Top Obama adviser: GOP like Jim Jones cult

It's not like it hasn't happened before.

Prominent politicians, media personalities and others on the left have been calling conservatives, Republicans and tea-party members outrageous names like "terrorists" and "suicide bombers" for some time now, including the Department of Homeland Security's memo labeling pro-lifers and military veterans as "right-wing extremists" and ex-MSNBC host Martin Bashir recently suggesting former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin should be forced to eat human excrement.

One might ask, what could top such epithets?

A winner has emerged.

Barack Obama's new top adviser, John Podesta, tapped to help the president use executive orders to maximum advantage in his second term, has compared the GOP to the infamous People's Temple cult, led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana.

The comment came in a profile by Politico's Glenn Thrush. Podesta suggested ways the Obama administration could bypass Congress.

"They need to focus on executive action given that they are facing a second term against a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of Congress," he said.

In November of 1978, the world was shocked by the deaths of 913 members of the People's Temple cult. Jim Jones convinced his followers to move to Jonestown, a remote community he carved out of the South American jungle and named after himself. Jones constantly feared losing control of his followers. His paranoia was the main reason he moved the cult to Guyana.

The mass murder-suicide occurred after Rep. Leo Ryan of California and a team of reporters visited the compound to investigate reports of abuse. After some members tried to leave with the congressman's group, Jim Jones had Ryan and his entourage ambushed at the nearby airstrip. He then ordered his flock to commit suicide, many against their will, by drinking grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide.

PBS reported that Jones, in control of the socialistic commune, "confiscated medicines from every resident and kept himself alternatively medicated on amphetamines or barbiturates."

"The public punishments and humiliations continued, as did the private sexual advances. Jones declared that all men (except himself) were homosexuals and tightened his control over who could associate with one another. Families were broken apart and asked to inform on each other. Hard physical labor occupied able bodies six days a week. The late night meetings continued, and occasionally escalated into 'white nights' – all night sieges during which the entire population would huddle in the main pavilion listening as Jones railed against conspirators in the government, the media and the relatives who wanted to destroy their community."

Jim Jones

The PBS report said Jones also controlled all information.

"Letters coming in or going out were censored; telephone calls were restricted or scripted. … Armed Peoples Temple guards patrolled the jungle around Jonestown, ostensibly to protect the residents but clearly threatening anyone who considered escape. … In anticipation of an assault, Jones had his followers practice revolutionary suicide, drinking from vats of of flavored water which he announced was poisoned. When they survived the 'poison,' the residents realized it was another test of their loyalty."

After the horrified reaction to Podesta's Jonestown comment broke loose, he apologized, stating, "My snark got in front of my judgment."

House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman said with such an attitude in the White House, it's hard to see how anything gets accomplished.

Tea Party Patriots spokeswoman Jenny Martin told USA Today the name-calling was "despicable."

"Any man who is so historically ignorant as to compare millions of Americans who cherish freedom with the macabre and mass suicide at Jonestown is unqualified to hold any position of authority. We recommend Mr. Podesta read a book on basic American history."

The slime toss from Podesta is far from the only vile attack on conservatives during Obama's administration, however.

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center found itself linked in a federal court case to terrorism after confessed domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II told the FBI he identified groups to attack based on information posted by SPLC.

Corkins, a homosexual activist who admitted he planned mass murder, said he picked out the Washington office of the Family Research Council because SPLC identified it as a "hate" group, based on their biblical position on homosexuality.

See video of the attack:

Left-wing MSNBC host Martin Bashir ended up resigning his position after he suggested someone should defecate in Gov. Sarah Palin's mouth. He already had apologized but the chorus of critics wasn't silenced.

In October, far-left Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson sparked outrage by comparing the tea party to the Ku Klux Klan.

His fundraising email showed a burning cross and two Klansmen in the background. The graphic uses the cross to begin spelling out "tea party," and the caption reads, "Now You Know What the 'T' Stands For."

