Rosalynn Carter and the Democrats' Infatuation with a Black Marxist Death Cult

The true story of Jim Jones and the Guyana massacre

Adapted from the wonderful book, MUGGED: Liberal Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama

A shining example of the Democrats’ promotion of a crazy black people was their close association with Jim Jones’ “People’s Temple.”  Though recent television biographies on Jim Jones’ People’s Temple portray him as a religious leader in the mold of Jerry Falwell, Jones was the original left-wing “community organizer,” beloved by Democratic politicians throughout the land.

Jones’ People’s Temple was a black cult, though Jones, like so many other jackass liberals wrecking black people’s lives, was himself white.  But more than 80 percent of Jones’ followers were black,[i] and according to the most intensive study of Jonestown ever conducted -- by the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University -- the People’s Temple was “primarily black community in racial terms” and in “cultural identity.”[ii] 

During Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, Rosalynn Carter went to Jones’ People’s Temple of “apostolic socialism” and appeared on a stage with him, an act second in its shamelessness only to the time she appeared on stage with her husband.  

Carter’s vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale wrote a letter to Jones, saying: “Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me."[iii]

Based in San Francisco, Jones was embraced by all of California’s liberal elite, including then-Gov. Jerry Brown, former Gov. Edmund Brown Jr., Democratic congressmen Phillip and John Burton, then-Assemblyman Willie Brown and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone – who gave Jones a position on the city’s Housing Authority.[iv]

Even before the mass suicide in Guyana, it was obvious that Jones was crazier than a March hare.  His newspaper, People’s Forum, was like a written version of MSNBC.  In it, he predicted a Nazi takeover of America, and warned his followers that fascists were planning concentration camps for black people, doing to them exactly what Germany did to the Jews.[v]

With California’s liberal political establishment fawning over Jones, the media mostly left him and his commune alone.  But finally, on August 1, 1977, New West magazine published a major expose on Jones, based on interviews with more than a dozen former members who were willing to speak on the record. In response to credible allegations of child abuse, assault and fraud, San Francisco’s liberal elites … rallied around Jones.

Of course, they did.

The Democratic mayor and district attorney – whom Jones had helped elect -- refused to investigate, a practice now known as "pulling a Merrick Garland.” Willie Brown appeared on stage at Jones’ Temple, saying the attacks on the commune were “a measure of its effectiveness.”[vi]  (Sadly, none of these elected Democrats accompanied Jones to Guyana.) 

Jones soon fled with his members to Guyana, which he admired for its Marxist government.   His entry was greased with letters of recommendation from First Lady Rosalynn Carter, Vice President Walter Mondale, and Carter cabinet member Joseph Califano[vii], among other eminent Democrats.  His plan was to create “an experiment in socialism.”[viii]  Terrific move.  Those always go well.

After the cult’s departure, ex-members and relatives of members began warning in interviews, newspaper articles, and letters to President Carter and the State Department that that Jones was insane and was planning a mass suicide.  Carter’s State Department investigated and concluded that it had no basis for action.[ix]  

Jim Jones lawyer, Mark Lane

Finally, a Bay area congressman, Leo Ryan, went on a fact-finding mission to Guyana in November, 1978. As he and his entourage were about to board their plane home, Jones’ followers sprayed them with machine gun fire, killing Ryan and NBC correspondent, Dan Harris.  In all, five people were killed and ten wounded.

Back at the socialist paradise, Jones ordered his followers to commit “revolutionary suicide” to protest “the conditions of an inhumane world.”  He exhorted them to take the grape drink and die “quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly.... Good knowing you!”

More than 900 men women and children died, mostly by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid grape drink, memorialized in popular culture as “drinking the Kool Aid.”  Cyanide poison causes death after a painful several minutes of writhing, screaming and foaming at the mouth.[x] Some were apparently murdered with injections of the poison. Jones died of a gunshot wound to the head.

As hundreds died in front of him,