Jonestown

I was about a month away from being born when the Jonestown suicides took place. It's very hard to find good news footage online - although there have been several documentaries made - showing the 'shantytown' and its people. It never ceases to amaze me how, over and over throughout history, those perceived as leaders can use lies, fear, and hypocrisy (and more often than none, force, when things go awry for them) as their means of influence to gain and maintain power. It's hypnotic in nature, a psychological drug, if you will. And it subterfuge lies in the pretense that there is a great cause of good to be achieved. There are variations on this theme throughout history - from slavery to the Holocaust to the modern day cults we've seen on the news recently. This theme was even woven into the threads of the Republican party's campaign (that's a whole 'nother blog, though).

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the mass suicides of Jonestown, where 900 people committed suicide, on the bequest of Jim Jones. No one really knows what he told all of those people to convince them to drink cyanide laced water, but for months its inhabitants had been held hostage, forced to attend 'classes', and basically brainwashed. Their leader preached a good agenda about social change, but really was not much more than a paranoid (and dare I say fascist) power-monger.