The Jonestown Tragedy: A Sociological Perspective on “Evil”

The narrative surrounding Peoples Temple is unsurprisingly dominated by its shocking conclusion: the “tragedy” or “mass suicide”, a culmination of all the evil that has thus characterised the organisation (Malcolmson, 2016). While the deaths have been characterised as evil (McCabe, 1979), the “evil” label extends also onto the individuals involved: Jim Jones (Silver, 2011), the members of Peoples Temple (Moore, 1988) and hence the entire organisation (Malcolmson, 2016). However, the story told by family members and survivors reveals a much less newsworthy, more ambivalent account, one that includes the good along with the evil, the attraction of Peoples Temple and the important reasons that people joined in the first place (Moore, 1988; Jonestown 2006; National Geographic UK, 2024). It is only when the whole story is told that these “evil” labels gain any real meaning: without this, the event is so distanced and external to our everyday lives that we are not really threatened or even disturbed by it, certainly not compelled to question basic assumptions about ourselves or society (McCabe, 1979). It is therefore a purpose of the sociology of evil to reframe evil within society.

The essay begins by essentially testing a hypothesis of whether evil can be externalised from civic society by applying Jeffry Alexander’s (2001) counterdemocratic codes to the case of Jonestown. This analysis demonstrates the essential ambivalence of the evil in the Jonestown case as it is not neatly characterised by Alexander’s framework. Considering this, the essay moves away from theoretical labelling to empirically grounded observations of why people might commit evil, accepting that the label has been applied regardless of theoretical consistencies. Akin to how Arendt and Levi de-emphasize the singular figure of Hitler to focus on the machinery of the Holocaust, the latter part of this essay focuses on the mechanisms of the “total institution” (Goffman, 2022 [1961]) and its members rather than just Jones himself. Hannah Arendt (1964) and Primo Levi’s (1989) work on Auschwitz offer a framework where evil is not a monstrous anomaly, but where evil can be born of “banality” and as a result of erosion to an individual’s moral capacity, revealing a more nuanced understanding of victim-perpetrator and good-evil binaries particularly in Levi’s “Grey Zone” (Levi, 1989; Arendt, 1964). Approaching the sociology of evil in this way not only evokes a more meaningful sympathy but also a recognition that, without acknowledging the societal implications of evil, we ignore the ways to prevent tragedies like Jonestown.

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The origins of Peoples Temple lie in Indiana in the 1950s, where Jim Jones established the church through a Methodist-inspired social creed that challenged racial segregation and economic inequality (see e.g. Moore, 2009). Drawing on elements of the social gospel, faith healing, and a charismatic leadership style, Jones presented a vision of collective uplift that appealed particularly to marginalised communities (Moore, 2009). During this period, he cultivated an image as a committed community leader, establishing care homes, housing projects for delinquent boys, and canteens for those in need, as the Temple expanded (Kilduff and Tracy, 1977). His public profile was further legitimised by political support, culminating in his appointment to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in 1960 (Kilduff and Tracy, 1977).

While this narrative is not false, it offers only a superficial account of Jones’ rise: faith healings were later revealed to be staged, while political favour was largely motivated by the electoral influence of Peoples Temple’s growing membership (Moore, 2009; Kilduff and Tracy, 1977). Internally, members were subjected to increasing financial and psychological control, including a mandatory commitment fee of 25 per cent of earnings and excessive labour demands that left little time for rest or independent thought (FBI, 1979b). Disciplinary practices within Peoples Temple also escalated to include public humiliation, beatings, and coerced boxing matches (Feinsod, 1981). As former members and journalists began to threaten public exposure, Jones reframed withdrawal from American society as a moral necessity (Moore, 2009). He promoted the relocation to Guyana as the creation of a utopian, self-sufficient commune, a vision that many followers felt unable to reject after surrendering their homes, finances, and social ties (FBI, 1979b).

