This paper is my reaction to the “Jonestown Cult Suicides - The True Story – Documentary” that published on YouTube May 21, 2014 and narrated by Paul McGann.
It tells a story of a preacher named Jim Jones that created and lead a cult; Peoples Temple, in the late 1970’s. Ex-members of Jones’s congregation incriminated him of physical and sexual abuse, mind control, and coerced drugging. Jones and his members were the object of media frenzy. His church, the members, and his family of over 900 fled to Guyana in South Africa and it was there they built their own city, Jonestown. They would build together, live together, and worship together all in the name of Christian socialism.
”fig 1”
While the United States began building their case against …show more content…
Jim Jones himself said “If we can’t live in peace; then let us die in peace.” (Father Jones Last Speech), and so they did. But, what the survivors confess and I believe; it was a mix of murder and suicide. Parents murdered their children either savagely or forcing them to ingest the cocktail of death.
I cannot imagine anyone or anything causing me to kill, much less hurt my precious children. My heart aches for all those that were under the spell of the mentally broke Jim Jones. Now, I must say that my intrigue had grown into an obsession over Jonestown. The knowledge I gained from many sources, has open my focus of this event along with the idea Jonestown created. What a wonderful idea these people shared. Somewhere they could call home and live free, happy and join as a family. Hearing the members talk about the cult with the driven emotion they bring during services helped me conclude they believe in their cause and had strong emotional attachments to Jim Jones as their spiritual leader. The idea of Jonestown is manifested by the members under Jones’s …show more content…
Not knowing if I am more disgusted by the actions of a preacher doing sexual acts on his followers or shocked by the amount of people who trailed behind him leading to their death.
In the documentary, Jim Jones’s son, Stephan said it best at the end of the documentary by saying;
“Ask yourself; what would someone have to do to you to get you to do something unthinkable? And learn from it, do not judge it, do not stand separate from it. Be willing to stand in the shoes of the people you are judging, and I hope that you -know nine hundred plus people that day died and the way they died might offer us something so that their lives will not be in vain.”
”fig 3”
The true focus of my Jonestown observation lies in the uncanny ability Jim Jones had in manipulating others and having mind and body control over them. I see that the people of Jonestown shared the correct assumption on why they wanted solitude from the United States was due to prejudice, racism, and politics. I feel their downfall was in fact their leader’s fraudulent accusations of being a profit and their belief in
It tells a story of a preacher named Jim Jones that created and lead a cult; Peoples Temple, in the late 1970’s. Ex-members of Jones’s congregation incriminated him of physical and sexual abuse, mind control, and coerced drugging. Jones and his members were the object of media frenzy. His church, the members, and his family of over 900 fled to Guyana in South Africa and it was there they built their own city, Jonestown. They would build together, live together, and worship together all in the name of Christian socialism.
”fig 1”
While the United States began building their case against …show more content…
Jim Jones himself said “If we can’t live in peace; then let us die in peace.” (Father Jones Last Speech), and so they did. But, what the survivors confess and I believe; it was a mix of murder and suicide. Parents murdered their children either savagely or forcing them to ingest the cocktail of death.
I cannot imagine anyone or anything causing me to kill, much less hurt my precious children. My heart aches for all those that were under the spell of the mentally broke Jim Jones. Now, I must say that my intrigue had grown into an obsession over Jonestown. The knowledge I gained from many sources, has open my focus of this event along with the idea Jonestown created. What a wonderful idea these people shared. Somewhere they could call home and live free, happy and join as a family. Hearing the members talk about the cult with the driven emotion they bring during services helped me conclude they believe in their cause and had strong emotional attachments to Jim Jones as their spiritual leader. The idea of Jonestown is manifested by the members under Jones’s …show more content…
Not knowing if I am more disgusted by the actions of a preacher doing sexual acts on his followers or shocked by the amount of people who trailed behind him leading to their death.
In the documentary, Jim Jones’s son, Stephan said it best at the end of the documentary by saying;
“Ask yourself; what would someone have to do to you to get you to do something unthinkable? And learn from it, do not judge it, do not stand separate from it. Be willing to stand in the shoes of the people you are judging, and I hope that you -know nine hundred plus people that day died and the way they died might offer us something so that their lives will not be in vain.”
”fig 3”
The true focus of my Jonestown observation lies in the uncanny ability Jim Jones had in manipulating others and having mind and body control over them. I see that the people of Jonestown shared the correct assumption on why they wanted solitude from the United States was due to prejudice, racism, and politics. I feel their downfall was in fact their leader’s fraudulent accusations of being a profit and their belief in