Jim Jones Leads Jonestown Meeting (July 1978) Side A

Jim Jones leads a community meeting in Jonestown in mid-July 1978. While there are a number of tape edits that rob the meeting of its complete context - is Jones quizzing his followers on recent news stories and then elaborating upon their answers? Is he fielding questions from the people in attendance? Did he plan to speak on specific issues beyond his main news, or was it stream of consciousness? - there is no doubt that the Temple leader has called everyone together to discuss the lawsuit which his attorneys in California have filed against former member Tim Stoen.
The lawsuit is liberating in a number of ways. It represents a counter-attack to the actions that Stoen has taken. While it seeks financial damages, its real purpose is to put a number of charges against Stoen on the public record so that the Temple can’t be sued for repeating them. The charges - if substantiated in court - will also hurt Stoen where it counts, according to Jones, in that it could result in his disbarment. “This is better than bullets, baby,” Jones exults at one point. “This is better than bullets.”
And the charges Jones discusses are serious. According to Jones, Stoen advised people how to avoid paying taxes, he took custody of hundreds of guns from Temple members - guns that never showed up in Jonestown - and he used his position in the DA’s office of Mendocino County to threaten lawsuits in order to accomplish his own purposes.
“His fucking name is gonna be ruined, and that’s worse than him dying,” Jones adds at another point. “We don’t kill a little old piece of white ass like his. Let him suffer to death!”
Jones spends time on other topics as well. He has discussed the attractiveness of the people who have given their lives to the cause in other tapes - and he refers to that here as well - but he spend more time on the flip side of the coin, criticizing those people who spend time trying to beautify themselves, and reminding them how the physical assets of which they’re so proud will eventually shrivel and fail, and how ugly they will become.
There are other sexual references in this tape. He reminds his followers about the sexual sacrifices he’s made for the cause. Dying would have been easier, he says. The sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross was less painful than his own, because Jesus’ ordeal ended in the finality of death, whereas his own torment goes on.
Finally, there are several references to death sprinkled throughout the evening, but his references to suicide are negative. He reports early in the tape that many car accidents are actually suicides of people who “were tired of … feeling all the misery of US living,” but if he were to die that way, he’d make sure to find a way to take out a white driver of a big black Cadillac with him. Still, he adds, “suicide … is wrong, because you owe a debt to society, as long as black people are sufferin’, you haven’t got no right to die and get out of your pain, ‘till everybody can be out of their pain.” His final words on the tape are also about suicide - “we don’t believe in suicide, and that’s the damn truth” - but this was more likely a talking point for Jonestown residents to tell outsiders.
Nevertheless, while he never speaks the words “revolutionary suicide,” he uses the same language in an offhand way that he would use on Jonestown’s final day. In a casual and familiar tone, Jones talks about the success of their project and how it might end. “We’ve had a purpose, and as Jack Beam said, if it didn’t last a day, at least we tried to do something, and we showed an example of what life oughta be, and we stood up and spoke up against the goddamn system, and we laid it out that we were socialist,” he says halfway through the tape, and then a moment later adds, “So why not die for somethin’ right, rather than die for no reason at all? That’s one thing for sure. You know if you die here, you’ve died for somethin’ right.”
It is unknown whether Jones was suffering from the impairment of either alcohol of drugs during the evening, although his voice suggests he might have been. His stream of consciousness discourse also seems slightly more exaggerated here than usual. A long discussion about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Black Muslim movement and the Back-to-Africa movement of Marcus Garvey leads Jones to speculate what genuine good King could have done, had he embraced socialism as Jones did, which leads him to discuss how the Temple did it in the states, but how they had to leave before they were taken down by the system, and how well they have done in Jonestown, without the fears they had in their home country.

[@ProjectFlashlight612]

You have to put yourself in their place. Isolated in the middle of nowhere, cut off from any voice or opinion but Jones', half starved, frightened. Then judge.

[@zebulonsatrap8020]

Jim Jones led them to the promised land and they willingly followed, with a few exceptions. The poor children were the true victims.

[@TheJpep2424]

I wouldn't be in their position because I wouldn't follow a psychotic cul leader to the middle of nowhere.

[@jsure8786]

​@@zebulonsatrap8020I agree. They followed because they made Jones their God. Which is ironic considering the folks in the cult didn't believe in God and a lot of them knew he was lying hence they were in on the lie.

[@chicagogyrl4846]

I wouldn’t be there!

