RedHanded by Suruthi Bala & Hannah Maguire

Author:Suruthi Bala & Hannah Maguire [Bala, Suruthi & Maguire, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Are We a Cult Yet?

As you can see, Jim Jones’s vision of an egalitarian utopia didn’t sound all that bad at first. And while, yes, he was definitely lying to his followers about being able to heal the sick, some might argue this was just a means to an end—and after all, healings and even exorcisms are still practiced widely by many mainstream religions all over the world to this day.

So when did the real exploitation start? Well, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple started to ask for 20 percent of their followers’ incomes. But again, one could argue that’s not unbelievably unusual even for an ordinary, societally accepted religion. Also, socialism was Jim Jones’s whole bag; everybody putting money into one big pot that could be used to help others was the entire vibe of the Peoples Temple. It also appears that in the beginning, Jim Jones did indeed use this money for good. He built homes for the elderly, fed the poor, and started up a drug rehabilitation program. (Considering Jones’s own hefty drug problem, in hindsight this is pretty ironic. He famously wore sunglasses all the time. This wasn’t to look cool and mysterious, but rather to hide how incredibly fucked up his eyes were.)

So after reading all this, maybe you’re thinking: How could Jones have been a psychopath? He wasn’t stealing all the money and he seemed to be genuinely helping people. Well, just because a narcissistic psychopath like Jones doesn’t feel empathy, this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know what he needs to do to reach his ultimate goal: adoration. Remember, psychopaths and narcissists are happy to do good, as long as their actions are rewarded with admiration, attention, and love. And if it had ended here, if this level of power and respect had been enough for Jones, well then, no harm, no foul. But of course, the story doesn’t end happily ever after in Indiana.

The next stage of our journey into the story of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple is to understand when they made the shift from operating within the parameters of a normal religion and crossed over into cult territory.

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