(Episode 504): INCORRECT! Drinking the Koolaid…

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Shownotes! Because citations are political…

On today’s episode of INCORRECT! We are here to talk about “Drinking the Kool-aid”, the Jonestown Massacre, and why you are INCORRECT about cults. Megan is here to remind you, nerds, that New Religious Movements are overwhelmingly filled with people who are non-white, non-men, and non-cishet, and they are often joined as a way to become part of a strong community and to try to make a real difference in the world. The Jonestown Massacre involved the murder of people who were overwhelming Black women and children. So, when you joke about “drinking the kool-aid”, that is rooted in racism and mysogynoir.

“Peoples Temple was a predominantly black New Religious Movement, devoted body and soul to creating an egalitarian, anti-racist, anti-capitalist society. The people of People's Temple were scholars and revolutionaries, activists and optimists.”

-Megan Goodwin

The 101: Where We Did the Professor Work…

Why shouldn't we make fun of cults??? Aren’t these people brainwashed??? What’s wrong with making jokes like “drinking the Kool-Aid”???

As Professor Goodwin reminds us, The People’s Temple was a movement to create an idealistic space where people could exist in community. A tremedous amount of work was done by members of the People’s Temple, which was a majority Black women and children. So, in the massacre at The People’s Temple Agricultural Project was an act of Jim Jones and his fellow leaders (who were mostly white women), forging white supremacy which ending in the death of hundreds of adults and children.

If that isn’t enough, After this heinous crime, no one wanted their bodies. Guyana said they were a US problem. America wanted to leave them in Guyana. The bodies of unclaimed Jonestown victims were shipped in rubberized bags from the Guyanese jungle to an airforce base in Delaware, where they languished for months. America ultimately decided that the Jonestown dead were not human and therefore not America’s problem — rendering these teachers and veterans, workers and revolutionaries, as Christina Sharpe might put it, unmournable.

Why you were INCORRECT! about “drinking the kool-aid”

when you joke about Jonestown, you minimize the heroic efforts and the brutal murders of hundreds of victims.
“drinking the kool-aid” has implications of brainwashed, stupid, cult-followers who did not have agency. Instead, members of the People’s Agricultural Project should be remembered as revolutionary figures who were brutally murdered by an abusive leader.
The Black women of people’s temple went to Guyana because it was made clear that the US had no future for them. They sought out the People’s Temple because of it’s process of a better future of equity and love.

"Arrival at Jonestown"

"Jonestown Settlement in Guyana"

The lesson plan: here’s what we talked about…

Cults, what they are, what they are not, and why you should be careful about how you use “cult”. The killjoys reminded us of two things we need to think about when we talk about cults…
1. When people say “cults” they often mean, “religion we don’t like.”
2. “Cult” is often shorthand for concerns about coercion and manipulation.
The killjoys are here to tell you that brainwashing does not exist, but abuse and manipulation does. And we should take seriously the ways that impacts the choices, or lack thereof, of members of new religious movements.
“Cult” does work to minimize and shut down the existence of people who are doing religion in a way that is too different, too beyond the pale, too independent.

““It would be useful for people to know that the term ‘cult’ is not a useful characterization for religious groups that may fall outside of the mainstream…it signals that these are inherently unbelievable theologies, that the authority of the leader is questionable, that the rationality of the members is suspect in ways that are beyond what you take to be religion”

— Judith Weisenfeld

You must remember this!! Where have we talked about this before?

SGS1: “Cults” Where Megan and Ilyse talk about the history of the term “cults” and its implications.
E203: Race and Religion in What’s Now the United States In which we shock and/or awe you with the ways Americans built race out of religion (also violence -- you know how we do).

The too-long-didn’t-listen from each of your killjoys…

“cult” is not a useful term for a new religious movement. Goodwin likes to remind us that when we say “cult”, we usually just mean “religion you don’t like”.
The People’s Temple was made up of people, majority Black women, who were seeking out a better life, and a community built on equity and love. The massacre at Jonestown was a betrayal and a murderous act on the part of Jim Jones.
When we say “drinking the kool-aid”, it trivializes and minimizes the lives lost at Jonestown.