In Guyana in 1974, Jonestown was formed and Jones consolidated control by systematically restricting the possibility of exit: passports were confiscated, and members were coerced into signing documents falsely implicating them in serious crimes (FBI, 1979a). Jones’ authority was reinforced by an inner circle known as the Planning Commission, which developed extreme contingency plans involving killing the president, hostage-taking, and mass suicide in the event of external intervention (FBI, 1979a). Additionally, throughout his leadership he emphasised that the government was targeting him for promoting values contrary to wider society. This was legitimised for many followers when a fire was deliberately started in one of his Temples in San Fransico (Jonestown, 2006). These facts illustrate how an initial humanitarian vision was gradually transformed into a closed system of coercion, dependency, and ideological control.

On 18 November 1978, the arrival of U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan precipitated the commune’s collapse (see e.g. Feinsod, 1981). The visit was intended to test the group’s freedom, and when several members attempted to defect, Jones’ authority was visibly shattered (Feinsod, 1981). Having long rehearsed a narrative where external scrutiny required self-destruction, Jones ordered the ambush of Ryan’s delegation, killing Ryan and several others, and initiated “revolutionary suicide” (Feinsod, 1981). In his final address, recorded on the “Death Tape,” Jones framed the poisoning as a political act (Howard et al., 2025). However, the event was heavily coerced; survivor Odell Rhodes testified that armed guards encircled the pavilion, leaving members with a choice: ingest the cyanide mixture or be shot (Feinsod, 1981). This enforcement transformed Jones’ ideological rhetoric into the mandatory mass death of 918 people (Moore, 2009).

This final chapter of Peoples Temple is perhaps the most prominent in the public imagination, reflected in songs (e.g., Ultraviolence by Lana Del Rey), films (e.g., The Sacrament, (2013)), and the idiom “drink the Kool-Aid”. These representations have solidified the idea that followers committed altruistic suicide, while simultaneously trivialising the evil by reducing it to spectacle and obscuring the structural and coercive conditions that produced it (Carter, 2013). Durkheim’s (2002 [1897]) concept of altruistic suicide refers to deaths that occur when individuals are so fully integrated into a group that their personal identity and interests are subsumed, leading them to sacrifice themselves for the perceived good of the collective. While this may describe a very small minority of Jonestown members, a former member of Peoples Temple, Tim Carter (2013) argues that the reality (armed guards, forced poisonings, and the deaths of hundreds of children) points overwhelmingly to systematic coercion rather than revolutionary or altruistic suicide. Carter notes that acknowledging this reality is itself an ironic example of “drinking the Kool-Aid”, highlighting how public narratives oversimplify and sensationalise the event. Moving beyond the suicide narrative allows for a more accurate account of Jim Jones’ evil and the institutional mechanisms that enabled it.

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This section will attempt to account for the evil in Jonestown through the application of Alexander’s (2001) democratic codes (herby DC) and counterdemocratic codes (hereby CDC). As Moore (2009) notes, news accounts framed the story as binary-reinforcing: “good versus evil”, “the noble congressman versus the evil cult leader” (p.2). Alexander (2001) legitimises these distinctions, positing that evil is fundamentally linked to an affiliation with the CDC.  He proposes that this categorisation is a core function of the sociology of evil, “not to do away with evil but to actually establish the fundamental reality of its existence” (p.154). Testing this theory against Jonestown, however, reveals significant limitations.

Firstly, we can look at Peoples Temple generally, and for this analysis Alexander’s (2001) codes for the discursive structure of institutions is most relevant. Control mechanisms largely aligned with the CDC: punishment was arbitraryrather than rule-regulated (DC), manufacturing loyalty through fear. Similarly, Peoples Temple relied on Jones’ volatile personality (characterized by charisma and paranoia) (CDC) rather than accountable office (DC). However, Peoples Temple did not align solely with CDCs; contractual obligations (DC) were evident in the commitment fees and jobs members undertook in internal institutions (Kilduff and Tracy, 1977).

