When I went to Venezuela late last year, I came back with the impression that it was heading well into Jim Jones territory. There was too much cult of personality there, starting with the gigantic Hugo Chavez billboard that greets you from Caracas airport before you take the highway into the shantytowns, and within the city, all the ‘Chavez IS the people’ posters, with him looking soulful and thoughtful, if not nauseastingly adored by small children gathered around his side. This imagery went well beyond the political and deep into the cultural realm, and beyond even cultural, to the religious realm.

Well, it turns out this may be more than an impression. Hugo Chavez is proposing to name himself the archbishop of his new quasi-Christian evangelical nationalist cult, with all of his ministers named archbishops. It’s like Jim Jones – the leftwing San Francisco Democratic-party machine cultie leader who took his own brand of far leftism deep into Guyana and tried to set up a whole new society there, remaking mankind from mud in 1978, until he ordered them all to commit suicide. It happened right next door to Venezuela. Now, like Jones, Chavez wants to be everything, renouncing history and remaking mankind from scratch. The guy is a nut.

In one way, his move seems to echo the clerisy power the Church once held over all Latin American society, but I think it’s more than that – it’s an effort to remake society in his own image, for his own glorification and it’s so Jim Jones I can’t believe it.

Given what he is doing to Venezuela’s economy, Chavez’s third term won’t just be a passive administration, but now with his bishop thing, a la Jim Jones, have the full Flavr-Aid ending, too. Miguel at Devil’s Excrement has plenty of new evidence for that, in his excellent posts here, here and here.

Jim Jones is back in Venezuela and he’s already serving his purple Kool-Aid!
Source: Radio Cristiandad

Hat tips: Venezuela Today
and Free Republic