<\/p>\n
The key to understanding the tragedy that was Jonestown lies in the oratory skills of the Peoples Temple founder, Jim Jones.<\/p>\n
With the cadence and fervor of a Baptist preacher, the charm and folksiness of a country storyteller, and the zeal and fury of a maniacal dictator, Jones exhorted his followers to a fever pitch, audiotapes recovered from Jonestown reveal.<\/p>\n
As he spoke, they applauded, shouted, cheered. One follower who survived the \u201crevolutionary suicide\u201d at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, said that Jones was the most dynamic speaker he had ever heard.<\/p>\n
Like all powerful speakers, Jones\u2019 greatest asset was his ability to determine what listeners wanted to hear and give it to them in simple language that appealed to them on an almost instinctual level.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very charismatic, very charismatic,\u201d said Leslie Wilson, who survived that fateful day in Jonestown by walking away from the settlement before the cyanide that killed more than 900 Peoples Temple members was distributed. She was one of 33 people who began the day in Jonestown and lived to tell the tale.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could quote scripture and turn around and preach socialism,\u201d she said. \u201cHe appealed to anyone on any level at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of his followers were elderly African-Americans drawn to his cause by his soulful delivery and Pentecostal preaching style, including at times speaking in tongues. That hair-raising fervor was perhaps only overshadowed by what he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I say, I am God, then I feel truth well up within my soul. And I see it well up in you, and I see the sick healed, and the blind see, and the dead raised,\u201d he shouted<\/a> in a full-throated roar in a 1972 sermon<\/a>. \u201cYou wanna know how I feel, I never feel so good as when I say I am God.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones further enraptured crowds with faith healings \u2013 laying hands on disabled or sick people who would miraculously be cured of any ailments. Though insiders later revealed that these most of healings were staged, Jones\u2019 mastery of word and presentation left few in attendance with any doubts about his abilities.<\/p>\n He also indoctrinated many young, idealistic liberal white people in progressive 1970s California with the themes of socialism, equality and political activism. And he justified his brand of socialism with the Bible for those recruited from more conservative religious factions, who might have found such left-wing ideas tough to swallow.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only ethic by which we can lift mankind today is some form of socialism,\u201d he said in another 1972 sermon<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s a smattering of it in the New Testament. It\u2019s very evidently clear on the day of Pentecost that they that believed were together and had all things common.\u201d<\/p>\n Socialism, he said, is \u201colder than the Bible by far.\u201d<\/p>\n But by the time Jones and many of his followers completed a lengthy relocation from California to Jonestown in Guyana in 1977, he had begun to change as a speaker. His trademark passionate delivery gave way to blind fury and incredible rage.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI been tired for 25 years,\u201d the 47-year-old Jones told his followers<\/a> in 1978, his voice rising steadily in pitched anger. \u201cI\u2019m tired of looking at people\u2019s faces that don\u2019t give a fuck for 25 years, I watch and they don\u2019t give a goddamn. You can lay it out in front of them, and they will not listen. They will not read. They will not do anything, and that\u2019s why I have to suffer every day and all night and all through the hours, because I will have nobody but a few that will carry the burden with me. Because you hide yourself away in ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n His rages created a fear that cemented the hold he had on his followers.<\/p>\n He also used a \u201cdivide and conquer\u201d method among his followers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Jones did was try to break all ties that were not to him,\u201d said former member Vernon Gosney. \u201cTransfer all that loyalty, all that bonding to him. And so families were broken apart. Relationships were divided.\u201d<\/p>\n Such divisions caused family members to spy and report on one another, or friends to turn in friends for various transgressions.<\/p>\n Jones furthered the poisonous atmosphere among his followers by encouraging physical fighting to either solve problems or administer punishment. Audiotapes of such sessions reveal Jones laughing, apparently entertained.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019 mastery of the spoken word also enabled his many sexual exploits with both female and male followers. Jones deftly justified his actions to his followers by saying that what he did to them was actually for their own benefit, or the benefit of making the church a stronger, tighter-knit organization.<\/p>\n He preached that many of his male followers were in denial about their homosexuality, conditioning those followers to accept him if he approached with a sexual advance.<\/p>\n And he defused any accusations of sexual perversion on his part by claiming that he gained no personal pleasure from his acts, which he called a \u201cgreat sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if the leader is attracted to you, then somehow that cultivates,\u201d Jones said during a Jonestown community meeting<\/a> in 1978. \u201cWell, you ought to know I\u2019m attracted to you, I\u2019m ready to die for every one of you, so that means I\u2019m attracted to you. You follow what I\u2019m saying? I\u2019m attracted to all of you. How much more attraction can you have than to be ready to have your eyes plucked out?\u201d<\/p>\n By the end of Jonestown, Jones was more rock star than preacher. His sermons and remarks at meetings were littered with obscenities. He regularly had sex with his followers and he abused drugs.<\/p>\n By Jonestown\u2019s final month of existence, Jones was so intoxicated at times that he had great difficulty even reading the news aloud to his followers. His tone as a speaker took darker turns. He constantly fed his followers in Guyana a steady diet of fatalism.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, life is a fucking disease,\u201d he told his followers<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s worse than cancer. It\u2019s a disease. And there\u2019s only one cure for the sonofabitchin\u2019 disease. That\u2019s death. And socialists can only take one form of death. What is it? Fight a goddamn war, or revolutionary suicide. If you don\u2019t believe life\u2019s a disease, then you\u2019re dumb. Very dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n Spurred on by their leader\u2019s talk, Peoples Temple members were ready to follow Jones even into death. At his request, they even wrote personal notes to him expressing their willingness to die for their cause.<\/p>\n This was the ultimate test of loyalty, and the absolute testimony to the power of his words. As history shows, Jim Jones the orator was chillingly effective.<\/p>\n (David Matthews is a producer at CNN, which aired the documentary <\/em>Escape From Jonestown in November 2008. Based in part on tapes<\/a> from the Jonestown Institute, this article was adapted from an article<\/a> on the CNN website.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The key to understanding the tragedy that was Jonestown lies in the oratory skills of the Peoples Temple founder, Jim Jones. With the cadence and fervor of a Baptist preacher, the charm and folksiness of a country storyteller, and the zeal and fury of a maniacal dictator, Jones exhorted his followers to a fever pitch, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":30918,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30849","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30849"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55161,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30849\/revisions\/55161"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}