The Press Abroad: Aghast

IS SATAN DEAD? This stark headline on the cover of London's prestigious Economist was typical of the foreign press reaction to the Jonestown massacre. As so often happens in moments of great American triumph or tragedy, the world press gasped, grimaced and then gushed forth explanations. Several foreign weeklies published long stories on both the deaths of 911 Peoples Temple members and on the general phenomenon of cults in the U.S. Surprisingly, only the Communist press used Jonestown as an occasion for lashing at U.S. society as a whole.

The Economist struck the most sobering note. Attributing the rise of modern cults to the decline of traditional religious belief among educated people, the weekly observed: "What happened in Jonestown, Guyana, is a ghoulish cautionary tale for these people who, in these differing ways, are seeking God in a secular world. In that search for God, it is all too easy to blunder into the arms of Satan instead." Added the Vatican news paper L'Osservatore Romano: "Christianity is a religion of life, not of death." West Germany's Stuttgarter Zeitung philosophized less cosmically: "It was not just a symptom of America or its system's shortcomings. Mystic sects and pseudoreligious groups exist in this part of the world as well and in worrisome numbers. The Jonestown deaths pose the vital question of whether in our modern way of life our institutions provide a sense of sufficient stability." Commented Tokyo's daily Asahi Shimbun: "The Guyana incident is a ghastly reminder of how fanaticism born of the contradictions of modern society can destroy human beings."

Inevitably, the peculiarly American and Californian ambience caught the eye of many foreign observers. California, noted the Statesman of India with considerable accuracy, is "the home of a hundred strange cults from the merely dotty to the disgusting." A reflection along similar lines prompted Columnist Mustafa Amin of Egypt's al Akhbar to wonder why Jones had not been stopped earlier by the police or the CIA. Yet France's daily Le Monde, which is frequently critical of American policy, found the massacre "unAmerican." Said the paper: "It would have been inconceivable, and without doubt unrealizable on the victims' own soil, with or without their consent. It was necessary to uproot them, to transport them to the heart of the jungle, to transform them into prisoners of a delirious faith in a messiah, who in the end would give free rein to his instincts for domination and death for them to become self-destructive robots." Perhaps reflecting a recent, antileftist trend among French intellectuals, the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur thought that the massacre epitomized "the insanity of totalitarianism in the guise of the clerical spirit."

For Moscow, by contrast, the story was, as Pravda put it, "one more page illustrating the tragic fate of American dissidents who could not find a place for themselves in America." The Soviets made no martyr of Jones, however, describing him as "a skillful, cynical operator who cannily took advantage of the massive disillusionment of Americans with their government and the whole American way of life."

But few foreign judgments could match in poignancy that of a Lebanese newsman as he gazed at the grim pictures from Jonestown. Said he: "We've been committing mass suicide for the past four years now. So what's new?"

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