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Who knows, maybe Jim Jones was providing money, people, and even sexual services from his followers (male or female) to some people in high places?

This is exactly what 'Cy Aaron' (pseudonym for a real person), leader of the cult Steve Susoyev, wrote about, did. You can read all this in Susoyev's memoir, People Farm.

Cy Aaron invited highly placed therapists, academics, and yes journalists, to his human laboratory, a therapy ranch and his beautiful teenaged inner circle of 'professional sex surrogates' serviced these illustrious people. One of them was a Nobel Laureate.

Just about all these people wrote letter on Cy Aaron's behalf, to his sentencing judge, pleading for clemency or at least a mitigated sentence.

Cy Aaron's less famous though still damaging career, was built at the very same time Jim Jones was weaving his own support network in San Francisco and elsewhere. Susoyev captures the networking perfectly.

And...a few months after Cy Aaron and his wife fled the US to escape charges for sex with minor children and 'crimes against nature' Jim Jones and his followers died at Jonestown.

The news was still singing the airwaves when Cy Aaron and his wife slipped back to the United States and were caught trying to bribe a potential witness into silence. This background of indignation, plus Cy Aaron being a psychiatrist, (and therefore legally accountable for his actions in a way that a non licensed person is not...cough!) meant that the judge ignored the many pleas for clemency and sent Cy Aaron to prison.

*Interestingly, Cy Aaron had made it a point in his happier and more illustrious days, to lend his very considerable support to Gay Liberation. And though Susoyev saw that ghastly damage the man did, he admitted that Aaron's support for Gay Liberation came at a crucial time.

Steve Susoyev was homosexual and had been rehearsing his own suicide, just before he met Cy Aaron. He did horrible things to serve Cy Aaron, for he was sincerely convinced Aaron had been his savior.

To this day, Susoyev has to live with the knowledge that he himself did horrible things in loyalty to his brilliant and horrible leader, and he knows many people remain afraid of him...and Susoyev accepts this and knows thier emotions are valid.

Yet, though he is horrified by what his leader did, and wrote his book to make amends and educate the public about the dangers of cults, and especially therapy cults...he
admits that Cy Aarons support for Gay Liberation came at a crucial time. Many of Aarons most ardent supporters were closeted gay mental health professionals who were desperate for support.

Now I must ask whether there are psychopaths who have the finely honed survival instincts attributed to feral animals.

And whether people like Jim Jones and 'Cy Aaron' have a way of only coming to the support of worthy but controversial social reform movements at the instant, only at the instant, those movements are on the very point of becoming socially acceptable???

For remember, there were activists who labored in painful obscurity for years, and even decades before that final crucial window of time, just before Stonewall.

Harry Hay and the Homophile Movement.

Lyon and Martin and early women supporters of The Daughters of Bilitis.

Harvey Milk placed a crucial role, but he was lucky to be there at the moment when the wave crested, partly with his help and partly because the moment itself was exactly right.

A great moment in social reform with its hero or heroine is like a great moment for surfing.

You need a surfer with splendid technique, years of experience, on that board.

But...that person who is made immortal in surfing annals also needs to find him or herself atop that Perfect Wave.

Afterward, the Perfect Wave itself vanishes back into the great ocean of anonymity. The surfer is remembered.

Still, getting back to my incoherant question, we must dare ask if some psychopaths are opportunists and whether they lend their support, their very public support, at the very instant, a social justice project is just about to succeed and look good--and make them look good.

People like Jim Jones and Cy Aaron seem to know how, in that regard, to 'time the market' and know just when to 'buy in' to what had formerly been a low priced, disreputable social movement.

Anticult wrote:

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It seems that a number of political people were involved with Jim Jones, perhaps due to believing in the social-sexual politics, or maybe for their own reasons.

But of course after the massacre, they all try to wipe that out of history.

I was shocked to find that Harvey Milk support letter for Jim Jones, Harvey Milk supporters should not try to hide that by omission. Harvery Milk was a big supporter of Jim Jones even after Jones was in serious trouble, that is factual, its in the letter to Pres Carter.

Harvey Milk was great. But great persons can make grave mistakes and they can allowe themselves to co-opted by adroit con artists and social manipulators like Jim Jones. Milk may have prided himself on his own political acumen (just as a fine musician is justifiably proud of his or her ability to play violin and do it well)...yet a brilliant politican who delights in working the scene may fail to imagine that he himself has been co-opted and is being himself used as a bishop or knight on a cult leader's even bigger chessboard.

