Fleapit revisited:Jonestown:Terror in the Jungle.

"Just get on my bus and I'll take you to the promised land" - Jim Jones

"I shall be God and beside me there shall be no other" - Jim Jones

"Don't mess with me. I'll kill you" - Jim Jones

"I am creator of the Peoples Temple and I will have my way or I will tear hell out of everything you've built" - Jim Jones

"If we can't live in peace then let's die in peace" - Jim Jones

What I knew about the Reverend Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ is that they were a cult that set up a community in Guyana in the seventies and that, for some reason, Jim Jones exhorted them all to commit suicide by drinking Kool-Aid (actually an alternative brand, Flavor Aid) laced with potassium cyanide, resulting in nearly one thousand deaths and giving the world the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" meaning swallowing something, a lie, a world view, or a political position, that, obvious to all around them, is both detrimental and deadly.

BBC4's Jonestown:Terror in the Jungle, shown as part of their excellent Storyville strand (one that's already drilled down into David Koresh and Waco), looked to tell the full story of the events that happened both on and leading up to the "revolutionary suicide" of 18th November 1978 in the Guyanese jungle. It went back decades to Jones' childhood and tried to understand how he became the man he was and how people so willingly followed him to their own deaths. It also wrongfooted me by asking, and tacitly answering, if many of those committing revolutionary suicide weren't, in reality, simply murdered by Jones.

Via remarkable footage taken in the Jonestown complex and interviews with ex-cult members (lost souls whose interracial marriages had been rejected by both families, a woman whose daughter was an addict and was attracted to the rehab programme run by Jones and his church, and a Vietnam vet who was most likely suffering PTSD and found, in the church, a home - a family even) and two of Jones' adopted children, Terror in the Jungle sought to explain how 910 people ended up dead in just one day.

San Francisco 1972 and Jones' temple is full of people of all races singing and dancing. It's a place of acceptance and inclusiveness and Jones, with his white suit, dark glasses, and dark hair is a powerful, articulate, and captivating rock star of a speaker (some even compare his performances behind the pulpit with those of Martin Luther King Jr). It's easy to see how people are attracted but when you throw in the fact that he performs 'healings' as well that becomes too much for many to resist.

Cripples walk again, blind people see for the first time, people with broken legs dance with wild abandon, and one woman even claims Jones has cured her cancer. Jones was tricking his throng into believing he had the power to heal, of course, but he was performing equally mundane acts of sleight that would, as everything he did would, go to furthering his own ends. He created an image of a family man and he and his wife, Marceline, adopted children of many different races to create a "rainbow family".

Jones, it seems, at this point, much like the far more dangerous Donald Trump, simply wanted the attention he was deprived of as a child. One of his children tells of the young Jim Jones being starved of paternal affection growing up in rural Indiana and over compensating ever since.

In rural America, between the wars, the main thing was to fit in. To not upset the applecart. Young Jim Jones, blatantly, did not fit in. His parents didn't nurture him so he looked for attention elsewhere. He held elaborate funerals for roadkill and, during World War II, when other boys at his school fantasised about being allied soldiers, Jones became obsessed with Adolf Hitler's magnetism and his powers of persuasion.

He joins five separate churches and becomes inspired by, and learns tricks from, the preachers there. Soon he's speaking in tongues and slamming bibles down on the lectern like the best of them and at the age of twenty-five he starts his own church in Indianapolis. He calls it the Peoples Temple and soon it's attracting followers from that city's African-American community who have become tired of, and marginalised by, America's Jim Crow laws.

As the church membership expands it grows too big for Indianapolis and Jones decamps to California. Fearful his congregation may not follow him he tells them the apocalypse is nigh and if they stay in Indiana they will die. In 1965, one hundred and forty of them move to the Redwood Valley in northern California. Jones' anti-racist, socialist message attracts many white liberals and, soon, the membership of the Peoples Temple triples.

Communal living was encouraged. Fifteen to twenty people per house may not have been particularly comfortable and certainly made intimacy between members difficult but that was all part of Jones' plan. He didn't want church members expending energy on sex as it should all be used to further the cause of the Peoples Temple. To increase the power of Jim Jones.

Jones propagated the idea that capitalism, even to the extent of buying shares, was a form of slavery but that on its own wasn't enough to shut the rest of the world out so it was espoused that family relationships were also a form of sickness and they were broken up. In lieu of the actual family members they'd cut out of their lives, his followers were encouraged to see Jim and Marceline as their parents.

Although Jones himself certainly had a fairly fluid approach to familial relations when he fathered a child with one of his 'daughters', Carolyn Louise Moore. Sex, it seems, was verboten for mere followers but the rules did not apply to the leader himself. Do as I say not as I do.

