San Diego State religious studies department chair trying to rehabilitate Jim Jones (yes, of the Jonestown massacre)

San Diego State religious studies department chair trying to rehabilitate Jim Jones (yes, of the Jonestown massacre)

From Jawa Report:

Hey, it was only 918 people who were forced to commit mass suicide by a politically-connected Democratic power player and Marx-spewing Leftist. Daniel Flynn at City Journal takes down Rebecca Moore's new book, "Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple".

It would be tempting to dismiss Moore, who in addition to her latest apologia has authored such titles as A Sympathetic History of Jonestown and In Defense of Peoples Temple. But like the group whose reputation she seeks to resuscitate, Moore does not operate on the margins, however marginal her views. She chairs the department of religious studies at San Diego State. When the subject of Jonestown arises, as it did recently on the 30th anniversary of the events, media outlets solicit her expertise. Stanley Nelson’s PBS documentary “The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,” for instance, featured Moore as a talking head. And she published this latest book not out of her garage but through Praeger, a respected imprint of a major publishing house. However reassuring it is to believe that all cranks are tinfoil-hatted denizens of the furthest recesses of the Internet, the examples of Jones, the darling of the San Francisco power structure, and of Moore, a tenured, media-designated authority, prove that what’s comforting isn’t always what’s true.

For years prior to Jonestown’s cataclysmic finale, unheeded voices, such as journalist Les Kinsolving’s, warned America about the raven-haired preacher feted by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, supervisor Harvey Milk, and mayor George Moscone. In her topsy-turvy narrative, Moore seems most concerned with refuting these lonely critics. She calls the relatives of Jonestown members who exposed oppression within the Temple “apostates” and “defectors,” faulting them for failing to “consider the effect these actions might have upon residents of Jonestown.” The slain Congressman Ryan didn’t provide adequate notice for his trip and embarrassed the Temple by bringing an entourage of journalists, Moore claims. “Violence erupted because Jonestown residents believed that Ryan jeopardized their ultimate concern, which was to be in solidarity with all oppressed peoples, but especially with African Americans. He represented the power of the state and its ability to destroy the community.” This is the kind of tripe that one would have expected to hear over a Jonestown loudspeaker. Here it is in a book by a department chair at a respected university.

Here's a lesson in how an intelligent person, with, one would assume, a real grasp of the historical facts, can still cling to wrong side on what appears to be a simple issue. Jim Jones coerced his followers (918 of them) to drink poison Koolaid and die. And yet, this SDSU professor seeks to make a hero of him.

Similarly, we read professors, politicians (ex-Presidents) tell us that "Israel is an Apartheid state", when the truth is, Israel has Arab-Muslim Parliament members and Muslims live better in Israel than they do in the Palestinian territories. Additionally, Palestinians really do insist that no Jews live in Gaza or the West Bank. That's right; No Jews allowed. But somehow, to our intellectual betters, Israel is the Apartheid State.

And, when Israel kills a few Palestinians in targeted military actions in response to Palestinian violence, we are told there is a genocide going on against the Palestinian people. The other day, the head of the UN Human Rights Commission said the blockade of Gaza has created a situation worse than the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust. Meanwhile, this same UN representative seems to care not at all that the Arab Muslim government of Sudan has killed nearly 2.5 million black Christians and Animists in a real 25 year-long genocide.

One would hope that, if there is a hell, this SDSU professor, this UN Human Rights Commission rep, and this ex-President would be forced to live with the Palestinians and the Janjaweed.