LESSONS OF JONESTOWN AND POPPER'S OPEN SOCIETY

Image By Nancy Wong - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53779491

Further Information: Jonestown The Life and Death of People's Temple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydHRESPjBxg

Charles Krause, the Emmy-Award winning journalist, was a political columnist for the Washington Post in 1978 . He'd just begun his first foreign assignment in Buenos Aires, covering wars and revolutions in Latin America. He was ready for the risks of meeting right-wing dictatorships and left-wing guerilla warfare . However, he did not anticipate being shot at by Americans in Guyana hours before what, he wrote, " is still perhaps the most bizarre and tragic episode in the history of American religious movements...the mass suicide- murder of more than nine hundred of Jim Jones' followers on November 18, 1978". Krause was accompanying the ill-fated investigation led by Congressman Leo Ryan, who perished in an airstrip shooting, as he sought to fly Jonestown defectors to safety .

Charles Krause has drawn upon his Jonestown experience to report on the abuse of power by regimes of all kinds throughout the world . Deborah Layton - a former aide to Jim Jones, whom Jones charged with depositing millions of dollars in foreign banks- is the author of Seductive Poison, a book for which Krause wrote the foreword. Layton's account of her attraction to the People's Temple through to her escape from Jonestown reads like a terrifying thriller with a resounding warning :" Our alarm signals ought to go off as soon as someone tells us their way is the only way." It was Layton's escape, and 37-point affidavit , that spurred Leo Ryan's investigation.

Layton's concerns were echoed in 1940's New Zealand, in Christchurch , where Sir Karl Popper began work on his classic text The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper wrote in defence of democracy - an open society- where the vitality of public dialogue could keep the rise of tyranny in check . In Popper's day, scholars looked to "Platonic Guardians" as an alternative to the regimes of Hitler and Stalin.

Under Plato's vision , the idiocies of all forms of government could be replaced by the rule of justice from wise leaders occupying the high moral ground. Popper, conversely, stated that justice cannot be established by government decree because nobody can be everywhere , and no one person or group has all the right answers.

The late Emeritus Professor Peter Munz, New Zealand historian, called for a celebration and widespread discussion of Sir Karl Popper throughout New Zealand's universities.

Given Charles Krause's plea- for"an open , national discussion on religion, politics, and the USA to prevent Jonestown , or something like it, happening again " - Professor Munz' clarion call may be worth heeding , with New Zealand possibly providing academic leadership on this matter.

It is also worth noting that the story of Jim Jones is more about politics than cultism . Jim Jones was always a communist , an avowed Marxist - Leninist. His political movement, The People's Temple, passed itself off as a church- long after Jones had been disaffiliated as a Christian minister -simply to avoid paying taxes.

With a sprinkling of all kinds of social movements and born-again Christianity - ( gospel music , emotional preaching ) - Jones' "church" had tapped into a rich vein of California culture. Yet by the time Jonestown was settled in the Socialist Republic of Guyana, his church had become an "Agricultural Project."

Nevertheless, Jones' ability to deliver crowds and votes to key political leaders - notably then Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone- kept him very well connected.

When I was a student here at Massey University, one of my lecturers once worked for the San Francisco Housing Authority when it was led by Jim Jones, who'd been appointed by Mayor Moscone. When I asked if she had any sense of foreboding, she admitted her unease, but put it down to politics as usual.

I wish not to dwell on a macabre point in the social history of the Americas but to remember those who sadly lost their lives in search of something bigger and better than what was in front of them , and the loved ones left behind . I cannot think of a more appropriate tribute than Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, and I leave the reader with but one quote from this all too unheralded brilliant scholar :

" It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion with righteous stupidity will be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ " .

Karl Popper (1902 - 1994)

- ADAM GREENWELL ( 2008)