Johnstown massacre
1977 - the "City of Dreams" of the religious cult "People's Temple" by Jim Jones was founded. It ceased to exist after a mass suicide and murder of residents took place in it. More than 900 people died, including 276 children.
Anyone who has read Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun would hardly ever want to live in it. From the perspective of a modern person, it resembles a concentration camp rather than a city of universal happiness, equality and freedom. Those who went to the jungles of Guyana to build Johnstown also thought they were going to build the Dream City. And so it was, but few realized to what extent their views of the Ideal diverged from the dreams of the Reverend Jim Jones. He was the main leader and inspirer of this idea. The city was named in his honor.
1978, mid-November - the news of the tragedy in Guyana spread throughout the world. Not a single sect in the history of mankind has known such a terrible outcome. The footage of the chronicle showed the world hundreds of bodies lying in the middle of a tropical forest, distorted by dying convulsions. All of them - some of their own free will and some of them under duress - obeyed the orders of their spiritual father and committed suicide by drinking a solution of potassium cyanide. There were even babies among the dead. According to the surviving eyewitnesses, they injected poison into their mouth from pipettes. What could have caused such a nightmare?
According to one version, members of the People's Temple sect became victims of the CIA's secret MK-ultra project. Jimmy Jones himself and several of his close associates were secret employees of this organization. Their main task was to conduct experiments on people in the field of brain control. The result was to be unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader, and mass suicide was indisputable proof of this. However, a lawsuit brought against the CIA by family members of the victims was dismissed by the American Supreme Court in October 1983.
Such a version certainly has a right to exist, but it could have been not so difficult. People for the most part are quite easily influenced, which has been successfully demonstrated to us by the White Brotherhood, Hare Krishnas and similar sects.
Ironically, over the main altar of Johnstown was a plaque with the words of the famous philosopher George Santayana: "Whoever does not remember the past will have to repeat its mistakes." Well, let's try to restore the picture of the events that led to the tragedy.
The young Methodist priest Jimmy Jones certainly had an extraordinary gift for speech. Hundreds of Indianapolis residents gathered to listen to his sermons. But the framework of the church hierarchy constrained the newly-minted holy father, because he wanted to solely rule over the audience. Soon he is given the opportunity to become a free street preacher. Jones rented a warehouse in one of the Indianapolis neighborhoods. Above his door he immediately nailed a sign: "People's Temple". This is how a new religion appeared.
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For the priest, Jones turned out to be an excellent businessman. Posters were hung throughout the city, screaming about his phenomenal abilities. The Reverend Father Jones' People's Temple was ready to provide anyone in need not only with food and shelter, but also with work. To raise money for the needs of the temple, Jones founded several small businesses, where cheap labor was always needed.
Gradually, the poor street preacher turned into a wealthy man. But more and more money was required for a luxurious life. Although the People's Temple “harvested from various fields,” the main income depended on the parishioners. New members of the community, fooled by Jones, often copied everything they had in his name, including social security cards. A whole staff of employees was involved in attracting new flock. It included actors portraying those healed by faith, and secret informants who obtained information that was then used in sermons, sounding like revelations, simple barkers in the streets, artists and many others.
Jones even got involved in politics. 1961 - appointed chairman of the city's civil rights commission. But there is a limit to all possibilities. The city was squeezed out like a lemon. Bad rumors spread that they were robbing the church to the bone. The time has come to leave the blessed place.
Yukia, a town a hundred miles north of San Francisco, was chosen for the relocation. And the reason was the revelation that after an imminent nuclear explosion, only he would survive. A whole caravan of cars moved to California. Over a hundred followers volunteered to accompany their spiritual father.
After the move, Jones went too far. During the service, he could simply throw the Bible on the floor with the words: "Too many are looking at THIS and not at ME!" Once, during a Sunday sermon, he put on a performance with his resurrection. First he fell on the altar, bleeding (a chicken was used for this), screaming that he had been shot. Then he came to life from reading prayers to the fury of the crowd.
With such talents, it's a sin to disappear on the periphery. So the Reverend Father thought and moved to San Francisco. At the new location, the version already worked out in Indianapolis was launched, only on a larger scale. Nursing home, drug addicts hospital, free clinic and much more. The city administration was not ignored either. For an organization of such a scale as the "People's Temple" was, it cost nothing to bring a crowd of people to some kind of demonstration or meeting. This kind of support seemed useful to local politicians, and they began to seek to get closer to Jones.
It is known for certain that he even dined in an informal setting with the wife of Jimmy Carter, then a Democratic candidate. The letters signed by the parishioners first made the head of the "Temple" the head of the local department for improving the life of the colored population, and then a member of the commission on housing construction.
But there is nothing secret that would not be revealed. Behind the beautiful facade of the "People's Temple", the true face of the "saint" gradually began to be seen. As it turned out, Jimmy Jones had a complete sexual wildness. There were persistent rumors about the harem from the parishioners. The most ancient way of controlling the populace is collective fear. Jones developed a whole system of scourging the disaffected. The guilty were beaten with sticks, and this was called "purification" sessions. At the same time, the tortured had to shout: "Thank you, Father!" Each time, the sessions became longer.
A new idea was needed to unite the flock. It became the so-called "displacement". All parishioners had to end their lives at the same time, so that together with their spiritual father they would be transported to some heavenly tabernacle.
