The 5 Worst Cults Of All Time | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by curiosity stream brothers and sisters the world is a dangerous place full of demons and dark forces that want to control you you know it you feel it and that's what brought you here but i have bad news for you brothers and sisters i can't save you i am not strong enough to save you the dark forces that run this world they've grown too big for too long they've won france there is no fighting back there is only escape luckily the good lord has sent us a messenger messenger with a road map god's gps if you will can i get name it amen messenger that will lead you out of this dark place into paradise a paradise full of boundless love and endless treats and that messenger's name is the immaculate the divine the indominable zoe [Music] zoe is the light she is the dark she is the beginning and the end she is the one true messenger that will lead us out of this hellish existence place all your trust in her for she is the only way to true happiness and salvation family they lie to you there is no family [Music] zoe is your family your sources of truth your media all liars liars who want to keep you complacent until they can drain you of your blood don't listen to them there is only one source of truth in this world and that is zoey can i get an amen god has three letters so he has three letters you can't question that money you don't need money in paradise friends unburden yourself of the demon paper cleanse it and make it pure by depositing it into zoe's account via direct deposit wire transfer venmo paypal and we do accept checks hallelujah now close your eyes close your eyes and give silent thanks to god's true messenger the one and the only zoe close your eyes now closer nice [Music] in the 1950s anthropologists visited the island of tana and vanuatu and they found something they weren't expecting a tribe of people native people deep in the jungle with a really odd religion they worshipped some american dude named john frum who was john from and why did he have religious devotees praying to him in one of the most remote places in the world john frum it turns out was an american gi that was stationed in tana during world war ii and while he was there he kind of you know accidentally started a cult so in world war ii the united states had a strategy of kind of island hopping sort of clearing a path so that they could directly attack japan and this meant going to a lot of very remote islands that had natives living there that had either very little or no contact at all with the outside world and then suddenly out of nowhere come these pale people with these metal monsters and flying machines and lots and lots and lots of cargo cargo filled with weapons and tools and food that they had never seen before in their lives and in quantities they never could have imagined these people lived a subsistence living and then suddenly there was literally food just falling from the sky well what would you think of course they thought they were gods or at least manifestations of their current gods so then the war ended the troops went home and the natives were just kind of left there going dude so they prayed and performed rituals and sacrifices trying to appease these gods so that they would come back and bring with them that precious cargo and these became known as cargo cults dozens of them sprang up in these islands around the pacific after world war ii and most of them petered out after a while you know they they got the hint that they weren't coming back but the john frum movement still continues to this very day of course now it's more of a cultural quirk of the island than an actual religion but for decades people actually prayed to john frum in temples that bore his name they flew american flags over their villages once a year they threw parades in his honor and dressed like american soldiers all of them believing that someday john frum would return and bless them with riches beyond their wildest dreams all the while the actual john frum lived out the rest of his days here in the united states having no idea that on the other side of the world there were people worshiping him like a god assuming john from was a real person there are some people that think that john frum is actually short for john from america like a soldier from america but regardless of whether or not jon from was an actual person they made him into an actual person a central figure around which they could base their religion on and this might be one of the reasons why this cargo cult carried on when others didn't there are a lot of different types of cults cargo cults they're mostly harmless they're just sort of an interesting side note to the topic but cults in general can be really harmful and totally ruin people's lives most cults are tied in with religion in some way in fact there's a saying that cult plus time equals religion because all religions kind of started off as a as a cult in some way in fact a lot of people prefer to not use the word cult at all and prefer to use the term new religious movement but not all cults are religious in nature cults can form around anything ideologies products companies business people self-improvement methods health fads basically any cause or movement that can be taken over by a charismatic leader that then people find unhealthy devotion toward you're getting into cult territory there according to ron n roth from his book the lure of cults some of the main categories and cults include eastern mystical aberrant christian psycho-spiritual or self-improvement eclectic or synchrotistic psychic occult or astral established cults and extremist political and social movements now there's a good chance that at some point in your life you could have fallen into a group that fits one of these categories in some minor way what really makes it a cult though 99 of the time anyway is a charismatic leader someone who's highly persuasive usually a narcissist with authoritarian tendencies an obsession with power sex or money or all three i mean think of the kind of narcissism you would have to have to actually think that you're jesus and that people should worship you but as people start to fall in line behind this charismatic leader some common traits start to emerge the group displays excessively jealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and regards his belief system ideology and practices as the truth as law questioning doubt and descend or discouraged or even punished mind altering practices such as meditation chanting speaking in tongues denunciation sessions or debilitating work routines are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader the leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think act and feel the group has a polarized us versus them mentality which may cause conflict with the wider society the leader is not accountable to any authorities the leadership induces feelings of shame and or guilt in order to influence