I would say there is some relevance to this thread. The idea being that a component of evil is dehumanization. Ascribing to one side the responsibility for the majority of the world’s evil, is an act of dehumanizing that side. Dehumanization precedes evil. Funny how that works.
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I believe blaming ideologies for our actions is excuse making. Hitler hated Jews before he was a Nazi, not because he was a Nazi. Stalin didn’t murder millions of his own people because of communism but because he was a maniac. If we focus on ideologies, we dismiss the human element behind acts of evil. Ideologies can be used to excuse all kinds of evil behaviors. Ayn Rand approved of the genocide of the Indians, using her ideology to defend that position. The US has been behind coups in Latin America because of ideology. We in turn blame those ideologies when we look back and disapprove of those acts. Do people not have a choice?
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Deal, I’ll do my best to keep my case on-point and relevant to the thread topic.
If we consider the case of Jim Jones, and we can all agree that he was an evil man, let’s ask the question of “How did he do it?”.
How was he able to amass millions of dollars? How was he able to amass thousands of followers? How was he able to convince these people to move to Guyana to create a communist utopia? How was he able to convince the same people to drink the kool-aid?
There are a lot of answers to this question. He was charismatic. He was clever. He was power-hungry. He was never a believer in Christianity, but he was always a true believer in communism. Christians don’t get appointed as the head of the Housing Authority of San Francisco in 1976. Hard core leftists get that job.
Like any other mass murderer, he needed help. Jim Jones got his help from the entire progressive establishment, from the news media to Hollywood to the political elite, including all of who’s who in California progressive politics right up to the White House. Using rhetoric nearly identical to today’s darlings of the progressive left, he built the People’s Temple into a massive fundraising and political activism machine. He was the AOC of his time, until, well, you know THAT happened.
After the massacre all of the people who enabled his rise to power scattered away from him like cockroaches. The Herb Cains, the Willy Browns, the Jerry Browns and all of the people who lauded Jim Jones right up until the massacre had to create space. All of a sudden Jim Jones morphed from a progressive champion of social justice into a “power hungry fascist” in the words of Walter Kronkite.
Today most people associate him more with Christianity than with communism, which is what communists and communist sympathizers always do and still try to do today. Explain away the awful outcomes from their rhetoric and policy by controlling the narrative. Still the modus operandi today.
Here’s a good read from the wayback machine, back when journalism was still practiced.
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How do you know this?
Something interesting about this thread is that you and another poster have taken the opportunity to attack the left, whatever that even means, and place the responsibility for evil acts on the left. Because in your mind it makes sense that anyone who is a democrat or so called leftist must therefore approve of mass murder. Comparing AOC to Jim Jones? Seriously?
The thing is, it is only you and another poster who have made this thread into a place to vent your hate for a political ideology that you haven’t even defined. You say the left then you say communism. Which is it? But again, it’s only you and another poster who have betrayed your obsession with a binary view of politics. It’s as though you expect some leftist on here to defend Jim Jones or Stalin.
Woodrow Wilson was a Republican. He was behind the occupation of Haiti. The US enacted racist policies in Haiti. Should I now say anyone on the right must therefore approve of racism? Should I point out Reagan’s role in the crack epidemic in the US as well as his racism that has been made a matter of public record? His invasion of Grenada to distract from his failure in Beirut? Is this thread supposed to devolve into keeping score when it comes to how many this or that side killed? What’s next? We are going to compare how many people Christians, Muslims, atheists, pagans have killed over the centuries?
Edit: Wilson was a democrat. I meant to show how individuals from two parties can do bad things without it being a reflection on everyone in those parties.
I’m trying so hard to not turn this into a political thing, but i think you’re way, way, way off the mark here.
I read The Road to Jonestown and listened to a long multi-part podcast covering Jim Jones on The Last Podcast on the Left. You could also, get this, read Jim Jones’ own words. Or, for another crazy idea, read the New York Times article I linked from 1978.
From the article:
Years later, in a 1977 interview with The New York Times, his wife said that her husband had not been lured to the ministry by deep religious faith, but because it served his goal of achieving social change through Marxism.
When he was 18, she said, he told her his hero was Mao Tse‐tung, who had just overthrown the Chinese Nationalist Government. And at 21, she said, he decided that the way to achieve social change was to mobilize people through religion.
“Jim used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion,” she said, adding that he had once slammed a Bible on a table and said, “I’ve got to destroy this paper idol!” If that was how he felt from the start, it was not what he told his congregation.
From the man himself:
“If you’re born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you’re born in sin. But if you’re born in socialism, you’re not born in sin.” – Jim Jones
“The young preacher once threw his Bible to the floor and yelled at his associates, “Too many people are looking at this instead of looking at me!” - Time Magazine , December 4, 1978
At every turn right up until the massacre, Jim Jones was supported by mainstream progressives while openly preaching communism. It’s no small coincidence that the people who believe in the message of communism are the ones who are easily led off of a cliff. It’s no coincidence that communism, socialism and the American manifestations of it attract power-hungry narcissists who cynically exploit the good intentions of other people to assume power in the framework created by the ideologies.
You make the absurd case that the outcomes are disconnected to the ideologies. It seems rather obvious to me that the outcomes aren’t possible without the ideologies. If not for the massive progressive support, Jim Jones would have been another street preacher. If not for the ideology of communism, Stalin would have been another thug unknown to history, unable to starve millions and run the gulag system. These outcomes are features of the ideology, not bugs. The ideologies do nothing but attract and enable power-hungry, sociopathic narcissists time and time again.
