If you don't know why conservatives use this expression to refer to the leftists prepared to defend any outrage of their heroes, this brief remembrance of the Jonestown massacre 30 years ago will help:
I should point out that while there were many Jonestown residents who drank the Kool-Aid willingly, and in full knowledge of what was in it, many others were threatened at gunpoint by Jones's machine gun wielding "security force," and many were children who had no idea what was going on.Shiva Naipaul's Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy (1981) discusses some of the involvement of progressive San Francisco Democrats in breaking laws and bending rules to help make this tragedy happen.Thirty years ago, Jim Jones was the leader of the People’s Temple, a communist organization that had been run out of San Francisco due to intense media scrutiny. They made their way to Guyana in South America, set up a collective named (of course) Jonestown, and proceeded to swell it with his supporters, many of them minorities.
They came because they appreciated his emphasis on integration. They came because he told them that traditional religion was created to keep women and minorities down. They came because he promised them he would take care of them. They came because he promised them a socialist paradise. They came because he told them he would fight their battles with oppression and help them win.
They never left.
On November 18, thirty years ago, their savior invited them all for drinks. At the end of the day, over 900 followers had perished drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid Jones gave them. It’s why we use the term “drank the Kool-Aid” when we talk about someone so sold-out to a movement that he would do anything and believe anything to support it.
UPDATE: I am reminded that the drink mix was actually from a company called "Flavor-Aid" and I should expect a reminder from the makers of Kool-Aid shortly!
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