In the podcast I found it surprising that Jim Jones who is known for the deaths of over 900 people had good intentions in the beginning and was an activist for racial equality and other popular problems in his time period. One of the first things he did for his cause was starting a church but this is when it started to go downhill. It mentions in the podcast that he would have these talks in the church and he would talk to them as if he is a living god and refer to himself that way. In his church meetings he would manipulate people into joining his church by using different tricks of sleight of hand. This is where we started seeing the traits of a toxic charismatic and narcissist.
In the podcast one of the things that was said that was shocking was that Jim Jones was a big fan of Hitler and this is especially shocking because he was an activist for racial equality earlier in his life and he actually got the big suicide plan from Hitler and thought of it as the perfect escape out of their lives. An interesting piece of the podcast was that he tested his followers in a sort of ritual called the “White Night”where he would say that he made poisioned Kool-Aide and saw if his followers would drink the Kool-Aide. When I learned that some of the followers drank it, I thought about the kind of qualities someone like Jim Jones possesses in order to convince people to commit suicide willingly. It was surprising to see that someone that went to fighting for racial equality would change their views entirely and plan a suicide that killed more than 900 people. It leaves a couple of questions as to if he was a toxic charismatic or a narcissist or was he both.
His initial seemingly good intentions also caught me off guard, as its not something you would really expect from a man who was responsible for the deaths of so many people. The sleight of hand thing I thought was actually very interesting. I don’t typically expect evil cult leaders to be good at those sorts of things, but I can definitely understand how that could have been very effective in building a following and giving him a God-like appearance.
I agree with the fact that anyone who admires Hitler is shocking to say the least. Because Jones began as an activist for racial equality and ended up violently murdering his own followers, I wonder if his initial appeal to people was all part of a plan to get followers by any means possible. A lot of times people use campaigns and the media to make huge claims about what they want to do and what they plan to do if they get followers to vote for them and never end up following through. I don’t want to think that all leaders are manipulative but sugar coating any sort of campaign or resume or speech about why someone should pick you for something could constitute as a smaller example of this.