and control members often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group this is not an exhaustive list there are other similarities and not every cult fits into every single one of these points but the basic gist is cults try to control how their members think by controlling what access they have to information it's classic brainwashing and not every cult is necessarily dangerous you know for a lot of people they can be an actually a very positive experience as long as the ideology doesn't get too extreme but they are dangerous in general if nothing else they can take away your freedom of thought and they can bleed you dry both financially and socially but some are definitely worse than others some are more controlling than others some have more nefarious goals than others there's a lot of different ways to define worst when it comes to cults but for this list i'm going to go with a very simple metric and that is human lives how many people actually lost their lives because of this cult either going down willingly or not so willingly and this probably doesn't need to be said explicitly but uh this this gets pretty grisly so yeah you've been warned number five the heavens gate cult anybody that was around in 1997 probably has the images seared into their minds room after room full of bunk beds containing people and track suits and matching nike shoes covered by a purple shroud in march of that year earth was visited by the hail bob comet which is one of the brightest and most spectacular comets that we'd seen in the last 50 years like like seriously i remember seeing it it is easily the most impressive comet i've ever seen in my life people all around the world were looking up in awe at this thing in the sky but nobody more so than the heavens gate cult on march 26 the 39 members of the group all went out to dinner at a local san diego restaurant and they all ordered the same thing turkey pot pie cheesecake with blueberries and iced tea they then went back to their rancho santa fe compound recorded goodbye messages into a video camera changed into their tracksuits and then consumed a mixture of barbiturates and vodka with applesauce they then went to their bunk beds and drifted off to sleep two remaining members then methodically went from room to room with a plastic bag putting it over each person's head until they asphyxiated and then they took their own lies by taking a lethal dose of the barbiturates they believed that by doing so they would ascend up into a ufo that was hiding behind the hillbop comet seriously how do nearly 40 people come to that conclusion and believe it so strongly they're willing to end their lives for it well it didn't happen overnight in fact it took 25 years the leader was a man named marshall applewhite marshall grew up in texas and studied music later becoming a music professor and choir master at the university of alabama following the divorce in 1968 he had something of a nervous breakdown and eventually wound up in the hospital in 1972 where he met a nurse named bonnie lou nettles the two hit it off immediately and it's like one of those things like you know you meet a stranger sometimes and everything just it just clicks and you just get along immediately and eventually decide that you know you're obviously a pair of advanced super beings or prophesied in the book of revelation it was one of those things they began traveling the country spreading their word and developing an intricate belief system in which they believe that they were what they called quote level above human basically heaven and human form and it was their job it was their duty to convert as many people as possible to be like them until the world gets recycled apocalypse style they believed that the human body was just a vessel and that in order to ascend to that higher form they had to eschew all human interests and all human desires and they believed that aliens were their pure spiritual form and that someday a spacecraft would come and and take them away to that higher plane and they believe that there were some next level humans that came before them jesus being one of them they changed their names to bow and peep clearly because they thought of themselves as shepherds but later they changed their names to tea and dough so over the next decade they traveled the country and recruited people into their group eventually reaching about 200 people before they started to kind of weed out all but the most loyal and obedient members members were kept to a strict code of uniformity smoking alcohol and sex were forbidden and all members wore the same baggy clothes and the same haircuts they wanted to essentially be genderless in fact some of the males submitted to castration they were also kept in a very strict and regimented work schedule to keep them constantly occupied in 1985 nettles died of cancer and marshall applewhite took over soul control of the group and they eventually settled in san diego in the 90s where they actually established a really successful web design company there seriously it was a company called hire source and they actually had a pretty great reputation in the area for being you know at the cutting edge of web design at the time people that they worked for said that they were very professional a little weird but professional and if you want to see some of their work you can because the original heavensgate website is still up in all of its 1990s design glory there were a couple of members that they chose not to level up so that they could continue managing this website over time so in 1995 when the hellbop comment was discovered marshall applewhite or doe as he was being called at the time decided that that was the sign they'd been waiting for and he put his exit strategy into action the fact that these people took their own lives is of course tragic and sad but as death cults go they were fairly innocuous i know that's a weird thing to say but for the most part all the people that were former members of the group had nothing but positive things to say about their time there you know they didn't abuse the members they didn't exploit children or anything like that and they didn't keep people from leaving apparently if somebody wanted to leave they totally could they wanted people to be there because they wanted to be there so yeah it's sad to us but in their final statements or exit interviews as they called them they seem really happy in fact thrilled to be going on this journey i'm not trying to put a positive spin on this or anything but most of the other people on this list didn't go out quite so happily number four the order of the solar temple on september 30th 1994 emmanuel dubois was stabbed to death in his home in montreal the killers then burned the house down killing his parents along with him emmanuel was three months old his murder was carried out by members of the order of the solar temple under the direction of their leader luke gerais he believed that the child was the antichrist