Democrats also called members of the Republican Party jihadists, arsonists, blackmailers and terrorists during the partial shutdown of the federal government, triggered by Obama's refusal to consider any compromise proposed by Republicans.

Among the statements:

From Rep. Miller, D-Calif.: "The gentleman from California said [the shutdown was hurting] the towns around Yosemite. Was he thinking about that when he voted to shut down the government? He was prepared to sacrifice the local economy. He was prepared to sacrifice the towns around Yosemite when he was on the jihad against American citizens getting access to health care."

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid called the GOP "anarchists" and "monkey wrenchers."

"When I was in school I studied government. I learned about the anarchists. They were different. … They were anarchists because they were against government at any level. ... They did not believe in government. The tea party [doesn't] say we're against government, but that's what it amounts to," he said.

"Local, state, federal, that's what it's all about. Anything they can do to throw a monkey wrench in government, they are happy doing that," Reid charged.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined the chorus.

"I call them legislative arsonists," she said. "They're there to burn down what we should be building up."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., took the lead in calling members of the GOP "blackmailers."

"They are blackmailing the country," he said. "They are saying they will shut down the country, or worse, destroy the full faith and credit of the United States if we don't repeal or delay Obamacare."

His argument didn't include the fact that members of the House GOP had fully funded the government, with the exception of a proposed delay in Obamacare.

Critics also point out that the health-care law Congress approved isn't the one being implemented, because Obama himself already has ordered 19 changes, including exemptions for millions of his supporters and a delay in the insurance mandate for employers.

Nadler, nevertheless, said Republicans are like gangsters in a 1930s film: "Pity if [it] should happen to blow up."

Obama himself charged that the GOP was trying to run the United States as a "banana republic."

"This is not some deadbeat nation," he said.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., described repealing Obamacare as a "wet dream" for Republicans.

Democrats outside Congress also joined in the refrain.

Senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said: "What we're not for [is] negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest. We're not going to do that."

And independents, who caucus with Democrats, were aligned, with Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont asserting "right-wing extremists" who were prepared to "destroy" Obama.

Obama, in another speech, described the GOP as kidnappers trying to "extract a ransom."

"The idea of putting the American peoples' hard-earned progress at risk is the height of irresponsibility. It doesn't have to happen. … It does not have to happen. … You don't get to extract a ransom for doing your job."

The diatribes against conservatives even have come from portions of the U.S. government when leftists and Democrats have influence.

The U.S. Army was caught calling the conservative and Christian American Family Association a "hate group."

WND also has reported that the U.S. military already had been caught teaching that the Founding Fathers, whose beliefs and political positions could accurately be described in today's terminology as conservative, were "extremists."

And according to a study at the West Point Military Academy, those who make up the right-wing segment in society constitute a danger to the U.S.

The Obama administration's attacks on conservatives date back to just weeks after he took office.

At that time, a newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warned against the possibility of violence by unnamed "right-wing extremists," including opponents of abortion.

The report was followed by only days by a report from the Missouri Information Analysis Center that warned law enforcement officials to watch out for individuals with "radical" ideologies based on Christian views.

Officials with the DHS later told WND they would refuse to identify the authors of the report or comment on any actions taken in response to the controversy.

But the steady drumbeat of statements from the administration even prompted members of both parties in Congress to blast the comments.

The Department of Defense later was caught teaching that those who oppose abortion are "low-level terrorists."

Early this year a West Point study from the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center linked opposition to abortion and other "fundamental" positions to terrorism.

The study, "Challenges from the Sidelines: Understanding America's Violent Far-Right," cites "anti-abortionists" as an active threat for terrorist activity.

"The anti-abortionists have been extremely productive during the last two decades, amassing 227 attacks, many of them perpetrated without the responsible perpetrators identified or caught," author Arie Perliger wrote. "And while, in both cases, the 1990s were more violent than the last decade, in the case of anti-abortion, the trend is much more extreme, as 90 percent of attacks were perpetrated before 2001."