Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 25, 1978, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free november world Jonestown finds a final reality Henry Allen tin washing Tan Post in an age in which everything was yet Tittle seemed the Jim Jones promised a at his Peoples Temple in California and in the Jungles of Little enough was permitted disciples surrendered aim in a Blaze of certainty lit by Jones deceits and Power they found Thor final reality they were smiling they were genuinely said Mark a lawyer for the cult who fled into the Jungle just before the mass Sui cide began with the squirting of Nide into babies adult supposedly immunized against such mad Ness by 20th Century education and children of the enlighten ment watched their own their spouses and friends die in foaming then waited even happily to fall dead in their Only they could understand whatever message they tried to Send with their so it died with but they were already Long past appreciating this Savage Para genuinely if Lane is Here lies the real terror for the rest of All in the historians groped for psychiatrists for Community leaders for courses of mow could this have happened could it happen again except Fot the smugness of Hind sights offered by foes of the mind control Cults that have emerged in the last there Are no simple a variety of explanations Rise out of fact and none suffices in but taken they begin to show How the madness of one Man could converge with the spirit of an age in upheaval to weave a doomed nexus out of strands ranging from the most ancient of human instincts and Cus the is cold for All that it was bizarre beyond we dont need a Jim Jones to invoke the supernatural to explain the immolation in it was a human frighteningly human exit has happened scientists and historians rushed to sweep the carnage into the Corner of but suicides even mass suicides for gods and right and have occurred in various con texts throughout on april nearly jewish defenders of the fortress Masada killed themselves rather than be taken prisoner by the besieging according to the 4th and 5th centuries were marked by the wilful Marty oms of the Dona in seeking frequently stopped travellers on the pub Lic highways and obliged them to it Flint the stroke of martyrdom by Promise of a if they consent by the threat of instant if they refused to Grant so very singular a the 13th the Fervour of the albigensian and cathar heretical sects in Southern France to avoid the material and seek the spiritual led to numerous deaths from a Tyyor of the Savage writes that after the Conquest of the new treatment at the hands of the Spanish was so cruel that the indians killed themselves by the thou Sands rather than endure in the West according to the Spanish historian Girolamo men and countless women and Chil Dren died by jumping from Cliffs or by killing each in the upheavals of the Industrial the romantic rebel lion turned suicide into a after the appearance of Goethe the sorrows of Young Europe was swept by Werthe like before the end of second world thousands of japanese soldiers and civilians killed them selves in Masse after Island Battles rather than be dishonoured by defeat or vietnamese buddhists registered political protests by set Ting themselves afire in the in about a dozen French students killed themselves As a political Ges put these however come within the Pale of understand what Promise of or threat of disaster or could have tempted the Peoples Temple we were informed that our Situa Tion bad become hopeless and that the Only course of action open to us was mass suicide for the glory of we were told that we squid be tortured by mercenaries if we were taken alive life at Jonestown was so miserable and the physical pain of exhaustion was so great that this event was not traumatic for i had become As to whether i lived or Deborah Layton former member of the Peoples scribing a suicide rehearsal there were no of there was Little situation to become the Peoples Temple was hardly known outside much less under except for some West coast Media Jones had sizable political clout he was head of the san Francisco mousing authority and a Treasury that May have held Mil Lions of he and his followers had by conventional to live what you have to remember is that leaders like Jones always believe in what there its a divine says Syracuse University anthropologist age Ananda once a person is embarked on this it Wilt Lead to a Power what increases the Power is the dependence of there Are Cults and cult leaders All Over the and always have in the South we have the cargo Cults whose members be Lieve in the imminent arrival of Shi loads of goods and if they can Only have Complete Faith that it will but in other something comes along to slow the momentum of the Power people for Jones managed to escape that by taking his followers to Guyana where there was no no possibility of dissent or the divine calling like most messiahs and a minister by seems to have started with a around he saw a holocaust consuming Indiana where he was a few years in the archetypal Pat Tern outlined by sociologist Max Jones had gathered a group of followers and led them to a new land in he established a multiracial Community which quickly became a political Force in Mendo Cino in he bought his Geary Street Temple in san Francis then to los he preached socialism and practice Faith praised Huey Newton and Angela Davis and expanded his apocalyptic vision by predicting a fascist takeover of being so sure of his Jones had no doubt about a philosophy he passed along to according to cult Jones gained an estimated following of 000 by staging Faith healings in which the tutors which were passed by his subjects were actually Chicken he staged a fake assassination attempt in which a shot rang blood appeared on his and then he pronounced himself warning witnesses to say what happened the better to further their perceptions of the outside world As populated by those who could not by As in All hermetic there were Levels of those who suspected fraud justified it on the ground that it brought More recruits to the truth of Jim Jones claimed to be the inheritor of the spirit of Buddha and the brotherhood of to be some defectors his Means were beyond Jones Power and manipulation fed on his Delu legitimized by his divine Call had nothing to Check them when he secluded his Mission in the Ana rain this have happened if they haunt been so says Thomas Ungerleider of the Urcla Neur psychiatric with no feed Back from the outside world you can do incredible things with peer he was irate at the Light in which he had been portrayed in the Deborah Layton Blakey testified last he Felt that As a consequence of having been ridiculed and a he would be denied a place in his obsession with his place in he made his first mass suicide threat in threaten ing the deaths of All his followers in a Mere dispute Over a