The Cult Leader’s Bid For the White House
Parallels Between the President & Jim Jones
“Here’s an easy way to figure out if you’re in a cult: If you’re wondering whether you’re in a cult, the answer is yes.”
~ Stephen Colbert, I Am America
The former president and his most ardent supporters have been called a cult by a growing number of people and for good reason. He certainly displays several signs of a cult leader. While watching the documentary, Truth and Lies: Jonestown Paradise Lost, I was struck by the many parallels between notorious cult leader Jim Jones and the former president.
In the documentary, his sons, former followers of the Peoples Temple, and a few authors talk about how Jim Jones created a sense of belonging that initially drew people in but ended with a collective madness and disconnection from reality. Although the former president and Jim Jones had nothing in common politically, the two men actually have a lot in common. They both share a broad range of strange beliefs, paranoia, odd ideas, abusive tendencies, and a raging God Complex.
Stoking Fear
Both men weaponized fear to gain and control their followers. The former president used fear effectively to catapult himself to victory in 2016. He stoked already existing fears about crime and terrorism with vague ideas about rapists coming across the southern border and evil Muslims to gather a large following. Although he attempted to resurrect that strategy in 2020, the results were not the same.
Fear is extremely powerful. Politicians and cult leaders throughout history have used fear to gain support and hold on to power. Even after losing the election, he has continued to stoke fear about the integrity of our election system with delusional fantasies about a huge conspiracy to steal his second term. The response of his followers shows how well fear and anger can be used to advance the most sinister agendas.
The God Complex
What is a cult leader without a god complex? Former members of the Peoples Temple talk about how Jones convinced people that he had a god-like ability to heal. He was a minister and a conman, alternately worshipped and feared by his cult members. He held flashy, and dubious, healings, and former followers have described believing he had the power of God. They wanted to believe so much that they didn’t see the negativity.
While Trump doesn’t claim to have the power to physically heal, he has consistently cast himself as the only one who can save the country, starting with his “Only I can fix it” refrain from the 2016 campaign. His followers, especially the most ardent and QAnon conspiracy believing, literally think he is the only one working to stop child sex trafficking.
Trump has gotten an assist in his attempts to deify himself from several evangelical pastors. Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who has been referred to as “Trump’s Apostle” has defended every action of the former president, from touting the border wall and treatment of immigrants at our southern border to paying off the porn star to conceal his affair. That doesn’t seem very Christian. Jeffress is far from alone. More than half of all evangelical pastors support this president, and several have referred to him as “God’s chosen one”. They continued to support him even after he referred to evangelical pastors as “hustlers” in a conversation with his former attorney, Michael Cohen.
Addicted to Money and Power
Both men could be described as charismatic leaders with an addiction to money and power. The more power they got, the more they craved power and attention. Money and power are how Trump values people. If you don’t have money and power, you are of no use to him, except for your vote and donations, of course.
The need for power is really about control. Jim Jones clearly needed to control people, even to their deaths. This is a trait that Trump undoubtedly shares. He has insisted on loyalty oaths for his employees and his followers, even before taking office and attacks former employees and supporters as disloyal. He was criticized for this prior to the 2016 election when he had supporters taking loyalty oaths at his rallies. Trump seems not to understand that loyalty belongs to the country and Constitution, not the president.
Questionable Sexual Proclivities
Jim Jones sexually abused and assaulted his followers. Accusations of sexual assault and rape of members of the Peoples Temple are the reason he chose to move his cult from San Francisco to Guyana. Prior to this, he was arrested in Los Angeles for soliciting sex in a bathroom from an undercover agent. Within his cult, he used sex to control and humiliate his followers.
The president’s sexual excesses were known for decades before he ventured into the political arena. Every wife was cheated on with the next wife. He bragged about sex in interviews and on Howard Stern, even veering into the taboo when talking about his daughter, Ivanka. His affairs, involvement with porn stars, and dozens of incidents of alleged sexual assault and rape have been widely reported both before and after he became president.
Cruel Streaks
Members of the Peoples Temple could face harsh punishment for transgressions, both real and imagined. After moving more than 900 members of his cult to Guyana, he created the feeling of being in a war zone, telling them that soldiers were waiting in the jungle to kill them. He punished his followers by using snakes, drugging them, public humiliation, blackmail, sleep deprivation, separating families, starving them, and putting them in boxes that were the size of a coffin.
While Trump doesn’t beat or physically attack his employees or followers, the president’s cruelty has been well-documented. There are consequences for any act or comment that is seen as disloyal, such as firings, rude nicknames, and social media posts disparaging former administration officials, politicians, and even election officials in states that he lost but feels he should have won.
Many have been cowed into complicity to avoid being branded as the enemy. The surviving members of Jonestown report a very similar dynamic, albeit more extreme. People around the former president were aware that something was seriously wrong with him, both when he was president and now. Unfortunately, too many were afraid to speak up or only came forward after the fact. This continues to be true of many Republican members of Congress.
