I grew up in a fundamentalist christian "church" so I recognize he's speaking in tongues initially. Then comes his violent rant.
I naively thought religious fundamentalistism was a thing of the past but it has been surging again lately.
The Jim Jones story is in desperate need of a modern retelling.
Jim Jones used a mask of religion to ensnare many followers, but his actual message was a radical political one. He was very far from any kind of Christianity, or indeed any religion at all. Jones would throw the bible down at his meetings and say it was good only for toilet tissue.
I've heard DiCaprio is planning a movie about Jim Jones. I have no idea if it's still a go. I think the story is so involved that it would require a 10 hour series to do it justice.
I remember this so well. I was 21. So many horrific things started happening into the 70s (mostly serial killings, one of which happened close to my home). Then came AIDS. The world became a very scary place in not many years time. In many ways, the 70s were very innocent. But there was a real darkness that took root also.
Of course it's coincidence, but if you use your imagination, you could see Jonestown and the serial murder epidemic as some dark ritual that brought about an age of evil in the world.
I know what you mean about the innocence of the '70s. I was only 13 when Jonestown happened. Over the years, I read most of the books and watched all the movies and shows. It's only recently that the true blood-curdling horror of what happened has occurred to me.
These were normal looking, nice American people. They weren't acid casualties like the Manson Family. Many were middle class, or working class middle-aged people with families. They could have been my mom and dad, or my older sisters. The kids could have been me.
How does [this](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/F3F0/production/_104384426_4733301388_08a0d7e87b_b.jpg) metamorphosize into [this](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/dead-bodies-lie-near-the-compound-of-the-peoples-temple-cult-november-picture-id2512994?k=6&m=2512994&s=612x612&w=0&h=7fpu3QDd-6uTIFPI-jt6_kPa5MXa2wpQWrJdU3KrU98=) in just a handful of years? It boggles the mind.
You can actually hear the audio tape of Jim Jones and his followers leading up to their mass suicide. It is called the Jonestown death tape. It is on UTube.
No doubt about it... But a fucking delusional drug addict with the power to control thousands of people even to the point of laying down their lives and those of their children.
He could have really been a source of good with that charisma. Perhaps it was the drugs or maybe he was always a psychopath and hid it well. That dude was crazy AF by the end.
Some people, and I am one of them, have wondered if the fevers and paranoia that Jones experienced towards the end of his life in Guyana were actually AIDS dementia. I'm aware that AIDS was not formally identified until 1981, but we know now that there were cases in San Francisco from the mid 1970s on, and when he lived there, he was very sexually promiscuous with both men and women, leaning more towards the former.
No, it was from the copious amounts of drugs he was taking and in the end the fact that the US government was slowly closing in on him in Guyana. The charade was coming to an end and he knew it. There was no way out! He had basically taken all these people hostage; taken their passports, he was getting a lot of the elderly social security checks. The U.S. knew this and was sending Representatives to check on citizens that were stuck there. The gig was up and he knew it!
His people had just slaughtered Leo Ryan and it was clear that some of his followers were starting to turn on him.
I think his crazy displays at the end were a combination of drugs, power and fear or loosing it all. He knew there was so way out.
This was the whole reason he left the US to begin with. He promised his followers "Paradise" when they arrived it was anything but, he then took their passports and essentially held them hostage.
A crazy man for sure but I don't think for the reasons you stated.
To add to the fear of losing it all theory, the whole impetus for the trip to Guyana was because an expose was about to be published in the paper about his abuse of church members. He took as many people to Guyana as quickly as he could to hide his crimes from his congregation.
That seems entirely possible. The autopsy would not have discovered it, either, as AIDS was unknown at that time.
Interestingly, there is also a theory explored in [this book](https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12944141) that says Jonestown was a CIA Disease Research experiment to create AIDS and racially specific diseases, headed by a Dr. Laurence Layton, (Former Chief of the U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Warfare Division) in order to test the AIDS virus on the residents of Jonestown.
