Please disable your Ad Blocker to better interact with this website.

Email FeaturedHistoryOpinionPhilosophyReligion

Creepy — Is a Political Jonestown Coming to America?

Liberals are always the first ones to deride and mock people of faith. To those on the left, all religions are equivalent to a cult. Yet, secular or not, liberals themselves are the most cult-like of all Americans.

For example, modern-day progressives would never admit that Jim Jones of Jonestown fame adhered to the same socialist utopian ideologies as their esteemed leader Barack Obama.

Moving from California to Guyana in the late 1970s with the express purpose of setting up a religious utopia, Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones established a communal agricultural project.

Jones preached about the virtues of establishing and furthering a social gospel. What Jim Jones forgot to mention was that the “Apostolic Socialism” gospel he preached was really communism.

Sounding a lot like Karl Marx, Jones taught that, “Those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment — socialism.”

Jones extolled a version of a gospel that sounds a lot like what Americans have been hearing from another social justice promoter named Barack Obama. “If you’re born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you’re born in sin,” said Jones, “but if you’re born in socialism, you’re not born in sin.”

“Level the playing field,” anyone? How about “sharing the wealth?”

To his credit, Jim Jones never covered up crucifixes when speaking in Christian venues, nor did he accuse his followers of clinging to guns and religion while quoting Scripture out of context every chance he got. Instead, Jim Jones derided Christianity openly. Jim Jones insisted that patriarchal religious institutions and the Bible were tools used to subjugate both women and non-whites. Sound familiar?

Jones built Jonestown and called it the “Peoples Temple Agricultural Project.” Jonestown was promoted as a means to create both a “socialist paradise” and a “sanctuary” from the media scrutiny in San Francisco.

The primary purpose of Jonestown was to establish an altruistic communist society disguised as a religious community. According to Jones, “I believe we’re the purest communists there are.”

Jones openly admitted: “I’m so purely socialistic and some of my family is so purely socialistic, some of the members of this glorious Temple are so purely socialistic, that you’d be glad to work to see that everyone had the same kind of house, the same kind of cars … People are so afraid of socialism. They’re so terrified. They say, ‘What’ll it do to us?’ Why, you poor people.”

At first, Jim Jones attracted people, many of whom were black, to the Peoples Temple through speeches disguised as religious sermons that focused on tolerance, social responsibility, and community.

Preying on the broken, hurting, and homeless, “Alternate Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple,” sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, writes: “Jim Jones appeared to be a great person, and he convinced so many people that he was doing great things in the community. He united the races, and combated the racist attitude, which may have lingered within members. He supported the poor and elderly people in the community.”

As Jim Jones’ following grew, his sermons on fairness and acceptance were disproven by his own hypocrisy, evidenced by his increasing demands for cult-like devotion and unquestioning compliance. Members were confined to the compound, overworked, and increasingly indoctrinated.

Jones’ grip on his followers was so strong that, in 1978, after murdering California Congressman Leo Ryan, three members of the media, and one defector of the compound, 900 or so of his followers, including 300 children, joined him in mass suicide, which was the largest deliberate single-event death toll in American history, until September 11th 2001.

Now, in the political realm, the past is repeating itself. Liberal devotees are exhibiting a religious zeal they themselves would normally mock in others.

For five years the left has evangelized poor minorities into believing one man is able to deliver the Nirvana they seek and are told they have been wrongly denied. There is talk of fairness, accusations of racism, an anti-capitalistic sentiment, calls for community commitment, and persecution directed at traditional organized religion. All that’s missing is the South American jungle.

Even more disturbing is that, with an eerie similarity to Jonestown’s cult-like enthusiasm, anti-religion liberals are eagerly lining up to partake of a cyanide-laced socialistic healthcare plan being fed to them by a charismatic leader named Barack Obama. And while Obama is certainly not encouraging mass suicide, in essence, the end result will be larger and more devastating.

Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com

Image: Cult leader Jim Jones as the loving father of the “Rainbow Family”; The Jonestown Institute, http://jonestown. sdsu.edu. This photo appeared in a Temple-produced brochure publizing the accomplishments of Jonestown.” http:// jonestown.sdsu.edu/About Jonestown/Gallery/G2/images/01-rainbow.jpg

Jeannie DeAngelis

Jeannie DeAngelis, born in Brooklyn, New York and raised on Long Island, is a wife, mother and grandmother to three grandsons. She has written for politically-themed articles for conservative websites like American Thinker and Breitbart, emphasizing current events as well as the full range of liberal hypocrisy in politics and Hollywood, and pro-life issues. Jeannie publishes a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *