The Jonestown Massacre

[kentuck]

https://www.britannica.com/event/Jonestown

(snip)
Peoples Temple, religious community led by Jim Jones (1931–78) that came to international attention after some 900 of its members died at their compound, Jonestown, in Guyana, in a massive act of murder-suicide on November 18, 1978.

(snip)
Following the tragedy at Jonestown, the Peoples Temple was identified as a “cult,” and Jones was depicted by the media as the epitome of an evil cult leader. Although numerous scholarly and popular studies of Jonestown have been written, the effort to understand the group and the tragedy continues.

[Mad_Machine76]

1. The story is both

horrible yet fascinating. I feel like we are currently dealing with a real life cult leader right now with Trump.

[marble falls]

10. So when are the MAGAs drinking the Flavor Aid?

[Sky Jewels]

15. Hundreds of thousands of them did when they refused to get vaxxed for Covid.

"Refuse the jab; wind up on a cold slab."

[former9thward]

2. Jim Jones was not a traditional "cult" leader.

He started out as a Marxist and then shifted to his own version of religion mixed with communism. When he went to San Francisco he used the popularity of his church with poor Black people to become friends with the Bay Area power structure. Mayor Moscone appointed him to be the Housing Commissioner. High level politicians met with him including Jerry Brown, Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter and many others -- including the media which praised him. Unfortunately they ignored his past.

This link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones gives a much better history of his personal history than the link in the OP.

[AKwannabe]

4. They had a little embarrassing moment eh?

R. carter and Mondale ya say?
Fucking hell!

I was a little young for politics then.
But I know of them both from childhood to now

[haele]

13. Y'know, it was a time when just making an effort to help the poor...

...without "strings" got one noticed. At the time, he said his early Marxism was tempered by his Christianity, which made him acceptable to everyone who was fighting the War on Poverty.
He didn't start out as a crazy cult leader, he was genuinely working to help the poor and minorities in the San Francisco area; when I was a kid and we lived in the area, my parents knew people who went to his church at one time or another and had offered help when we were in need. I remember Mom and Dad talking about it when Jonestown happened.
In hindsight, it's easy to say "he was like all the other narcissist fakers and grifters". At the time, he presented himself as something like a Jimmy Carter type, an ernest, compassionate community resources facilitator with a helping hand to anyone in need.

Haele

[MistakenLamb]

12. I read Road To Jonestown last year

Very in depth look into the beginnings of him and the Peoples Temple. He really manipulated anyone he could

[Recycle_Guru]

16. GOP love to always call cult leaders Dem or Dem-friendly

kind of sad, really. They are the party of Reagan worship and Trump worship.

[AKwannabe]

3. Kool-Aid?

Dumb MAGAts!

[murielm99]

5. I knew someone who became a follower

while he was still based in Indiana. She followed him to California and on to Jonestown, where she died. I never met him, but I heard what she said about him and so did most of our friends. We thought he was evil, but we did not take it seriously enough. We thought it was a passing interest and she would move on to something else.

[W T F]

6. Thunk about it. One man got 1000 people to kill themselves at his command. There's a science to that

[canetoad]

7. When you see Trump

Revving up his followrers, leading chants, hand signals - all those things, he is affecting the critical thinking of those present.

The catholic (indeed every church) church does it, yoga classes do it, self help groups do it and so on. It's a rudimentary form of hypnosis that breaks down critical thinking. Cults hugs and praise newcomers. Agree with them. Tell them what they want to hear.

Then they are hooked.

I know, I got hooked in my 20s but I questioned and was excluded. Proudest moment of my life.

[MistakenLamb]

8. Every one keeps talking Jim Jones and Trump but I am more terrified of

Trump and MAGA being Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo . A sarin-like attack in DC, NYC or Atlanta over any indictments or commanded in any other "liberal" cities is what worries me.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. US Rep. Jackie Speier survived Jonestown.