In terms of the members of Peoples Temple, it is useful to consider Alexander’s (2001) codes of social relationships. Alexander’s codes do explain some of the evil in this sense as the DC of critical was expressed initially as a central part of the group’s formation while in wider society: they were critical of existing social structures that promoted racism and capitalism (Moore, 2009). However, as they became a society in of themselves, this critical capacity was not applied to the regime itself, becoming deferential (CDC) to Jones, allowing his thoughts to supersede personal thinking (Jonestown, 2006). Yet, DC and CDC were often experienced simultaneously, contradicting Alexander’s binary thesis. The Temple functioned as a community of friendship (DC) while simultaneously treating defectors as existential enemies (CDC) (Feinsod, 1981). Trusting relationships coexisted with suspicion and secrecy, highlighting an essential ambiguity that binaries fail to capture (Moore, 2009).

Finally, turning to the “epicentre,” Jim Jones, Alexander’s framework suggests evil stems from consistent internalization of CDCs like secrecy, greed, and conspiracy. While Jones possessed these traits, his initial humanitarian activism contradicts this presumption. In fact, the narrative reveals that Jones’ may have attributed many of Alexander’s CDCs to wider society: greed and power in the form of capitalism, and hierarchy which Jones directly attempted to combat with activism (DC of social motives) and the aim of creating a communist utopia (Moore, 2009). It is worth noting that Alexander positions equality as a DC and treats hierarchy as an inherently CDC. This distinction is oversimplistic: hierarchy is a pervasive feature of most societies and equating it with opposition to equality risks abstracting away from structural realities where hierarchical structures within society can have aspects of democratic equality or inequality within them, depending on the type of hierarchy and what Alexander means by equality (Marotta, 2025). His framework implies that all hierarchies are automatically morally suspect. Jones’ project appears to simultaneously embody the DC more fully than other institutions, as well as being just as guilty of the hierarchical CDC (by pitting himself as the leader), illustrating both why he attracted followers and a limitation of Alexander’s model: its inability to capture empirical complexity or the “manifold forms of social power” (Marotta, 2025, p.108; Smith, 2004).

By establishing the “fundamental realities” of evil’s existence, the analysis of Alexander’s (2001) framework raises the question of whether evil only exists when it is supported by CDC. Despite Alexander’s attempts to clarify the air of common-sense understandings of the “evil” label, Jonestown has proved that evil could encompass more than can be explained by CDCs: in fact it proved that evil can be a result of DCs too. His framework is undermined by the fact that the label “evil” is applied by social actors navigating lived experience rather than following theoretical prescriptions (Smith, 2004). In this sense, the sociology of evil is at its best when it is simply recognising evil’s discursive existence and evil not necessarily as an externalisable or binary distinction to civic life, but as endemic to social structures and everyday social relations. Crucially the Jonestown case has been labelled as evil. However, the symbolic reasons for it being labelled as such is insufficient; we must understand the mechanisms that actually allowed the violence to occur. Since Alexander’s sociology illuminates the code but fails to account for the practice, this essay now turns to Arendt (1964) and Levi (1989) to examine the structural production of evil.

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Hannah Arendt’s (1964) concept of the “banality of evil” was formulated during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. She argued that monstrous crimes are often committed not by “the perverted nor sadistic”, but by “terrifyingly normal” individuals (p. 129) who become functionaries within a dehumanizing bureaucratic machine. Additionally, it is useful to understand Jonestown through Goffman’s (2022 [1961]) concept of the “total institution”: separation from wider society, the regulation of all aspects of daily life within a single space, and the concentration of authority in a small supervisory group over a large, managed population. Jonestown reflected these features through its physical isolation, collective labour, and strict control exercised by Jim Jones and the Planning Commission (see e.g. Kilduff and Tracy, 1977). As Goffman (2022 [1961]) notes, such institutions are incompatible with independent economic life and family autonomy, both of which were deliberately undermined in Jonestown to prevent resistance and reinforce total institutional control. This gives us a theoretical framework that allows insights from works that focus on the production of evil in such institutions like Auschwitz.

