ABSTRACT
Modern totalitarianism, whether communist, fascist, or Islamic, is viewed by Norman Cohn as a new expression of movements. It is a Manichean vision of good versus evil, whether defined in terms of religious or political ideology. Jonestowners could experience collective transcendence through identification with Jones and with an ideology promising the transformation of this world. Communal sharing, confessions, and rituals of mortification reinforced group values. Occasionally, psychopharmacological drugs were administered to keep people quiet. Jones's preaching and the Temple ritual combined both New Left and unreconstructed Stalinist ideology, atheism, and old-time religion. The ordinary Jonestowners who reportedly applauded the punishments, either enjoying or tolerating such socially sanctioned sadism, were not just victims but were co-perpetrators. People were humiliated by Jim Jones's orders to perform homosexual and heterosexual acts in public with assigned partners. Some punishments were less public.
