I'm going to be running a Jonestown simulation

[Ismail]

Yes, I'm going to run a simulation of life in Jonestown, the famous agricultural commune which ended in mass murder-suicide at the orders of avowed socialist Jim Jones.

Next year is the 40th anniversary of that event and I'm receiving assistance from an academic website (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=70384) to make the simulation as realistic as reasonably possible.

Participants join as individuals, either within Jonestown (e.g. nurses, teachers, ordinary laborers, senior citizens, members of Jones' inner circle, etc.) or outside of it (such as a member of the "Concerned Relatives" group in the US which denounced the settlement as a concentration camp and sought to rescue relatives from it.)

I assume few people on here would actually be interested in participating (it won't be run on this forum), but I've read over a dozen books on the subject (plus numerous articles) and would be glad to answer any questions anyone happens to have relating to Jim Jones, Peoples Temple, and Jonestown.

[ckaihatsu]

Have you decided on a flavor for the Kool-Aid yet -- ?


x D


EDIT:


Shit, they knew I was coming...!





None of those who have thus far expressed interest in participating actually knew anything about the subject beyond Kool-Aid jokes.




http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=70384

[Ismail]

Shit, they knew I was coming...!Yes, turns out I am actually Jim Jones IRL and have miraculous godly powers to predict when people on the Internet make jokes about fruit drinks. Fear my power.

[BIXX]

Plot twist: everyone actually dies.

[Ismail]

Plot twist: everyone actually dies.Plot twist: everyone actually lives. Utopian socialism becomes a viable method of organizing society and Jim Jones joins RevLeft under the username BIXX to encourage the forum's active users to follow in Jonestown's footsteps and build a similar community and then everyone dies.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Haha Dang ismail, I didn’t realize you were funny. I should visit the off topic section more.

[ckaihatsu]

Yes, turns out I am actually Jim Jones IRL and have miraculous godly powers to predict when people on the Internet make jokes about fruit drinks. Fear my power.


How did such an unassuming book-scanner suddenly become so *scary* -- !


= D

[Ismail]

From a book I'm reading (The Cult That Died, p. 186):


Faith recalls a time in 1971 when [Jones] was trying to convince his flock that he was a reincarnation of Lenin. The revelation came to him while he was preaching the Christian virtues of socialism and communism. He was the Marxist messiah, the only man alive who could save the world from the evils of capitalism. . . Jones sensed some of the people in his flock had strong doubts. He took the problem to his staff and together they worked out a scenario that would prove Lenin's spirit had found a host in Jim Jones's body. The scheme involved placing Patricia Cartmell, Patty Cartmell's daughter, in the attic of the Redwood Valley church. Carrying a day's supply of food, a jug of water, and a script, she climbed a long ladder up to the attic early on morning when no one was around and waited all day.

During the evening service, Jim Jones went into a trance. He was in touch, he said, with "the ethereal waves." He could hear the voice of a woman who was in limbo because she had betrayed Lenin. As he meditated, the people in the congregation began to hear, with increasing clarity, a ghostly female voice. The voice spoke in Russian. Jim Jones had no trouble translating; he had been Russian in a previous life. The woman wanted Jones to help her find peace in the spirit world. She needed his divine powers to help her out of limbo. He forgave the woman for her betrayal, and she thanked him profusely. The voice faded back to the spirit word until it was no longer audible. Jim Jones came out of his trance, and Patricia Cartmell stretched out in the attic and went to sleep.

[Ismail]

Since nobody is joining, I've decided to change my recruiting tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QwKCBa2Gsc

[qnhan10a3]

great .good luck to you

[Ismail]

Continuing the theme of Jones claiming to be Lenin, I bring you this (from In My Father's House, 1982, p. 115, 117):

Jim Jones had confided to John Collins—his son-in-law and trusted aide—that his sexual attraction to Carolyn was so strong that he didn't know if he was going to be able to hold it in check. Because of his psychic ability, he said, he knew what she looked like in the nude, and that made things even harder for him. He realized intuitively that she was as attracted to him as he was to her. He had never been unfaithful to Marceline, he explained, "except when the cause demanded it"; but this was different. Jones claimed to be the reincarnation of V.I. Lenin; and Carolyn, he said, was the reincarnation of Inessa Armand, one of Lenin's favorite lovers.

