Reaction to the Jonestown Massacre
Last night I watched a Documentary/Reenactment of the Jonestown Massacre. The two-hour program presented on History Channel raised alot of questions that I thought were really important to answer. Instead of writing a summary that will leave important information I’ll just let read about Jonestown on your own. So anyway here are some of my questions/ideas.
Jim Jones started out as a normal preacher to the congregation of People’s Temple. Jim Jones offered an immunity to the racism and cruelty of the U.S.A. So Jones took the Peoples Temple congregation to a remote part of Guyana. They established a camp where they were safe from everyone else. No-one came in and no-one got out. Every now and then Jones would arouse the siren in the middle of the night and announce over the intercom “White Night”. Everyone was ordered to come to the pavilion area and practice fake-suicides.
On November 14, 1978 the U.S. sent congressman Leo Ryan a democrat from San Francisco with a reporter and news crew from NBC to get the full story of Jonestown. Jim Jones reluctantly allowed the reporters to come in. They got what they needed and took whoever wanted to leave to the air strip. Jones didn’t want the story to reach the press so he sent nine gunmen armed with shotguns to kill everyone. They did their job fully. A few people escaped before they were shot. Those who were shot were again shot in the head to insure they were dead.
As the stroy continues Jones felt it was time for everyone to die. He ordered some followers to place cyanide and other drugs in kool-aid. The first people to die were the children. If the children didn’t voluntarilly drink the kool-aid they would inject the kool-aid by means of a needle. Then they killed all of the adults. Jim Jones was killed by a single gun shot wound to the head.
Anyway all of this raises so very serious questions. How can someone just kill all of his followers? Why did he kill the children first, all 300 of them (1/3 of everyone there)? Even though the reporters still had the story why have everyone commit suicide? It seems to be very twisted to have everyone die for no reason. Almost like suicide.
In my next post i will answer these questions.
For now see if you can.
February 20th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Wow that post was really creepy. I can’t believe a guy would acutally commit mass murder through kool aid. i think he was secluded from other people for so long that it screwed up his judgment. that’s just sad.