Jones had created his own Hotel California ("you can check out any time you like but you can never leave") but Marceline was not happy with him 'carrying on' with Carolyn and asked for a divorce and for custody of their children. As with so many men faced with this Jones turned nasty. He told Marceline she would die before she took his kids away from him.

He wasn't lying. Marceline never did leave and was one of the 910 people found dead in Jonestown in 1978. Back in the Redwood Valley, having used threats of murder to keep Marceline part of the movement, Jones was in need of funds to finance the ever growing Peoples Temple. So he took a fleet of buses around America to attract new recruits. A couple of empty buses follow the convoy and bring some of them back to California. Also on tour, Jones makes more money selling souvenir Polaroids that he has personally blessed.

Money pours in, Jones' narcissism spirals, and he takes further mistresses (occasionally branching out into having sex with some of his male followers too). It seems likely that Jones was bisexual and even though he seems to have had a preference for women another factor in his sleeping with more female than male followers is that he believed he could "fuck socialism into women".

Jones said he wore dark glasses because the spirit of the lord that shone from his eyes was so powerful that it may burn onlookers on the spot but in reality his eyes were red and swollen from taking drugs. He used the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X to promote a not unreasonable paranoia among his African-American followers about law enforcement and government but he wasn't doing it for them. He was, as with everything else, doing it for himself.

Everything was a big act and everything, as with religious leaders throughout history and populist politicians now, relied on those followers having faith in Jones. Should faith in Jones disappear the entire house of cards would collapse. Sadly, for the hundreds of dead and the tens of thousands bereaved, that did not happen soon enough.

In 1972, to  gain more political strength and to insinuate himself into more power, Jones moved the Peoples Temple to San Francisco. Then a hotbed for unconventional lifestyles and a Petri dish that was throwing up all manner of unorthodox solutions for changing, and improving, society. In SF, Jones became both a celebrity of sorts and an even heavier drug user. Amphetamines, tranquilizers, and booze being his poisons of choice. Before he got into cyanide that is.

Like so many paranoid leaders, he started to worry he was losing control over the Peoples Temple so a 'planning commission' was formed to try and discover which members were considering leaving and which ones were beginning to have doubts about the direction of Jones and his movement. It was, to all intents and purposes, a spy network and infractions, even minor ones such as nodding off during a meeting and having your ears pierced, were met with severe punishment. By both Jones himself and the mob he whipped up and encouraged to pile on.

To Jones, loyalty (to him) was the greatest value and, thus, defection was the greatest sin. Blackmail was used, people were forced to sign blank pieces of paper to which Jones could add a confession of his choice at a later date, and (if you've seen Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix in Philip Thomas Anderson's 2012 The Master you'll recognise this) people were 'broken'. Both physically and, more importantly, psychologically and mentally.

Jones became so obsessed with loyalty that he devised a test. At a vineyard ranch he offered his followers wine in Styrofoam cups. Five minutes after they've drunk the wine Jones tells them they have all been poisoned and they have just one hour to live - and that none of them are permitted to leave. As they sit there waiting to die Jones reveals, forty-five minutes later, that they had not been poisoned at all. It had all been a test of their loyalty.

What he didn't reveal, however, that it was also a test to see how they'd react to such an extreme set of circumstances. Not a single one of them took their anger out on Jones himself. An idea must have set in his mind that would be lethally allowed to flourish fully in Guyana in 1978.

A country Jones and his followers moved to in 1974 when it becomes apparent that his/their activities are beginning to attract too much attention from the wrong people in the US. The press were chatting to defectors and starting to sniff around Jones so Jones struck a deal with the Guyanese government to buy a plot of unused land in the jungle and soon his followers start building Jonestown. An agricultural community where they grew potatoes, carrots, eddoes, and papaya and, more importantly, a place so remote they won't have to answer any awkward questions from journalists or law enforcement agents.

It's also, handily, a place that is so remote that those who go there will have virtually no chance of escaping. It's a nineteen hour boat trip to reach Jonestown from Guyana's capital Georgetown and it's not a pleasant one. As Jones followers arrived in Jonestown using scattered flights from America so as not to arouse suspicion they soon set about building roads, pharmacies, and even a school from scratch in the jungle.

It does, in some ways, look genuinely idyllic but it was neither idyllic nor was it sustainable. Jones at least understood the latter point. There was not enough food being grown in Jonestown to feed the elderly residents and although Jones himself had amassed enough money to solve that problem he chose to keep that for himself. Jones' often drug-addled voice was piped through the speakers of Jonestown 24/7 castigating his followers for not working hard enough.