five days later swiss firefighters responded to a call about a burning farmhouse when they got there they found 23 charred bodies laying in a circle one of them luke gerais himself that same day fires in ski chalets in switzerland revealed 25 more bodies with 15 more found in fires in canada in 1995 16 more bodies were found burned in the french alps and five more were found a couple years later in 1997. the order of the solar temple was messed up it was founded in the early 80s although it came together over a period of many years most people kind of pin it down to 1984 and they believed to be sort of a reincarnation of the ninth templar with some new age mysticism thrown in their leaders with the aforementioned luke gerais and joseph de monbro they both kind of had their own following so they just kind of combined them together to form something of a super group they were the damn yankees of colts geray claimed to be descended from members of a revival of the knights templar in france following the revolution in 1805 and just like the knights templar they leaned heavily into secret rituals and symbolism nobody outside the group was allowed to attend their ceremonies or know their beliefs and new members were only allowed in by being sponsored by elders in the groups and then were only allowed in after performing elaborate rituals and rights they had secret relics and handshakes and code words and it was very hierarchical with three levels of membership you could level up by being promoted by people who are in that upper echelon or you could just buy your way in which many people did in fact they sort of cultivated a lot of successful businessmen into the group that way this was done on purpose of course these guys craved access to power and in fact they had a lot of connections to extremist right-wing groups in europe and of course all that money funneled up to the leadership who lived an extravagant lifestyle off of it as their exposure grew so did the scrutiny over their financial structure and the behavior of the leaders in the group behavior like you know insisting that all the women have sex with them and along with the scrutiny came paranoia and delusions of grandeur luke gerais believed that he was the third reincarnation of jesus and joseph de monbro believed that his children were demigods their teachings became more and more apocalyptic survivalist mentality seemed to take over their group in fact they established a lot of organic farms that they could use to ride out the upcoming apocalypse but this somehow morphed even further into believing that life itself is an illusion and that they would need to shed their earthly bodies so that they could be reborn on a planet orbiting the star sirius all this increasingly crazy rhetoric led to factions within a group with some of the group choosing to split off and go follow a guy named robert follerdoo and this set the stage for de monbro and giurai to enact their end game taking their followers with them and purifying their souls with fire it's not known how many went willingly and how many were murdered in the cleansing of 1994. there were some bodies found with gunshot wounds that they had but it's not known whether or not they were shot or it was just part of some grizzly ritual believe it or not the order of the solar temple is still around today in some form although the details of it are unsurprisingly very secret number three the branch davidians oh boy the brains davidians are probably the most controversial on this list because depending on who you ask they are either a crazed extremist child abusing end times cult that killed five police members and then burned themselves up in a fire or a simple slightly weird religious sect that was murdered in cold blood by federal agents in fact there are some people who make the argument that they shouldn't really even be called a cult but they fit a lot of the descriptions that i laid out earlier so for the purpose of this video i'm going to go with it the brand's davidians are what some might call a new religious movement but they've actually been around for a long time they split from the seventh-day adventists in the 1930s the divisions were formed by a bulgarian immigrant named victor hoteff who believed that jesus was not the messiah prophesized in the book of isaiah that that messiah had yet to come and of course when this messiah arrived it would bring about the apocalypse and of course this was going to happen any day now so hotef and the davidians bought land outside of waco texas and named it mount carmel where they plan to write out this impending apocalypse and establish a davidic kingdom hotep's death in 1955 split the group a little bit with some following his widow florence and others following a pastor named benjamin rhoden florence and her followers left mount carmel and the remaining members started going by the name branch davidians by 1981 benjamin rhoden had passed away and the leadership of the group passed on to his wife lois and his son george rhoden who continued to preach the gospel that this messiah was going to be coming soon and bringing the apocalypse with him and then in walked vernon howell howell came from an unstable family and had a troubled past but he had just become a born-again christian bouncing from the southern baptist church to the seventh-day adventists and eventually winding up at mount carmel his ascendancy to the leadership of the group is every bit as crazy as any of the events that would follow he quickly won over supporters with his encyclopedic knowledge of the bible and his seeming gift for prophecy but what may have sealed the deal on his leadership was the fact that he had an affair with lois rhoden he believed that god told him that they were going to have a child together and that that child would be the chosen one george rhoden for obvious reasons didn't particularly care for this mother so he filed a lawsuit claiming that howell had brainwashed and raped his mother things got heated to the point that vernon howell left waco in 1984 and took his followers with him which was most of the group at the time they went to palestine texas and then george rhoden renamed mount carnival rodenville but this long distance beef continued with george calling his feud with vernon a holy jihad but finally in 1987 george decided to put an end to this feud and challenge vernon to a competition and whoever won this competition would win the right to lead this group and the competition that he had in mind was of course who could raise the most dead people like you do george set out praying over the body of a dead church member named anna hughes and vernon decided actually not to participate and instead called the police and reported george for corpse abuse all this came to a head in november of 1987 when vernon returned to mount carmel with seven of his followers wearing camouflage and heavily armed and a gunfight ensued they would later claim that they were just there to get some