violence and furthering chaos. Lesbians, gays, women, liberal whites and progress made in race relations are some of its secondary victims.
I view this weaponized phenomenon as one feature of a global war on humanity itself both an intentional and emergent happening to the benefit of a parasite class.
Blessings🙏 and courage💗upon all who stand free, do not comply with and oppose this scapegoating madness.
Two well written, well articulated pieces Chris.
https://www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/b-c-researchers-develop-game-to-address-vaccine-concerns-among-young-adults/
Did he play board games with the youngsters? Because now you can!! And encourage them to take those shots! So crazy!