[NOTE: This is not original content, it is a repost from a tumblr thread which can be found here.]
Ok, I actually want to talk about this for a moment.
Jonestown, one of the most infamous cults in history, with a mass suicide / mass murder that left more than 900 people dead of cyanide poisoning, hundreds of whom were childrenā¦ was a leftist political cult. That fact is an unambiguous and completely undebatable matter of historical record.
This isnāt a footnote in the story of Jonestown, and it isnāt a weird anti-leftist gotcha either. Jonestown attracted people to their cause with anti-segregation and anti-poverty activist work, and they did actual, meaningful good for those causes. The Peopleās Temple was a leftist org, unambiguously. They created mutual aid networks for food aid, and rent assistance, and job placement services, and clothing donations, and winter heating. They leaned heavily on the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in order to push desegregation, and led sit-ins and boycotts and protests. They participated in significant voter registration efforts. They led the fight against the eviction of tenants from San Franciscoās International Hotel.
People joined The Peopleās Temple because it was a good thing when they joined it. They didnāt start out as brainwashed cultists, and they didnāt gravitate towards the leadership of Jim Jones out of masochism, or inherent submissiveness, or a perverse love of creeping authoritarianism. They fell in line under Jim Jones because heād built a community that was genuinely helping people, and was advancing a political cause that seemed worth fighting. They followed Jim Jones because he earned their trust.
Jim Jones then used the trust and the social capital that he had gained from all of the above in order to elevate himself to the status of a messianic figure, and abuse and profit off of his followers. Slowly but surely, he boiled the frog. It was all good ā and then it was mostly good ā and then, well there was some abuse, but it wasnāt that bad, and it wasnāt really his fault ā and then there was a lot of abuse, but the outside world would destroy them if given the chance, so wasnāt it the lesser of the two evils? And then, eventually, it got so bad that hundreds of people poisoned themselves and their children at his command, and murdered everyone in the compound who refused and resisted.
Your cause of choice is not immune from abusers taking advantage of it!
It doesnāt matter if youāre right. It doesnāt matter if your cause is just. It does not matter if your good thing really is a good thing, because there is always the possibility that it will one day be co-opted by a monster. And if the fact that it started good is enough for you to ignore that gradual, subtle change, you could end up in a truly horrible situation.
One of my best friends in undergrad got sucked into a cult. Years later, we talked about it, and he told me something that Iāll never forget which is, itās only when you look all the way back at things that they seem crazy. You start off with things that are totally normal and innocuous: āweāre stronger togetherā; āoppression is badā; āyou can accomplish more if you believe in yourselfā; āempathy is important and we should all try to bring more of it into our livesā; etc. Then, you move to something thatās just a little step away from that. And then again. And then again. And then again. But it never feels like a big jump, because itās not! A -> Z is crazy, but A -> B wasnāt, and B -> C wasnāt, and C -> D wasnāt, andā¦
This friend was smart, and rational, and independent, and normal, and by the time he and his wife left, theyād gone from just thinking that we should all practice more emotional mindfulness, to being terrified that leaving the cult and the cult leader would literally kill them, via the cult leader having magical powers.
If your only analysis is āWhere I started was good, and no single step since then has been crazyā that is utterly insufficient to keep you safe.
āThis canāt possibly be a cult, because when I joined it was a leftist political org and thereās never been a single instance where it suddenly changedā is literally the exact logic that kept people in Jonestown until it was too late.
Itās such a modern thing to frame everything as a āleft vs. rightā debate. As if one group makes all the cults. And if you believe that there arenāt left wing cults, or that they arenāt right wing cults, then youāve stopped critically thinking and youāll be prone to falling for it. Thinking youāre too smart to be scammed is how people get scammed.
Nothing about cults or their diagnostic criteria have anything to do with WHAT the message actually is.
Modern awareness of right-wing authoritarianism as a means of control has been abused by groups seeking to divide and control leftists. Itās really easy to start an anti-racism group by creating a reddit sub, for instance. Then using nothing more than reddit algorithms you have an instant cult base to start seeding whatever message you want. This is not a new phenomenon; it has been going on for at least 15 years and has only gained speed on the fediverse. Polarization breeds radicalization.
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The only way to be too smart to be scammed is to understand that you are perfectly capable of being scammed and always looking out for it.
Jonestown hasnāt been āin the room with usā for 50 years.
This is why itās important to collect questions and not overvalue answers.
Thank you very much for sharing that, I feel privileged to have seen it and I think it will stick with me a long time
One of my favourite pieces
That was delightful, thank you for sharing.
I shared it with a friend I met through a philosophy group who is having a rough time at the moment, so thank you doubly
If āworthlessā answers are the only thing that leads to actions, the things that makes things actually happen, whatās, the real use of your precious questions and crazy theories to the world out there anyway?
Jim Jones represents a genuinely curious piece of American history.
Someone who started out as a seemingly forthright and serious Marxist, who leveraged the umbrella protection of the Christian Church against the Red Scare tactics of the Hoover FBI, who adopted the utopian language and social mission of the Civil Rights Era, and who ultimately abused the authority invested in him by a congregation that sought real progressive goals.
