While the cold war was a prominent issue in America during this time, Jim Jone's paranoia lead him to move to Ukiah, California, because he thought there was going to be a nuclear holocaust. His followers got involved in state politics as well as Protestant ecumenical circles, which eventually lead to Branch Congregations opening up in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Jonestown, Guyana. Jones believed in apostolic socialism and was also influenced by the Marxist "liberation theology". To help forward his utopian views, he encouraged his followers to live communally.
He did not move to Jonestown until his church was publicly accused of financial fraud, physical abuse, and mistreatment of children. He and hundreds of members fled to Guyana. His community had turned into a cult. In 1977, groups of former members and relatives of current members were worried about Jone's followers. They asked Leo J. Ryan, U.S congressman of California to go check Jonestown out. At first, everything was going fine, until it was time for the congressman to leave. Scarily, many residents of Jonestown asked Ryan if there was a way out. When Jones realized his some his followers wanted out, he became more distressed and paranoid. Ryan was then attacked by one of Jone's lieutenants with a knife. He was not killed then, but Ryan and people who accompanied him were murdered when they reached the airport in United States.
As they were escaping, Jones ordered his followers to assemble in the pavillion. He then ordered them to kill themselves with a deadly mix of cyanide, sedatives and powdered fruit juices. Parents forcefully fed their children the deadly concoction, and they were the first to die. Adults and parents then injected themselves or drank it. A few onlookers decided to play dead. Cameramen and reporters from newspaper companies such as Hearst newspaper and the Washington post had been injured or killed. 900 people died that day.
Sources:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adst/the-jonestown-massacre_b_8592338.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Peoples-Temple
Thanks for writing this post on the unfortunate and tragic deaths of these people. I found it interesting how a group which had started out with good intentions and high ideals, such as fighting racism and poverty, had somehow deteriorated into becoming a cult where members were willing to kill themselves and their children once their leader told them to. I understand how the followers may have been drawn in by his positive message, but what made these people so willing to follow the orders for them to kill themselves coming from a mentally unstable man?
ReplyDeleteIf you've ever heard the phrase "Drinking the Kool-Aid" to mean believing something blindly, this is where that comes from. Kool-Aid has gone down in infamy because of the Jonestown massacre, but film footage from Jonestown reveals that the actual mixture used was made of both Kool-Aid and the offbrand competitor Flavor Aid (though Kraft Foods, the makers of Kool-Aid, claim that there product was not a part of the massacre, and that it was only Flavor Aid).
ReplyDeleteMoral of the story: don't drink the Kool-Aid (or Flavor Aid) just because everyone else is, kids.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
This was extremely surprising for me to read. I had heard things about cults and mass suicides, (there is even a Family Guy episode that includes this idea) but I had never heard about this incident in specific. Reading this, the events seemed like something out of a horror movie, it is sad to think that this actually happened. This tragedy is just one more historical event that shows how people are willing to follow madmen, whether it be the emperor Nero, Hitler or, while not to that extreme, someone a bit more prevalent in our lives today.
ReplyDeleteWow. This is one bizarre low point for the US. You did a great job in not only stating the event but tracing it back to the initial group and how it gradually got out of control. Quite scary. It turns out that in the 1997 Marshall Applewhite, the founder of the Heavens gates, religious cult influenced 34 people to be part of his mass suicide. They believed that a commit they saw was an alien spaceship that was going to save them.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.biography.com/people/marshall-herff-applewhite-236006
Tanshi, you did a great job highlighting a tragic yet important event of the 70s. I remember coming upon this event in class after hearing about Harvey Milk's assassination. After researching it a little more, I found that Milk was an advocate of the People's Temple and actually supported Jim Jones. The barrier-breaking, amicable San Francisco supervisor was actually a shrewd and short-tempered politician, and the support of the People's Temple was, in his mind, necessary. So, he formed a relationship with Jones, and in one instance defended Jones' character to President Jimmy Carter after Jones abducts a young boy. This boy, John Stoen, would later die at Jonestown. This was shocking to me, and I think of Milk very differently now.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.city-journal.org/html/drinking-harvey-milk%E2%80%99s-kool-aid-10574.html
Thanks for writing such an excellent blog post on this Tanshi! I had heard vaguely about this cult before, but never realized that the initial intentions of the cult were noble ones - to fight racism and poverty. The Peoples Temple is unique in that it drew people of all different ages and races together as equals in a single community. Something interesting I found out was that this murder-suicide lead by Jim Jones was the largest number of American civilian causalities until 9/11. The supposed catalyst to this event was over a custody battle between a woman who left Jim Jones cult and their supposed son. The disputed son was one of the 304 of them were aged 17 years or younger (of the approximate 900 people killed). I believe that Jones town is an incredibly important not event to study, not only because of its impact on our current vernacular (eg "drinking the kool-aid") but also because it teaches an important lesson of always thinking for yourself and never to rely on a single leader for all of your information.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/jonestown-massacre-what-you-should-know-about-cult-murder-suicide-w512052
Fascinating post, Tanshi! I've done a lot of reading about this cult, and I think you did a very good job discussing the activity of the cult inside and outside the US. What always interested me the most was the massacre itself. I was surprised to find out that Jones tested his followers numerous times in so-called "White Nights". These White Nights consisted of suicide drills where the followers would line up and each get a glass of Kool-Aid. The members would also arm themselves and stay up for days on end, ready to defend their promised land against outside forces that they believed were coming. They didn't know if the Kool-Aid they took actually had poison or not, but the drills were meant to test the loyalty of members. When the Jonestown Massacre actually happened, many members believed that it was just another White Night drill, and they weren't actually going to die. It was only when people began to fall to the ground that people understood the gravity of the situation.
ReplyDeletehttps://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=35371