#JonesTown

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[fuzzyghost]

[heavenlydeceptor]

“But to me death is not … death is not a fearful thing, it’s living that’s treacherous…“ – Jim Jones, the Jonestown Death Tape, November 18, 1978.

[whatbigotspost]

Content warning suicide, murder, child death

God what a great way to start a post right? 😳

Anyway, this is highly random but I just wanted to say it bothers me people call Jonestown a mass suicide only because it was ALSO a mass murder event. Lots of the people who died didn’t want to drink the flavor-aid (that’s right, NOT kool aid) and lots of Jones’ goons injected cyanide into people who weren’t willing to drink it. Plus tons of the people killed were children.

It was truly so horrific of an event either way; suicide or murder…over 900 people. God. But calling it a mass suicide event and thinking of it only as a mass suicide event is simply wrong and a half truth that implies something much less overtly VIOLENT than it was.

I watch (too much) cult documentary crap and so often Jonestown is the extreme example they bring up and it’s soooooo frequently called a mass suicide event and I don’t know it just makes me bristle, on behalf so many people present who did NOT kill themselves being erased.

Source: my book club tortured ourselves with this like 700 page book on the topic years ago, and as you can see I have read it/listened to the audiobook (I had to do both, alternating to make it though) in my kindle app 😅

The book really drove home what the massacre was like and massacre is the right term. And I learned WAY more than I ever wanted on this topic…and am always horrified that Jim Jones, like me, is originally from Indiana/Indianapolis and went to the university I graduated from. Back then, he was a very respected community leader, renowned fairly mainstream pastor of a HUGE church, recognized by the mayor for being a champion for integration and legit having a very diverse congregation. He was known as left leaning and socialist, which was boarder line controversial for that community but he was not at all the kind of leader he grew into later. When you deep dive into what he was preaching back then, it’s actually quite understandable why he amassed a huge following. My elderly aunt remembers his church well by reputation in Indy before he relocated the whole thing to California (and eventually Guyana.)

Anyway Jonestown was a massacre. There was a mass suicide event within that but not all the people killed themselves. MANY were murdered. MANY of them children.

[uncannycorpse]

i’m tcc not in the i like school shooters way but in the i love cults and not commonly worshipped criminals

[afriblaq]

Know That You Are Loved - Cleo Sol

[tomorrowusa]

The Pledge of Obsequiousness to the MAGA flag.

It really is a cult. Seriously.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Jonestown Survivor: Trump Has “All the Trappings” of Being the Next Jim Jones

This is the sort of stuff that was typical of Stalin's USSR.

First the oceans, now the money…Republicans want to see Trump’s face on the $500 bill Arizona Representative Paul Gosar pushed treasury to start printing $500 bill again after 79 years

[floridaboiler]

source - https://twitter.com/lippyent

[duckielover151]

Just have to rant about this somewhere.

CONTENT WARNING: Murder, Suicide, Mass Death of Children, Hostage Situations, Cults... It goes on and on, honestly.

I just watched the 3-episode documentary National Geographic did on the Jonestown Massacre... And I don't ever want to hear anyone refer to it as a "mass suicide" ever again.

If 'Jonestown' doesn't immediately ring any bells... You probably know it better as the incident in the 1970s where almost 1,000 people in a religious cult committed suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.

And frankly, that's just not an accurate representation of how it really went down.

For one... They weren't what I'd consider overly religious. Hearing some of the survivors talk about what drew them to this cult... They were more akin to hippies, if anything. Drawn to this philosophy of equality and peace and love... Jonestown started as this commune where everyone would support each other, where they'd be free from things like racism and classism. It really targeted the most vulnerable people in society and led them to believe they could create their own paradise. The leader did become this unhinged, most likely mentally ill, egomaniac... But hearing the people talk about what drew them in... the 'religion' was never about worshiping him specifically.

These 'followers' were not this uniform group of fanatics that every media portrayal I'd ever heard about this incident made them out to be.

This commune they'd created that was supposed to be their paradise was controlled by armed guards. Who you better believe were present the day everyone was killed, enforcing the "suicides" after Jim Jones felt he'd started to lose control and people had started to escape.

Some of the interviews with survivors after the fact are genuinely infuriating.

One woman who got out the day previously... crossing something like 30 miles of jungle with her 3-year-old... terrified the whole time that, any second now, they were going to be discovered and shot down... was taunted by this one reporter, trying to get her to admit that if she'd been there, she most likely would have gone along with her friends and poisoned her child.

Eyewitness accounts of the soldiers who went in to try and account for the bodies after the fact, tell stories of people they found who were clearly trying to run away and ended up with bullets or syringes in the backs of their necks.

I'm sure there were true believers who did drink the Kool-Aid willingly, believing there was nothing left for them in this world.

But so many of the people who lost their lives were victims in the strongest sense of the word. I'm willing to bet that most of the parents who did poison their children that day, did it because they truly believed it would be a kinder, gentler death than what was inevitably waiting for them if they'd tried to fight back.

It's kind of disgusting, how this incident has gone down in history. Just the undertones in every portrayal that the people involved were crazies who deserved it.

(I mean, my view of the internet has hit rock bottom a lot of the time... But you search the Jonestown tag on this very site... And primarily what comes up are memes or posts making a joke out of it. And that's a little horrifying to me.)

As someone who has definitely referenced "drinking the Kool-Aid" in a derogatory, joking manner in the past... (And fairly recently, I'm ashamed to say.) Please educate yourselves. And don't automatically trust the media's portrayal of tragedies like this.

[ubykh]

[catsrsocwel]

Cult leaders!!

[spookyhotmess]

[heavenlydeceptor]

"My mother, I remember her coming to me and saying, “Stephan, we have to isolate your father and get him off drugs". And I was there with his mother and we both started laughing at the same time. My grandma Jones and me. Then I calmed because I knew mom was serious. And she really was desperate. I said, “mom, you don’t tell God he’s got a drug problem.” – Stephan Jones

[misterlemonztenth]

08-14-24 | dinovelvet. misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive

[spaceintruderdetector]

Was Jonestown A CIA Medical Experiment ? ,Michael Meiers (1988) : Michael Meiers : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[the-weird-kids-next-door]

how does Tumblr know my hyperfixations at all times