pictures but regardless a gunfight broke out and george rhoden fled the scene with multiple gunshot wounds he would survive but he lost control of the group vernon's trial for attempted murder ended in a mistrial and he and his followers returned to mount carmel where he assumed sole leadership and changed his name to david koresh after king david and king cyrus from the bible over the next six years david koresh continued growing the church and preaching the gospel that he was the true messiah that had been prophesied all those years ago and that the apocalypse was soon at hand he claimed that children of the messiah were sacred and so therefore it was his duty to seed the world with his children in order to usher in this new davidic kingdom so then he's persuaded some might say ordered many of the women in the group to become his wives and have children with him some of whom were underage eventually 13 kids would be born to david and his many wives but it wasn't the polygamy and underage sex that got the attention of the authorities it was the stockpile the arsenal of weapons that they had begun hoarding in order to prepare for this upcoming apocalypse of course when the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms began snooping around this only validated his belief that dark forces were descending on them on february 28 1993 agents from the atf rolled up on mount carmel to execute a search warrant what happened next has been argued and debated ever since but it resulted in a massive gunfight that killed five of the agents six of the branch davidians and wounded 16 others including david koresh and began a standoff that would last for 51 days the media descended on the area and the country was gripped with 24-hour news about the standoff david caress took advantage of this by releasing videos from inside the compound proclaiming their innocence and highlighting his wounds from the original gunfight as the standoff continued the fbi grew in force eventually becoming what malcolm gladwell described as quote the largest military force ever gathered against a civilian suspect in american history the fbi attempted negotiations as well as strong arm tactics to get them to come out including playing loud noises and music 24 hours a day to induce sleep deprivation according to a surviving member of clive doyle this consisted of quote rabbits being killed worked up music nancy sinatra singing these boots are made for walking tibetan monks chanting christmas carols telephones ringing and reveilly doyle said i got to where i was only getting about an hour or two of sleep every 24 hours finally on april 19th the fbi raided the compound with armored tanks and tear gas again what happened next has been debated ever since but one way or another a fire broke out it quickly engulfed the compound killing 76 of the 85 people inside the narrative immediately following this event sort of painted the branch davidians as a paranoid death cult that set themselves ablaze to save their souls but over the years the narrative shifted a little bit to become more about government overreach i don't think that's an invalid argument but that narrative took hold immediately amongst right-wing militia groups who used it as a rallying cry against tyranny in 1995 on the second anniversary timothy mcveigh killed 168 people when he blew up the federal building in oklahoma city in an act of revenge there are still branch davidians around today some of whom still are waiting for david koresh to return from the grave caitlyn dodie from ask a mortician actually went to mount carmel recently and did a really great video about it there's a lot more details there if you want to go check that out but suffice to say this is a very complex moment in american history and its legacy lives on by the way if you're wondering what happened to george rhoden he was actually arrested in 1997 in odessa texas for murdering his roommate with an axe he claimed that david koresh had sent this man to kill him from beyond the grave at his trial he was declared not guilty by reason of insanity number two the movement for the restoration of the ten commandments of god you know one thing that stands out to me about the three stories that i just told you is they all took place in the decade leading up to the millennium and i don't think that's a coincidence even if that wasn't you know explicitly stated as a catalyst for it there was a lot of millennium anxiety at the time and in fact even non-religious people feared a technological apocalypse with the y2k bug but the event that ended the movement for the restoration of the ten commandments of god was one hundred percent about the millennium changing the movement came together in the late 80s in uganda sort of a splinter sect from the catholic church that believed that we need to go back to the ten commandments that people should live completely by the ten commandments hence the name of the group they believe this so strongly that they discouraged talking to prevent the possibility of breaking the eighth commandment about bearing false witness in fact many of the members of the group communicated through sign language and they also say it with me believe that the apocalypse is coming soon that's that's sort of a thread with these groups they believe that they were meant to be sort of like a noah's ark you know a place of refuge for the good people while the world is cleansed of wickedness now to understand how this group came to be you kind of have to understand the context of the world that it came up in uganda from the 70s through the 90s was a mess a series of dictators and warlords ran the country leading to endless civil wars the aids pandemic hit that area hard decimating populations the economy was in shambles and with all their other institutions crumbling around them many turned to the catholic church simultaneously there was a rash of sightings of the virgin mary in uganda and across africa in general there was a good reason for this sightings of the virgin mary are known as marian apparitions in the catholic church and to believers they were powerful symbols of divine power that usually reflected something sacred about the place where it was seen or something sacred in the people who witnessed it marian apparitions that are confirmed by the church are a big deal usually temples are put up there and they you know become canonic in the catholic church they get names like our lady of lourdes and our lady of fatima these locations attract thousands of visitors a year and help convert local populations in fact that was kind of a strategy that the church used to grow into new areas so in uganda and other hurting african nations at the time having a confirmed sighting would be a huge deal it would bring a lot of resources there that they desperately needed of course the church didn't confirm every case they actually confirmed very few cases but even still somebody claiming to have seen the virgin mary if they're persuasive enough