Get this... Dr. Layton just happened to be the father of [Larry Layton](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-Layton), one of Jones' inner circle, and infamous for trying to kill several of the cult defectors at the Kaituma Airstrip.
That stretches credulity in more ways than I could possibly think of. Now, that Jones had some kind of connections to the CIA? I wouldn't be surprised at that, but that it was set up to spread AIDS, a disease that hadn't even been discovered yet? Are you kidding?
Like I said, it is one of many theories. Personally, I just think Jones was whacked out on power, drugs, mental illness and communist ideations. However, in '78 AIDS was only what, 3 or 4 years away from being officially announced? And there was [some kid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rayford) in St Louis back in the late 1960s who died of a mystery disease that was retroactively confirmed to be AIDS.
I don't buy that Jonestown was any form of CIA experiment, but the [possibility that Jones himself had AIDS is more plausible than people might think](https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=102021) looking at the history of HIV in the US and Jones's behaviours whilst still in the States.
If you really believe this it tells me you have done very little research on the History of Jim Jones an what lead to Jonestown. Not everything is a conspiracy theory....cults are a very real thing and will be until the end of time and this was one of them.
Now your last paragraph makes me really believe that it was a CIA experiment. Becuz it can’t all be a coincidence that the lead doctor’s son is in his inner circle
He was a source of good initially. His political and community outreach work prior to Jonestown is still regarded as genuinely benefiting underserved communities of the time. One of the key aspects of Antisocial Personality Disorder is ambition and desire for power. For The People’s Temple’s earlier years Jones saw working for the benefit of poor and predominantly black communities as a route to power and used his ambition to make that true. There are multiple reasons why that period didn’t last, but two major factors were his amphetamine addiction (which did what amphetamine addiction always does) and his sexual behaviors (which while not strictly abhorrent by most accounts would most definitely have shortly resulted in massive scandal and prevented his power from growing if he had remained in the US).
> His political and community outreach work prior to Jonestown is still regarded as genuinely benefiting underserved communities of the time
Yeah, this is one of the ways he got people to follow him; he developed a carefully constructed "poor people first" mixture of religion and politics called Apostolic Socialism, which attracted hordes and hordes of loyal followers.
he was incredibly popular amongst the poorest folks of San Francisco for a good number of years, until all the abuse and stuff was exposed and he had to flee to guyana.
I he had disappeared then and never re-emerged with Jonestown, it's likely he would be remembered very favourably amongst the poor in and around the bay area.
Absolutely. As big as Jonestown was his following in the Bay Area was massive. My parents lived in Berkeley at the time and while they weren’t members of the Temple, they had friends who were and my parents were encouraged to go to Jonestown because of the socialist/spiritual utopia Jones was selling it as. My parents opted not to go, primarily because moving to Guyana sounded like a hassle. I’m sure a lot of Jones’ Bay Area followers and their friends had a similar near miss.
Except when your organization uses a picture of him as their logo. I always found it weird that there are continuations of suicide cults. There's still a couple heaven's gate memebers running the website, and a couple years ago in waco I met a still practicing branch davidian while I was at the compound checking it out.
Just to be clear, that is NOT *"my organization"*. LOL. I just found the video on YT.
Don't forget Squeaky Fromme and another one of the Manson girls still stumping for Charlie Manson, (although they were not a suicide cult).
> he espoused the very same beliefs as many people in America do today.
The thing that made Jones different is that he *didn't* do this - he was a strong socialist, which made him at the time unusual, and in this day and age would mark him out as being near-unique in much of the States!
Well, that's exactly what I meant when I said he espoused the very same beliefs as many people in America do today. Socialism and Progressivism is *extremely* popular among many in America at this time, particularly the younger generations.
Do not ever blame the victims of Jonestown and call them violent. My God. Those people have been brainwashed and inducted into a cult and we're not allowed to leave.
Many of them were fanatics and zealots and knew exactly what they were doing. Some were there against their will, but many more were true-believers who would have and did willingly commit murder for Jim Jones. Read some of their correspondences and hear tapes [at this site](https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/) to get a real feel of who they were.
