Probably a conspiracy theory, but it’s so, SO on the nose. Some raging idiot pretending to be communist, talking not like Marx or Lenin but rambling like a stereotypical evil commie movie villain, buying a huge plot of land and starting a commune that had none of the actual characteristics of Marxist or Leninist communism, before killing everyone in a massive, extremely publicized group suicide. This was still in the red scare era too.

Not saying he was a CIA agent or anything, but I’m thinking the feds saw what he was doing and were wilfully negligent in protecting people from him or potentially even egged him on because they saw this as an opportunity to instill fear about socialism and communism in the general public. That whole compound seemed extremely out of place for something that happened in the US, and we know that the feds have silenced real communists for much less, so it’s really weird that they let it go on for that long if it wasn’t intentional.