Wow. I just read everything Wikipedia had to say on Peoples Temple and the Jonestown Massacre.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

What a snowjob Jim Jones did on all those poor people! Shit--I didn't know people actually could be duped so easily.

[crim son]

1. Hmmm. My kids were recently asking questions about that incident.

I can't remember all the facts - time to check out Wikipedia.

[skygazer]

2. How do you think Bush got elected?

:shrug:

[KG]

3. why are you suprised? 59 million idiots voted to relect a simian for prez.

[HughBeaumont]

11. Which is why no one should be surprised at Heaven's Gate or Jonestown.

Hell, if 59 million people voted for Bewsh (many of them TWICE), you can easily find 917 easily duped morons out of that group to drink from a tin bucket of Kool-Aid laced with Cyanide.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

18. It was about 913 people, actually, and they did not drink from a tin bucket.

According to Deborah Layton, an early defector from Jonestown, Jones was giving the community weekly or so "White Nights" where he would have his men fire outside the settlement and tell the followers that the gunshots were from CIA agents coming to kill the community because the members were socialist. He told the community that they would each drink a cup of Flavor-Aid, which had been laced with "poison" and which would kill them within a certain period of time (like half an hour or so), and that the mass suicide would be better than dying at the hands of CIA agents. Every time except the last, it was just plain Flavor-Aid, and when the members did not die, Jones said it had in fact been a loyalty test. Anyone who refused to drink was, I believe, killed or perhaps tortured.

The last occasion, where the Flavor-Aid was in fact laced with potassium cyanide, was after Congressman Ryan and his entourage had been attacked at the airstrip nearby, on November 18th, 1978. When the attackers returned and said they had failed to completely stop the planes from leaving, Jones made the decision to order a final round of Flavor-Aid, which his henchmen brought around to the members and forced them to drink. Apparently many people by then had begun to come to their senses, and when they refused to drink, they were forcibly injected with the Flavor-Aid via syringe. Many of the higher-ups, including Jones himself, died by gunshot, though it's uncertain whether they turned on one another or whether suicide was also involved.

Absolutely nasty but, as you say, not surprising sometimes.

On Edit: According to the official affidavit of Deborah Layton, while "White Nights" were held weekly, on only one occasion previous to the acutal death by Flavor-Aid were the members actually given the drink and told to prepare to die, only to later find it had been a "loyalty test." On the other "White Nights" Jones was merely terrifying his group with other threats of mass suicide.

[HughBeaumont]

19. Really? What's that look like?

Over 900 members of the People's Temple Cult led by Reverend Jim Jones died in Jonestown as victims of mass murder and suicide. In the foreground a tub of cyanide-laced punch which was used to assist in the suicides of people in Jonestown. This photo appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.

OE: That's GOTTA reek.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

20. Wow. That's insane.

I don't think they actually physically drank from the tub, though. They probably scooped up cups of it and filled the syringes from there.

[crim son]

4. I just read it.

It sounds like a fair number of the people figured it out at the last minute. I remember seeing pictures in a magazine of the already swelling bodies, lined up in rows. There were so many of them. Some of the women were holding small children.

Resist authority, is the lesson to be learned.

[alphafemale]

5. There was a Mini Series or TV movie shortly after the incident.

People were figuring it out. But they were in the middle of nowhere.

Very sad.

[Critters2]

6. This is why I encourage people to challenge me when they disagree with me.

I tell my congregation that if they disagree with me they need to tell me. They may be right about whatever the issue is, and I need their opinion--in case I'm wrong. I think anyone in authority can begin to think too highly of their own opinion of they aren't challenged. Then, after a while, they refuse to hear any opposition. Then they move their church to the middle of the jungle. Then they start handing out poisoned kool-aid.

It helps to be slightly unhinged to begin with, but who's to say how loose the hinges have to be.

What a tragedy.

[Sequoia]

7. Hey, Bush accomplished the same thing.

That Jim Jones was something else. Even political leaders of SF thought he was the real thing.

[BlueIris]

8. What you might find more shocking is how few of the small # of living survivors of Jonestown

will openly condemn Jones today. Of the four I saw interviewed in the PBS doc I watched last winter, only one would do it, and even he defended what Jones had 'tried' to do for his "people."

[InternalDialogue]

10. I think I saw that same show.

The apologists still saw the "vision" of what that paradise could have been. They didn't seem to realize that the promise of the paradise was never real, except in their minds. It's not like the train derailed on the way to paradise; it was never going there to begin with.

[BlueIris]

12. Thinking about this today, I guess it's possible that some of what they said

in defense of Jonestown might have been part of their own survivor's guilt. Some of their comments might have also been motivated by a lingering fear of being killed for having escaped the cult (as opposed to loyalty to Jones or his vision). As late as the mid-'80s, the survivors who would consent to be interviewed were telling reporters that they feared being killed by members of Jones' security force who might have escaped the slaughter and could still be seeking to murder them for defecting.

[InternalDialogue]

16. I agree.

I think that, because of the amount of mind control and power wielding that went on in establishing Jonestown and the "dream," the effects of it would linger long after reality intruded. The mind reacts very strongly and nearly irreparably to fear, coercion, and guilt.

[alphafemale]

15. Who survived Jonestown? People in the cult that hadn't gone there yet, maye?

I didn't think anyone at the compound survived.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

17. 4 people who were at Jonestown when Jones ordered the mass suicide survived.

According to Wiki:

Four people, who were intended to be poisoned, decided not to cooperate and survived. They were:

76-year-old Hyacinth Thrash, who hid under her bed when nurses were going through her dormitory with cups of poison;
36-year-old Odell Rhodes, a Jonestown teacher and craftsman who pretended to get a stethoscope and hid under a building;
25-year-old Stanley Clayton, a kitchenworker and cousin of Huey Newton, faked out security guards and ran to the jungle; and
79-year-old Grover Davis, who was hard of hearing and so missing the announcement on the loudspeaker to assemble, lay down in a ditch and pretended to be dead.

In addition, those who defected with Congressman Ryan made it back alive, and one woman, Deborah Layton, a higher-up, defected months before and was granted asylum in Guyana. She made it back to the US, and it was partially her testimony that made Congress decide to go down and investigate

[Danger Mouse]

9. Look at America. Look at the IWR and the mess we have now.

Is it really so surprising?

[Aristus]

13. Congressman Leo Ryan evidently asked Dan Quayle to accompany him to Jonestown.

Quayle didn't go. Must have had "other priorities".

That was back when Democrats had guts. Ryan was quite a remarkable guy.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

14. He tried to save all the ones who wanted to defect,

and I guess only one of the people killed at the airstrip was a defector. The rest were Ryan, one of his staff members, and reporters. The majority of the defectors got out alive, though emotionally and possibly physically battered from all that time under Jones.

[Deja Q]

22. Maybe Dan Quayle read the boarding ticket wrong and went to the wrong loading gate.

:shrug:

[Deja Q]

21. I wonder if they still teach that maniac in schools.

They did in my time. Along with every other cult leader. And this was something like 10 years after Jonestown!

These days they probably have everyone praise cult leaders instead.