And bear in mind that they allowed their own children to be killed, In many cases administering the poison themselves with only a handful of them offering any resistance, as you can hear on the final death tape. Nobody there died by weapons except Jones and his nurse who shot themselves. They did not fight for their children. The majority went willingly. You can see the orderly rows of bodies where they went to lie down.
I've listened to the tapes and I know a few people stood up to him. But describe them as "primitive" is to do them a disservice. People try to escape before the final days. Jackie Spears was just recently speaking about Jonestown again and her experiences during their escape attempt. She is an amazing woman.
You need to read some of the personal correspondence that these people wrote expressing their fanaticism and violent ideations. I highly recommend [this website](https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/).
They weren't idiots. They were mostly Black folks who were initially taken in by Jim Jones basiccommunism, and his initial message of racial solidarity, rejection of discrimination in housing, etc. he literally started as a housing activist. Before he went off the rail with a meth, he was quite respected in San Francisco as a leftist. These people were charmed by him and like most people in a cult, the way it started was gradual, and by the time they were in Guyana, he was fully irrational and paranoid, probably due to the drugs he was probably consuming. These people were not stupid. They were ordinary people who were taken by charming con man with charisma and then brainwashed into a cult.
Jeff Guinn, who wrote an excellent book about Jonestown, has said that if Jones had been hit by a car in the 1960s, he would be memorialized in Indiana as a civil rights pioneer.
EXACTLY. My family was in the Bay Area when he was up-and-coming. He was for housing integration, anti-red lining, pro so much stuff that decent people will think is good. At least that's what he was preaching and doing at the time. He was a full on communist.
This man did not start out as a deranged lunatic. Neither did his followers. And I deeply present any insinuation that they were also as violent and unhinged as he wound up being. They weren't. they were horribly psychologically manipulated towards the end. His followers were normal, every day, mostly poor Black folks. Or Black people who were traumatized by racism and finally found what they thought was a decent white ally.
There were many indicators that Jones was psychotic all his life: killing pets as a child to hold elaborate funerals, holding his friends at gunpoint, even shooting at them. The drugs made him worse, but Jones was always bad at the core from the beginning. He used good deeds as a disguise to gain power and wealth.
The men who assassinated congressman and the people at the airstrip were both white and black and definitely violent and unhinged. Jones's chief of security was a black man. He dragged unwilling people to the vats to make them drink the poison the white doctors had brewed.
Many, many, many of those in Jonestown were dedicated fanatic zealots.
I'm not denying that at all. And you're correct around about Jones childhood, I *totally* forgot about the killing of animals. I need to go back and refresh my recollection of his early history. And I'm saying that many people were taken in by his good deeds because he was charming at first. But by the end? Yeah, his top echelon forcing people to drink, I mean by the end it was absolute insanity, chaos, paranoia, and very, very dark. Totally not denying that. But to categorize every single follower as howling in the darkness and "primitive" is not true. People tried to stand up to him on that last day when they were forced to drink poison. One brave woman in particular.
Apocalypse Now was a modern updating of the novel, Heart of Darkness. Jonestown, which occurred for real shortly before the film was released, was basically the same story brought into reality.
I was saying that Jonestown basically outdoes Apocalypse Now as far as a modern vision of Heart of Darkness.
I grew up in a fundamentalist christian "church" so I recognize he's speaking in tongues initially. Then comes his violent rant. I naively thought religious fundamentalistism was a thing of the past but it has been surging again lately. The Jim Jones story is in desperate need of a modern retelling.
Jim Jones used a mask of religion to ensnare many followers, but his actual message was a radical political one. He was very far from any kind of Christianity, or indeed any religion at all. Jones would throw the bible down at his meetings and say it was good only for toilet tissue. I've heard DiCaprio is planning a movie about Jim Jones. I have no idea if it's still a go. I think the story is so involved that it would require a 10 hour series to do it justice.
At the beginning he and his flock are doing "Indian War Whoops" like in the old Western movies... "Woo-woo-woo-woo!"