Paranoia
Paranoia was a big problem for Jones, as it is for Trump. Starting before the move to Guyana, Jones’ paranoia continued to grow in the isolation of the jungle. Even before the move to South America, he started speaking about his belief that the FBI was monitoring him and complaining about the “haters” that were speaking out against the cult. Once in Guyana, this rhetoric was only increased, as he constantly warned his followers about American soldiers waiting in the jungle to kill them and imminent attacks on the settlement.
Trump shares a sense of paranoia that was seen even before he became president. Those disagreeing with him are branded as haters and losers, all. Like Jones, his paranoia has only continued to grow. Increasingly, he spends his days posting messages conspiracy theories about the election and the “deep state”. He insists that he won the election he lost, and all prosecutors and witnesses in his many pending criminal cases are conspiring against him.
Same Rhetoric, Different Details
Each of these leaders used the language of his time and place. Although the specifics of their message are wildly different, the rhetoric that was used to captivate followers is very similar. In Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost, Jim Jones’ son Stephan talks about how his father conjured fear in the members of the Peoples Temple. The former president attained his office with a message rooted in fear and continues to use similar messages as he attempts a third presidential run.
Their messages were wholly different, but the tactics used weren’t. Jones stoked fear with messages about graft, greed, racism, and war. The former president embodies graft, greed, and racism. Instead, he conjures fear using racism and bigotry. His favorite targets have been Muslims, anyone brown living in any country south of our southern border, China, and all the “shithole countries” he was caught referring to when discussing immigration.
Carefully Cultivated Images
Both the president and Jim Jones had cultivated images of themselves that had little basis in reality. They were both quite adept at creating a false perception of success. When Jim Jones moved a small group of his core followers to Guyana, he enticed others to join by manufacturing an image of a thriving community. He created videos that were designed to show Peoples Temple members still in the United States how great it was in Jonestown. He talked about how they were building a community and showed bananas as proof of their success in agriculture. The documentary showed that the bananas actually had stickers on them, which showed that they were purchased and not grown.
When his followers arrived in Jonestown, what they found couldn’t have been further from the carefully choreographed video that brought them to Guyana. What they found was a ramshackle settlement in the middle of the jungle that was hot, infested with bugs, and without enough food or water for the cult’s followers.
In The Art of the Deal, there is a story about a 1992 Atlantic City casino project and the president’s desire to get Holiday Inn to invest in the project. He told his construction manager to bring in dump trucks and bull dozers to move the dirt around on the construction site. The book states that, “What the bulldozers and dump trucks did wasn’t important, I said, so long as they did a lot of it.”
Mary Trump elaborates on her uncle’s fake image of success that was backed by his father’s money in her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. This false image of a tremendously successful business man was used to catapult himself, first in business, then to fame in reality television, and finally to the White House.
Like Jones, there is nothing but an empty shell behind the façade of enormous success. After hiding his financial records and tax returns from the country for most of his term in office, the truth eventually came out, as it usually does. It turns out, he is not much of a success, pays almost no taxes, and has taken tax refunds in the tens of thousands. Recent judgments in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case and the New York fraud case will cost him nearly a half a billion dollars.
Even the “I Alone Can Fix It” promise was nothing but a carefully cultivated message for the campaign. Despite promises to “fix” healthcare, four years went by with absolutely no plan ever introduced. Mexico did not pay for the wall. He did manage to pass absurd tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporate tax cuts, but this did nothing to make America great. Both Trump and Jones offered nothing but empty promises.
The Crazy Comes Out in the End
Jim Jones was probably always crazy, but he really let it show when the truth about him started to come out and the tide began to turn. This happened with an expose in the magazine New West that was highly critical of Jones and the organization. Jones was portrayed as an extortionist and a philanderer with information gleaned from interviews with former cult members. This article is what led Jones to relocate the group to Guyana.
Once they got there, he really went off the rails, as a response to feeling attacked. Isolated in Guyana with things going very poorly and barely enough food to feed his followers, he grew more paranoid. When a delegation came to investigate conditions at the settlement, his ruse appeared to be going well until a group of followers stepped forward and said they wanted to leave. The end is well-known and breathtaking in its tragedy.
Similarly, Trump is exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior, as his legal woes continue to mount. The former president’s crazy has been on full display on his Truth social media platform and bizarre rants at his political rallies. We are seeing a mass delusion with so many of them actually believing that he won an election he clearly and decisively lost.
Both men were able to convince their followers that everything they said was true and everything else was delusional or fake, while saying the most delusional things. Both men insisted that everyone was against them.
Jim Jones told his followers at Jonestown that they were “all going to go down together”. The former president has also shown a willingness to let others take the rap and expects others to go down for him or with him, at the very least. In response to his election loss, he tried to bring our democracy down with him. He has threatened to do even worse, if given another chance at the top job. It is up to us to decide if we are willing to go along with the degradation of our country or stand up and fight for truth and democracy.
Like the surviving members of the Peoples Temple, the American people must mourn our dead, not from a mass suicide, but from a deadly virus that was allowed to rage out of control. Many are also mourning the loss of family relationships and friendships with people now deep in the former president’s cult, QAnon, and other conspiracy theory political cults that have arisen in his orbit and consume so many of his followers. We need to emulate those who escaped Jonestown, spit out the Flavorade, and move forward together.