‘Undaunted’ Congresswoman Jackie Speier Recounts Jonestown Massacre Survival

By Jonathan Marker | National Archives News

WASHINGTON, November 4, 2019 — The massacre of 918 women, men, and children in and near Reverend Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, was the largest single loss of American civilian lives as the result of a deliberate act in history until the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In the days preceding the massacre, Congressman Leo J. Ryan, who represented California’s 11th congressional district—which included San Francisco, home to the Peoples Temple before the congregation fled to Guyana to build Jones’s compound—led a fact-finding delegation into Jonestown to investigate alleged abuses within the commune. Ryan convinced Jones to permit several defectors to leave the compound with his delegation, but as the group prepared to board two small airplanes at an airstrip in nearby Port Kaituma, Jones’s gunmen ambushed the group, killing Ryan and several others.

Among the survivors was Ryan’s wounded aide Jackie Speier. The 28-year-old survived five gunshot wounds at close range during the ambush and feigned death to fool the gunmen as they passed over her body. Speier—who would later become a Congresswoman herself, representing the 14th District in California—recounted her survival of Jonestown and her persistence through the many ups-and-downs that followed in her memoir, Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back. Speier highlighted her book on Tuesday, October 29, in the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

“November 1978 was a harrowing month for residents of the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Archivist of the United States David Ferriero. “Speier’s survival of the massacre at Jonestown, she wrote, guided her ‘into the life [she] was meant to live.’ For the past 40 years, she has pursued a life of public service and now serves in the United States Congress.”

“In these months leading up to the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment,” said Ferriero, “we remember the women who stood up for their rights and beliefs in order to secure women’s right to vote. We also honor the women of the present day who continue to speak up for rights and serve the greater public.”

The National Archives presented the book talk in conjunction with the Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote exhibit in the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery. Rightfully Hers commemorates the centennial of the 19th Amendment and is open through January 3, 2021.

“I was dying,” said Speier as she read the opening passage of her memoir. “It was just a matter of time. Lying behind a wheel of the airplane, bleeding out of the right side of my devastated body, I waited for the rapid shooting to stop. Then I said my act of contrition, praying by rote for forgiveness. I used what little energy I had left to finish that prayer before the lights went out. But the lights didn’t go out, and I slowly began to take stock of my situation.”

Speier survived the Jonestown massacre to the disbelief of the medical team that treated her. That formative moment in her life steeled her resolve to pursue a career in public service. Yet, more profound darkness awaited her.

“Life is not always fair,” said Speier. “Life is just whatever you get, and while Guyana delivered incomparable trauma, it was not the worst day of my life.”

On January 25, 1994, as Speier traveled to Sacramento, California to deliver a speech to the California Bankers Association, she received an urgent message. She soon learned that her husband, Dr. Steven Sierra, chief of emergency services at San Mateo General Hospital, was braindead from trauma sustained in a car accident caused by a negligent driver.

“He was in the ICU [intensive care unit],” said Speier. “They had done everything they could.”

Speier, pregnant with their second child, brought in the couple’s five-year-old son to the hospital to say a final goodbye. After, she nodded to the doctor attending her husband’s body to terminate life support.

After sharing these harrowing moments, Speier answered questions from the audience.

Source: https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/undaunted-jackie-speier-lecture#:~:text=%27Undaunted%27%20Congresswoman%20Jackie%20Speier%20Recounts%20Jonestown%20Massacre%20Survival%20%7C%20National%20Archives

[malaise]

11. I still have the Time Magazine from that catastrophe

Recently retired Congresswoman Jacky Speier survived Jonestown.

https://abc7news.com/jackie-speier-jonestown-massacre-1978-interview-jim-jones/11243189/

[leftyladyfrommo]

14. That was awful. It was all over the news for days.

I just remember headlines where 900 people died. It was so huge it was really hard to get my head around. How could 900 people just drink kool-aid and die?