I think itās very easy to look at the Peopleās Temple, in hindsight, and proclaim āWell I simply wouldnāt have been in a cult to begin withā. Much more difficult to understand the political tensions of the era, the violence directed at organizers and civic activists, the horrors of looming nuclear war, and the economic realities of experienced by church members.
This friend was smart, and rational, and independent, and normal, and by the time he and his wife left, theyād gone from just thinking that we should all practice more emotional mindfulness, to being terrified that leaving the cult and the cult leader would literally kill them, via the cult leader having magical powers.
Social alienation, isolation, and poverty deteriorate the capacity for reasoning. This isnāt unique to ācultsā. You can find the same dynamics in souring marriages, floundering businesses, and failing governments. The āHitlerās Bunkerā moment can arrive for the most enlightened and the most canny, if their fortunes turn and their friends leave them.
āThis canāt possibly be a cult, because when I joined it was a leftist political org and thereās never been a single instance where it suddenly changedā is literally the exact logic that kept people in Jonestown until it was too late.
What kept people in Jonestown was their exile from Indianapolis and Redwood Valley, California for holding unorthodox political views in the midst of a Red Scare. If you were in an interracial relationship at the Peopleās Temple - a relationship that was illegal until 1954 and heavily stigmatized straight into the modern day, where exactly where you supposed to go?
If you were blacklisted as a Communist? If you were being surveilled by the FBI? If you were otherwise homeless, you had no personal savings, no nearby family who would take you in, and no career prospects outside of panhandling and prostitution?
And someone comes by to say āYo, did you know youāre in a cult? You should leave.ā Leave to go where, exactly?
For a great many people, Guyana was the end of the line. They had nowhere else to go.
opportunistic assholes with delusions of grandeur will use whatever ideas are fashionable to do their thing. In the 20th century, socialism was such an idea
Justin Geever of Anti-Flag is a perfect modern example. While it wasnāt exactly a ācultā, punk is at itās core a left-wing counter-culture community, and even if it tries to have a level playing field, popular musicians end up with celebrity status. Geever made a career out of punk spectacle combined with legitimate activism off-stage even if the band made it to the fringe of mainstream pop punk. Radically vocal about feminism and equality, dude was a behind the scenes rapist. Not just ātake advantage of fansā level rape (he did that too), like āno doesnāt mean shitā, violent physical force applied rape. He also obviously had a plan for if he ever got exposed because as soon as he thought the jig was up he was out of country, assets transferred, hiding under a rock in a country with no extradition. It hit the punk scene hard because while AF could be obnoxiously preachy and obtuse, they did effectively sell their message as genuine, were a gateway band for a lot of younger punks, and the whole thing has led to questioning how someone like that hid in plain sight so long.
It wasnāt a leftist political cult. Jim Jones started out as a very charismatic religious leader on the left, particularly with regard to race relations. Thatās how he managed to rise in national prominence and rub elbows with important people.
Whether he āknew what he was doingā in those early years will never be known, but he loved the power and control he could exert and his priorities shifted to getting more of those for himself.
At the end he was most definitely a paranoid, power mad, delusional, insane cult leader. But politics had entirely left the chat.
For anyone who hasnāt seen the miniseries Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones it has an all-star cast: two Deadwood alum (Tombstoneās Powers Boothe and Dune 1984ās Brad Dourif), Star Trek: TNG and Rootsā LeVar Burton, Star Wars and Lion Kingās James Earl Jones, and the celebrated Christmas Vacation and Independence Dayās Randy Quaid.
Seems to be a decent dramatization as it starts out sympathetic then increasingly lurches toward madness. (The two Deadwood actors even sweatily share a bed in one scene, but unfortunately itās not what you think.)
He also claimed to be a Marxist and frequently talked about socialism and communism. Reading his Wikipedia article, it certainly sounds like this cult was a curious mixture of religion and politics, and at times it sounds like he was just using religion to further his idea of communism. Hard to tell what was genuine and what wasnāt (and which parts his cult members were believing, especially the inner circle), but āpolitical cultā seems like an apt description to me. He even tried to donate his churchās assets to the Soviet Union after the massacre.
Also very clearly an abuser from the start, but thatās not mutually exclusive.
Yes, and North Korea has Democratic in its name and a single candidate.
Itās actually quite an interesting Topic but at the end of the day itās all show the candidates are pre selected and while you sure can mark out who they said youāre voting for, youāre doing it in front of officials and placing your special no vote in a separate box I donāt have high hopes for the 0.07% who voted against Kim Jong Un this āelection
Once again, people, itās a class war.
And thatās precisely why we need fewer heroes/idols/exemplary figures in general, not more. Let movements keep themselves going on their own merits, not on the charisma or talent of a corruptible person.
What was the cult your friend joined?
Most likely a magat cultist. Those things are beyond hope.
So then are there any durably reliable heuristics for avoiding malevolent organizations?
Never go beyond A in the alphabet: itās a slippery slope.
