Last week was the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre, a mass poisoning of over 900 members of Peoples Temple. The clip above is from the documentary, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple by Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith and Noland Walker. A powerful film, a sobering reminder, it is available in its entirety at Google video.
Tim Reiterman, a reporter who was there, was wounded, and has covered the story since the beginning, was interviewed for On The Media last week:
BOB GARFIELD: While memories of Jonestown may fade over now, three decades, it has found its way into the popular lexicon because of one particular phrase. How do you react when you hear people use the expression, quite blithely, “They drank the Kool Aid?”
TIM REITERMAN: Well, I find that offensive to the victims as well as to the survivors because it’s come to mean unthinking loyalty, something less than human. What happened in Jonestown was Jones. When he started this ritual, he surrounded that community with armed guards with crossbows, and when he ordered that potion to come forward, he ordered the children to go first.
By doing that, he sealed everyone’s fate because the parents and other elders would have no reason to live once the young ones died. That was the diabolical final step in what really was mass murder.
I will never use the phrase “…drank the Kool Aid” again.
LATER: Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing has pulled together an incredible collection of links, most notably, the original audio recordings from People’s Temple and Guyana.