Famous Cults: Jonestown - The Last Moments

The End of the Temple and Jonestown
           The catalyst for the end of Jonestown was when a few reporters and a congressman arrived at Jonestown, Guyana. During their visit, reporters initially thought all was well. Everyone seemed happy and spoke well of the temple.

However, on the second day a member slipped a note to a reporter, 

saying they wanted to leave and needed help getting out.

           This created mayhem as it induced more and more people to come out and say that they too wanted to leave. Dozens began to pack up and leave on the plane the congressman and reporters had arrived on.

             As they were leaving four members of the temple drove up in a truck and began to shoot at those who were leaving on the plane. The congressman was shot but everyone else managed to escape.


After this, within the next 24 hours Jones ordered all 900+ members left in Jonestown to gather at the pavilion area where he delivered the famous Jonestown Death speech and ultimately passed around the poisoned koolaid which killed everyone, man, women, and child, who could not escape.

Famous Cults: Jonestown - Increasing Members

The Headquarter in San Fran
         At the headquarters in San Francisco services were held, which have been described as being a lot like Baptist Church Services because of their engaging and excitable nature. As the temple grew, more full time workers were needed.
It became popular for people to quite their jobs, sell all their belongings and simply work for the temple.
As described in the PBS Documentary: The Life and Death of Jonestown working at the temple was excruciating.

People worked 20 hour days with few breaks, getting little to no sleep. 

It is possible that this was a tactic by Jones. Workers became sleep deprived and unable to make decision by their own will, following Jones blindly.


Jonestown, Guyana
         While members were fervently working at the San Fran headquarters, Jones was planning to build a new town in the rural jungle of Guyana. He believed in Marxism and said he wished to build an ideal society where all were equal.

          One day Jones found out that ex-members of the group had spoken to a journalist about their negative feelings about Jones and the temple, he found out that the article was to run the next day. Due to his paranoia he ordered all members who were planning to move to Guyana, to leave that evening.

Wu Lyf - We Bros

Again, I find myself posting about a band. But this group, Wu Lyf (World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation) recently came out with a music video for their song We Bros:


The lyrics are about industrialization and how we are becoming so dependent on money and material goods. I know it's difficult to understand what he's saying, so here's a link to the lyrics: http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858872801/

I'm posting the movie because it depicts a group of young adults which are disheveled and seem to be running away from something. Then the very final shot is of this smog-filled sky line full of dreary sky-scrapers and factories.

I think that again this depicts an aspect of modern cults.

Because they are obviously escaping something and are being blocked by this metal fence
(a metaphor you can interpret as you like, but in the context of a cult is guilt and shame by the leader)
I think that you could categorize what they are running from as a group which could hold cultic qualities.

Especially recently with the Occupy movement it has come to many peoples consciousness how controlling our government and economy are. We are deceived and manipulated, like members of a cult.

I am not saying that you can classify our government or the world economy as a cult at all, I just think it's interesting that these forms of controlling groups are coming out in modern media and culture.

Famous Cults: Jonestown - The Beginning

Debatably the most famous cult of all time is The People's Temple. They are the group which set up The People's Agricultural Project in Jonestown, Guyana.

Members of the Peoples Temple standing outside the buses

Over the next few posts I will give a brief history of the temple, it's leader Jim Jones, and how it ended.

The Beginning

        The People's Temple was set up in Indiana by Jim Jones. Through the years it grew in size and moved it's headquarters to San Francisco, California because Jones claimed that they were not understood and accepted in Indiana.

        The group began a long bus tour around the country to help grow the movement. The bus would come to different towns, Jones would speak and inspire people in the town, who then had the choice to join the movement the next day and carry on the bus tour with the People's Temple.

Milieu Mind Control

A few of the people commenting have asked to hear about the types of mind control which lead people to join (and feel the inability to leave) cults.

As I said before, Lifton is a leading academic in this subject and has created a list of eight criteria which define a cult. Among these are types of mind control, which when implemented by a charismatic leader have been proven to keep follower devoted.

One of the major tactics is milieu mind control.
This is when your communication is controlled. By communication I mean how you speak and connect to others (who you are able to talk to, who you are kept from talking to).
Groups will create a certain dogma and slang words which only members of the group will know, isolating anyone else outside.

This type of mind control also falls under the category of how you talk to yourself.
If the leader is able to get followers to speak to themselves in a deprecating manner, making themselves think that they must have to reassurance and guidance of the cult and leader, than people will be less likely to leave.

Lifton + Modern Day Cults

One of the leading academics in the study of cultic mind control is Robert J. Lifton.
He has come up with eight criteria of mind control, which when applied to a group allow the group to be labelled a cult. (http://www.reveal.org/library/psych/lifton.html)

Because defining the word CULT is so difficult, because of the negative connotations which come with it, Lifton's criteria help box and label what can and can't be a cult.

But, I think Lifton's work really pertains to the 60s and 70s, when a lot of "religious groups" (or cults) were popping up and they needed a means in which to define them as destructive religious cults.

Now the word cult is used to describe any group which is heavily dedicated to one person or a small group of people. It's like cults don't pertain to mind control but dedication.

Do you think fans of Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga could be

 legitimately named cult members?

Cults In Modern Media

On the topic of modern cults the famous lo-fi artist, James Blake, came out with a music video a few months ago for his song Lindisfarne.

The movie depicts a commune-living style with lots of etherial, beautiful shots.
Even though calling something a "cult" is a touchy subject, I think it's fair to say this movie depicts a cult.

Throughout the movie it is as if they are accepting her into their group, yet to be accepted she must go through certain tasks such as drink the spit and be coloured on.

Enjoy xo