On November 18, 1978 more than nine hundred people lost their lives to a mass suicide, there has to be a reason for the deaths besides Jim Jones himself and that reason is fear. Jones used this fear to shape the identities of his followers through forcing them to join his community from blackmail, convincing most of his followers that the public media were all liars and dangerous, and most importantly getting the people of Jonestown to kill themselves. Everything started off with Jim Jones gaining followers of course, but how did Jones followers start to grow? Well Jim didn’t always play nice, in fact to get people to physically have no choice than to stay at Jonestown, Jones took control of most of his followers by quote “press them to give …show more content…
The first sign that something horrid was about to happen was when NBC news visited Jonestown on November, 18 1978 and reporter Don Harris got a note saying “help us get out of Jonestown”. This note was shown to Jim, his reaction very defensive and nervous. Jim convinced the media to leave and allowing some Jonestown members to leave too, however he ordered gunmen to kill the party leaving and they did. After this situation everyone was in panic mode fearing they would all get in trouble for what just happened and no one was more scared than than Jones. Jones was so scared that his precious temple would be in trouble so he ordered his workers to make the cyanide laced kool-aid claiming he wanted it to be " quick, simple, and easy". They way he told the people of Jonestown was not exactly new, every night once a week Jim would hold an event that people called " White nights" it was where Jim preached about suicide convincing his followers that they would die with pride and dignity explaining how many people in Jonestown believed that they were doing the right thing by killing themselves. However Jones was the only one who truly knew that those words were false because they were his own, and the reason for convincing others to commit suicide was not out of dignity it was out of him being simply scared. This is because without Jonestown was the only thing Jim had and the only thing that gave Jim power and without it he would have nothing so when Jim's power was on the line he wanted to make sure that if he fell down his followers fell with him. So after the NBC news incident the poisoned drink was handed out along with Jones's speech on how this massacre would be a stand against the evil in the world then just like that Jonestown became