On that fateful day in 1978 in the Guyana jungle
ANDERSON’S CARTOON MISSES THE HORRIFYING TRUTH — SOUPCOFF
From the U. K.’s Guardian newspaper Thursday: “The Pulitzer- winning cartoonist Nick Anderson … put his cartoon The Trump Cult up for sale on the online retailer Redbubble this month. The illustration shows Trump with supporters in MAGA hats, serving them a drink that has been labelled ‘ Kool- Aid,’ then ‘ Chloroquine’ and finally ‘Clorox,’ a U. S. bleach brand.
“The cartoon is a reference to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where more than 900 people died after drinking cyanide- laced punch at the order of cult leader Jim Jones, and to Trump’s widely denounced idea of injecting bleach to protect against coronavirus.”
Is the toon a bitingly clever takedown of Trump and his supporters or an offensive and simplistic hit job on the U. S. president and the people who voted for him?
The answer is irrelevant to whether Anderson ought to be able to post the work for sale. The Trump re- election campaign was wrong to try to get the cartoon permanently removed from Redbubble — and ultimately unsuccessful. The company pulled the artwork from its site when Donald J. Trump for President Inc. complained that it constituted a trademark violation. But Redbubble reposted the satiric drawing this week, saying taking it down had been a mistake.
So, now all is well in the world of parody and political critique, where the freedom to be potentially offensive and/or unfair is a necessary ingredient to contributing to social and intellectual progress. But let us not move on from Anderson’s cartoon entirely before pointing out that it is most hurtful and problematic in a way that has not even been commented upon.
Those who are most wronged by the illustration are the victims of the Jonestown Massacre, who are depicted, by analogy with the cartoon MAGA supporters, as willing dupes, happily guzzling the poisoned Flavor Aid that will kill them all. The reality is that far from being stupidly pleased, the 909 people who died at Jonestown had little choice but to play a hand in their own miserable deaths and those of their children.
When Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones commanded his followers to commit what he dubbed “revolutionary suicide” on Nov. 18, 1978, they were stranded in the remote jungle, surrounded by armed guards.
An American congressman, three American journalists and a Jonestown defector had just been murdered by a handful of their fellow Jonestown settlers, and they were told that the Guyana Defence Force was on its way to attack them in retaliation.
Jonestown nurses squirted poison directly into the mouths of infants and toddlers, many of whom were screaming. These children were too young to know exactly what was happening or to have a say in it, but not too young to be terrified and defiant.
Adult Jonestown followers who actively resisted drinking the knock- off Kool- Aid were forcibly restrained and injected with poison.
A few people did manage to escape Jonestown shortly before or during the mass poisoning, eventually trekking almost 50 kilometres through the jungle to safety. But as for the many more who did not, it is unfair to conclude that they were enthusiastically choosing to end their lives in a voluntary act of solidarity with the abusive, drug- addicted man who was doling out the cyanide.
Anderson’s c artoon misses the horrifying truth about Jonestown: it was far more parts psychopathic murder by a prideful and power- hungry narcissist than it was suicide by a hoard of gullible simpletons who should have known better. By November 1978, many Jonestown followers did know better. It was just too late for them to do anything about it.
The cruel mistake of portraying the Jonestown victims as pathetic pawns was made early and often after the massacre. In those days, the writers and artists who created these depictions may not have known any better themselves. But in the intervening four decades, several books, photographs, audio recordings, documentaries, interviews and articles have appeared that make it clear that the popular notion that the Jonestown victims “drank the Kool- Aid” — in the sense of cheerfully dying for a pointless cause — is reductive, simplistic, and mostly just wrong.
It is disappointing that a cartoonist of Anderson’s calibre would not take this more accurate picture of Jonestown into account. It does not mean Redbubble should pull the Trump cult cartoon. (Again.) It is still the case that satirists ought to have a wide berth to produce work that could be considered disrespectful, or even wounding.
But it does not mean we have to be happy about it when they do.
The Jonestown victims deserve more respect than being used as cheap visual punchlines in the political commentary of the day.