The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

Jimmy learned alienation from his mother. The art of making others feel that they had beliefs and hopes in common was a gift all his own. And even as a small child, he had a talent for explaining away actions that seemingly contradicted his words.

Later, it would often be said of Jim Jones that he used others without scruple, cold-heartedly conning his way to whatever he wanted and never really caring for anyone, even those who’d helped him the most.

As much or even more than their parents, children in Lynn emphasized conformity. They believed in and followed the same rules, respecting parents and teachers above all. This was typical throughout Indiana—according to state historian James H. Madison, “Moderation has been the Indiana way, a moderation firmly anchored in respect for tradition. Among the revolutions that have not occurred in Indiana is a generational revolt.” Lynn kids shared toys and treats. Girls learned cooking and household skills. Boys played sports, roamed the woods and fields, and never shirked chores. Usually, they grew up to be just like their parents, and that was fine with everybody.

This is such simplistic bullshit, with unsubtle ideological “heartland” overtones.

When Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, thwarting enemies who sought to capture and humiliate him, Jimmy was impressed.

This author doesn’t have a subtle bone in his body. He’s working so hard to make sure that everything in J’s young life is an exact precursor to J’s known adult actions. And, by the way, how would one know little J was “impressed” by Hitler’s suicide??

It took a white preacher to show them how.

So condescending. This whole account of the black community. They're depicted like stupid, passive, lazy fools—as if they didn't know that their survival depended on appearing safe to their "courteous" white neighbors. I don't imagine I'll finish this book...

The only excuse for wording like this (and elsewhere in this passage) is if the author is adopting J's POV.

Jim Jones’s most effective means of persuasion was empathy. He had an uncanny ability to meet someone, surmise what was important to him or her, and then convince the person that he shared the same interests.

the truest form of socialism.

That's not socialism. It's charity.

He’d learned well from Father Divine that having enemies, real or imagined, was invaluable in recruiting and retaining followers.

Relocating to a foreign land would also increase Jones’s daily control of his followers, since they would be isolated from relatives and nonmember friends who might lure them away from Temple attendance and activities.

Aimee Semple McPherson,

The lesson for Jones’s followers was that an honorable end justified whatever morally questionable means were necessary to achieve it.

But Jones, too, wanted to be worshipped, and that desire meshed perfectly with the concept of reincarnation and his newly announced divinity in human form.

But he would no longer have the capacity to learn from mistakes, because he didn’t believe that, as a superior incarnation, he could make any. In the future, anything that didn’t work exactly according to Jones’s desires would be the fault of flawed followers or implacable enemies—and, with each passing day, Jones became more convinced that he had enemies everywhere.

Eureka, California,

almost universally working-class whites who lived far away from urban areas on purpose.

Though most residents of Ukiah and Redwood Valley were suspicious of the federal government, they were fervently patriotic in a more general sense. To them, antiwar demonstrators were traitors and communists—the terms were interchangeable. Outraged blacks were ungrateful Negroes who didn’t appreciate what they had, and whose genetically programmed propensity for violence represented a terrible threat to law-abiding whites. The Church of the Golden Rule didn’t alarm locals. Its members were white and they mostly stayed out of sight up in the hills. Peoples Temple was different. They shoved their way into what had previously been nice, quiet neighborhoods, and some of these interlopers were black.

Once teens became members, Jones monopolized their lives.

For now in Mendocino County, prophecy was the most effective way for Jones to maintain a sense of awe in his followers—it required a deft psychological touch, but Jones’s real gift was always an instinctive understanding of what worked best for specific audiences and adapting his approach as necessary.

For the present, those flaws didn’t endanger Peoples Temple, or lessen most members’ certainty that their pastor was above reproach. A few loyalists knew that the miracle healings were faked. Some also doubted Jones’s insistence that he was, in some way or another, godlike. Anyone even remotely close to Jones realized he was obsessed with control, and could not bear to delegate any real authority. But to them, what mattered more was all the good that was being accomplished through Jones’s leadership. It was his vision and apparently limitless energy that drove the Temple forward, in a time and place where its shining example was so unlikely, and so badly needed.

My mother came out to the tree; she was crying and she had smeared soot all over her face. She called up, ‘Now am I black enough for you to love me?’ ”

They're all ill.

Jones was obsessed with sex, and had been since childhood.

