I find destructive cults interesting. How can one man convince thousands of people to follow him blindly? How come governments can't intercede against Scientology for example in spite of several complains and how come the legal apparatus is at its disposition to fuck up people's lives?
Was Jim Jones aided by someone?
How did he come to have the means to buy an insland, guns and poison and transport all of his followers without american intelligence sniffing out its intentions?
This shit is horrific. Here's an aerial picture of the pavilion area, where they all met and spoke about committing suicide before drinking the kool aid.
They took needles off syringes and squirted the poison into children's mouths. Hell, if you google the pictures, they even poisoned the dogs. There's a ~40 minute recording of the night they died, and by the end of it you can hear children crying and screaming.
They didn't buy an island, they bought a patch of jungle in Guyana and set up a communist community. Jones bribed Guyana immigration officials so that mass immigration off his cult members would be a quick process with minimal questions asked. Also, he bribed them to make it very hard for members to leave Guyana.
Yes, he did have help. His lawyers were devout followers, and he had armed guards around the town. Plus most of the people in Jonestown were true believers. You don't up and immigrate to a jungle commune in Guyana if you're a casual.
I could go on about this all night, I find it absolutely fascinating in the most morbid way. The Jonestown wiki reads like a horror novel, I recommend it.
If you're a metal fan, there's a thrash song called "Hypnotized" by Heathen that starts off with lines from various Jim Jones speeches. The guy was a lunatic, but he was a great public speaker and very charismatic, which helped him pull this off.
>>17462523
Here's a pic of the airstrip in Guyana where US Congressman Leo Ryan was killed. He went to Jonestown to investigate claims that people weren't allowed to leave.
He was there for a few days and some of the cult members told him they wanted to leave, so he took them back to the airstrip with him. They got on the plane, and a bunch of Jones' followers showed up with guns and opened fire. Five of them were killed, including Ryan, who was shot over 20 times.
What was Jones goal? I thought he only had the mass suicide carried out because he feared authorities were about to force him to end the cult.
>>17462611
He was a communist, and originally chose Guyana because it was socialist and he figured the government would be easy to bribe (he was mostly right).
I'd say it's a Ritual Sacrifice. Are there any crossings of ley lines or obelisks or something significant where this tragedy occurred? An old temple perhaps?
>>17462701
But why do all that? What was he trying to accomplish?
>>17461832
Scientology survives to this day because L. Ron Hubbard had connections to the US intelligence community and ran in the occult circles that the elites played in
Scientology uses mind control techniques derived from CIA tactics which in turn are derived from the Nazis' experiments in mind control
Jim Jones was likely a government agent who was meant to demonize racial harmony and especially make his African American worshipers look crazy/stupid, it was a tactic against the hippie movement, same as Charles Manson
>>17462867
The ones who benefit would benefit the most are the proverbial reptilians, unfortunately. It's their delicacy. I've listened to the tapes. I'm sure the lizards came buckets.
>>17461832
Actual psychopath here.
>How can one man convince thousands of people to follow him blindly?
One at a time.
>>17463166
>Actual psychopath here.
Lol.
In Jungian psychology there's a term called Ego Inflation. Super simple concept that can lead to huge, fucked up situations.
The best metaphor i heard is this - one with an ego inflation becomes like King Midas, turning everything and everyone into objects to be owned and controlled.
This condition in addition to an identification with god/a religious psychosis can birth pseudo prophets.
Jung says that Pseudo prophets aren't the only outcome, the other outcome would be willing disciples.
These disciples bask in the radiant energy, warmth and sunlight of a semi-divine being on earth. They also support each other by reassuring themselves of their own convictions.
Basically - if someone is articulate enough, has enough charisma, he can draw out an urge to become a disciple from a crowd.
Vernon Howell, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Marshall Applewhite, Alexander Bedward, Kolaskin, Wovoka.
The line between asylum patient and prophet is very thin.
But we must not throw out the baby with the bath water. For even 'love thy neighbor' was a new concept that greatly affected mankind. Prophets have arguably brought society to it's current state. Prophets have helped their societies stand back on their feet as much as they've lured them and themselves to their own death.
Handsome Lake of the Senecca comes to mind. As does Jesus and Buddha.
>>17462919
Nail'd. /thread
>>17462611
He was also an extremely paranoid individual. He started to suffer persecution from authorities when they saw how big the cult grew and because there had been some claims of abuse inside the cult.
>>17461832
If the followers are already 100 percent convinced of an afterlife and a God of some sort--then it isn't actually that hard to convince people that you have more detailed answers to their questions--especially if you have a magnetic personality and the followers are in a bad place in their lives. People in low emotional places are easy to manipulate because they will latch on to any authority figure that gives them hope.
>>17462867
Originally, he was really trying to help people. Jones was a huge civil rights advocate and supporter (a lot like Lee Oswald interestingly enough). He saw a lot of injustice growing up in the rural US--and had a genuine concern for the Black experience in America. Addictions to sex, drugs, and power ultimately corrupted him. His psychosis didn't happen overnight. It was a slow process.
I was reading the Jonestown wiki last night, and apparently Jim Jones' adopted son (Jim Jones Jr.) went back to the area years later with camera crews. The place was being quickly reclaimed by the jungle and was covered in vegetation, but he found an old rusty steel drum near the spot where the pavilion was, and said it looked like the one that they mixed the poison in. Fuck, that creeped me out for some reason.