A guy like Milk may never imagine 'I am being used in someone elses game, a game that person hasnt even TOLD me about.'

Jones may have told a little bit about his 'game' but let it seem his game was manageably secular--religion with a reassuring dose of civil rights feel good fizzies mixed in.

Jones never told Milk and his secular backers that his chessboard and game were of non secular but actually of cosmic and ghastly proportions.

Jones may well have masked himself as just a very effective and innovative civil justice leader, sympathetic to Gay Liberation, not as someone who secretly thought he was Jesus at war with the Devil.

And he probably only backed Gay Liberation because Jones was feral and smelled out that Gay Liberation was now socially viable and had a critical mass of influential supporters who were on the point of going politically mainstream.

In short, unlike Jesus who cared for the poor and oppressed, Jones only cared for the poor and oppressed--when they were in a movement that was about to WIN.

It would be a teachable moment if those of us who honor Harvey Milk to have the guts to do the research and see to what extent even a great activist like Harvey may have allowed himself to be used as a chesspiece in Jim Jones Game of Ego and Death.

Its not just that Jones died so horribly and took so many people to horrible death with him.

I think a lot of living politicians on the SF scene cant stand the mortification of facing that they were used by a bigger con artist than they were.



I cannot stress enough that persons who do become famous have an obligation to be
very careful about whom they endorse. For once they endorse someone, those endorsements cannot be taken back, even if the famous person later has misgivings.

This thread may have trouble adding up because this is a very complex and emotionally charged situation.

Jim Jones has a place in the history of liberal San Francisco, the way Charles Manson had a relationship with the rock music scene in LA.

When Jones became infamous, all the people who had had contacts with him, tried whenever possible to deny ever having had anything to do with him--even when they had.

And...Manson, apparently also used his collection of girls to compromise people who were devout heterosexuals.

It wasnt just notoriety and blackmail that were consequences. Apparently, to add insult to injury, a lot of the guys who bedded the Manson girls found themselves later having to get medical treatment.

Those were the days---the days when antibiotics still worked.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2009 10:22PM by corboy.

Forgive me the vanity of quoting myself, but as I wrote:

Quote

(For a cult to establish itself in the guts of society)you need a gap, a breakdown in the larger social context, and a lack of vigilence by those who should be the immune system, the Fighter and Helper T-cells of human society--politicians, journalists, mainstream clergy.

If too many politicians, journalists, clergy and social justice activists are lulled into failing to fact check and do 'immune survaillance' on the new guy coming into town with his offer to save the world, society's immune barrier fails to function....much the way
powerful pathogens slip past the body's normal human immune barrier and get well entrenched before any sort of response is attempted.

By the time warnings come out, the cult has entrenched itself inside of vital parts of society the way HIV and plague manage to entrench themselves.

So...again, any cult leader who is clever enough to mimick the healing response of society and get the collusion of those who are supposed to guard us from rascals
before the rescals become entrenched and get an undeserved and deceptive sheen of legitimacy--thats a formidable cult leader indeed.

Yet another warning from Corboy:

As the words are written, in bronze at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem:

People be Vigilant

When charismatic narcissistic people show up wanting to support your beleagured cause, BEWARE.

Charismatic narcissistic people like Jones only back a cause, however controversial it is, if they smell out that it is going to WIN, or at least has so very many influential supporters, that even if it doesnt win, their support will garner the charismatic leader
narcissistic supplies.

If supporting a cause means hours of hard work, obscurity, public ridicule and social disgrace, a charismatic narcissistic person like Jones will stay far, far away.

Gay Liberation already had enough support from the powerful and beautiful people of liberal San Francisco that Jones was willing to lend his support. He went for it because he wanted to legitimize himself and get political and narcissistic supplies, chess pieces for his own deadly and demonic game--which he kept well hidden.

Well watch out. I implore all who love and support Marriage Equality to beware--someone like Jim Jones may be moving in to exploit your cause. The conditions are are similar to those for Harvey Milk and Gay Liberation in San Francisco, in the late 1970s.

There is great desperation among Marriage Equality supporters in California to
educate the public in time for the 2010 elections, in case the California Supreme Court votes to uphold Proposition 8.

I can tell you all right now, that a new Jim Jones could come along and EXPLOIT
all these people of good will, if he or she could convincingly promise 'Hey I have lots of people to help you do community organizing--we are even willing to do it in Fresno, Modesto, Tulare, Delano..'