The Moores weren’t impressed. Jones put them in mind of the fictional Elmer Gantry, a flamboyant con man masquerading as an evangelist.

For them, their leader and their cause—the greater good—had become the same thing.

In fact, in its most basic form, socialism was a belief in more equitable distribution of wealth, with everyone afforded the opportunity to thrive in accordance with personal achievement regardless of race or social position. A nation could choose to observe socialist tenets. Communism meant rigid government control—people had no choice other than to comply, and government mandate rather than personal accomplishment determined the course of their lives. Peoples Temple socialism was intended to change hearts through example, not coercion.

This isn't a good presentation of the difference between socialism and communism. He goes by extant examples rather than theory, it seems. Remember, his idea of socialism is a church giving clothes and food to the poor for free.

No one was forced to comply, but everyone did—this was a way to demonstrate commitment to the cause.

descent into hucksterism.

But even the most dubious couldn’t deny another fact: the money pouring in from these questionable practices made possible exceptional outreach to those in need.

Ends justifying the means is one of the most powerful themes in Jones. This keeps the slide into [whatever] feeling much more gradual than it was. Like that frog slowly boiling in a pot of heating water, some of these Temple members probably died before they ever got far in the "what that hell am I doing here" train of thought.

“Only much later,” she says, “did I learn that the Mertles were stealing letters to me from my family when they got to their mailbox. That’s how Jones got all that information, but since I didn’t know it then it gave him his first hold over me. He could read my mind, he had these powers, and the Temple was working toward the things that I believed in. So I joined.”

But as Father frequently pointed out, it was an honor to work yourself into near-exhaustion for the cause.

Every aspect of their lives was monitored and controlled, even manipulated when necessary.

“We were learning a new set of ethics from Jim: ‘The ends justify the means.’ He also called it ‘situational ethics.’

a sense of exclusivity

us against them,

the example of Jim Jones himself, who seemed to work harder and longer than anyone.

Jones invariably established an emotional connection. He had something in common with every member—enduring the indignities of poverty, struggling with an isolating, lifelong sense of being different from most others, the frustrations of trying to bring about change instead of meekly accepting social injustice. Jones could even connect with the gradual influx of young, well-educated white members who’d previously lived in comfortable circumstances. He was just as informed as they were.

Nothing was more important than the cause, facts included.

We're all familiar with this characteristic of cults these days. Although I'm not clear what "the cause" is...

All members were constantly kept busy, but in the process many discovered talents they had no idea they possessed. This not only gave them increased self-esteem, but usually assured their ongoing devotion to the Temple.

Praise from Jones was a drug in itself.

Members often competed to see who could sleep less. If someone bragged, “I worked so long last night, I only slept three hours,” someone else was likely to retort, “I only slept two.”

Everyone was worn out—and most, at some point, found themselves simultaneously exhilarated. Predictably, the atmosphere of mandatory humility fostered in many a simultaneous sense of moral superiority. The less they slept, the more they sacrificed material possessions and bourgeois pride, the more worthy they were.

Observing with satisfaction what had literally become his kingdom, Jones observed to Terri Buford, “Keep them poor and keep them tired, and they’ll never leave.” How well he understood his people.

the election of Richard Nixon on a thinly veiled racist campaign theme of “law and order” (veteran political reporter Jules Witcover described it as “the politics of oppression, under the guise of patriotism”), the emergence of former Alabama governor George Wallace as a political force among angry whites.

Despite all the terrors of the outside world, they had each other, and Peoples Temple, and Jim Jones.

The cult of Trump uses so many similar psychological ploys, but the spirit is so much meaner--an astonishing thing to realize, given how the Peoples Temple ends.

He regularly announced “danger cycles” during which everyone should be especially cautious. If anything bad happened to a member during one of these, it only fulfilled Jones’s prophecy. If nothing did, then he was responsible due to his timely warning.

But Jones never accepted limits.

And God, or someone who believed himself to be at least partially God, did not settle. Every day, the ambition of Jim Jones ratcheted up, and so, inevitably, did the pressure he felt.

There wasn’t anyone associated with Jones in Peoples Temple to tell him no and make it stick.

On surviving tapes, his sermons sound interminable and frequently incoherent, but careful examination suggests they were less stream-of-consciousness than they seemed.

How much is this passage true for DJT as well?

But at some point each follower heard something that reaffirmed his or her personal reason for belonging to Peoples Temple, and for believing in Jim Jones.