Last Update on the Left - Episode 17 - The Road to Jonestown: An Interview with Jeff Guinn
Last Podcast On The Left
In this episode of Last Update on the Left, hosts Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, and Ed Larson welcome back author Jeff Guinn to discuss his book 'The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.' The
Key takeaways
- Jim Jones attracted followers by embodying multiple identities—religious leader, social justice advocate, and revolutionary—making him 'all things to all people.'
Main topics
- Jim Jones's manipulation tactics
- Psychological dynamics of cult leadership
Notable quotes
"He could convince anybody. Let's say you three, each one of you, Jones might have convinced you need to be part of People's Temple for an entirely different reason."
Conclusion
Jeff Guinn's deep dive into Jim Jones's rhetoric and control mechanisms reveals a uniquely
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:02) That's when the cannibalism started. Last Speaker 3 (0:06) update on the left. Speaker 4 (0:14) Hello everyone and welcome to Last Update on the Left. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with... Henry Zebrowski. And... Ed Larson. And today... Speaker 3 (0:23) Ready Speaker 2 (0:23) to join. Speaker 3 (0:27) Don't... Hey, not automatically hear it out first. Speaker 4 (0:31) Yeah, hear the pitch. And our guest today is a returning guest. So far, the... Biggest response we've got from a guest on last update on the left. Welcome back, Jeff Gwynn. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. Speaker 1 (0:47) It's good to be back on the show. Speaker 4 (0:49) So last time we talked to you about Waco and your new book about Waco, but. Many years ago, over almost 300 episodes ago, we did a five-part series on Jonestown. And your book, Road to Jonestown, I think it had been released a year before, was an invaluable resource to us. And it's still, honestly, one of my favorite nonfiction books. It's one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read. So thank you very much for that book. Thank you. You Speaker 3 (1:20) talking about, I always remember you describing the idea of him believing that laser beams would like come out of his eyes, like Jesus energy was coming out of his face. And it was like, he does have a lot of face. Yeah. And that's why he had to wear sunglasses. Speaker 4 (1:35) Yeah. Speaker 1 (1:35) Well, that was the excuse anyway. Speaker 4 (1:39) But of course it was to hide the red eyes from the uppers downers he was constantly taking. But let's start with the macro. Big questions. So in looking at like mass suicides, it seems like there are kind of like three different reasons why mass suicides happen. And I know the Jonestown was much more of a mass murder than a mass suicide. But, you know, it seems to be some of them are to avoid wrath. It's to avoid approaching armies, to avoid, you know, a fate worse than death. Some of them are suicides of despair, like how... so many people in Nazi Germany committed suicide after, you know, the Nazis lost. And then, of course, there's religiously motivated suicide when it comes to, like, say, like Heaven's Gate. Like, which of these three do you think loomed largest over Jonestown and the eventual, you know, end? Speaker 1 (2:35) We had a lot of trouble trying to figure that out. And I finally decided, and it took months, really, that... To try to say there was one overriding reason just didn't work in this case. And that's what makes this whole thing so unique. There really hasn't been anything like it that we can say what happened in Jonestown is especially like what happened at such and such a place. The reason that isn't the case is that by the time over 900 people are in Jonestown in November 1978, Speaker 1 (3:15) They're no longer there for any one specific reason. They don't all have one reason in common. Jim Jones, a lot through basic instinct more than anything else, understood that if he was going to have a big following, he was never going to sell everybody on any one aspect of what he was trying to do. So you've got people in Jonestown, a number of them, who are there because they believe Jim Jones is more than human, that there's some godlike aspect to him, and that they are joining him in some great sort of moment, that there will be a wonderful life beyond. And in this case, they're doing exactly what a greater than human leader wants them to do. So there are some people like that. There are people who have been convinced by Jim Jones, as they're out here in the jungle for a long time, no other communication, that the American government is coming to kill them all. We're dangerous to the government. They're coming to get us. If we let them come and we fight them and they're going to kill us and they'll take our children off and they'll do terrible things to the children. So we're avoiding that. And then you had at least a couple hundred people who had been living out in the damn jungle for so long. And I have been there, guys. I used a machete and I cut my way into the place this was. And it was in the monsoon season, triple-decker canopy, so the sun hardly gets through in most places. Snakes everywhere, biting insects. They've cleared a few hundred acres of land and they work it like slaves