In Jonestown, Arendt’s insights into the banality of evil offer some key insights that account for the participation of both the Planning Commission and the general membership. For the “angels” (inner circle of the Planning Commission), evil became a matter of administrative duty: overseeing abuse and managing the “medication” (poison) as functionaries of Jones’ will (FBI, 1979b; Feinsod, 1981). Similarly, for the general members, a “thoughtlessness” which Arendt describes to be a specific inability to engage in critical reflection, was systematically cultivated through sleep deprivation, constant labour or meetings, and Jones’ voice broadcast on the speakerphones 24 hours a day encouraging them to “allow Jones to think for [them]” (Jonestown, 2006). This mirrors Arendt’s (1964) observation of the “Führer’s words” being elevated to law-level authority. This administrative evil was further masked by “language rules”, designed to camouflage the nature of the crime: just as the Nazi regime used “officialese” to hide murder (Arendt, 1964), Peoples Temple employed a coded vocabulary: the poison was referred to as “medication”, the mass killing was framed as “revolutionary suicide” (Howard et al., 2025) and in the planning stages, the final act was discussed as “going to New York” (FBI, 1979b) . This linguistic subversion as well as the “thoughtlessness” facilitated what Arendt (1964) termed the “Pontius Pilate feeling”: a total displacement of responsibility where members felt absolved of moral guilt because their actions were sanctioned by their society’s highest authority. As Moore (1988) notes, this was not an overnight descent but a gradual process where members “[accepted] small atrocities bit by bit” resulting in “freedom and judgment [eroding] a piece at a time” (p.131) illustrating Arendt’s (1964) warning that evil flourishes when the capacity for critical detachment is lost.

Alternatively, as Cesarani (2004) contends, the commission of evil often stems not from passive, mindless obedience, but from a high degree of individual agency and conscious ideological commitment. Many in Jonestown were driven by an active passion for racial justice (see e.g. Moore, 2009), meaning they were far more than “thoughtless” functionaries. Indeed, many individuals who administered poison to their children could be viewed as ideologically committed, though it is impossible to disentangle this commitment from the fear of Jones’ alternative narrative: the threat of torture by government officials (Feinsod, 1981). Additionally, eyewitness accounts provide evidence of critical reflection: most notably Christine Miller’s resistance to the suicide proposal and the fact that several individuals attempted to escape that day (Feinsod, 1981; Howard et al., 2025). While these may have been exceptions, they serve to demonstrate that any capacity for moral resistance which remained was systematically overwhelmed by physical and psychological coercion. Thus, the tragedy of Jonestown is found in this tension: an environment that weaponized the members’ ideological agency only to transform them into “prisoners coerced into their own destruction” (Moore, 1988). To understand this landscape, where individuals are neither purely “thoughtless” nor purely “innocent,” but are instead blurred through forced complicity, the analysis must turn to Primo Levi’s (1989) concept of the “Grey Zone.”

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The application of Arendt’s (1964) “banality of evil” has thus far attempted to explain the mechanisms of both the Planning Committee and the general membership using the same theoretical nuances. However, this risks tarnishing low-level members and the inner circle with the same brush, a move that replicates the simplistic media representations of the tragedy by framing the final act as a collective choice. Since Arendt’s thesis was developed to explain state-sponsored perpetrators like Eichmann, applying it indiscriminately to Peoples Temple risks a false equivalence between Nazi guards and individuals who were, in reality, trapped within a “total institution” (Goffman, 2022 [1961]). To expand on this, the distinction between the Planning Commission and the general members is not entirely clear-cut; while the enforcers perhaps bore a heavier responsibility for the daily abuse, they were simultaneously trapped by the same coercive mechanisms as those they supervised (FBI, 1979b). Levi’s (1989) concept of the “Grey Zone” resolves this ambiguity by allowing a comparison between the Planning Commission and “Kapos” (supervisory prisoners of Auschwitz) who sought to identify with the oppressor to better their conditions. This comparison forces the analysis beyond “simplistic moral thinking [that] pretends there is nothing between victims and perpetrators” (Levi, 1989, p. 25).