could grow a huge following in a local area so it was in this time and place that credonium or wendy grew up seeing the virgin mary was kind of a family business for cordonia her father paolo had claimed to see the virgin mary and his dead daughter going all the way back to the 60s when she got older and claimed to see visions of the virgin mary herself her father convinced her to go around and and spread the word and she quickly became known as a bit of a spiritual mystic to the population and she claimed to be the resurrection of mary magdalene which made sense because she kind of dabbled in prostitution in 1989 she met joseph kibwateri and together the two of them crafted their apocalyptic worldview and put it into a booklet that they titled a timely message from heaven the end of present time and then they used that booklet to grow their church around africa kim terry grew up in a wealthy religious family with close ties to the church and he had ambitions toward leadership he ran for office a couple of times but he never really won so instead he took this family money and he built a school in his name so he was a well-known and respected member of the community so when he and credonia joined forces she had the spiritual currency and he had the social currency so she kind of went out there and converted the followers and he ran things from the background in fact he went by the name the figurehead and she went by the name the programmer it's a pretty apt name for a cult leader and together they grew a substantial following across southern uganda and not a lot is really known about the group during this time because like i said uganda was kind of a mess there's not a lot of documentation out there about it in fact you keep seeing the same images over and over again in this segment because that's literally all there is there's just there's just nothing else at their height they had up to 5 000 members and like any good cult they had hierarchies and inner circles and they actively promoted uh bringing in former catholic priests and people connected with the church so that they had some legitimacy and like a lot of cults they came under scrutiny for forced labor and kidnapping what we do know is that as the millennium approached they thought this would usher in this apocalypse that they had been preaching about so they made the prediction that the world was going to end on december 31st 1999 then then it didn't as often happens when end time sex are wrong they just push the date forward a little bit just kind of kick that armageddon can down the road this time they predicted it on march 17th of 2000 and they seemed determined to make this one stick on march 15th they were seen buying up to 70 cases of coca-cola and three bulls which they slaughtered and then served on a giant feast on the evening of the 17th 338 people gathered in their new church to celebrate the end of the world dancing feasting and praying into the evening as the evening drew to a close they all went into a separate building an older dining hall to wait out the end of the world the windows and the doors were boarded shut and then immediately after they got in there within minutes local people heard explosions and the building went up in flames all 338 people died in the fire but incredibly the nightmare was just beginning over the next week more bodies were found throughout southern uganda including six that were found at the site of the church buried under the little train a mass grave in bahunga contained 153 bodies a sugar cane field near rugazi held 155 bodies in a mass grave and the homes of two of the church inner circle were found to have 81 and 103 bodies respectively medical examiners determined that these people were mostly poisoned and strangled and that these deaths occurred a few weeks before march 17th so many people died then an exact number can be determined but they believe that the total number is over 800 people the ugandan government investigation determined that these were not a mass suicide they have classified this as a mass murder it's thought that when the world failed to end on december 31st some rifts may have formed in the church and this caused the leaders to mastermind this plot to sort of save face one of those like if i can't have you nobody can things and the cherry on top of all this is that the bodies of joseph kidwateri and credonia merwende have never been identified it's assumed they died in the fire but there's no hard proof of this now granted this is true of many of the victims of the fire because fire but there have been reports from various people that have seen them in places like kampala the capital of uganda this might not mean anything but there are many people who think that they escaped the fire that night and are alive today now before we get to the number one on this list i want to call out a few honorable mentions like the true russian orthodox church that locked themselves in a cave for several years the ancient enrico cult that poisoned a tokyo train station was sarin gas killing 12 people the madamoro's human sacrifice cult that murdered over a dozen people along the border of mexico and of course the manson family who murdered seven people in an attempt to start a race war all of these cults were terrifying in their own rights but thankfully didn't stack up the numbers like some of the others on this list even though they may have wanted to but when it comes to worse cults in terms of human death there's really only one name that stands out above the rest number one the people's temple agricultural project also known as jonestown the people's temple and their leader jim jones had become known as the gold standard of cults after nearly a thousand of them killed themselves by drinking cyanide lace punch in 1978. like honestly i didn't want this to be number one on this list i wanted something a bit more unexpected for this but it turns out no you just can't beat jonestown and part of the tragedy of jonestown is that it really had potential to be something really good in the world but instead it turns into this nightmare that we're still reeling from 40 years later jim jones grew up a poor kid in indiana to an alcoholic father and maybe because of this dysfunction he seemed to turn inwards and became obsessed with religion and death friends would later tell stories of him holding funerals for dead animals he found as he grew into adulthood he joined the pentecostal church and cut his teeth on the revival circuit driving from town to town putting on shows to convert the masses here he honed his skills at building a following he was heavily focused on social justice in his work having grown up poor he felt connected to disadvantaged communities and filled his pews with blacks and minorities he adopted children of multiple races and got heavily involved in the civil rights movement at the time this was difficult to do in indiana it was the 60s and they were still pretty segregated at the time so eventually he picked