<\/span><\/p>\n
\u2022 Jakari Wilson \u2013 the son of Leslie and Joe Wilson, and the youngest survivor of the Jonestown tragedy \u2013 was convicted in August 2011 on two counts of premeditated attempted murder.\u00a0A Sacramento County jury also found Wilson guilty of intentional discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury.<\/p>\n
Wilson had been convicted on two prior felony aggravated assaults in 1994 in Georgia.\u00a0Because of the previous convictions, he faces a prison sentence of up to 110 years when he is sentenced later this fall.<\/p>\n
The conviction stems from an incident in October 2010 at a barbeque at Wilson\u2019s home where he lived with his wife and her 16-year-old daughter. According to prosecutors, Wilson and his wife got into an argument over a text message he exchanged with another woman. Wilson grabbed his wife, threw her to the ground, and fired a gun at her. She was struck in her right upper arm. When the daughter screamed at Wilson to stop, he turned and shot her in the face, striking her right cheek bone.\u00a0Both victims were treated for their injuries at a Sacramento hospital.\u00a0A bullet fragment still remains in the daughter\u2019s right cheekbone.<\/p>\n
Jakari Wilson was three when his mother escaped from Jonestown with him on the morning of November 18. His father Joe, who had become one of Jim Jones\u2019 most trusted aides in Jonestown, died that day.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in January 2011 \u2013 esp. while she hovered between life and death \u2013 recalled a previous attack on a congressman. Several news media compared the shooting to that of Rep. Leo Ryan in 1978, and interviewed a number of the principals and relatives, including a conversation<\/a> on NPR with Ryan\u2019s daughter Erin.<\/p>\n However, a commentary<\/a> in the conservative journal Human Events<\/em> differentiated between the slaying of Leo Ryan and the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords. \u201c[O]ne mass murderer was a darling feted by politicians at the highest levels of government; the other was an outcast among outcasts,\u201d wrote Daniel J. Flynn in his opinion piece \u201cBlood Libe(ra)ls.\u201d \u201cIronically, it is the pariah who had no politician friends, rather than the establishment darling, whose crimes turned into a partisan blame game. The reputations of Jim Jones\u2019 enablers and allies have remained strangely intact.\u201d<\/p>\n At least one other conservative website \u2013 the Minnesota Prager Discussion Group<\/a> \u2013 used the attack on Gifford as a vehicle to compare Barack Obama to Jim Jones.<\/p>\n Several publications and online sites \u2013 including Wikipedia<\/a> and the Twilight Language<\/a> blog \u2013 followed the shooting with listings of members of Congress killed or wounded while in office.<\/p>\n \u2022 A political mailer for a county Republican chairman\u2019s race attracted attention beyond the borders of Palm Beach County, Florida, in December 2010, with its attack on a candidate including his photo superimposed over a background of Jonestown bodies. As depicted on by Poston Politics<\/em>, the mailer sent to members of the party\u2019s Executive Committee depicts candidate Ed Lynch as the Kool-Aid man with the urgent message to voters not to drink the Lynch Kool-Aid. The flyer is labeled Lynchtown.<\/p>\n The incumbent Sid Dinerstein defeated Lynch on a 120-87 vote the next day.<\/p>\n \u2022 In addition to these news articles, Jonestown and Peoples Temple is often mentioned in the mainstream media both as cultural icons and in serious considerations of religious and political issues.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n News from Guyana<\/p>\n <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Most of the news coverage of the reconstruction focused on Jim Jones and Jonestown. However, as former member Don Beck – who brought the article to this website’s attention – and two people who commented on the story online pointed out, Jones held a total of one service in the church, and that was in February 1975, soon after he arrived in Guyana and well before the mass migration of Temple members began.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Discussions of Jonestown <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Kool-Aid, cults and hypocrisy<\/span><\/b> Did We Drink the Kool-Aid in “Suicide Cult” Disappearance?<\/span><\/b> \n Jonestown cited in political contexts<\/p>\n <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The GOP goes to Jonestown: For Republicans, rigidity reigns Someone ought to study the Republican Party. I am not referring to another political scientist but to a mental health professional, preferably a specialist in the power of obsessions. The GOP has become a cult.