This method of achieving bliss was not to everyone's liking. Jones' henchmen put them on special lists. Subsequently, he will try to take them to Johnstown first. "Moving" was a way to avoid the persecution that hit the "People's Temple". "How many of you are ready to give your life to protect the church from the shame that threatens her?" - the monk declared directly.
Before "moving" it was necessary to find a safe refuge, from which no one would prevent everyone from ascending. The enterprising pastor immediately began to raise funds for this goal. It was high time to think about it, but the obsessed people for the most part were no longer capable of this. “We believed that Jones was God and could not do anything wrong,” one of the parishioners later wrote.
It was time to take decisive action. Trouble at the "Temple" multiplied. Those followers who nevertheless had the strength to break with Jones organized the Comrades in Misfortune group and did their best to awaken the public. 1977, August - An accusatory article was published in the magazine "New West", which contained facts exposing the activities of Jones and his closest henchmen. Abandoning all positions held (much to the relief of the city authorities), the founder of the religious cult immediately flew to Guyana.
In the past, the British colony on the coast of South America was the ideal place for the implementation of Jimmy Jones' Napoleonic plans. Lost in the rainforests, the republic was very poor, and a commune wishing to produce agricultural products came in handy. Half a million dollars, collected for the organization of production, are also useful.
1977 - The first settlers set foot in the primeval rainforest to found Johnstown. The nearest settlement was 150 miles away. After the site was cleared and the first barracks were built, the rest began to join the pioneers. They still believed they were going to build the Dream City.
Jones' ideal turned out to be very commonplace - a typical plantation where blacks work from dawn to dusk, and whites with machine guns prevent them from running. Add to this the obligatory meetings, court, prison, school (which is strange) - and we get the usual dictatorship, only of a church-racial sense. Many rules and punishments for the slightest disobedience.
Despite the departure of the preacher, the passions in California did not subside. The employees of the American Embassy in Guyana were not inclined to attach importance to them, because Johnstown was under the special patronage of the state. Those few who still managed to get into this closed city saw a performance about a happy and joyful life.
Democrat Congressman Leo Ryan found the People's Temple affair quite suitable for personal advancement. If he could only guess how things would turn out, he would have thought ten times. A trip to Guyana was supposed to answer all the accumulated questions.
At first everything went according to the usual scenario, but so smoothly that Ryan and the journalists who arrived with him did not suspect anything. Anyone who spoke ill of the commune seemed to be slanderers and deceivers.
However, with the onset of night, walkers secretly reached out to the guests, settled in one of the huts. People talked about beatings, torture, forced sexual intercourse, drugging, worm food, lice and much more. The guests were especially impressed by the "white nights". This was the name of the rehearsals for a mass departure to another world. During the existence of Jonestown, there were 44 of them.
The whole camp rose in the middle of the night on alarm and drove onto the veranda, where the Reverend Jones was waiting, illuminated by the searchlights. Everyone was given a glass of the flavored drink, and people drank it, thinking it was poison. Then it turned out that this was another performance, and everyone went to bed. Such actions were played out under the pretext of an attack by CIA mercenaries who allegedly surrounded the camp. Jones developed a persecution mania under the influence of actively taking tranquilizers and amphetamines.
The next morning, Leo Ryan decided to put it bluntly. He asked to let go with him all those who would like to leave the city. There were many more people who wanted to than the two planes of the guests could accommodate. And yet the decisive congressman tried to take everyone away. People got into trucks. Six miles of dirt road separated them from rescue.
After their departure, Jones began a fit of hysteria. Even with guests, he lost control of himself and said too much into the TV camera. Now the nerves have given up completely. The guards sent after the departed shot everyone who did not have time to board the planes. Among those killed were Ryan himself, some refugees and several journalists. The wounded were finished off in cold blood. One plane still managed to take off, and of those who did not have time to plunge into it, not a single person survived.
Jimmy Jones realized that it was time to "die in revolutionary suicide." It was these words that he shouted into a megaphone, calling people to the last performance. Tired of numerous checks, people did not immediately understand that this was the end. Only when the first victims started beating in convulsions did it become clear how real everything was. There were two lawyers in the camp who had come with Ryan. They managed to take cover in the jungle in time and see everything from the side. It was from their words that the world learned the terrible details of what happened.
The children were ordered to be killed first. Infants were given poison from pipettes, those who were older were poured from cups. According to some reports, many of the parishioners were shot dead because they refused to die voluntarily. As for the Reverend Jones himself, it has not yet been found out whether he was killed by one of the guards or shot himself.
This is how the People's Temple sect ended its existence in a senseless and merciless manner. This was the most massive, but far from the only case of collective death on religious grounds. Unfortunately, few people in the world have learned the proper lessons from such cases. Only the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uganda had the courage to openly declare that such "events prove the need to reconsider the issue of cults and work out measures that could protect ordinary people from dangerous leaders."
The version according to which these tragic events occurred as a result of the CIA action carried out within the framework of the MK-ultra project appeared later. Perhaps it simply became another manifestation of the Cold War, although even now some analysts believe that this option should not be discarded. It is possible that the inhabitants of Johnstown could in fact become victims of this most secret project in the history of American intelligence, which involved experiments on the human psyche using drugs, hypnosis, and various stimulants in order to provide "mind control" by zombifying people. But this version can be confirmed or refuted only with the help of documents that are unlikely to become available in the near future.
I. Romanenko