up his following and moved them to ukiah california one of the reasons they picked you kyo was because he had read somewhere that it was one of the safest places to be in the event of a nuclear holocaust which is something that he thought was coming soon here he established a farm where the entire congregation lived and worked it was sort of a prototype for what would follow later on and this is where he started leaning toward the ideas of communism of course this wasn't something he could just come out and say he had to couch it in terms of religion people involved in the group had to kind of hand over their their money to him he convinced older members of the group to to sell their homes and then give them money to the church and then the church would put them up in senior centers and take care of them for the rest of their lives and by all accounts this worked out pretty well the seniors in the group seemed to have been pretty well taken care of this also meant the church members were working constantly which is a common trait in cults you know don't give them time to think about what's going on in the summers the congregation would hop on buses and travel the country putting on shows and events everywhere they went he tapped into his experience doing the revival circuit and it worked the congregation grew into the thousands he preached against sex calling it selfish and against the ways of god although he himself did not abstain from sex he slept with many of the congregation including the men in 1974 he moved the group to san francisco and became politically active he would basically hire out his church members to go to rallies and do letter writing campaigns for progressive causes he came he became kind of a go-to guy in san francisco politics politicians made a point of meeting with him figures like walter mondale and rosalind carter eventually helped get san francisco's mayor elected and in return he was named the head of the housing committee and this seems to be when things started to spiral downward now that he was sort of part of the government he was under more intense scrutiny and it didn't help that he had his members of the church join in all the meetings and cheer wildly whenever he said anything really made people start to wonder what was going on with this guy and his weird followers the extra scrutiny made him more paranoid this was in the years following mlk and robert f kennedy's assassinations he became convinced that progressives like him were being targeted so he created his own secret service within the group that not only was there for his protection but it was also there to kind of weed out dissenters from the group his sermons got darker and more apocalyptic anybody who stepped out of line was publicly shamed in church services he even encouraged violence against dissenters basically having beat downs as part of the service and he began doing drugs which only amped up his paranoia convinced they weren't safe anymore he bought up land and guyana in 1975 and began constructing jonestown a jungle paradise where they would establish a communist utopia away from all the dark forces in the us government that would try to destroy what they built toward the end of july in 1977 jones got word that some former cult members were speaking out against him and had been talking to a reporter from a magazine called new west it was set to be a damning expose filled with stories of fake faith healings violence and sexual abuse within hours jim jones was on a plane to guyana he moved the congregation to jonestown seemingly overnight and in this new place isolated from everything they knew his stranglehold over them only tightened they had no communication with the outside world were made to work 18 hours a day and he turned church members against each other making it their duty to turn other members in if they spoke about wanting to leave he had loudspeakers set up throughout the compound where he played recorded sermons and messages 24 hours a day claiming that the outside world was falling apart and that their only salvation was jonestown no matter where they were in the complex jim jones voice was in their ear they literally couldn't escape it over time the messages got darker and more apocalyptic more convinced that dark forces were bearing down on jonestown and then in november of 1978 they got a visit from leo ryan leo ryan was a congressman from california and he had a reputation as sort of a hands-on politician like at one point he was investigating prison reform so he actually spent a week in folsom prison imagine a politician today doing that he'd been lobbied by family members of jonestown residents saying that they couldn't get access to him they didn't know if they were okay that they were being held there against as well so he decided to go take a look for himself on november 17th 1978 he flew down to guyana with some members of his staff and a handful of reporters and they were impressed with what they found when they first got there what these people have been able to build in the middle of the jungle it was actually a nice self-sustaining commune plenty of food nice accommodations a medical clinic school daycare for the kids and everybody was happy the congregation welcomed them with open arms they held a reception with music and food and dancing and they couldn't stop telling them how happy they were to be there whatever the comments are there are some people here who believe that this is the best thing they've ever had in their whole life but later in the evening some cracks began to show throughout the celebrations that night a couple of people slipped notes to the camera crew asking for help escaping jonestown the next morning leo ryan confronted jim jones about it doesn't it concern you though that this man for whatever reason one of the people in your group people play games friend they lie they lie what can i do about liars as ryan and his group prepared to leave more and more people came out of the woodwork begging to go back with them and all hell broke loose jonestown residents joined the congressional delegation and they left jonestown for the nearby airport but as they were boarding a plane another truck pulled up and several gunmen jumped out and opened fire on them in all five people were killed on the airstrip including congressman ryan back at the compound jones called an emergency meeting in the pavilion where he broke news of the congressman's death seeing no way out at this point he ordered his underlings to mix up some cyanide with punch and began distributing it throughout the congregation and this is where the term drink the kool-aid came from you know where somebody has really bought into an idea to an extreme level they say they drink the kool-aid which is unfortunate for the kool-aid company because they are actually drinking flavor aid they gave it to the children first in order to give the parents less reason to go on living families were told to lie down together in the