18 November 1978. It was a day that shook America. 909 Americans committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. They were followers of the Peoples Temple, a cult founded by a man called Jim Jones.
The mention of the word cult should bring up spooky images of secret chambers, candlelit altars and hooded worshippers. The Peoples Temple was a high profile religious organisation with strong political support for its woke and socialist stance. Jim Jones had very orthodox and legitimate beginnings. He was ordained as a Christian minister in the Independent Assemblies of God in the 1950s. He founded his own church, called Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955. In 1965, he moved his church to San Francisco, California and that’s when things really took off.
Reverend Jim Jones was often described as eloquent, charismatic, shrewd, self aggrandising and manipulative. Initially, his church had the endorsement of various Protestant denominations. Peoples Temple would then morph into a socialist movement that rejected the Creator and idolised Jim Jones. He shocked everyone when he said:
“You prayed to your sky God and he never heard your prayers. You asked and begged and pleaded in your suffering and he never gave you food. He never gave you a bed and he never provided a home. But I, your socialist worker God, have given you all these things because I am freedom, I am peace, I am justice and I am God.”
How did Jim Jones manage to get so many people to worship him? At the peak, he had some 7,500 committed followers/worshippers and over 100,000 casual ideological supporters. With an oil crisis and economic recession looming and also following the hippie movement when rebellious youngsters rejected Western culture and politics, Jim Jones’ ideology resonated with the lost and disillusioned masses.
He provided food and shelter for the homeless. He got his volunteers to look after the elderly. He started various businesses, including real estate, F&B, wineries and used the earnings to finance the church’s social missions. To promote himself, he set up a stage where he performed “miracles”. On another front, Jones and his wife adopted several non-white children. Jones referred to his household as a “rainbow family”. He became immensely popular with Blacks. He even went to the extent of setting up sting operations in order to catch restaurants which refused to serve Black customers. In 1960, Indianapolis Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jones director of the local human rights commission. In 1977, he received the Martin Luther King Jr Award.
Meanwhile, Jim Jones also demonised the US government with conspiracy theories, alleging that the CIA planned to insert mind control chips into American citizens. He attacked capitalism, promoted socialism and racial integration. This attracted teachers, lawyers and civil servants from minority races. It was apre-internet woke movement Not surprisingly, his followers came from all walks of life, ranging from the ghettos to estranged members of the elite. Jones’s followers engaged in a communal lifestyle in which many turned over all their income and property to Jones and Peoples Temple who directed all aspects of community life. Opportunistic conservative politicians hinged on his popularity and praised his community as a model for the country.
As his church and its various social enterprises grew bigger, he started getting defectors and dissenters. Peoples Temple was criticised for fraud, physical and mental abuse. Some former followers revealed that they had to attend confession and criticism meetings typical of communist regimes. Children born to parents who were followers were deemed to belong to the church and their parents would come in second. Jim Jones also broke up marriages when he fancied a certain follower who happened to be married. His followers believed that they had to make a sacrifice to keep their ‘god” alive. Family members of individuals who had joined the church started demanding that Peoples Temple returned their loved ones.
How did Jim Jones deal with that? First, he told his followers to accuse their own families of abuse. It wasn’t too difficult for them to make up stories when they already didn’t enjoy staying at home. He also staged mock assassinations to victimise himself and earn the sympathy of the public. Very soon, he was able to justify the formation of a security force. To ensure permanent loyalty, he forced members to deed their property to the church. If they ever decided to leave the congregation, the church would possess their property. Like the mafia, that forced its members to commit a crime before being initiated, Jim Jones made followers write confessions to crimes they had never committed. These signed confessions would be locked up and released if they ever decided to leave the church.
On the public relations end, Jim Jones employed an army of writers to bombard the newspapers and magazines with accusations of spreading lies and being one-sided. In today’s environment, the church would have numerous influencers debunking “lies” and defending the cult on social media. YouTubers who visit the church will only have good things to say and show as “proof” that Western mainstream media has been lying. Sounds familiar?
Jim Jones’ problems began with journalists calling his bluff at faith healing sessions and more stories started leaking out from insiders and whistleblowers. Negative press gathered steam as more and more former members started talking to the press. As power got over his head, he started acting like he was untouchable even outside his church. After being arrested and charged for lewd behaviour in public, Jim Jones plotted an exit plan. He ordered the construction of a new Jonestown commune in communist Guyana (South America) in 1974. Earlier on, he applied to set up his commune in China and the USSR but was rejected. The first settlers in Guyana cleared swaths of tropical jungle to build the church, homes, schools and medical centre. Isolated from US laws, followers had to put in 8 hours of work and 8 hours of socialist studies every day, following the system in North Korea and China.
He convinced or compelled many of his followers to live there with him in Guyana. Jones claimed that he was constructing a socialist paradise free from the oppression of the United States government. By 1978, reports surfaced of human rights abuses and accusations that people were being held in Jonestown against their will. It soon dawned on the migrants that the soil in the new Jonestown they colonised was poor and the low yields from the land resulted in malnourishment. As food became scarce, Jim Jones started importing meat and other food items to secretly supplement the diet of members in his inner circle. A ruling class had emerged in their socialist community. A few who saw what was happening started to flee. But they were the minority. The majority of malnourished, overworked and sleep deprived individuals obediently sat down to study socialism and listen to his preaching.
Thanks to the transparency of the US system, we are now able to see all the inner workings and transformation of a socialist utopia in the Peoples Temple. On a national level, the effects would have been magnified and prolonged. A desperate Jim Jones publicly denounced the US and invited Soviet representatives to visit their community, claiming that the USSR was Peoples Temple’s true spiritual motherland. Fortunately or unfortunately, Jonestown did not receive any substantial Soviet funding. Unknown to his followers, Jones was addicted to drugs including stimulants and barbiturates. After suffering multiple strokes and debilitated by edema, Jones then warned his community that they were under threat from the CIA. He conducted suicide drills where followers would ritually drink poisoned Flavor Aid to commit suicide before the CIA could destroy their home. He promised the people a good afterlife if they had committed suicide before they were killed by evil Americans. Of course, it would have been against international law for the US government to send in the military.
On 18 November 1978, US Congressman Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in Guyana to investigate reports from escapees. While boarding a return flight with some former Temple members who wished to leave, Ryan and four others were murdered by gunmen from Jonestown. One of the shooters was a follower who pretended that he wanted to flee. Those who survived managed to escape and returned to the US. Jim Jones obviously didn’t order the shooting. He realised that killing a Congressman would give legitimacy to the US government to send troops and Jonestown in Guyana would be destroyed. He thus ordered a mass murder-suicide. The children were fed the poisoned drinks with syringes. Then the adults followed. Even though a few of them showed signs of resistance, the majority of the followers just quietly waited for their turn to consume the poisoned drink! Jones proudly declared that “We didn’t commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide, protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”
That revolutionary act claimed the lives of 909 commune members, 304 of them children; almost all of the members died by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. A member who was staying at Georgetown outside the community at Jonestown decided to join her brothers and sisters in the revolution. She got a knife, killed all three of her children before she cut her own throat. Only 85 members of the community survived the event. Some slipped into the jungle just as the death ritual began.
Other survivors had been tasked to deposit or transfer money to the Soviet Union to propagate their socialist cause. One of them committed suicide after his mission. In the aftermath of the Jonestown mass suicide, church leaders and politicians distanced themselves from Peoples Temple which was shut down a month later. Appallingly, protesters received threats from US based followers. Right until the 1980s, there were still random followers going around preaching Jim Jones’ ideology. In the age of social media, it won’t be too difficult to revive such beliefs.