The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

In years to come, Jim Jones would frequently be compared to murderous demagogues such as Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. These comparisons completely misinterpret, and historically misrepresent, the initial appeal of Jim Jones to members of Peoples Temple. Jones attracted followers by appealing to their better instincts. The purpose of Peoples Temple was to offer such a compelling example of living in racial and economic equality that everyone else would be won over and want to live the same way.

“We individual Temple members had no real authority, but we weren’t mindless robots,” Tim Carter says. “We willingly gave up some freedom for the greater goal. If you got upset with something, with Jones, you still felt respect for others in the Temple and you’d think, ‘If this is wrong, these other very intelligent, very decent people wouldn’t be here, so, therefore, I must be wrong.’ ”

Individual suicide was wasteful, but mass suicide that sent a message of defiance, and that encouraged future generations to fight oppression to the death, was admirable.