Word: communed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Jonestown: the name of the commune is destined, like Watergate and Viet Nam, to pass into our vocabulary as a synecdoche, a symbol for something larger. The victims cannot be dismissed as mere crazies: many were poor, elderly blacks, but a number were well-educated younger people from seemingly comfortable backgrounds. What united them was partly a fear of freedom, partly a defect in will that led them to surrender blindly to any powerful leader, any strong faith - things they somehow were not able to find in U.S. society and so rejected it. They did so even though the leader...
...Jones' final delusions was that he would move his cult to the Soviet Union. A delegation from the commune talked twice with Feodor Timofeyev, the Soviet press attache in Georgetown, about a possible move, but a memo of that meeting shows the Russians offered little encouragement. Russian consular officials and a Russian doctor also visited Jonestown, which was the object of a favorable report by Tass. In the past few months, Russian language classes were held at the commune. Members had to recite Russian phrases, like "good morning," before receiving their rice-and-gravy meals...
Jones' dream of moving the commune to Russia may have stemmed from his delusion that he was the reincarnation of Lenin. Indeed, he once told Jeannie Mills in California: "Lenin died with a bullet in his body and so will...
Despite their dubious and sometimes deadly activities, the cults have remained pretty much outside the law. Evidence emerged last week that the U.S. State Department had been given ample warning of the impending catastrophe at Jonestown but had not acted decisively. Deborah Layton Blakey, sister of Larry Layton, the commune's alleged executioner, sent the department an eleven-page statement detailing Jones' paranoia and brutality, the suicide drills, the weapons present in the camp, the malnutrition and sickness that were rampant, and the state of fear in which most of the inhabitants lived. She claims that the commune...
...expanded this protection. At the same time, partly because of abuses by some agents during the Watergate era, the FBI has been sharply restricted in its undercover activities. FBI agents argue that the only way they could have found out what was happening in Jonestown was to infiltrate the commune. Had that become known, says an agent, "can't you just hear the roar...