It was obvious to his followers that he was hammered and hypocritically not contributing to the work himself. Some even began to see through him but trapped in the jungle they had little option but to stay as Jones' reign become increasingly cruel, paranoid, authoritarian and his messiah complex grew to the point that he claimed he had the power to stop the rain from falling from the sky.

We see footage of followers playing basketball and eating plantain chips and radishes but oddly there's none of The Box. A hole in the ground much like a freshly dug grave that those who angered or displeased Jones were put in as a punishment and covered in leeches. I'm A Follower Of A Celebrity Cult Leader, Get Me Out Of Here!

Many remained devoted to Jones despite of this. All had had their passports and money taken from them, a technique ISIS also like to use, so even those beginning to have doubts are stuck in Jonestown. A group of Peoples Temple defectors back in San Francisco, however, form a coalition with some concerned family members and one, Grace Stone, sues Jones in an attempt to get her son back from him.

This precipitated a siege in September 1977 when Jones misinforms his followers that 'they' are coming for their children. The 'they' in question is the Guyanese army and Jones armed himself and his followers with guns, dynamite, and cutlasses or at least boasted of having these tools at his disposal.

The siege lasted for six days. Six days in which the constant threat of instant death was never lifted and it was during this that the idea of revolutionary suicide took the next step further following on from Jones vineyard 'test'. Jones asked four hundred of his followers who would be prepared to take their own lives and die for the cause. When only three of them responded in the positive he knew he had much work to do to persuade the huge majority who quite simply didn't fancy killing themselves.

When the siege ended, Jones persuaded the Guyanese government to drop all charges and Grace Stone's child remained in Jonestown. Leo Ryan, a Democratic Congressman for California, became interested in Jonestown and, being a man who preferred experience to rumour and hearsay, took a trip out to Jonestown to see for himself what was happening.

A couple of concerned relatives travelled with him. Jones' initial message of "Yankees, go home" soon, apparently, softened and Ryan was permitted a  visit to the complex. Jones warned his followers that Ryan may offer some of them safe passage back to America and that they must refuse his offer, refuse their own relatives exhortations to leave Jonestown, and, under no circumstances, leave the jungle.

The consequence of, the punishment for, conspiring to leave Jonestown is death. No court. No trial. Instant death. Some disillusioned followers, however, do decide it's worth the risk and believe Ryan's position as a US Representative will ensure their safety even as Jones strongly hints that Ryan will come to regret making his visit.

On arrival at Jonestown, Ryan and the other visits, toured the impressive commune and were introduced to devoted followers who told him they loved it there and that they were free to leave should they wish to but had no desire to do so. Entertainment in the form of musical performances and food were provided for Ryan and the guests and an impressed Ryan, eventually, made a positive speech in front of followers who erupted into ridiculously over enthusiastic applause.

The sort of applause that lasts ten minutes and only tends to happen when people are scared to death of stopping clapping. The sort of applause that arouses intense suspicion. One Peoples Temple member, Vernon Gosney - interviewed in this film, attempts to pass a piece of paper to Ryan saying he wants out. Ryan eventually gets to speak to Gosney, and others, and tells them they will leave with him the next day.

No transport is available for them to leave immediately but Gosney knows, even if Ryan doesn't, that time is of the essence. It could be a matter of life and death and so it proves. As Jones' angers at these acts of betrayal the situation in Jonestown becomes chaotic and one group of followers escape and try to make it thirty miles through the jungle to a village called Matthews Ridge.

The mood in Jonestown becomes ever more sour, ever more chaotic, and ever more paranoid as even some of those who have been by Jones' side since Indiana decide they've had enough and they're leaving. An airlift removes one group of defectors while Ryan decides he'll hold on to ensure the second airlift goes smoothly. The second airlift does not go smoothly.

The weather turns and the truck those that are leaving are using to travel to a nearby airstrip gets stuck in the mud. A follower of Jones fails in an attempt to cut Ryan's throat (this is the point that Peoples Temple member Tim Carter, speaking in the film, sees the scales fall from his eyes:- "I've been playing peace and love and he's a fucking murderer") and when the truck finally manages to get moving it is boarded by Peoples Temple member Larry Layton.

Layton is a hardcore, psychotic, Jim Jones loyalist and, other defectors believe correctly, is posing as a defector for terrifyingly obvious reasons. A tractor full of armed Jones loyalists pursues the truck and while Ryan gives an interview on the tarmac of the run down runway the tractor arrives. Guns are fired. Gosney is shot but survives and, operating in survival mode, is able to overpower Layton.

