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Gary Dickson
Jim Jones of Jonestown: a charismatic type
Funny thing coincidences. I read Walter Humes’ piece (18 October) where he thunders against the psychopathic tendencies of individuals in the corporate, and especially financial world.
These are ‘flawed and dangerous personalities’ who manoeuvre their way up the alpine heights of corporate power exhibiting ‘strong leadership’. Indeed, they are ‘charismatic’. Now by a weird and wonderful coincidence my long article ‘Charisma, Medieval and Modern’ has just come out, armed with full references, in an online, open access, scholarly journal ‘Religions’.
‘Charisma’ burst into academic life thanks to a pioneering sociologist, Max Weber (d. 1920). Forget academic niceties. By the 60s popular culture snatched it. Thanks to the mass media, pop musicians, movie stars, sporting heroes, TV personalities, ‘reality’ show victims, glamorous models, and, on occasion, notorious rogues – all became celebrities. They were ‘charismatic’. What did they have? Besides close-ups, they had names, either their own, or manufactured for them. So they were exceptional. Most of us live and die as plain old Mr/Mrs/Ms Anonymous.
Before Weber, the idea of ‘charisma’ (as a gift of God) came from Christianity. Weber thought it was a quality belonging to truly exceptional individuals. Because they performed heroic, inspiring deeds – say as warriors or as holy men – they attracted, overwhelmed, captivated people who recognized their exceptional qualities and became their followers. Charisma had to be performed to be perceived. When the mass media grabbed ‘charisma’ it generated fans, not followers. What a gulf between them. Fans crave entertainment. Followers will allow their lives to be reshaped by the rules, perhaps the new moral ideas, of a charismatic leader.
New moral ideas? That’s why I wrote about the transgressive sexuality of the infamous sect leader Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana. In 1978, his 913 followers committed suicide, although some were murdered. Jones, who died with them, was a sexual opportunist, exploiting his charismatic aura to ensnare both his male and female adherents. He boasted of his conquests.
A second example of a charismatic sect leader is Vernon Howell who changed his name to David Koresh. In 1993, his religious community, Mt. Carmel, near Waco, Texas—not Wacko as Radio Forth pronounced it—was stormed and burnt to the ground by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI. 74 of Koresh’s followers, including their leader, died. Koresh taught that the Apocalypse was coming soon. And come it did. He claimed that God called on him to take ‘spiritual wives.’ He obeyed; they followed.
Charismatic demagogues could combine religious and political roles. The great Florentine Renaissance preacher Savonarola was a Dominican friar, who was thought of as a prophet. He had a political following. After castigating Pope Alexander VI, he was excommunicated, tortured, hanged and burnt. Today there are calls for his beatification. A modern cleric was the American parish priest Father Charles Coughlin, the ‘father of hate radio’ from 1926-41. He broadcast pro-fascist and anti-semitic sermons across America until, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, his archbishop ordered him to stop or be defrocked. He retired as a parish priest in 1966. His reputation was tarnished, but he still had supporters.
Weber knew that charisma had a short shelf life. Once they are dead, however, charismatics and ‘charismatics’ have a mixed fate. Fans and followers alike can celebrate them, raise statues in their honour, put up plaques, or, if they become saints, venerate them. But reputations can suffer a ferocious about turn. Look at financial wizards. Look at Jimmy Savile. Or look at the statues of Lenin, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein pulled down and spat upon. The afterlife of charisma risks Last Judgements.
Gary Dickson is formerly a reader in history and is an honorary fellow at the school of history, classics and archaeology, University of Edinburgh
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