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2009 10:35PM by corboy.

Its fascinating to read articles from before Jonestown, as in 1977 some were calling for investigations into Jim Jones, as all the serious warning signs and problems were coming out, like with his armed guards, etc.
But he had delivered voting blocks, and had the intense support of Willie Brown, and everyone else.

The bottom line is that local politicians love these cults, why? Because their members will vote the way their leader tells them to vote, and they will work for free to get you elected.

Add to that the blackmail around sexual misdeeds or drugs, which would enable the leader to in turn to completely control the politician. In the end, it was the corrupt local politicians and power brokers that allowed Jim Jones to run amok.

Here is a link to a August 1, 1977 expose article, 15 months before the massacre at Jonestown.

__________________________
Inside Peoples Temple By Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy
[jonestown.sdsu.edu]
"She just got a look at some of the methods Jim Jones has used to make himself one of the most politically potent religious leaders in the history of the state.

Jim Jones counts among his friends several of California's well-known public officials. San Francisco mayor George Moscone has made several visits to Jones's San Francisco temple, on Geary Street, as have the city's district attorney Joe Freitas and sheriff Richard Hongisto. And Governor Jerry Brown has visited at least once. Also, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley has been a guest at Jones's Los Angeles temple. Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally went so far as to visit Jones's 27,000-acre agricultural station in Guyana, South America, and he pronounced himself impressed. What's more, when Walter Mondale came campaigning for the vice-presidency in San Francisco last fall, Jim Jones was one of the few people invited aboard his chartered jet for a private visit. Last December Jones was appointed to head the city's Housing Authority Commission.

The source of Jones's political clout is not very difficult to divine. As one politically astute executive puts it: "He controls votes." And voters. During San Francisco's run-off election for mayor in December of 1975, some 150 temple members walked precincts to get out the vote for George Moscone, who won by a slim 4,000 votes. "They're well-dressed, polite and they're all registered to vote," said one Moscone campaign official.

Can you win office in San Francisco without Jones? "In a tight race like the ones that George or Freitas or Hongisto had, forget it without Jones," said State Assemblyman Willie Brown, who describes himself as an admirer of Jones's.
...
Finally, something must be said about the numerous public officials and political figures who openly courted and befriended Jim Jones. While it appears that none of the public officials from Governor Brown on down knew about the inner world of Peoples Temple, they have left the impression that they used Jones to deliver votes at election time, and never asked any questions. They never asked about the bodyguards. Never asked about the church's locked doors. Never asked why Jones's followers were so obsessively protective of him. And apparently, some never asked because they didn't want to know.
___________________________

Made in San Francisco, Jonestown and Official San Francisco:The Untold Story
[www.brasscheck.com]
Jones' supporters in San Francisco [www.brasscheck.com]


The SF Chronicle had an entire page for the 30 years after Jonestown. [www.sfgate.com]
Its unbelievable, that they include articles on "forgiveness" when the complete facts on Jonestown haven't even yet been released after 30 years! They should be screaming to have all of the investigation files opened to try and find out what happened.
Nope.

And there appears to be no mention of the letter from Harvey Milk to President Carter, or his support of Jones. That is deliberate. That should be a headline, but they don't want to open that can of worms.

They also frame Jim Jones simply as a "madman" when in reality, he was allowed to run amok due to the corruption in SF. They loved him, and they used him, as he delivered votes, money, sex and drugs too.
They were turning over children under state care to Jim Jones and his followers.

And to this day, the same type of thing continues, just in a different form.
The same type of leaders deal with these powerful cultish leaders and groups, to get votes, money, sex, etc.
They turn a blind eye to the abuses, as long as they get what they want out of it.

Even to this very day, for example, there are LGAT style sex-group "communes" in SF, who are using similar group persuasion methods used by Jim Jones in the early People's Temple.

It must be about the nature of POWER over human beings.




(this article does not even mention Harvey Milk or his support of Jim Jones, and try to make it sound like SF elite were dupes of Jim Jones...which is BS)

Jones Captivated S.F.'s Liberal Elite
They were late to discover how cunningly he curried favor
[www.sfgate.com]

you know, probably one of the most horrendous disgraces for the San Francisco establishment (Willie Brown), is the fact that they never even properly identified, buried, or had a proper memorial for the children who were murdered at Jonestown.

It says here 287 children were murdered. Others say 305 children.
[www.brasscheck.com]

No one would even accept the bodies of the children, and they were buried in a mass grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, with no memorial.

