More than 45 years after the deaths in Guyana, Peoples Temple and Jonestown continue to offer a context for current news events on a regular basis.
• Throughout the 2024 presidential election campaign, numerous reporters and commentators have asserted a similarity between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones. The articles include:
I think the J in the middle name of 45 is Jim or Jones, by Vetwife, Daily Kos, January 13, 2024
A cult leader and his followers, by Kim Zappala, NECC Observer, April 10, 2024
Opinion: A Republican warning of national political suicide, by South Florida Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, May 20, 2024
Donald Trump Compared to Cult Leader Jim Jones After Claiming MAGA Supporter Would ‘Commit Suicide’ Before Voting for Joe Biden, by Alexandra Stone, OK! News, June 10, 2024; related article, including video, at Newsweek.
Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Jonestown Survivor: Trump Has “All the Trappings” of Being the Next Jim Jones, The Hollywood Reporter, June 21, 2024
Are We Witnessing the Evolution of the Cult of Trump?, by Roger Ray, LA Progressive, June 23, 2024
Mar-A-Lago Guests Say Trump Is Giving Off “Jim Jones Vibes”, by Dash McIntyre, Medium, August 18, 2024
• Jonestown survivor Thom Bogue is running for an open seat in the California State Senate in the November 2024 election. The Republican candidate won his party’s primary election in March, to succeed incumbent Bill Dodd, who was termed out. “I am committed to bringing my experiences and dedication to serve individuals and our communities to the state level, regardless of party affiliation. It’s very simple, I represent everyone in being a people’s person,” Bogue said in The Contra Costa Herald on March 27, 2024. Bogue has previously served as mayor of Dixon, California, and is on the city council for that town.
• The Jewish News Syndicate, an Israeli newssite devoted to “combating the stream of misinformation on Israel with real, honest and factual reporting,” declared in December 2023 that “Israel must make it clear that peace is not an altar of human sacrifice.” In an article entitled The new Jonestown, writer Benjamin Kerstein said, “One senses that like Hamas, which has deformed and degraded one of the world’s great religions into a death cult, those who demand such a peace worship a kind of dark and hideous god that must be propitiated, and to which they must periodically feed the Jews and, ultimately, themselves—as the wars of the last century have shown. This, the advocates of [Jim] Jones’s peace appear to believe, will finally set the world right.”