>>17462701
He chose Guyana because it was the only English speaking South American Country
I grew up in San Francisco in the '70's and remember all the People's Temple bullshit, every local politician had their arm around Jones, the current CA governor, US senators, Congressmen, everybody loved Jim Jones, he helped to get people elected to office
Nobody gave a shit about his followers until they were dead, mostly black, poor, addicts, they went to him because he gave them hope when others turned their backs
If you want to start a cult or a movement, find the people most at risk, the most marginalized, those with no hope, drunks, druggies, ex-cons, they will come like flies, when people have nothing in their lives to look toward, when they are desperate they will circle around someone who promises hope
My grandparents were really good friends with Congressman Ryan, they had lunch with him the day he left for Guyana, he was upset that all the Bay Area politicians who were "so concerned" about Jones refused to come with him to try and help, President Carter and the State Department tried to prevent Ryan from investigating by telling him "everything was just fine in Jonestown", the Ambassador in Guyana didn't want to help Ryan, Dan Quayle was suppose to have gone with Ryan but at the last moment decided not to go
The US Ambassador and Mission Chief Burke a Dwyer were both former/current CIA people
Ryan was a major critic of the CIA and had sponsored legislation to clamp down on them and provide meaningful oversight
My grandfather said Ryan always thought the Peoples Temple and Jonestown were CIA operations developing mind control techniques over large groups of the lower classes
Jones got 1000 people to die at his command, guess those plans worked out and a critic of The Agency went away
Met Ryan a couple of times, he was pretty nice, the only US Representative killed while in office
Met Jones a few times too, had an aunt (bad side) who was a Temple member
My wife's stepsister lived in Ukiah, CA, and decided one day that they should check our a new "church" nearby. "We were sort of creeped out by the guard towers." It was a branch of Jones's People's Temple.
>>17461832
Netflix has a documentary on him its really interesting, it has first hand eye witness accounts including his own to add more credibility
>>17463329
And still psychopaths can create cults.
>>17461832
>How did he come to have the means to buy an insland, guns and poison and transport all of his followers without american intelligence sniffing out its intentions?
Because he did not express his intentions for them all to die at first and never publicly. He got his money by financially exploiting the people in his cult. He convinced them that he spoke for god. If you can do that, then you can control them as if you really are a god.
Cult leaders prey on emotionally and mentally vulnerable people. They prey on those looking for answers and they bombard them with the acceptance and idealistic notions that they haven't found anywhere else. They often deprive members, especially newer ones or those thinking about leaving, of food or sleep in order to manipulate them more easily. They also resort to physical punishment in a lot of cases.
It's a predatory process but there are a lot of people out there who don't realize how easy it would be to fall victim to it if they weren't in the right state of mind.
If you want to understand the mass suicide at Jonestown, look more at it's seemingly innocent beginnings and the utopia that he promised them all.
They used to force children who acted out to spend a night at the bottom of a well. Holy shit.
>>17463755
Link?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377369/unburied-truth-about-jim-jones-j-delgado
>An atheist, Jones cleverly realized, quite early on, that religion could serve as a vehicle to attract followers to his social-justice views and his “church.” Masquerading as a Christian preacher, he ultimately founded the People’s Temple, which grew substantially thanks to followers’ donations. Jones would later readily admit that he asked himself what would be the best method to spread Marxism and decided on doing so by infiltrating Christians and preaching Marxism disguised as religion. In a 1977 New York Times interview, his wife reportedly admitted that Jones was promoting Marxism by mobilizing people via religion, and that he referred to the Bible as a paper idol he must destroy. A decade after starting The People’s Temple in Indiana in the 1950’s, Jones moved camp to the greener pastures of San Francisco, where he found himself surrounded by fellow radicals such as Harvey Milk, who heaped praise on him and his work. Jones’s leftist views fit right in among the Bay Area glitterati. But upon learning that an upcoming press article was about to report on allegations by former Temple members that they had been emotionally, mentally, and physically abused (the bisexual Jones reportedly even sodomized some followers), the organization fled to Guyana in the summer of 1977, establishing its community abroad, away from prying eyes. Jonestown was comprised largely of committed leftists, many of whom were drawn, for one reason or another, to Jones’s railings against rampant racism, social injustice, and income equality. A few months later, Jones even visited Cuba specifically to meet with notorious Black Panther Huey Newton, returning with nothing but praise for the Communist island. Lest there be any doubt about Jones’s political views and those of his fellow Jonestown residents, he once boasted: “I believe we’re the purest Communists there are.”
>>17461832
This guy had to be part of some communist opted movement or talking part in some crazy occult led organization like Heavens Gate. In reality he most probably was demon possessed.
>>17465685
National Review is a right wing shill site. All of their articles are shit.
>>17465703
Oh so Jones didn't go to Cuba and loudly praised the government there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones#Jones.27_.22Rainbow_Family.22
Here is Salon saying the same damn thing as The National Review
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/21/the_divine_inspiration_of_jim_jones_inside_one_of_historys_most_partner/
Suck a dick.
>>17465655
Look on wikipedia retard
Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple is a really good documentary on Jim Jones, you can easily see why people would follow him.
>>17461832
I've been looking at this picture and pictures of Jones for the past few hours, and I have to say I feel like I truly know him. Like, was I Jim Jones in a past life?
Fucking weird as feeling.
>>17461832
https://youtu.be/-ctMEs2ERBU
I tend to find this guys videos pretty interesting to watch
>>17462523
>Heathen
this shit sounds pretty dope, thanks
>>17463958
Good info in this post, thanks. Pretty good thread in general. Awful that this shit happened The pictures are bad enough, cant bring myself to listen to the audio of people cryring / screaming while being held down and injected with poison. Fuck man.
>>17461832
https://archive.org/download/pdfy-eDNpDzTy_dR1b0iB/Festinger-Riecken-Schachter-When-Prophecy-Fails-1956.pdf