custody Case involving one the Guyana courts backed when it appeared that Leo Ryan would end his investigative Mission to Jonestown with a relatively favourable a knifing attempt and then the Airfield attack ensured Jones had vindicated himself by fulfilling his own holocaust in he had no his Only Way out was the More spectacular the he had organized it Well in so that his followers would die arms fallen in testimony to his like Many of the Cults and esoteric religions that began attracting americans in the late peo Ples Temple had lost a Large part of its membership by As the upheavals of a decade ago have eased in the somnolent religious refuges and revelations have lost a photo the throne of cult Leader Jim Jones sits empty surrounded by dead As in the late the nation was swept by proponents of ecstatic in which converts were invited to sense god rather than through the intermediaries of theology and the 1960s movement had two in the the enemy was not satan and sin but establishment reason and along with the reality they heroes included British psychiatrist who argued in the politics of that schizophrenia was As valid a reality As establishment and there was humanist psychologist Abraham who advocated the cultivation of the sort of Peak experiences which Mark the uves of saints and american spiritual often a drab business of Church suppers and Bingo exploded with alternatives tibetan the mysterious Wisdom of Carlos castanedas Don primal biofeedback and zen in the Art of practically every Ltd and other psychedelics became Anodyne for the situation once described in Graffiti in a bos ton mens room reality is a in everything became per but reality which religion ultimately defines became very unsure the problem was that this rather than attacking a Well entrenched was largely a symptom of its collapse in the storm of racial generational enmity and rapidly shifting it publicly played itself out in where in 1967 a summer of love turned into a Nightmare of rape and drug then the Charles Manson murders in 1969 showed that Ltd revelations could Lead to lethal Para Noia and messianic so when the second the so called min control began to appear with Many of the popular esoteric trappings but none of the the change was often greeted with la the the Hare Krishna cult arrived in far from doing their own cult Mem Bers dressed in identical men shaving their Heads except for a top in David Moses Berg founded the fire eyed children of god to preach salvation in the face of the earthquake fever that swept the hip West coast psyche that in a 13yearold Indian guru Maharaj i arrived from India to found the i Vine Light Sun Myung Moon had come from Korea to build his unification Church into the most controversial of All the which seemed to exist in a constant barrage of charges ranging from financial malfeasance to brainwash the cult promises to and indeed does provide for the con Vinced the Assurance and absolutism the Large society so conspicuously states Hersh of the National Institute of mental health and Ann Macleod of the University of in a paper entitled and youth i the initial decision v is taken to join the rest comes read made what is what is who shall be saved and who How to How to How to the Cults represent what anthropologists have Long identified in cultures around the world As a revitalization following on what anthropologist Anthony Wallace Calls a period of cultural marked by such things As extreme passivity and flt regroup disregard of Kin ship and sexual irresponsible to in Public As Wallace explains a Prophet has one or several hallucinatory i such As Jones vision of a Holo he preaches his revelations to people in an evangelistic or messianic then converts Are made by the some undergo hysterical seizures induced by suggestion in a crowd situation some experience an ecstatic vision in private circumstances some Are convinced by More or less rational arguments the Prophet changes his message to fit his in instances where organized hostility to the movement a crystallization of counter hostility against unbelievers frequently and emphasis shifts from cultivation of the Ideal to com Bat against the such is the Fate of a Large number of american that combat sometimes takes the form of ridiculously High stakes Gam Bles the children of god predicted the end of the world with the arrival of the Comet Kohoutek guru Maharaj Jis adherents rented the hous ton Astrodome for a Mammoth convention at which they predicted apocalyptic confirmation of their Doc even setting aside spaces in the parking lot for flying the combat has taken harsher in the past members of a califor Nia group originally founded in the 1950s to treat drug have been accused of attempting to Mur Der a prosecutor by putting a rattle Snake in his one prankster who hit guru Maharaj i in the face with a pie later had his Skull Frac tured with a Hammer he by a divine Light Mission the unnatural passive so of cult is actually a carefully muted write Kath Erine Kemp and John professors of psychiatry at the University of Maryland school of medi in Battle for the mind and the mind British neurologist William Sargant has cited Laboratory evidence gathered by Pavlov and his own observations of acute combat stress in world War ii As part of a hypothesis that if Strong can produce a marked in crease in hysterical suggestibility so that the individual becomes susceptible to influences in his environment to which he was formerly says anthropologist it can happen to former cult members recite a Litany of stress they underwent sleep constant Haran and in the Case of Peoples Public beatings and threats of were left with the hideous vision of smiling disciples drinking we can explain it away As a terrible saying that the cult Mem Bers were duped into thinking the exercise was just another we could claim that the cultists were forced to kill but that does not explain the the fail ure of More members to the dying with arms linked with fellow in a survivor recalls one woman Only to be shouted Down with cries of Trai Duclas Ungerleider speculates that they May have killed them selves willingly out of what Anna Freud called identification with the its a defense mechanism in hopeless when the ego is it explains Why some jews would actually help each other into the Gas Chambers in concentration even when the dying and panic twitched through the Jones was Able to keep the mad momentum going by insisting that they must die with we might do Well to consider that they died believing that death was As Jones kept chanting into his if they share his his vision of the the Fate that awaited the Community after the murder of Ryan was far worse than to his Jones was a god whose Power they could take into themselves merely by obeying it May have As they drank the that for one moment they would share in ultimate Power the Power of life and in the falling and that moment Ever no one will Ever ;