\u2026 [Its] intellectual rigidity has produced a GOP presidential field that\u2019s a virtual political Jonestown.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This article was cited in several commentaries, including:<\/p>\n An Establishment in Panic<\/span><\/b><\/strong> <\/strong> Ad Hominem Attacks Are Not Necessary<\/span><\/b><\/strong> Is the GOP Bound for ‘Political Jonestown’?<\/span><\/b><\/strong> The GOP Checks Into Jonestown<\/span><\/b><\/strong> The tenth anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the assassination of Osama bin Laden led to some comparisons between radical Muslims and Jim Jones.<\/p>\n Muslim and Christian reflect on extremist actions of 9\/11<\/span><\/b><\/strong> Ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks, a former Midland pastor says radical Islam is still the greatest threat the West ever has faced. The Rev. Jim Denison, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Midland and founder of the Denison Forum on Truth and Culture, explains his stance in his new book, Radical Islam: What You Need to Know<\/em>. \u2026 Bin Laden’s last daze<\/span><\/b><\/strong> Yet in the end, Osama was a lonely has-been – a leader of a cult with only three women and some goats. Somehow, even the Rev. Jim Jones of the People\u2019s Temple exited more gloriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Evil Charisma: Osama Bin Laden, Hitler and Manson Had It<\/span><\/b><\/strong> How did Osama bin Laden get hundreds of young recruits to strap bombs to their bodies and persuade well-educated men to fly suicide planes like missiles through the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?\u2026 Mark Stern, professor emeritus of Iona College in New York and an expert in the psychology of evil and Messianic figures, believes bin Laden was different from other evil charismatics, such as Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson and Jim Jones. \u201cHe had more of a political world view — more like a desire to save the world than to destroy it and rebuild it in his image,\u201d said Stern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Time Magazine\u2019s coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden included a listing of the Top Ten Evil Lairs<\/a>, which included Jonestown<\/a> at position number 8.<\/p>\n \n Jonestown cited in serious articles<\/p>\n <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Male bashing in Barbados (#3A): “I think, therefore I jam”<\/span><\/b><\/strong> One of the most common criticisms of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity in general and Pentecostalism in particular is its individualistic ethos. Cautions and warnings abound about the movement\u2019s preoccupation with charismatic leaders like Reverends T D Jakes, Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart and Eddie Long. These are \u201cpop stars\u201d of piety\u2026. Sadly, personality cult tragedies like those involving Jim Jones and his followers who died with him in the horrific 1978 Jonestown, Guyana mass murder and suicide tragedy, demonstrate the validity of such cautions against \u201creligious rock star\u201d worship all too often.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Over the Threshold<\/span><\/b><\/strong> When I was a Unitarian minister, like many others of the kind, I kept a \u201ctraveling sermon\u201d that I used when doing pulpit supply. Since one was usually only there once as a replacement while the regular minister was elsewhere, one was free to be memorable and risky. So I told about a moment one warm afternoon standing on the Chicago El platform when suddenly, for no reason, I was flooded with fusion, joy and harmony. It only lasted a few moments\u2026 The best descriptions I found [of this phenomenon] were in terms of \u201climinality\u201d in the work of Victor Turner and Van Gennep, anthropologists describing exotic tribal ceremonies. They spoke of \u201climinal time and place,\u201d that is, a state of mind in which one goes over a threshold (a limen) into a protected but risky \u201cplace\u201d and then comes back, often profoundly changed by the experience\u2026 [Jonestown has been interpreted] as a liminal experience that went wrong because the participants went into that \u201cother\u201d place and refused or were unable to come out. In short Jim Jones\u2019 insanity was a liminality where all his people joined him.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Time to rethink it: Guyana is trying to cultivate a new image and finally shed the Jonestown stigma<\/span><\/b><\/strong> <\/strong> Looking for obscure creatures in an obscure country sums up the Guyana experience. Though the place is an environmental Eden, it\u2019s unknown to most people — who, when they think of Guyana, think of one thing only. Let\u2019s face it: Jonestown is the elephant in the room. Few people know anything else about Guyana.