Some defectors play dead to save their lives. Others aren't so fortunate. One woman's body is cut in half - by people she was living in a commune with just hours ago. Congressman Ryan doesn't play dead either. He doesn't have to play. He's very much properly dead. Layton and his accomplices riddle his corpse, both body and face, with bullets to make doubly sure of that. Layton went to prison, in America, in 1987 and was released in 2002.

With a US congressman dead, Jones knows he's in serious trouble now. But Ryan will be far from the last to die that day. In Georgetown, two of Jones' adopted sons, who are there for a basketball tournament, have been told to kill themselves but they're not prepared to die for the (lost) cause). In Jonestown they're mixing up the Flavor-Aid with the cyanide. Jones knows he's going down and like so many morally bankrupt cult leaders before, and no doubt after, him he's not going to go down alone.

Sharon Amos, a hardcore Jones devotee - also in Georgetown that day, cut her children's throats on Jones' orders and, in Jonestown, Jones issues the order that everyone must commit revolutionary suicide - "if we can't live in peace then let's die in peace".

He tries to sell to his followers, and some buy it and some don't, that it's somehow more honourable to take control of your own destiny by killing yourself than it is to wait to be killed by others. First to go are the children. It seems unlikely kids will follow instructions to kill themselves and, as a 'happy' side effect to killing the kids first, it's believed their parents will be so traumatised they'll soon willingly take their own lives.

Over three hundred children have cyanide laced Flavor-Aid squirted down their throats from syringes - and, of course, die. When it comes to the adults, some refuse to take their own lives. Those who do this are forcibly held down and injected by others. In their necks, in their arms, in their skulls. Whatever. As long as they die.

Death by cyanide poisoning is normally a very painful, very slow suffocation. Seeing the pain his followers are in Jones dies of a gunshot wound to his head. A coward, ultimately, to the very last.

When word of Ryan's murder reaches Georgetown the Guyanese army is sent to investigate. Up to this point they, and the rest of the world, have been completely unaware of the mass suicide/murder. When they report back, shocked, from the scene of the crime they're asked what they've found to which they can only reply "heaps".

"Heaps of what?" they're asked. As we all now know it was heaps of dead bodies, a scene not far removed from Auschwitz. Soldiers are dispatched to count the dead and report that, along with crossbows used by guards to prevent people escaping, they've found about four hundred dead bodies.

It's initially believed that about five hundred people have successfully escaped but soon their dead bodies, too, are found scattered around the commune and the death toll is revised, eventually, to NINE HUNDRED AND TEN. Entire families murdered in their own homes.

Although Layton did go to prison for Ryan's murder, Jones' death - and that of other murderers, meant nobody was ever charged with or for the Jonestown deaths. But, to this day, many survivors carry fear, guilt, trauma, and depression with them. Many interviewed in this film seem to have struggled but they have, especially Jones' adopted sons, come to the realisation that life is better, easier, when love is chosen over hate.

Other survivors, now forty-two years on, struggle with the still open scars and the dark shadows Jim Jones and their experiences with him brought to bear on their lives. They lnow they were taken in, hoodwinked, made fools of, made monsters of, and, ultimately, made victims of by Jim Jones and for that they can never forgive themselves. Not least when, as in many cases, it led directly to the death of the people they loved most.

Terror in the Jungle doesn't let it end there though. It makes a very clear, very topical, and very terrifying point. The events that happened in Jonestown aren't some kind of freakish one-off. They've happened before, they've happened since, and they'll happen again. Always in different ways, history's fiendish like that so we think we can see it coming, but almost always for the same reasons.

People who allow themselves to be inducted into a cult of personality will soon be encouraged to make enemies of anybody else who does not subscribe to their increasingly debased world view and once those enemies have been made it becomes exponentially more difficult to ever turn back, to ever have a dialogue.

In this time of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson, we are living in a very very dark age of the personality cult. The three countries presided over by those men have the three highest death tolls in the world relating to Covid-19 (as I write there are 138,358 registed deaths in the US, 75,366 in Brazil, and 45,053 in the UK) and yet many maintain that Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson have not been in any way irresponsible or negligent or untruthful but that they are, in fact, great men doing the greatest job of any world leaders.

If that isn't a death cult way way larger than anything that happened in Guyana I really don't know what is. Some who were at Jonestown still can't face telling their stories about Jim Jones and over nine hundred are unable to do because they're dead. In the US, Brazil, and the UK over a quarter of a million people would, if they'd not had to die to prop up the death cults of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson, probably be able to tell you how that feels. Cyanide laced Flavor-Aid and Covid-19 kill without thinking about doing so. Jim Jones, Donald Trump, and Boris Johnson kill without caring about doing so.