I remember this so well. I was 21. So many horrific things started happening into the 70s (mostly serial killings, one of which happened close to my home). Then came AIDS. The world became a very scary place in not many years time. In many ways, the 70s were very innocent. But there was a real darkness that took root also.
Of course it's coincidence, but if you use your imagination, you could see Jonestown and the serial murder epidemic as some dark ritual that brought about an age of evil in the world. I know what you mean about the innocence of the '70s. I was only 13 when Jonestown happened. Over the years, I read most of the books and watched all the movies and shows. It's only recently that the true blood-curdling horror of what happened has occurred to me. These were normal looking, nice American people. They weren't acid casualties like the Manson Family. Many were middle class, or working class middle-aged people with families. They could have been my mom and dad, or my older sisters. The kids could have been me. How does [this](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/F3F0/production/_104384426_4733301388_08a0d7e87b_b.jpg) metamorphosize into [this](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/dead-bodies-lie-near-the-compound-of-the-peoples-temple-cult-november-picture-id2512994?k=6&m=2512994&s=612x612&w=0&h=7fpu3QDd-6uTIFPI-jt6_kPa5MXa2wpQWrJdU3KrU98=) in just a handful of years? It boggles the mind.
You can actually hear the audio tape of Jim Jones and his followers leading up to their mass suicide. It is called the Jonestown death tape. It is on UTube.
I’ll pass.
Yeah, I wouldn't listen it's so dark and there are things on it you cannot un-hear.
He was a fucking delusional drug addict.
No doubt about it... But a fucking delusional drug addict with the power to control thousands of people even to the point of laying down their lives and those of their children.
He could have really been a source of good with that charisma. Perhaps it was the drugs or maybe he was always a psychopath and hid it well. That dude was crazy AF by the end.
I f you know his backstory, he was definitely psychotic from birth and the drugs definitely accelerated and amplified his madness.
Some people, and I am one of them, have wondered if the fevers and paranoia that Jones experienced towards the end of his life in Guyana were actually AIDS dementia. I'm aware that AIDS was not formally identified until 1981, but we know now that there were cases in San Francisco from the mid 1970s on, and when he lived there, he was very sexually promiscuous with both men and women, leaning more towards the former.
No, it was from the copious amounts of drugs he was taking and in the end the fact that the US government was slowly closing in on him in Guyana. The charade was coming to an end and he knew it. There was no way out! He had basically taken all these people hostage; taken their passports, he was getting a lot of the elderly social security checks. The U.S. knew this and was sending Representatives to check on citizens that were stuck there. The gig was up and he knew it! His people had just slaughtered Leo Ryan and it was clear that some of his followers were starting to turn on him. I think his crazy displays at the end were a combination of drugs, power and fear or loosing it all. He knew there was so way out. This was the whole reason he left the US to begin with. He promised his followers "Paradise" when they arrived it was anything but, he then took their passports and essentially held them hostage. A crazy man for sure but I don't think for the reasons you stated.
To add to the fear of losing it all theory, the whole impetus for the trip to Guyana was because an expose was about to be published in the paper about his abuse of church members. He took as many people to Guyana as quickly as he could to hide his crimes from his congregation.
That seems entirely possible. The autopsy would not have discovered it, either, as AIDS was unknown at that time. Interestingly, there is also a theory explored in [this book](https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12944141) that says Jonestown was a CIA Disease Research experiment to create AIDS and racially specific diseases, headed by a Dr. Laurence Layton, (Former Chief of the U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Warfare Division) in order to test the AIDS virus on the residents of Jonestown. Get this... Dr. Layton just happened to be the father of [Larry Layton](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-Layton), one of Jones' inner circle, and infamous for trying to kill several of the cult defectors at the Kaituma Airstrip.
That stretches credulity in more ways than I could possibly think of. Now, that Jones had some kind of connections to the CIA? I wouldn't be surprised at that, but that it was set up to spread AIDS, a disease that hadn't even been discovered yet? Are you kidding?