Jones used his pulpit to set the scene for taking Carolyn away from Larry. He informed his congregation of three or four hundred. . . that the doctor had told him that [his wife] would never be able to have sex again, and that a man with his phenomenal sex drive could not live without sexual gratification. Or, as he told his flock, he had to "fuck somebody or die."

[....]

In 1973, when Carolyn became pregnant, she dropped out of sight at the Temple. Jones maintained that she had been arrested in South America while on a revolutionary mission for the cause, and was in jail. Actually, she was quite comfortably settled in her parents' Berkeley home.

[ckaihatsu]

Continuing the theme of Jones claiming to be Lenin, I bring you this (from In My Father's House, 1982, p. 115, 117):


Jesus, it reads like good fiction -- I *want* to make light-hearted jokes about the content but then I remember that this was all *real* and tragic.

[Andrew_Zito]

And how are you going to represent the FBI DEA ATF CIA DOD etc as one can presume that they were there. BTW you blew your cover.

[Andrew_Zito]

And how are you going to represent the FBI DEA ATF CIA DOD etc as one can presume that they were there. BTW you blew your cover.


P.S. LOVE YOU as what I call C.I.A. Types:

"On September 27, 1980, a column by investigative reporter Jack Anderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Anderson_(columnist)) was published under the title "CIA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA)Involved In Jonestown Massacre."[10] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown_conspiracy_theories#cite_note-10) According to Anderson, Dwyer and Jones had ties to the CIA, with Dwyer's ties dating to at least 1959; when quizzed directly about this alleged CIA involvement, Dwyer responded "no comment." At one point on the sound-recording made during the mass suicide, Jones' own voice commands, "Take Dwyer on down to the east house" and a short time later, Jones says "Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him."[11] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown_conspiracy_theories#cite_note-11)"

Anderson, Jack, "CIA Involved In Jonestown Massacre, September 27, 1980

DRINK THE KOOLAID ITS C.I.A. Approved.

[ckaihatsu]

And how are you going to represent the FBI DEA ATF CIA DOD etc as one can presume that they were there. BTW you blew your cover.


Dude, just because you make accusations doesn't mean that you're correct -- I'm *not* affiliated with law enforcement or the state in any way.

[Andrew_Zito]

Your American basis shows one thing the KGB CIA and MOB HAD IN COMMON was you and your sociopathic narcissism never had to be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt all they needed was a scintilla of proof and none the less a proper evidentiary standard but then you are never honest as you mince chop and dice your pathetic in words of lies where I prefer Gene Hackman in Company Business to you as your are a cheap actor.

[ckaihatsu]

Your American basis shows one thing the KGB CIA and MOB HAD IN COMMON was you and your sociopathic narcissism never had to be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt all they needed was a scintilla of proof and none the less a proper evidentiary standard but then you are never honest as you mince chop and dice your pathetic in words of lies where I prefer Gene Hackman in Company Business to you as your are a cheap actor.


You don't *know* me, AZ, and you continue to be wrong with your darts-at-a-board method of investigation.

I've also never been an actor, either.

[The Intransigent Faction]

How much did people in the USSR (state officials or otherwise) know about Jonestown?

[Ismail]

How much did people in the USSR (state officials or otherwise) know about Jonestown?Soviet media did a few reports on it that were basically "here's a commune of a thousand Americans in Guyana who were fed up with life in the United States, are avowedly socialist, and admire the USSR."

A member of the Soviet embassy in Guyana named Timofeyev visited Jonestown (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27428) and flattered it as the first American communist community in Guyana and in the world, this being a month before the mass murder-suicides.