Levi (1989) notes that the harsher the oppression, the more widespread the willingness to collaborate with power becomes. This created a dynamic where “ascent of the privilege” became the only mode of survival; to lift oneself above the norm was to escape, momentarily, the worst of the suffering (Levi, 1989). Ultimately, the tragedy of the “angels” in Jonestown and the Kapos in Auschwitz serves as a sociological warning about the “dazzle” of power (Levi, 1989, p. 51): he critiques the human tendency to be so blinded by the prestige of hierarchy that we forget our “essential fragility”. Ultimately, their privileged status offered no protection against the “lords of death” (Levi, 1989, p. 51): the cyanide consumed the “angels” just as it did the general membership. Acknowledging this does not excuse their actions, but it provides a necessary corrective to the binary narrative, revealing that extremely oppressive systems push people to behave in ways that are morally disturbing yet tragic (Levi, 1989).

Additionally, in Jonestown, the “Grey Zone” was maintained through the “best way to bind” subjects: by burdening them with guilt and compromising them until they could not turn back (Levi, 1989, p. 28). While for the Kapos this entailed abusing fellow prisoners (Levi, 1989), the members of the Planning Commission were forced to sign documents falsely implicating themselves in crimes like child abuse (FBI, 1979a). Furthermore, just as entry rituals of beating and humiliation in the Nazi camps were used to break solidarity and prompt moral collapse (Levi, 1989), Peoples Temple members were subjected to public beatings and encouraged to spy on family members for potential defectors, which severed their connections to anyone but Jones (FBI, 1979a). These acts were not signs of inherent evil but survival mechanisms in a system that, as Levi (1989) argues, damages people morally as well as physically. This concept of the “Grey Zone” resolves the ambiguity that Moore (1988) identifies as the barrier to understanding Peoples Temple. Rather than judging participation as malicious or perceiving them as morally pure victims, this lens reveals how absolute power destroys the moral capacity of ordinary individuals. To situate this in the broader importance of a sociology of evil, Levi (1989) asserts that we must study these manifestations of evil “if we want to know the human species, if we want to know how to defend our souls when a similar test should once more loom before us, or even if we only want to understand what takes place in a big industrial factory” (pp.25-26).

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To conclude, the narrative of Jonestown, often reduced to a sensationalist tale of brainwashing and “mass suicide” (Malcolmson, 2016) demands a sociological reframing that moves beyond the comforting binaries of good and evil. By testing Alexander’s (2001) codes, this essay has demonstrated that the “evil” of Peoples Temple cannot be neatly externalized through CDCs. The lived reality of the Temple and its initial aspirations defy simple categorisation, revealing that evil can flourish even within frameworks that mimic DCs. The analysis then moved to acknowledge that the sociology of evil should be more concerned with specific mechanisms that allow evil to flourish, rather than being overly concerned with theoretical categorisations. Arendt’s (1964) “banality of evil” illuminates how the administrative machinery of the Planning Commission and the linguistic subversions transformed murder into a bureaucratic necessity. However, if we emphasise the banality of such crimes, we eclipse the ideological commitment within individuals (Cesarani, 2004) or their survival mechanisms (Levi, 1989). Therefore, it is Levi’s (1989) “Grey Zone” that provides the most crucial nuance. It dismantles the myth of the brainwashed cultist by highlighting the coercive nature of the “total institution” (Goffman, 2022 [1961]), where the line between victim and perpetrator was deliberately blurred. The tragedy was not an act of altruistic suicide, but the result of a slow, systematic erosion of moral agency, where individuals were compromised until the capacity for resistance was extinguished (Levi, 1989; Moore, 1988).

Ultimately, the sociology of evil serves little purpose if it only reinforces the distance between “us” and “them”: if we label Jonestown as a “freak occurrence” or “madness”, we fail to see it as a “model for crimes to come” (Arendt, 1964). This analysis has attempted to confront the uncomfortable proximity of Jonestown to existing social structures; the event is not a monstrous anomaly of the counterdemocratic sphere, but a testament to the fragility of human reason under totalitarian pressure.

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