Surviving Jonestown

I think the story is always about a charismatic leader whose followers get so dependent that they can't even imagine living without that person. Then when the leader's ambitions don't work out the leader decides it's better not to live and the followers will kill themselves. Some of Hitler's followers killed themselves (and their children like Goebbels), people in Waco didn't try to escape. It's a weird psychology but I think it has happened many times in history.

Last Podcast on the Left has a multi-part episode on Jonestown - it shows how his ego goes unchecked even from the beginning of his life and how he slowly prepares the people in his cult to take their own lives one day. Definitely worth a listen if you find this interesting.

Understanding that question "How could this happen?" is something that will help you understand more about the world, and may change your opinion of people whom you think are crazy.

The key is that humans act on their beliefs. Which is to say if you believe X, then the action required for situation Y is Q. Rather than be abstract about it though lets put wrap some reality around it.

If you believe your house will be destroyed in the event of a hurricane, then the action required when it is threatened is to evacuate.

Conversely, if you believe your house will survive a hurricane, then the action required when it is threatened is the shelter in place.

Two people, each holding an opposite belief about the threat to the house, will come to two very different conclusions.

Now if you layer in a belief about evacuation, where one believes that people are killed when they try to evacuate with everyone else, and one who believes that people who evacuate survive these disasters. You can set up a perfect conflict between these two people.

Person A, thinks both their their home will survive and that evacuation will kill you.

Person B, thinks that the house will be destroyed and that evacuation will save you.

Here is the kicker, if you can put the right sets of beliefs into a person you can make them do anything you want, even when it is against their own self interest. We call it things like brain washing or propaganda or "fake news" but it is all the same stuff.

It is possible to define a set of beliefs for you where you think that killing yourself and your children is the correct (or even only) choice available to you.

What is worse, deprogramming people is super hard. They have these beliefs, they have been reinforced by some mechanism, and part of that reinforcement are a layer of beliefs that prevent alternate ideas from seeping in.

Immigration is a canonical example. Characterize immigrants as murderers, thieves, and rapists, show an imminent threat of "invaders", and convince people that the other side wants to just let these people waltz into the country without restriction.

The beliefs are all carefully constructed to interlock such that people who have adopted those beliefs will take action to insure the current ruling party is kept in power in order to keep them safe.

The Nazis used this, Stalin did too, the Chinese, and now the Republican Party have all adopted this technique of constructing a belief system around immigration and "the other" that incentivizes people to act against their self interest (or perhaps more accurately to convince them their self interest is served by acting in the way the party wants them to act.)

Jim Jones did this by convincing people that he was a prophet and in touch with God. That he had a clearer view of what was happening in the spiritual world, and could advise people how to act in order to maximize their success in the afterlife. They believed that so strongly that when he told them they needed to die to move on, they considered that a reasonable next step.

Edit: One of the more interesting aspects of Jim Jones' ministry for me was how people responded when faced with the reality that they were in a cult. There is an interview of some members from one of the documentaries where the members get angry at the interviewer who is pointing out inconsistencies and risks. Rather than challenge the beliefs with the source, they lashed out at some poor reporter who was pointing things out to them. No one thought to ask these folks if they would rather feel foolish at having believed something that wasn't true, or be dead. Of course at the time they didn't realize their beliefs would get them killed exactly. In my mind that is a real tragedy, one warped leader leading all of these people to a place where their energy, and contribution served only a twisted need for loyalty and power.

One thing jones promised was an idealistic prejudice free vision of society. Keep in mind many of his victims were poor black elderly people who had likely seen the harshest era of jim crow racism. They were old in the 1970s meaning that some had likely experienced racial terrorism & seen lynchings & kkk rallies. A white man preaching equality and justice to such an oppressed people would seem messianic.

I think the best thing to do is listen to Jones' own words, and look at their ideology, rather than ascribing it to more abstract psychology notions.

Jones believed, or at least said he believed, that because of the shooting of the Congressman (which he claimed he had no control over), they were all doomed. The US government was going to kill them.

I apologize for the source (though I can verify it is accurate, having listened to the recording), but here's the transcript of the tape of Jones telling them they needed to die:

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Jonestown_Tape

> So my opinion is that you be kind to children and be kind to seniors and take the potion like they used to take in ancient Greece and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act. We can't go back; they won't leave us alone. They're now going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen. And there's no way, no way we can survive.