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you read this, we survived: Don’t let extremists define religions<\/span><\/b><\/strong> <\/strong> If you are alive and reading this today and the world has not been shaken and burned to the ground \u2014 if Armageddon is not well under way \u2014 then The Gazette\u2019s editorial board was right once again\u2026Anyone, with any extreme message, is able to find a following in these times. Obama\u2019s birth certificate is not real and bin Laden is not dead, because kooky conspiracy theorists dupe the gullible. The Rev. Jim Jones managed to get more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple to commit suicide in 1978 by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid. \u2026 Tolerating these people is a cost associated with maintaining freedom. But freedom is best maintained in a context of self control and responsibility. Radical preachers, the likes of [evangelical radio host Harold] Camping, do more to harm religion and religious liberty than anti-religion activists could dream of doing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Why I Don’t Buy the May 21 Prophecy<\/span><\/b><\/strong> I spent the past week in Guyana, a South American nation where the people are friendly, the food is spicy and churches are growing at a healthy pace. But Christians there face a serious challenge because of the sad legacy of Jim Jones, the American cult leader who ordered his followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid at their compound in Jonestown in 1978. The mass suicide, which killed 909 people (including Jones), went down in history as the world\u2019s worst example of religion gone wrong. \u201cEven today, the Jim Jones tragedy poses a problem of credibility for us,\u201d one pastor in the city of Corriverton told me last week.<\/p>\n You can imagine my dismay when I arrived in Guyana and learned that groups of Americans were combing the streets and passing out literature claiming that Jesus will rapture the church on May 21. These Christians apparently are so convinced of the prediction that they traveled to the only English-speaking country in South America to deliver a last-minute warning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jonestown in cultural references<\/p>\n <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n![\"08-01\"](\"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/08-01-240x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Rep. Jackie Speier, who was an aide to Rep. Leo Ryan during his November 1978 trip to Jonestown and who was seriously wounded in the attack at the airstrip that took her boss\u2019 life, compared the attacks on her colleague and on her boss 32 years earlier in an opinion piece, From Jonestown to Tucson<\/a>, in the January 16, 2011 edition of the The San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>. She was also quoted on CNN<\/a>. A few days later, Speier proposed a resolution honoring her colleague and declaring\u00a0a Saturday\u00a0every January \u201cNational Congress on Your Corner\u00a0Day.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"08-02\"](\"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/08-02-300x227.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2022 Betty Smith, who reportedly lost five family members in Jonestown, and her husband, Rev. Mark Smith, were interviewed for an article on the nature of evil in the CantonRep.com<\/a> website in Stark County, Ohio, in January.<\/p>\n![\"08-03](\"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/08-03-1-300x187.jpg\")
<\/a>The San Francisco Examiner<\/i> reported in February 2011 that a Catholic Church in Georgetown, Guyana “that was once used by Jim Jones and his followers from the People’s Temple” and that burned down on Christmas Day in 2004, would be rebuilt. Construction of the Sacred Heart Church in Georgetown, which was considered a national landmark, is expected to cost about $390,000 US.<\/p>\n
\nby Guy P. Harrison , The<\/em> Cayman Observer<\/em>, 20 March 2011
\n<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s a comforting feeling to think that it could never happen to you,\u201d warned Deborah Layton when I interviewed her several years ago. She knows more than most about dangerous groups and dangerous leaders.\u2026 \u201cNobody joins a cult,\u201d she said. \u201cYou join a religious group. You join a political organisation. You join a self-help group. Then things change gradually and at some point you stop and ask, \u2018What am I in?\u2019 It is OK to use the word \u2018cult\u2019 in the dictionary, but not when discussing various religions that are active now.\u201d