[@jdsthird]

He "tested" their loyalty as early as the San Francisco days by serving drinks then announcing afterwards they'd just just ingested poison and had 15 minutes to live. Then he'd laugh it off and tell them it was a test of their faith in the "cause" and they had so many of them they became desensitized to it. I'm sure there were a few that thought that dreadful night it was another test until bodies started writhing and convulsing in pain. Their nightmare had come true, or their "deliverance" to paradise. As they were programmed to see it. Brainwashing and mind control...he was the master!

[@8angst8]

He did the "Flavor Aid test" at least twice before the final run on November 18, 1977, in Guyana. It isn't as if his followers weren't aware of what he ultimately had in mind. He'd been preaching "revolutionary suicide" for years.

[@jacobdavis5387]

He was a type of antichrist.

[@jamesm.2549]

0:30 " motherfckers, I Cannot live in a system like that"

[@pnpdynamic9720]

This sounds like the stuff the media promotes every day.

[@johnnyman9513]

bullshit you mean the opposite of what the media promotes!

[@Flagg1991]

Listening to these tapes has really opened my eyes to just how cultish the media and Democrats are. He'd fit right in with the modern left.

[@CuteFluff8]

Here is the thing. I would never go in the first place. His curses, his voice, his aggressive speech are just some small amount of red flags for me. His arrogance is the biggest red flag for me. The joy I see people get when they have people’s attention. Fools follow.

[@marryIsfake964]

if Jim Jones wasn’t so sinister he could’ve been a great standup comedian

[@evanjonez914]

He could of been a great preacher but he choose to be a evil corrupt man who lead 900 plus people to their deaths. Drugs, money and power got to his head real quick

[@stephenhumphrey7935]

Or a used car salesman.

[@marryIsfake964]

@@stephenhumphrey7935 I wouldn't think he with out run Cal Worthington.

[@starblossom1370]

He actually was intelligent and had interesting views. I can see how he could manipulate weaknesses. But he was twisted & contradictory. Also if he wouldn't have done that act in November he would have been known as a socialist legend. Shame he put his talents into massive destruction..

[@johnerickson4064]

He would have been a great monkey salesman

[@marcodevries4481]

The people shouting “yeah” when he says awful things even about them is so crazy. Such ignorance. Democrats today

[@bibblyboing]

1. They were isolated, brainwashed and too tired and scared to think differently. 2. Says the side who committed J6.

[@jonah1976]

These are the same type of people who go to a Trump rally. Cheering and bowing to a powerful man.

[@chicagogyrl4846]

@@jonah1976Comparing people at a Trump rally to these idiots! 😂🤣

[@XxHarmonicNightsxX]

17:44 “I never did feel like I wanted to got to bed with a dummy”. That’s funny because he talked about an incident as a kid when he tried to have sex with a dummy in another tape lol

[@maughan3061]

Just wow!

[@randymorgan7133]

He's clearly blasphem So very evil !!!

[@johnnyman9513]

not as evil as the CIA that instigated it all down to the mass suicide/murder

[@TonyMichaels166]

He literally and figuratively threw the Bible out during one of his sermons. He told his congregation that religion and God are bullshit and was merely a means to an end for him. As he blasphemed the church erupted in applause, cheers, and shouts and hoots of approval. They were totally unable to think for themselves.

[@chicagogyrl4846]

What is that talking in the background??! Makes it hard to hear or to listen!

[@levihl0]

What on earth is this guy even talking about? Something that once was disguised as a church with a pastor is now here just the ramblings of a madman about politics and sex, sad what happened here.

[@supermichaelssecondchannel4342]

That Jesus “shit is easy” what type of Christianity is that?

[@hgostos]

Jones' worldview had nothing to do with Christianity...

[@scorpi972]

Wow some of this is funny

[@annamartin3489]

Wow! he was a sick man and even worse he had people who were willing to follow him even though many eventually wanted to leave and couldn't because of death threats.

[@Qotsarena]

He came out with some funny shit 😝

[@danschreffler1280]

So I guess the Ham radio is what is bleeding through on the tape.

[@cshaw9083]

I read elsewhere it sounds like that because they recorded over other recordings on the same tape. And that's the sound that comes through occasionally.

[@michaelcollins1425]

He sounds like a black preacher

[@Nomorewarsforisrael]

He isn’t saying anything more radical than a lot of members of Congress say today.

[@8angst8]

Communism. Jim Jones admitted he was a Communist, but today's US leftists won't.