Timofeyev was the main contact between Jonestown and the USSR. Jones encouraged residents to learn Russian with the expectation that they would eventually relocate to the USSR. Timofeyev also expressed interest in Jones' purported ability to lead Americans from Christianity to atheism, saying that would be something useful in the Soviet Union.

Jonestown also had contact with other socialist embassies too, e.g. they were in talks with the Yugoslav embassy for importing medications, and the DPRK embassy sent the settlement videos extolling life in that country.

The Cuban embassy was apparently critical; it sent delegations to the settlement but also expressed unease at the veneration of Jones, and argued that a commune in the middle of the jungle was not the best way to go about socialism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think they got a lot of kudos and photo ops with US politicians too. They were celebrated as anti-racist Christians in the Bay Area before Jonestown was founded.

[Ismail]

I think they got a lot of kudos and photo ops with US politicians too. They were celebrated as anti-racist Christians in the Bay Area before Jonestown was founded.Yes, Jones purposefully obtained any praise he could get, even if it was purely formal, in order to promote the church. Here's a good example of how they used said praise: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14017

Lots of other public figures backed Jones too, such as Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Dick Gregory and Ralph Nader.

Finally, the December 3, 1976 issue of The Militant:

SAN FRANCISCO-More than 1,200 people crowded into Queen Adah Hall in San Francisco's Western Addition district on November 12 to demand Black majority rule in southern Africa. Hundreds more were turned away when the hall was filled. . . .

Rev. Jim Jones, founder and pastor of the Peoples Temple, said, "I hope that meetings such as this will be taking place all over the country.

"The sham homelands and Bantustans in South Africa are scenes of misery and mass starvation," Jones continued. "And here at home a great deal of our economy is based on the blood and sweat of our brothers and sisters in southern Africa.

"We must not worry whether we're sitting next to a communist or not," Jones said. "As long as people stand up for freedom, they are our sisters and our brothers."

Following Jones was Tony Thomas, author of The Freedom Struggle in South Africa and a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers party.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Soviet media did a few reports on it that were basically "here's a commune of a thousand Americans in Guyana who were fed up with life in the United States, are avowedly socialist, and admire the USSR."

A member of the Soviet embassy in Guyana named Timofeyev visited Jonestown (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27428) and flattered it as the first American communist community in Guyana and in the world, this being a month before the mass murder-suicides.

Timofeyev was the main contact between Jonestown and the USSR. Jones encouraged residents to learn Russian with the expectation that they would eventually relocate to the USSR. Timofeyev also expressed interest in Jones' purported ability to lead Americans from Christianity to atheism, saying that would be something useful in the Soviet Union.

Jonestown also had contact with other socialist embassies too, e.g. they were in talks with the Yugoslav embassy for importing medications, and the DPRK embassy sent the settlement videos extolling life in that country.

The Cuban embassy was apparently critical; it sent delegations to the settlement but also expressed unease at the veneration of Jones, and argued that a commune in the middle of the jungle was not the best way to go about socialism.

Cool, thanks for the answer!

I'm not surprised by the Cuban position. As for the USSR's, I'd imagine it was something of an international "PR" embarrassment, particularly due to the death of Leo Ryan.

[Ismail]

The Soviets actually defended Jonestown; authors in the USSR published books and articles arguing that the CIA murdered everyone. But there's no real evidence for that, whereas there's a mountain of evidence that Jones killed everyone.

[ZippyJuan]

Not sure I'd participate, but I'd like to see the result.

[ckaihatsu]

Not sure I'd participate, but I'd like to see the result.


Yeah, how do we know that it's only going to be a *simulation* -- ?


x D

[Ismail]

Alas, I decided to run a simulation of the world of 1919 instead as most people seemed to think a simulation of a commune in the middle of the Guyanese jungle lorded over by a very bad man wasn't the most exciting idea possible.

I still intend to run a Jonestown simulation, just not any time soon.