The People’s Temple (led by Jim Jones, had a settlement called Jonestown where they committed mass murder-suicide, and is the origin of the term “drinking the kool-aid”) was a progressive religious cult that combined Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. Before the whole murder-suicide thing they provided a bunch of social services including soup kitchens, rent assistance, job placement services, free canned goods, clothing, and coal for winter heating. It’s pretty wild reading about Jim Jones himself and seeing parallels to some modern online tankies (there’s a quote of Jim Jones suggesting they should all kill themselves because the world isn’t ready for socialism and then referring to a group of defectors as “Trotskyite defectors” and “Coca-Cola revolutionaries”).
The People’s Temple (led by Jim Jones, had a settlement called Jonestown where they committed mass murder-suicide, and is the origin of the term “drinking the kool-aid”) was a progressive religious cult that combined Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. Before the whole murder-suicide thing they provided a bunch of social services including soup kitchens, rent assistance, job placement services, free canned goods, clothing, and coal for winter heating. It’s pretty wild reading about Jim Jones himself and seeing parallels to some modern online tankies (there’s a quote of Jim Jones suggesting they should all kill themselves because the world isn’t ready for socialism and then referring to a group of defectors as “Trotskyite defectors” and “Coca-Cola revolutionaries”).