Jones and the People's Temple was a major player in the San Francisco political scene.
And I think this point, along with many others is what people get wrong about Jonestown. The mass execution/suicide is the exclamation point; the punchline to a setup most people don't know about, let alone understand. People dismissed these people and other cult members as crazy and brainwashed... they convince themselves that they could never be that susceptible but as Deborah Layton, one of the inner circle defectors said in her memoir, "nobody joins a cult." People join self-help groups, movements etc. and the change is so incrementally small that by the time some people realize where they are, they're deep in and trapped. If anything, this is more relevant these days considering things that we see in the rise of populism and groupthink in today's day and age.
That's why I was really hoping Vince Gilligan's HBO thing could get off the ground; Jones is fascinating, yes. The events in Guyana are beyond tragic and misunderstood and clearly dripping with dramatic potential. The Powers Boothe version was decent, but was made very quickly after the events in Jonestown where we still collectively didn't understand a lot about it. But the setup to Jonestown: the years of proselytizing, gaslighting, indoctrination is really where the meat of it is.
variety.com