\nLayton\u2019s comments are an important warning for everyone. If ever you find yourself seduced by a person or an organization that has all the answers, perhaps they only seem so impressive because you have failed to ask enough questions.<\/p>\n
\nby Julie Ingersoll, Religion Dispatches, 3 October 2010
\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240729064200\/https:\/\/religiondispatches.org\/did-we-drink-the-kool-aid-in-suicide-cult-disappearance\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/b><\/strong>
\nby Richard Cohen, The<\/em> Washington Post<\/em>, 7 July 2011
\nhttps:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/opinion\/gop-jonestown-republicans-rigidity-reigns-article-1.158562<\/a><\/p>\n
\nby Patrick J. Buchanan, buchanan.org<\/em>, 7 July 2011
\nhttp:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/an-establishment-in-panic-4796<\/a>
\nBy refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like \u201cfanatics,\u201d writes David Brooks of The New York Times.\u2026 <\/em>\u201cThe GOP has become a cult\u201d that has replaced reason with \u201cfeverish\u201d and \u201ccockamamie beliefs,\u201d writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post<\/em>. The Republican \u201cpresidential field (is) a virtual political Jonestown,\u201d the Guyana site where more than 900 followers of the Peoples Temple drank the Kool-Aid that Rev. Jim Jones mixed for them.<\/p>\n
\nby Peter Wehner, Commentary<\/em>, 6 July 2011
\nhttps:\/\/www.commentarymagazine.com\/peter-wehner\/ad-hominem-attacks-are-not-necessary\/<\/b> [Editor\u2019s note<\/b>: This URL was found to be defunct in December 2022]<\/em>
\nAs Republicans in Congress and the president negotiate over raising the debt ceiling, liberal commentators are, as they so often do, adding to the quality of the debate based on the rigor and care of their arguments. For example, the Washington Post\u2019s<\/em> Richard Cohen compares\u00a0the GOP presidential field as \u201ca virtual political Jonestown.\u201d \u2026 All in the name of elevated public discourse, of course.<\/p>\n
\nby J.P. Green, The Democratic Strategist, <\/em>5 July 2011
\nhttps:\/\/thedemocraticstrategist.org\/?s=What+puzzles+is+why+all+of+the+Republicans+have+guzzled+the+Koolaid<\/a>
\nWhat puzzles is why all of the Republicans have guzzled the Koolaid. Why hasn\u2019t it dawned on the party\u2019s brighter bulbs, perhaps Senator Lugar or, maybe Scott Brown or Huntsman that \u201cHmm, I could really separate myself from the pack of idjits by taking things to a more rational level\u201d? All indications are that the public would like to see a little more flexibility from Republicans.<\/p>\n
\nby Andrew Reinbach, The Huffington Post<\/em>, 10 May 2011
\nhttp:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/andrew-reinbach\/the-gop-checks-into-jones_b_860336.html<\/a>
\nThe Republican Party has apparently been kidnapped by a death cult that\u2019s perfectly willing to take America with it. The cult? The Tea Party, of course.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nby Sara Higgins, Midland<\/em> (Texas) Reporter-Telegram<\/em>, 8 September 2011
\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130316115446\/http:\/\/www.mywesttexas.com\/life\/faith\/article_52ff06de-89c8-5826-85e6-90525307378c.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u201cRadical Muslims do not reflect their faith any more than Jim Jones reflected Christianity,\u201d he said, referring to the cult leader who led the Peoples Temple, best known for the 1978 massacre of more than 900 of its members. \u201cBy no means is it the truth that all Muslims are radical.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nby R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., The Washington Times<\/em>, 10 May 2011,
\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20110514151134\/http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2011\/may\/10\/bin-ladens-last-daze\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nby Susan Donaldson James, ABC News<\/em>, 4 May 2011
\nhttp:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Health\/osama-bin-ladens-evil-charisma-recalls-adolf-hitler\/story?id=13520863<\/a> or https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120503112028\/http:\/\/abcnewsradioonline.com\/health-news\/tag\/peoples-temple<\/a><\/p>\n
\nby Junior Campbell, allvoices.com<\/em>, 5 July 2011<\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/prairiemary.blogspot.com\/2010\/10\/over-threshold.html<\/a><\/p>\n
\nby Jeff Greenwald, The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, 29 May 2011
\nhttp:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2011\/may\/29\/travel\/la-tr-guyana-20110529<\/a><\/p>\n
\nby Wayne Laugesen, Colorado Springs Gazette<\/em>, 21 May 2011<\/p>\n
\nby J. Lee Grady, Charisma Magazine<\/em>, 11 May 2011<\/p>\n