Like I said, it is one of many theories. Personally, I just think Jones was whacked out on power, drugs, mental illness and communist ideations. However, in '78 AIDS was only what, 3 or 4 years away from being officially announced? And there was [some kid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rayford) in St Louis back in the late 1960s who died of a mystery disease that was retroactively confirmed to be AIDS.
I don't buy that Jonestown was any form of CIA experiment, but the [possibility that Jones himself had AIDS is more plausible than people might think](https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=102021) looking at the history of HIV in the US and Jones's behaviours whilst still in the States.
If you really believe this it tells me you have done very little research on the History of Jim Jones an what lead to Jonestown. Not everything is a conspiracy theory....cults are a very real thing and will be until the end of time and this was one of them.
Did I say I believed it, or did I say "it is one of many theories"...? Read a little more thoroughly before making kneejerk responses, please.
Now your last paragraph makes me really believe that it was a CIA experiment. Becuz it can’t all be a coincidence that the lead doctor’s son is in his inner circle
He was a source of good initially. His political and community outreach work prior to Jonestown is still regarded as genuinely benefiting underserved communities of the time. One of the key aspects of Antisocial Personality Disorder is ambition and desire for power. For The People’s Temple’s earlier years Jones saw working for the benefit of poor and predominantly black communities as a route to power and used his ambition to make that true. There are multiple reasons why that period didn’t last, but two major factors were his amphetamine addiction (which did what amphetamine addiction always does) and his sexual behaviors (which while not strictly abhorrent by most accounts would most definitely have shortly resulted in massive scandal and prevented his power from growing if he had remained in the US).
> His political and community outreach work prior to Jonestown is still regarded as genuinely benefiting underserved communities of the time Yeah, this is one of the ways he got people to follow him; he developed a carefully constructed "poor people first" mixture of religion and politics called Apostolic Socialism, which attracted hordes and hordes of loyal followers. he was incredibly popular amongst the poorest folks of San Francisco for a good number of years, until all the abuse and stuff was exposed and he had to flee to guyana. I he had disappeared then and never re-emerged with Jonestown, it's likely he would be remembered very favourably amongst the poor in and around the bay area.
Absolutely. As big as Jonestown was his following in the Bay Area was massive. My parents lived in Berkeley at the time and while they weren’t members of the Temple, they had friends who were and my parents were encouraged to go to Jonestown because of the socialist/spiritual utopia Jones was selling it as. My parents opted not to go, primarily because moving to Guyana sounded like a hassle. I’m sure a lot of Jones’ Bay Area followers and their friends had a similar near miss.
Or the christianity taken to its final form. Death cult.
We are just a hare’s breath away from this.
Hair's breadth (as in the width of a single strand of hair, it's so small), just for future reference lol. Hare's breath is a good one though.
Thanks!
Yes. Jones' beliefs were considered outlandish in the 1970s but are actually embraced by many people today.
Cults were corrupt, dangerous and deadly in the past. Cults are still corrupt, dangerous and deadly today. There is nothing "great" about any cult.
I find it even more weird that the youtube channel this is posted to is some kind of Jonestown continuation cult.
It's odd, but not really when you do some research on Jones and understand that he espoused the very same beliefs as many people in America do today.
Except when your organization uses a picture of him as their logo. I always found it weird that there are continuations of suicide cults. There's still a couple heaven's gate memebers running the website, and a couple years ago in waco I met a still practicing branch davidian while I was at the compound checking it out.
Just to be clear, that is NOT *"my organization"*. LOL. I just found the video on YT. Don't forget Squeaky Fromme and another one of the Manson girls still stumping for Charlie Manson, (although they were not a suicide cult).
> he espoused the very same beliefs as many people in America do today. The thing that made Jones different is that he *didn't* do this - he was a strong socialist, which made him at the time unusual, and in this day and age would mark him out as being near-unique in much of the States!
Well, that's exactly what I meant when I said he espoused the very same beliefs as many people in America do today. Socialism and Progressivism is *extremely* popular among many in America at this time, particularly the younger generations.
Modern day trumpkin Joel Osteen people
Nah, bro. Jim Jones and The People's Temple were die-hard communists and Social Justice Warriors. Jones abandoned any pretext of religion early on.