But that’s not real communism.
On Jim Jones being a communist and communist ideology leading to the massacre? Really? What do you think enabled his massacre, if not for his political ideology? How would he have gotten so wealthy? How would he have gotten so well-known? How would he have gotten so powerful?
Or were you referring to something else?
AK-47’s. The people who refused to drink the cool-aid were mowed down.
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That would be great comparison. The number of Christians who murdered compared to Muslims, atheists… Christians … surely there have been many Christians who in a weak moment murdered. That’s true Christians, not those whose souls are just as dark as an militant atheist. Muslims… 100s of millions. You mentioned atheists not killing in the name of atheistism. China is there now. Pol pot, not sure, but trying to squeak by by saying not in the name of atheistism, isn’t a valid argument. The French revolution, atheists killed in the name of atheistism. But then that cause died away.
In Stalins example, it wasn’t a cause he was interested. But he was an atheist. Atheists have no moral compass. If an atheist says he is moral, whose moral code is he following? The moral norm has changed throughout the world outside of Christian life. An atheist could be a cannibal, some regions throughout the world have been there. Killing babies. A moral thing? Some people want to be able to end life of a baby even after birth.
I don’t know, because i don’t know enough about him. I suspect he was a communist in the same way that John of Lyden was an Annabaptist, although i don’t know enough to back that up. I also don’t believe that this type of tragic brainwashing is something unique to communism, rather than something that’s been happening throughout history.
Mostly though, i think that equating communism and socialism is insincere at best.
Edit: i suspect the socialism/communism thing is probably best done away from this thread though.
The French Revolution begot the American Revolution. I wouldn’t say that cause “died away”. Pretty sure that cause is still alive and well.
There have been philosophers writing moral and ethical codes of conduct since ancient times. There are vast libraries filled with them.
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Cool article. And great thread. Has anyone mentioned christobal Columbus? Great sci-fi book called the futurewatch - the redemption of Christopher Columbus, explores this. Seems like he was quite the zealot and madman.
Thanks
Al
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Have you heard of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy? If not, you might want to look that up.
How did you come to this conclusion?
Christianity isn’t immune to changing moral norms. What is acceptable in many Christian communities now isn’t the same as what was in the 50s for example.
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Huh?
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Correct, and the AK-47’s were wielded by Jim Jones’ most devoted followers, and only them. Another recurring theme among histories great murderers is making sure the people they want to murder don’t really get say in how that goes down. By the time they all got to Jonestown in Guyana, the people of the People’s Temple had no power whatsoever.
They gave it all to the man they trusted. The man who said the right words.
I disagree. If we’re to examine evil outcomes, you cannot escape the connection to particular ideologies. I realize this irks people who insist that modern conservatives and/or Republicans must have supported a genocidal monster or mass murderer in the last 100 years or so, or that our ideas about government spawn tyrant after tyrant, but the record isn’t there. Instead we get @zecarlo incorrectly labeling Woodrow Wilson as a Republican and doing the same distant reaches to draw conservative equivalence to some of the absolute worst outcomes in all of human history.
If this thread is to be apolitical, then all of history’s great murderers are off of the discussion table. None of them did it without engaging in the political process to achieve the necessary support that led to the awful outcomes we can all (seemingly) agree are evil.
You can, I suppose, talk about the Ariel Castro’s or John Wayne Gacey’s of the world, but that’s a pretty limited scope of evil. Whether you’re talking about Genghis Khan, his successors, Tamerlane, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Jim Jones or any other powerful killers in history, they all had help. They got that help by promising people a better life and engaging in the political process.
Genghis Khan actually delivered on that promise, for a few hundred years at least. Maybe that’s why he’s on the money today in 2022.
Thanks, drbabar. But I have to admit, this thread is causing my BP to go up. Must…refrain…from diving into politics. Oh, and no one mentioned Columbus. I know a little about him, but not enough. Feel free to fill me (us) in.
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So was Ghengis Khan a Republican or a Democrat? A Socialist or a Capitalist?
In my estimation, he was horny mostly.
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He was an absolute monarch with nearly full dictatorial powers who, at the root of the matter, governed through force. His economy was probably more capitalistic than communistic, but nothing remotely resembling a modern democratic republic.
His military, not inherited but devised and developed by him, was perhaps the greatest example of an egalitarian meritocracy in all of history. You didn’t command a tumen because you were the duke who has a lot of money, you commanded a tumen because you demonstrated your competence in warfare. His military was a great example of what can be achieved when you unburden yourself from ideologies like communism and Naziism. Without any ideological purity tests, you’re just left with what works best.
He was also an anti-racist, insomuch as he would promote anyone from any tribe and any religion who would serve faithfully and effectively. One of his most famous generals was Jebe, who fought against Genghis so well that Genghis offered him a job.
If anything, I kind of imagine Genghis Khan as an Elon Musk of the 13th century. A visionary genius who didn’t follow the conventional path and rose to heights unimaginable. There’s just that small difference in body counts. It is very hard to draw western equivalence to the Mongols.
A good insight into just how different the worldviews were between the steppe nomads and Catholics can be seen in the correspondence between the papacy and Mongol Khans.
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That’s kinda my point though. He wasn’t chasing a political ideal so much as wanting to get rich, powerful and laid. Like Stalin, or Hitler, or Jim Jones. I don’t see it as an ideological thing so much as a human thing.
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