grass outside the pavilion and in a matter of hours it was all over 909 men women and children lay dead jones was found lying on the pulpit with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head under a banner reading those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it 36 people who were at jonestown survived the massacre some of them hid some of them fled into the woods one person slept through the whole thing many of the survivors of jonestown don't like calling it a mass suicide apparently people with guns surrounded the pavilion pointing them inwards and forced people to drink at gunpoint and even those who did drink willingly had been psychologically stripped of their agency in the preceding years to the survivors this was a mass murder so it's easy to call the people of jonestown crazy or sheep but we're all social animals and we're all vulnerable to succumbing to social pressures add into that mix the the chaos of what was going on people with guns and years of being psychologically brainwashed who knows whether you or i would have made the same choice now i want to acknowledge that there is an argument to be made here that there were much worse and deadlier cults in the ancient world like say the aztecs who killed hundreds of thousands of people and religious rituals i'll let you guys debate that down in the comments but why am i talking about cults right now the easy answer is that it just worked out this way but the more interesting answer is we're currently living in a climate that is very conducive to cults you know i pointed out earlier that four of these five cults took place in the 90s leading up to the millennium well the other one the fifth one took place in the late 60s early 70s when there was a ton of social upheaval there were a lot of cults that came out during that time period including the manson family but think about what was going on during that time period the civil rights movement was in full swing vietnam was tearing the country apart robert f kennedy martin luther king just been assassinated and this was the generation that grew up with jfk being assassinated just 10 years before that i mean this was there in 9 11 and it's like it was happening all over again you know i never really appreciated just how much the world changed during that time period in my parents generation you know social and political institutions just crumble to the ground and the people grasp for something to give them meaning cults thrive in times like that because cults target people in times of transition or loss you know when you lost a job when you've gotten out of a relationship or when you just move this is when we're the most rudderless and desperate in fact i got curious if this trend went back further so i went and looked to see if there were any depression error cults that might have come up and it turns out there was a cult scare in the media between 1935 and 45. so here we are now in the words of pretty much every commercial you've seen in the last six months living in trying times more abrupt change more civil unrest more economic distress and on top of all that a generation defining event that has completely upended social norms more fertile ground for cults could not be designed but i'm sure you've got nothing to worry about you're smart there's no way you're going to fall into a cult oh and by the way you know who else thinks that everyone who's ever been in a cult cults basically operate like pyramid schemes you know the people are are encouraged to go out and recruit new members and by doing so they raise their own status within the organization it's a lot like a multi-level marketing business and in fact a lot of mlm schemes are very culty and just like mlm schemes most people recruit their families and friends and co-workers in fact two-thirds of people that join cults do so through friends and family members a friend or family member who may be trying to go up in the group or they might sincerely just be wanting to help you i mean this group gives them purpose and clarity and and you might be in a bad state and they just kind of want to offer that to you as well there's this amazing documentary that i watched while researching this video it was called jonestown the life and death of the people's temple and i think the opening words of this movie say it best nobody joins a cult nobody joins something they think is going to hurt them you join a religious organization you join a political movement and you join with people that you really like this is what draws you in the camaraderie the friendship the shared purpose it happens very casually over time and then eventually they start to employ ingratiation techniques they'll give you a gift or do you a favor and that kind of institutes a sense of reciprocity inside you that makes you want to do something in return for them and so next thing you know you're doing things for them and then the psychological phenomenon kicks in that once you do something for somebody once you've invested some time some energy some money toward a thing you tend to trust it a little bit more in fact this is something that scam artists often do they ask somebody to do a tiny little favor for them and that tiny little favor institutes just a little bit of trust in them and then once you're in the goal is controlling your thinking by shutting down any dissent through fear or guilt or shame make it known that speaking out will incur social penalty then they isolate you as much as possible and restrict the access to information from the outside world often this means shutting off relationships with family and friends and by the way in many of these groups you're given more information about the group's core beliefs the further up you go in the organization so whenever you hear like some really crazy beliefs that some of these cults have most of the people don't know that when they first join it's only once they've gotten past a certain point that they're willing to accept it you know only once you've accepted the previous line in the sand will they draw another one and then cognitive dissonance kind of keeps you trapped there because the further you go into it the harder it is for you to accept that you've been deceived and even when some reason or logic might have slipped through at this point you might be so deeply ingrained into this group you might be so isolated from the outside world you're convinced that you can't go on without these people so you just kind of ignore the crazy and carry on all of this operates on psychological phenomena that we are all susceptible to there was a famous experiment in 1951 known as the ash conformity experiment it was created by psychologist solomon ash and it basically had people answer a series of very simple and obvious questions each card had a target line on one side and three lines of various links on the other side and they were asked to pick which line closest matched the length of the one on the left and this is incredibly