A significant but almost forgotten anniversary

Forty years ago, the world was trying to come to terms with the horrifying news out of Guyana

This weekend, Nov. 18, will be 40 years since the mass murder and suicides in #Jonestown -- it is the worst thing I've ever witnessed in a career that spans many wars and other disasters. My @TIME cover shows the vat of purple poison, and the body of Jim Jones is under the "E." pic.twitter.com/vFOPlbJEit

— David Hume Kennerly (@kennerly) November 16, 2018

The People's Temple Massacre is the worst mass murder of US citizens excepting only 9-11. The anniversary passed without much press attention. A new book on Jim Jones and his cult-prison may tell us why this crime has been so effectively memory-holed.

City Journal reviewed the book:

Jim Jones, Made in San Francisco

Forty years after the Jonestown massacre, a new book chronicles the deep ties between the depraved cult leader and prominent Democratic politicians.

Flynn does a good job of laying out the social and political landscape of the Bay Area in the late seventies and situating the bizarre respect that the Jones cult received within the general fruitiness of the era. Jim Jones’s Bay Area was the same milieu that gave rise to the Zodiac killer, the lost-in-time Zebra murders, and the depredations of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
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At the same time, Jim Jones’s connection to mainstream Democratic politics has been suppressed. He and the Peoples Temple, which exalted racial diversity and social justice, have been cast as harrowing examples of Christian religious extremism, though Jones preached atheism and ordered his followers to use the Bible as toilet paper. A roster of leaders who remain dominant figures in California politics today embraced Jones publically. Jerry Brown, then and now governor of the state, approvingly visited the Peoples Temple, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who ascended to the mayoralty upon Moscone’s assassination, joined the Board of Supervisors in honoring Jones.

Then there is this gem from the "mentor" of CA senator and 2020 Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris:

Willie Brown, longtime speaker of the California state assembly, a mayor of San Francisco, and the mentor of Senator Kamala Harris, was especially lavish in his praise of Jones, calling him “a combination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Chairman Mao.”

An article by Daniel Flynn on Jim Jones and his enablers:

Jim Jones’s Tenured Apologist

A recent discussion on KQED with several People's Temple members who survived:

The Tragedy of Jonestown, 40 Years Later

Leave it to the Huffington Post to find a way to smear Trump with the deeds of demented, mass murdering leftists:

40 Years After The Jonestown Massacre, We Haven’t Learned Its Lessons

NPR tried to do the same thing but with a little more subtlety.

40 Years Later, Jonestown Offers A Lesson In Demagoguery