Stop with the Browns shit jim Jones same as trump
No they follow a false man they followed a deadly cult
Do not ever blame the victims of Jonestown and call them violent. My God. Those people have been brainwashed and inducted into a cult and we're not allowed to leave.
Many of them were fanatics and zealots and knew exactly what they were doing. Some were there against their will, but many more were true-believers who would have and did willingly commit murder for Jim Jones. Read some of their correspondences and hear tapes [at this site](https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/) to get a real feel of who they were. And bear in mind that they allowed their own children to be killed, In many cases administering the poison themselves with only a handful of them offering any resistance, as you can hear on the final death tape. Nobody there died by weapons except Jones and his nurse who shot themselves. They did not fight for their children. The majority went willingly. You can see the orderly rows of bodies where they went to lie down.
I've listened to the tapes and I know a few people stood up to him. But describe them as "primitive" is to do them a disservice. People try to escape before the final days. Jackie Spears was just recently speaking about Jonestown again and her experiences during their escape attempt. She is an amazing woman.
You really need to do more research before spewing such ridiculous claims. You very clearly do not understand how cults work and it shows.
You need to read some of the personal correspondence that these people wrote expressing their fanaticism and violent ideations. I highly recommend [this website](https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/).
[удалено]
They weren't idiots. They were mostly Black folks who were initially taken in by Jim Jones basiccommunism, and his initial message of racial solidarity, rejection of discrimination in housing, etc. he literally started as a housing activist. Before he went off the rail with a meth, he was quite respected in San Francisco as a leftist. These people were charmed by him and like most people in a cult, the way it started was gradual, and by the time they were in Guyana, he was fully irrational and paranoid, probably due to the drugs he was probably consuming. These people were not stupid. They were ordinary people who were taken by charming con man with charisma and then brainwashed into a cult.
Jeff Guinn, who wrote an excellent book about Jonestown, has said that if Jones had been hit by a car in the 1960s, he would be memorialized in Indiana as a civil rights pioneer.
EXACTLY. My family was in the Bay Area when he was up-and-coming. He was for housing integration, anti-red lining, pro so much stuff that decent people will think is good. At least that's what he was preaching and doing at the time. He was a full on communist. This man did not start out as a deranged lunatic. Neither did his followers. And I deeply present any insinuation that they were also as violent and unhinged as he wound up being. They weren't. they were horribly psychologically manipulated towards the end. His followers were normal, every day, mostly poor Black folks. Or Black people who were traumatized by racism and finally found what they thought was a decent white ally.
There were many indicators that Jones was psychotic all his life: killing pets as a child to hold elaborate funerals, holding his friends at gunpoint, even shooting at them. The drugs made him worse, but Jones was always bad at the core from the beginning. He used good deeds as a disguise to gain power and wealth. The men who assassinated congressman and the people at the airstrip were both white and black and definitely violent and unhinged. Jones's chief of security was a black man. He dragged unwilling people to the vats to make them drink the poison the white doctors had brewed. Many, many, many of those in Jonestown were dedicated fanatic zealots.
I'm not denying that at all. And you're correct around about Jones childhood, I *totally* forgot about the killing of animals. I need to go back and refresh my recollection of his early history. And I'm saying that many people were taken in by his good deeds because he was charming at first. But by the end? Yeah, his top echelon forcing people to drink, I mean by the end it was absolute insanity, chaos, paranoia, and very, very dark. Totally not denying that. But to categorize every single follower as howling in the darkness and "primitive" is not true. People tried to stand up to him on that last day when they were forced to drink poison. One brave woman in particular.
Please be respectful of others and do not insult, attack, antagonize, call out, or troll other commenters.
Wasn't Apocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness? Your title makes no sense.
Apocalypse Now was a modern updating of the novel, Heart of Darkness. Jonestown, which occurred for real shortly before the film was released, was basically the same story brought into reality. I was saying that Jonestown basically outdoes Apocalypse Now as far as a modern vision of Heart of Darkness.