Why? Same reason, to protect themselves. Some of these same people were using People's Temple children, who were wards of California, in their elections campaigns. Who knows what other horrendous crimes were visited on those children before their murder.

Now it makes sense why San Francisco powers-that-be wanted to close the file on Jonestown, and blame it on a "madman". Because their names and fingerprints were all over it.

Willie Brown has to be one of the most contemptible figures in this entire nightmare.
This is how he introduced the criminal Jim Jones...
"Let me present to you what you should see every day when you look in the mirror in the early morning hours ... Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein ... Chairman Mao." [en.wikipedia.org]

Maybe only now, as the Willie Brown generation leaves power, will the facts come out, if they haven't been eliminated.




----------------------------
QUOTE:
"Many of the children who died in Jonestown were wards of the State of California who had been turned over to Jim Jones and other Temple members by California judges."

"It was illegal for these children to be removed from California yet, according to the House Foreign Affairs Committee which investigated the matter, no California official ever requested a check into the welfare or whereabouts of these children."

______________________________
[www.brasscheck.com]
The facts about the children of Jonestown

1. 287 children died in the Jonestown massacre.

2. According to the Guyanese court which had jurisdiction in the matter, all but three of the deaths in Jonestown were ruled to be the result of murder, not suicide. Source: The New York Times, 12/12/78

3. In spite of this fact, the US news media persists in erroneously calling these deaths a "mass suicide."

4. Many of the children who died in Jonestown were wards of the State of California who had been turned over to Jim Jones and other Temple members by California judges.

5. It was illegal for these children to be removed from California yet, according to the House Foreign Affairs Committee which investigated the matter, no California official ever requested a check into the welfare or whereabouts of these children.

6. While in San Francisco, Jim Jones was engaged in a wide ranging criminal enterprise which included welfare fraud, election fraud, child abuse, and extortion.

7. Willie Brown, who brokered Jones' electoral services to other California politicians, publicly credited the victory of George Moscone and Joseph Freitas to Jones' efforts. The use of children as campaign workers was an integral and highly visible part of these campaigns. Source: "Six Years with God" by Jeannie Mills. (The Temple's former Publicity Director. Murdered in 1980.)

8. As a reward for services rendered, and at the insistence of Willie Brown, Mayor George Moscone made Jim Jones chairman of San Francisco's Housing Commission, a position which gave him great power over the lives of many of the city's most vulnerable residents.

9. District Attorney Joseph Freitas appointed Jim Jones' personal attorney, Tim Stoen, to be in charge of his office's probe into allegation of election fraud in the election that put him and George Moscone into office. The State Attorney General later initiated an investigation into Stoen and Freitas.

10. According to Reverend Hannibal Williams, when he presented evidence of a death threat against him from the People's Temple, the case was turned over to Tim Stoen who attempted to kill the investigation. Source: SF Chronicle, 1/21/79

11. Many other people claimed that their reports of criminal activity on the part of the People's Temple were ignored by the San Francisco police department, the district attorney's office, the mayor's office, and the governor's office. In fact, Jones was never charged with a single crime the entire time he operated in San Francisco.

12. No San Francisco newspaper issued a single negative report about the Peoples Temple until New West Magazine, owned by the publishers of New York Magazine, published a story documenting Jones' abuse of children and extortion schemes. At least one paper, the Examiner, received grants from the Temple, purportedly to subsidize their investigative reporting.

13. Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, and Joseph Freitas all later denied any involvement with Jones. All were proven to be liars on this point.

Unanswered questions:


Why did city and state officials protect Jim Jones while he was operating a blatantly criminal enterprise in San Francisco?

Why did not one city or state official look into the removal from the state of over 200 children from California's care in clear violation of child welfare laws.

Why were California judges so readily willing to grant custody of children under state care to the People's Temple and to even find in favor of the Temple in custody cases involving the children's own biological parents?

Has anything really changed in the way the United States in general, and California in particular, looks after the well being of children who, through no fault of their own, are without reliable guardians?

Can any of the individuals still active in public life who were involved in this despicable episode point to a single they've done in the last twenty years to protect the rights and safety of children who find themselves without families to protect them?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Everyone knows the lessons about cults and dying. What's the need to talk about it? Jim Jones was a cultist, not recognized by me or anyone else."
Willie Brown, Jr. as quoted in the San Francisco Examiner, November 8, 1998