History Channel: Jim Jones- Paradise Lost: The Mass Murders in Jonestown

Source:The History Channel- Reverend Jim Jones: the leader of The People's Temple in San Francisco, California and Jonestown in Guyana.

“Jonestown, (November 18, 1978), was the location of the mass murder-suicide of members of the California-based Peoples Temple cult at the behest of their charismatic but paranoid leader, Jim Jones, in Jonestown agricultural commune, Guyana. The death toll exceeded 900, including some 300 who were age 17 and under, making the incident one of the largest mass deaths in American history… 

Originally from Britannica, but the link was deleted.

“Docudrama, “Jim Jones’ town – Paradise lost,” a gripping look at an abominable cult’s final four days culminating in one of the most infamous mass murders on record. Some suicides, yes—but the simple, ugly reality is that these men, women, and little children were brutally murdered, through mental and physical coercion. Consider the body discovered of the woman with nearly every joint in her body yanked apart in a desperate attempt to escape the grasp of cult thugs poisoning her. Guyana’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, accompanied the teams that counted the dead hours after the massacre. He found fresh needle marks at the back of the left shoulder blades of 80-90 percent of the victims he examined. Others had been shot or strangled. Some of you may have this to compare with the images presented, or reported by some witless film critic, in Director Stanley Nelson’s, “Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple.” This stark contrast of a film winds down, featuring some poignant music accompanying a narrative of “The Final Note,” written by a doomed cult member—either Dick Tropp or Marceline Jones–on the day of the slaughter of these 913 Americans.”

From the History Channel 

I’ve blogged about this before, but the People’s Temple in the most positive sense and what its legacy is, is a collection of lost souls, who for whatever reason or reasons weren’t making it in mainstream America and were lost. And looking for a direction and a leader to lead them to let’s say the promise land and end their pain and suffering. And to a certain extent and the good side of Jim Jones was that leader that could show people what meaningful life is.

The people of Jonestown thought Jim Jones was the person to show them how to create a world where there wouldn’t be anymore suffering and where all people would live a positive life. Without suffering and where people would live off of each other and live off of the land and literally take care of each other which is socialism at its best. But the problem with the People’s Temple or later Jonestown, is that it was led by Jim Jones.

Jim Jones had a dictatorial evil side to him that was about making people completely dependent on him for their survival. And wanted people to only do his will and serve him. Which is a common theme of dictators, because they are people who believe in absolute power. Which is all about what being a dictator is. Someone who wants to centralize all of the power with them self. And not delegating power to their deputies and people they are supposed to serve. Which is a big reason why Jonestown ended in such tragedy. 

You can also see this post at FreeState MD, on WordPress.

History Channel: Jonestown Nightmare in Paradise

Source:The New Democrat

To understand Jonestown, you first have to know about the People's Temple, which started out in downtown San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and in a many ways an actual paradise, which is where a lot of members of Jonestown were from or at least were living before they moved to Guyana in South America in the early to mid-1970s to build what became Jonestown, which at the end of the day was not much more than a prison camp.

The People's Temple in San Francisco was put together by a Socialist Christian, the Reverend Jim Jones, who moved his organization from Indianapolis, Indiana, where it was unwelcome because his group was a biracial multi-ethnic church. Far-right religious conservative Indiana in the 1960s and early 1970s did not accept non-Caucasians and people who didn't believe in their American way of life, whatever the hell that was supposed to be, so the group moved to San Francisco, which was seen as progressive or socialist, and sufficiently tolerant to allow them to build their community.

I think this is where the paranoia of Jim Jones comes in, because San Francisco, for whatever reasons, was not not acceptable for what he wanted, which was to build a community and an organization, where people literally took care of each other and lived off each other in a socialist communitarian Christian way of life, real Christianity if you will, and not the religious-right silliness that is more common in America.

The People's Temple in San Francisco comprised American outsiders of all races and ethnicities, including Jim Jones himself, people who couldn't make it in America for all sorts of reasons, including drug addiction, who were looking for something that would give their lives meaning.  They wanted to make a difference or hoped to make the world better. These were the people who made the People's Temple run and did much of the work.

If you take Jim Jones out of the picture here and replace him with someone like Dr. Martin King or Dr. Andrew Young or Reverend Jesse Jackson, or even Dr. James Dobson, a leader of the Christian Right, the People's Temple, I believe, is still in business today because it had the strong moral leadership of people only interested in serving the then under-served and would have the financial backing to be in business today