every day. And the hours are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and they're physically exhausted and there's not enough food and they're half starved and they just decide, screw it. He says, we've all got to die. Let's just get this crap over with. So you're right. There are three different reasons for this kind of mass death. But to say only one was predominant misses the whole point. Jones was selling all kinds of things to different people, and that was part of his allure. He could convince anybody. Let's say you three, each one of you, Jones might have convinced you need to be part of people's temple for an entirely different reason. You had something to ask? I'm sorry. That was actually Speaker 3 (5:59) a big question in my mind. What was that? X factor? Is it just because he gave a good enough answer to each unique person's predicament and he was multifaceted, like he was a mirror? I know that Charles Manson said that, right? Famously, that you look down on me, I'm the devil, you look at me, I'm God. But see, here's the difference. Charlie Speaker 1 (6:22) Manson, at his best, could only convince a couple dozen drug-addled kids they needed to do what he said. Jim Jones created People's Temple out of a whole conglomerate of humanity. Yes. From elderly black ghetto dwellers to white Indiana farmers. to great intellectuals out in California who were lawyers, who were accountants, who were really brilliant people, who were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And there are probably right now, if you guys are feeling brave. three or 400 hours of Jim Jones's recorded sermons at People's Temple. Speaker 4 (7:11) I've listened to many of them. Yeah, they're fascinating. Speaker 2 (7:14) And you Speaker 1 (7:14) know, and I have listened, as part of my book, I felt obligated. I listened to everyone that's out there. Thousands of hours of sitting up here in the same room I'm talking from now, listening to Jim Jones. And at first, you just think, my God. It's a mess. It's rambling. It makes no sense. But then you start to pick some things out. And this man had an inherent oratorical brilliance. Speaker 2 (7:45) And Speaker 1 (7:46) what he would do in the course of these five-hour marathons is he would touch on all different kinds of approaches. He'd spend 20 minutes talking to the true Bible believers. quoting scripture being dramatic as hell. Then he'd talk to the atheists, the ones who didn't believe in God at all. And he'd make fun of a sky God who says he's going to do all these wonderful things and never does. And he'd throw the Bible on the floor and stamp on it. And then he'd talk for 20 minutes about all the social injustice in America. And you guys are much younger than me. But I promise you, in the 1960s, to mid-70s, when all the racial discrimination... Speaker 1 (8:40) The hatred, the holding down of women's rights, the whole economic disparity, it's coming up, it's being discussed in public for the first time, and Jim Jones touches on that. And he has people following him who don't care about religion at all. They're interested in socialism. Everybody getting a fair chance. So that's why everybody who followed Jim Jones. Every sermon he preached. They would hear something that seemed to speak directly to them. And it worked. I mean, you say you've heard a lot of these tapes, right? Yeah. Didn't you, after a while, start picking up that, wait a minute, we're getting something for everybody? Well, I mean, I think he Speaker 4 (9:30) himself even said, I can be all things to all people. I can be whoever you want me to be. He came out and said it. He said the quiet part out loud to people. There was Speaker 2 (9:39) no quiet part. Yeah, he was never quiet. So in listening to this for all those hours, what did he say that you were like, oh, that makes sense. I'm with that. What did he get you on? Speaker 1 (9:53) Okay, here's the scary thing. I have written about a lot of controversial subjects. My books usually look at iconic events where things happen that have affected us ever since, right? And I never, ever, in spending three years researching Charlie Manson, thought, gee, I wish I'd been out at Spahn Ranch. Man, Speaker 3 (10:20) dune buggies are awesome! Speaker 1 (10:22) I never... in three years of studying Waco and the Branch Davidians, thought for a moment there was anything to David Koresh that would interest me, that would make me willing to do anything. But Jim Jones was out in Greyhound buses, traveling around the country with his followers, going to different college towns, talking to different college audiences, and challenging the college kids. What? How many of you think racial discrimination is wrong? How many of you think misogyny is wrong, that women aren't treated fairly in America? How many of you think there's too many poor people in America where they don't have to be? Well, why do you think you're going to change it sitting around on a college campus, listening to professors give you lectures? You come with us right now, and tomorrow we will have you out in that part of America where help is so desperately needed and you can actually do something. And I'm in college, University of Texas in Austin. These years, he's going out there. And he gets into Texas. He gets to