Today marks 25 years since Jim Jones staged a mass murder/suicide, killing over 900 people. Arguably, the BATFs response to the Branch Davidians and David Koresh can be blamed partly on this earlier experience.
As the Washington Post reports:
Jones retreated to Guyana in 1978, taking about 1,000 followers with him. Later that year, Rep. Leo Ryan led a delegation of journalists and relatives of temple members to Jonestown. Some members chose to leave with him and the party was ambushed at the airstrip; Ryan and four others were killed. Back at the compound, Jones ordered his followers to die, starting with the infants. Most victims were poisoned, some forcibly. Some were shot by security guards. Jones was found with a bullet wound in the head. It is not known who fired the shot.With one monstrous swoop, Jim Jones succeeded in giving fringe religious groups everywhere a bad name, and made "Don't drink the Kool-Aid" a saying synonymous with "Don't trust your leaders." My sympathies to the families and friends of each of the victims of the Jonestown massacre. Apologetics Index has a page on Cult and Ex-cult Counseling Resources, and the entire site contains a wealth of information on various cult groups. They even maintain a blog.
If memory serves, wasn't he a radical leftist who feared nuclear war so badly he fled to the middle of nowhere?
Don't you have the sequence reversed? The Davidians might have occurred because of Jonestown, but it would take a reversal of the timestream to have Jonestown blamed on the Davidians.
Alwin -
I mean that the BATF's response can be blamed partly on Jonestown. If Jim Jones hadn't killed so many people at the prospect of congressional interest/media attention, perhaps the BATF wouldn't have treated the Branch Davidians like they were planning on blowing everyone up.
I'm no 'Koresh and his crew had it coming' type, but if 900 people had died as the result of another secluded religious cult, I'd be keeping that in mind when I was sent off to round up another one.
Good addendum, it clarifies. Found it a bit puzzling myself, so I edited it to make the meaning that Celeste has expressed here clearer in the original text.
I suspect they were actually more concerned about a Ruby Ridge type scenario, where a peaceful surrender led to the press taking photos before the crime scene could be sanitized. Evidence can be so inconvenient at times...
On the subject of Jonestown, do yourself a treat and find a copy of Jonathan Z. Smith's essay "The Devil in Mr. Jones." I know it was published in *<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226763609/qid=1069141349/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-8696750-7848601?v=glance&n=507846"Imagining Religion*, but haven't been able to track it down elsewhere. It manages to combine excellent writing with a radical but ultimately self-evident view of religion that you just don't find many places.
err. screwed that one up. sorry.