simple the answer is obvious but these people were put into a room with five other people who were all in on the test and when every card was revealed they went down the line and each person in the room gave their answer one at a time three three three but every once in a while the actors in the group would give the wrong answer two two the question is when everybody else gives a different answer than what you're very clearly seeing with your own eyes will you speak up against the group or do you go along two on average people went along with the group 37 percent of the time and 75 percent of subjects went along with a group at least once later when asked why they went along with the group even though they knew the answer was wrong the answers tended to fall into one of two camps one because they wanted to fit in with the group also known as normative influence and two because they believe the group is better informed than they are or informational influence we are all susceptible to group think and social pressures which means that we are all more vulnerable than this kind of psychological trickery than we think we are and the scary thing is that during this particular trying time that we're living through we're kind of brainwashing ourselves after all who needs a charismatic leader when an algorithm can tell you what to think and the company that made the algorithm can make billions of dollars off of it polarization is rising around the world at an alarming rate and it's happening at a time when we get most of our information from social media and search engines that are not designed to show us an accurate picture of the world they're designed just to get us to interact with them in some way usually by showing us things that we already want to see you know an article that perfectly proves the point that you were trying to make earlier in the day or a video that amps up a fear that you already have it's not the same as a cult but it does breed the same information bubbles that lead us to believing in different realities and baked into that as an us versus them mentality and a shared sense of victimhood that you know breeds this need for revenge this is leading to some scary places so just like we need to be wary of cults trying to brainwash us we need to be wary of our ability to brainwash ourselves you know poke holes in your information bubble you know take a look at some outside perspectives that are different from your own you don't have to believe it just be aware that they're there and take an audit from time to time of where you are in your thinking you know how different are you thinking now than maybe you had a year ago is there anything you believe now that you know at some point early in your life you could have never imagined believing have you drunk the flavor aid on some topic i think cults teach us a lot about how we think and what our vulnerabilities are and the horrifying things that we never would have thought were capable of so this was a long video this was one of those subjects that i thought would be a really simple video and then the more i got into it the bigger and bigger and bigger it got and i thought about splitting it up into multiple videos but i thought it would probably work better all in one package so here we are i'm in tim dodd territory now that actually happened again recently on another topic that i did decide to put into an entire series and i'm going to be releasing that exclusively later on this year on nebula nebula is a streaming service that i'm part of along with many of your other favorite youtube nerds and it's a place where we can do things outside the youtube ecosystem lets us try out new formats and not be beholden to the algorithm so you can find all of our videos there ad free along with nebula originals like tom scott's money series or real engineering's logistics of d-day series and on top of that nebula has partnered up with curiosity stream so when you get a subscription to curiosity stream you get nebula for free so you could be watching this video on nebula and it might make you curious about how cults eventually turn into mainstream religions so then you can pop over to curiosity stream and watch the series the deadly journey of the apostles this is a four-part series that follows the apostles philip simon and matthew and the journeys they took to spread christianity when it was at the time just another messianic cult but what they did after their leader was crucified would eventually lead christianity to spread across the world and this series shows how that happened this is of course just one of thousands of documentary series that you can find on curiosity stream from some of the best documentary filmmakers from around the world it was created by the guys behind the discovery channel so it's carrying on a grand tradition but yeah when you sign up for curiosity stream right now you get nebula for free and they are offering 26 off of their yearly subscription bringing it to a grand total of 14.79 for two streaming services for a year i don't know how to better sell this that's that's just ridiculous so yeah that sounds good to you i encourage you to go check out curiositystream at curiositystream.com joe scott link is down in the description i really think you'll like your outside stream i watch it quite a bit myself so thanks to curiosity stream for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the patreon supporters the answer files on patreon that are forming an awesome community helping me out i actually got a whole lot of help from last week's video from one of the patreon supporters so i do appreciate you guys uh we do have some new members let me murder the names real quick we've got rachel zablewski uh john dutcher brian betts andre hogman waffley nim luis luis congoola kaloongla sure jim proctor and kjs thank you guys so much if you'd like to join them get early access to videos exclusive live streams and just join an awesome community you can go to patreon.com answers with joe please do like and share this video if you liked it now this is your first time here i invite you to check out this video because google thinks you'll like that one there's also plenty more on the sidebar over there with my face on it and if you watch them and you like them and you want to see more i encourage you to subscribe i come back with videos every monday so all right thanks for sticking around to the end of this i know it was a big one i hope you enjoyed it it was it was a really fascinating subject for me but you guys go out there have an eye opening rest of the week stay safe and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 2,514,168

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott, cults, branch dravidians, david koresh, heaven's gate cult, marshall applewhite, Jim Jones, jonestown, the people's temple, leo ryan, worst cults, how cults work, death cults

Id: Mt_Koq9PYLg

Length: 50min 10sec (3010 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020