Houston a few times. Never seems to get to Austin. And I'm glad he didn't. Because I was very socially conscious in college. I wanted to do something. I wanted to help make a difference. And I can just see myself, 20 years old, hearing about this Jones guy, going to see him. Hearing him say that and jumping on the Greyhound bus. I wouldn't do it now. I wouldn't do it when I was old enough maybe to have a better sense of balance. But I could see myself at that point in my life going, yeah, I want to do this. I'll give up everything and I'll follow you. Speaker 4 (12:17) Well, that was one of our biggest questions when we were doing the Jonestown series is that, you know, Jim Jones accomplished some. Pretty impressive things. He desegregated Indianapolis. And that was one of our biggest questions is that, like, did Jim Jones believe in these things or did he just see this as a path? Did he just see it as these people? No one is paying attention to these people here. And I can manipulate these people and hold power over them. Speaker 1 (12:44) Again, the things you're saying are the things I thought I was probably going to find. Speaker 2 (12:49) Right. When I started looking. Speaker 1 (12:51) And when I say I spent three years, I really did. I went everywhere Jim Jones had been, where he grew up, where he had his first church, storefront church in Indianapolis, followed him all over the damn world, right to Guyana. Speaker 1 (13:08) I heard something when I was in Indiana that just shocked me. I'm in Lynn, the little farm town where he grows up, right? He's the weird kid. I've Speaker 4 (13:18) been there. Speaker 1 (13:19) Yeah, well, see, he had funerals for animals. I mean, he was the weird guy in a community where everybody else wants to conform. And he was like a preacher Speaker 3 (13:29) fanboy, right? Like he would go and kind of watch, yeah, Speaker 1 (13:32) church. Five churches in this little town. Jim, when he's a kid, goes to all five because he's picking up on what the different preachers are doing. But here's the thing. Every Saturday, Lynn, Indiana, he's a poor kid, right? And he's got maybe one nice shirt and pair of pants. Every Saturday, he gets on the bus and he goes about 30 miles to the town of Richmond, which is the big town in the area. And Richmond is so socially and racially segregated, there's just no believing it almost. I mean, the white people tolerate black people in town because you need gardeners, you need maids. You know, they know we're not equals. And a lot of black hobos would be in Richmond at any given time because they're coming in on the train, they're riding the rails, and they hop off in Richmond because the big towns are where you might be able to beg a few coins and get something to eat. Jim Jones, 15, 16, 17, every Saturday, takes that bus into Richmond. And he goes to this place by the tracks where white people do not go. And he preaches. He stands up and he talks about we are all equal. Your life isn't fair. But we're going to change that. And the only thing he ever got from that was beaten up a few times. What could he possibly be getting out of that? When he's in Indianapolis, almost single-handed, he desegregates a major city. Nobody else is trying it. Jim Jones does it. So that was the good part. I got in trouble with the Trump administration. Speaker 1 (15:30) Somebody from a magazine, I believe it was Rolling Stone, called me when the book came out and said, hey, it sounds to us like you're saying Donald Trump is a lot like Jim Jones. And I said, that absolutely is not true, because a few times in his life, Jim Jones did things that were good for people. Speaker 1 (15:53) Can I ask, Speaker 3 (15:55) like, maybe this is not about just helping me, but the idea of where does the line, you think, obviously we're all armchair psychiatrists, of the line between... We Speaker 1 (16:08) all are. Speaker 3 (16:08) Yes. Of pathological confidence into, like, some form of... Like, I would call what he has, like, some form of souped-up antisocial personality disorder, but he, it's like the opposite of it. Like, he has a, he's like an ultimate people reader that had bad intentions. So, like, where does that come, do you think that it's, it's like a mental disorder? Like, something like that? Speaker 1 (16:33) I think there are always going to be people who have tendencies towards megalomania. I am great. I am special. I am going to do amazing things. And we've all met people like that. And most of them don't do jack. But then you get someone like him. He's got all these crazy dreams that a poor farm kid in rural Indiana. I mean, it's never going to happen. And then. In this first ministry of his in Indianapolis, he actually makes some things happen. And he gets followers, people who have seen him do this, who absolutely believe everything he does is perfect. Oh, tell us more. You can do nothing wrong. And you get isolated from the kinds of things the rest of us have to deal with every day that remind us we may think we're great. The rest of the world is not agreeing with that. So that starts to build. He goes out to California because he wants to be even more important. And damned if he doesn't pull it off again. But now he's using drugs. And he's using drugs all the time. And again, as a child