Remember Jonestown. And beware of the Indian Jim Joneses.

Posted by Domestic Avalanche in Politics n Media, Society n Culture on 11 16th, 2008 | 3 responses

Tuesday, 18 November marks the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre that shocked the world. It has been an incredible story of deception, brainwashing, thirst for meaning for one’s life and human culpability. Let me give you a short history.

The People’s Temple started as a church based on apostolic socialism for all people regardless of color, national origin or past and led by the pastor Jim Jones. After the initial few years in Indianapolis, Jones moved the church to California where it flourished. It became a home for everyone who was fed up with life and the membership soared to the thousands. People were attracted to the cult by the feeling of part of a utopian society that would be a model of sharing in a cut-throat world. They were lured by the charming way that he spoke. Followers were mesmerized by the way talked to them. They all saw him as the savior figure who was likened to God himself.

As his influence began to grow, he started wielding it for political power. He basically controlled a whole part of California and its politics. Even when reports came up about anomalies, money laundering and other atrocities that happened behind the doors at his temple compound, reputed newspapers like San Fransisco Chronicle were scared to publish them. Things slowly started turning ugly. There were beatings and other torture for followers who wanted to leave or raised objections to the way he did business.

These pressures made him to move his People’s Temple and most of its followers to Jonestown, a newly cleared village deep in the jungle in Guyana a small country in South America bordered by Brazil and Venezuela. That was a very bad decision for many of his followers. It was supposed to be a tropical paradise where his followers had a vibrant community based on equality and love making a living in the old agrarian ways. However, once he reached there, he turned more paranoid and more controlling. More people began suffering his tactics. Some managed to escape and come back to the US and told horror stories of people being held against their wishes at Jonestown.

This led to the fateful events in November of 1978. Congressman Leo Ryan, of California had a lot of his constituents moved to Jonestown and he decided to go over there with his aides, journalists and a few concerned relatives and investigate about the conditions in Jonestown. During the visit, initially everything went well but by the time he was leaving back to the US, many people wanted to get out of Jonestown. Congressman Ryan took a few people with him as it would fit in his airplane and promised to be back. This led Jim Jones to go totally paranoid and berserk. He ordered his guards to go to the airstrip and gun down the Congressman as he was getting ready to take off from there. The gunmen managed to kill the Congressman and a few other journalists who accompanied him for the trip.

Soon after, Jim Jones told everyone that the Guyanese and the American armies are waiting outside their compound and are going to kill everyone. He asked his followers to drink kool-aid laced with cyanide and commit suicide. Little children were injected the poison by their mothers and his followers- some willingly and some forced by gunmen- drank the poison and committed suicide. A total of 919 people died in Jonestown during the incidents on 18, Nov 1978. Please watch this video and fill it in because words cannot describe the hundreds of bodies piled up at the site when authorities reached there the next day.

To put this into perspective, other than the 9/11 incident, this was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster. Leo Ryan became the only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.

The moral of the story is not to discard this story as another cult of mad people who did something crazy. The fact is, those who died in Jonestown were real people, with families, friends, and loved ones. The best way to appreciate this fact is to read personal reflections by those with direct knowledge of Peoples Temple and its members. Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University is the best source of material, recollections, original audio of the incident (Yes, Jim Jones taped the whole incident before he too killed himself).

Remember this when you see the modern day Jim Joneses who claim to bring joy, love and peace to their followers. When you see these demi-gods, do not be blind and ask questions.