> JONES: Don't be afraid to die. You'll see, there'll be a few people land out here. They'll torture some of our children here. They'll torture our people. They'll torture our seniors. We cannot have this. Are you going to separate yourself from whoever shot the congressman? I don't know who shot him.

Essentially, Jones believed their (in his mind) communist, multiracial utopia was doomed to fiery death the moment his people shot Leo Ryan. The mass suicide (or murder, if you prefer) was in his mind, and in the minds of many of his followers, a protest against the racist capitalists.

If you just heard of Jonestown then I'm guessing you might not have heard of Heavens Gate either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_gro...

Never underestimate the power of charisma and persuasiveness. Just look at Osho and other cult leaders. They find people that have nothing to lose, a void, and fill it with charismatic lies. That’s what makes these individuals truly sick and twisted.

One worthwhile vantage point from which to understand the foul and self-serving element of the 1960s in California is Joan Didion’s essay collection The White Album, published 1979. And in particular the title essay, which deals partly with the Manson cult.

It is a fascinating book, and she is such a singular writer, with a different and unique viewpoint of the 60s (being older than the hippies and not temperamentally suited to an optimistic worldview anyway), that it is completely worth your time.

Another reference point, come to think of it, is T.C. Boyle’s novel Drop City, which also features an idealistic commune that starts out in California and relocates (kids and all) to a remote place once the Man catches up to them. It also does not end well.

(Edited to add: not knocking the 60s as a whole, or optimism, or hippies, each of which has/have their place in my heart.)

I am old enough to remember it. I guess I would have been 13. It was a very big deal at the time. Not like 911, but like the Oklahoma city bombing. I think the comparison at the time was really to like Manson. Same kind of crazy person, but able to convince more people. There was a huge story about it in time magazine I remember reading. My general sense is nowadays while it's possible, it's harder to isolate people like that (i.e. cell phones, email), but there are still crazy things like the NXIVM thing. Of course its hard to tell if what's change is not world, because I'm 53 now and not 13. So my sense is now that it's probably easier for someone to get word out that they want out and are afraid. Really the part of article that was interesting to me was the part about the congressman, and the things he did before. That's the kind of thing I can't imagine happening now. I had completely forgotten that there was a congressman that had died.

I recommend listening to the audio recording of the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peoples_Temple_Cult_Death...

It's disturbing, but it gives the best insight into the mindset of those involved.

I think if history taught us anything then that the firm belief in absolute truths leads to such atrocities.

I bet most people have no clue where this is coming from. It's another weird thing like "skinning the cat".

Jonestown was just a cultural reference by the time I was born. I knew it involved the mass death of a cult but I had no idea of the violence involved — that a Congressman was gunned down, or that today’s Rep. Spier was present during the trip. Didn’t realize the Jones cult was tied to the Bar Area either.

I've always assumed that "drinking the kool-aid" was a reference to Ken Kesey, rather than Jonestown, and I'm surprised to learn otherwise. It's certainly in lousy taste.

At Aol, the ceo talked about drinking the koolaid as a positive thing and it was really off putting, but that was one of the less offensive things he said when I worked there.

Nah. Becoming part of the cultural lexicon is flattering enough. It's a great phrase largely because of the morbid origin.

I also think the term has taken on a bigger meaning since then, retroactively incorporating the merry pranksters lore. You really don't know what's in the kool aid, and whether it will be good or bad. That's what makes the phrase so versatile.

Don't take death so seriously.

The phrase is probably not necessary in a lot of circumstances but I think it has value as a cautionary tale warning against accepting as fact the statements by people in positions of power. I am surprised that many people are not aware of the origins and therefore actual meaning of the phrase.

*Her point.

The problem with calling it a mass suicide - besides the fact that hundreds of people slaughtered were children (who had no idea what was happening), the elderly (threatened into submission) and people forcibly held down and injected with poison - is that it leaves room to think that the majority of these 900 people CHOSE to die, and Speier's account shows that they overwhelmingly absolutely did not, regardless of their previous allegiance to the church.

Subsequently, we can joke about people's stupidity instead of having a conversation about how to recognize demagogues like Jones and prevent their rise to power.

I believe Speier's implication is that calling it mass suicide assigns culpability to the victims and away from a murderer.

The author didn't say "most", she puts the number murdered at 300. Either way most people rightly describe the incident as a massacre.

It isn't wishful thinking from Speier; there are a number of survivors who can attest that this is what happened. And how would many of them actually know that they were drinking poison, when there were several rehearsals beforehand that jones explained as tests of faith?