[@Flagg1991]

Jesus Christ, he sounds just like CNN.

[@johnerickson4064]

CNN = Communist News Network

[@brocktonma.1816]

All the crazies sprinkle facts into their lunacy.

[@dree2295]

LOL @ 16:56

[@binslick1000]

At least he's right about the U.S being an imperialist country.

[@8angst8]

I'd rather live in an "imperialist" country over a third-world sh**-hole country any day.

[@TheJpep2424]

He's wrong on everything else and murdered 900 people.

[@brocktonma.1816]

America has never been an imperial nation. Where’s your facts.

[@TonyMichaels166]

Jim Jones’ tirades have so many ridiculous quotes. I especially appreciate that they are fueled by amphetamines and a lethal amount of pentobarbital, as well as other powerful pharmaceuticals.

[@johnnyman9513]

as crazy as he was what he says about MLK and Malcolm X is spot on and with alot of the stuff he says about capitalist america!

[@TheJpep2424]

And what he proved about socialism is true. It leads to poverty and death.

[@martyguy8185]

Alot of things he sed are way less worse than what's going on now.

[@ActiveAussie2024]

At 24.54, that certainly is some thick ass jungle.

[@eej1983able]

He is a vile human being.

[@JihadBunnydick]

Gotta love him

[@elite1aa]

19:23 self-prediction

[@joeysanguine3596]

Reverend Jones speaks the truth❤😊

[@michaelcollins1425]

How could anyone think this is a preacher with all that fowl language

[@Thomas116-m2n]

He wasn't a preacher by this time. He mocked God in the pulpit repeatedly and said that he was an atheist, regardless of his degree or vocation.

[@cristianm7097]

Total lunacy.

[@kennethcharles1386]

A madman at the podium preaching bull$#!+......

[@johnerickson4064]

He would be the Democrat front runner these days

[@JimHaney-uc9ps]

Lol,he would fit right in with the maga cult.

[@substance-m7u-boredigger]

Why does he just drop the N word half way through this 💀

[@brocktonma.1816]

He was playn the blacks.

[@elbandido9887]

Such a waste

[@tiffanymariezaccagnino2599]

What does he think hes Martin Luther King

[@chocolatetownforever7537]

I thought I heard him applaud MLK in other speeches. I also heard him praise Malcom X even more on some of these tapes if I remember correctly.

[@tiffanymariezaccagnino2599]

@@chocolatetownforever7537 You probably did hear that..

[@johnzeszut3170]

I can make my own mistakes - this fellow is a foul mouth character.

[@chocolatetownforever7537]

Yell at me if you want, but he is right about some of the stuff he talks about lol. He didnt follow his own words on some of them, and he was a grandiose monster, but ive heard a bunch of these tapes, and there are truths. I honestly feel like his beliefs were great at first. I know eveyone is scared of the words "Socialism", and "Communism" in this country, but they are very moral and beauitiful ideas, atleast in terms of living as a society. The problem with Communism, or Socialism isnt the thought of all for one and one for all itself, its man. Man is fallable, selfish, and immoral, so you then have corruption in terms of its leadership, and so the Communal way of living, is never pure or fair.

[@ThizOne]

So true

[@johnnyman9513]

i agree but stand firm on the truth dont be worried about what others think, truth is truth no matter who says it!

[@chocolatetownforever7537]

@@johnnyman9513 Very nice of you to say, thank you bro.

[@8angst8]

Not one single Communist country has ever succeeded. Stop promoted this sickness.

[@jacobdavis5387]

In the hands of humans a socialist government will never work out to make everyone equal, capitalism is more fair and rewarding and durable in the end.. both capitalism and socialism can be corrupted, but capitalism is the lesser evil, it will keep a country standing longer.

[@Thebeautiful11]

This doesn't sound like Jim jones.

[@supermichaelssecondchannel4342]

It’s him.

[@TonyMichaels166]

He’s fucking wasted on 5 or 6 pharmaceuticals lmao sometimes you can tell when the pentobarbital is hitting extra hard.

[@marryIsfake964]

@@supermichaelssecondchannel4342 he was really 47 in this video, but it kind of sounds like he’s an old man about in his late 60s early 70s

[@TimoteoDeBaum]

I also noticed obvious differences in his voice from tape to tape, aside from his obvious deterioration. He also seemed to attempt to speak like a black man or a black preacher at times.

[@eric-hj8pn]

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