[[File:The Jimmy Carter Jonestown Massacre.jpg|right|350px|thumb|'''[[Socialist]] paradise in Guyana.''' Lack of beef and living off of jungle plants is said to have added to the mass irrationality. Its leader, a [[community organizer]] named [[Jim Jones]], was very active in [[Democratic partyParty|Democrat Party]] politics.]]
The '''Peoples Temple''' was a [[progressive]] movement for social change based on [[identity politics]] between 1955 and 1978. The Peoples Temple was so far ahead of its time, they committed an act of "revolutionary suicide protesting the inhumane conditions of this world."<ref>''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc1CpgwbPA0 Revolutionary suicide protesting the inhumane conditions of this world],'' Jim Jones, Guyana, November 18, 1978.</ref>
Sleep deprivation from working long hours and a lack of adequate meet meat and [[nutrition]] contributed to the group's inability to make rational judgments.<ref>[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199203/the-truth-about-jonestown The Truth About Jonestown], By K. Harary, ''Psychology Today'', published March 1, 1992.</ref>
==Cultural milieu==
Rebecca Moore writes in ''Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple'':
{{quotebox|“If Indianapolis represented the conservative heartland, then California signified the [[progressive]] frontier....This … suggested that [[Jim Jones]] was a political visionary who wanted the Temple to adopt a more radical stance than it had in Indianapolis, and perhaps even to become a player upon the world stage, like the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.<ref>Rebecca Moore, Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009), 23.</ref>}}
Peoples Temple members became involved in politics in California, volunteering their services to liberal candidates. In 1975, the election of [[George Moscone]] as mayor of San Francisco was attributed in part to the efforts of Peoples Temple. Many of the programs supported by Peoples Temple and San Franciscan liberals echoed the goals of the Black Panther Party and their “’survival programs,’ which ‘contributed to the well-being of poor and working-class racial and ethnic minorities.’” These actions show the growing influence Peoples Temple had in California, often benefitting benefiting minorities, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.
Duchess Harris and Adam John Waterman observe in their essay ''To Die for the Peoples Temple: Religion and Revolution after Black Power'', that members of Peoples Temple began to use Black Panther Party rhetoric, as it was {{quotebox|“an available and appealing syntax of revolutionary social and political change. As members of the Temple used this rhetoric, they expanded upon it, challenged it, and appropriated its meaning for use in creative, provocative, and problematic ways. Ultimately, these rhetorical strategies helped the members of the Temple to work in a world in which the radical, political, and economic orders were being rapidly reshaped.... Jones tapped some of the same sources of political and cultural identity that [[Huey Newton]] did, the same historical references to [[slavery]] as well as the more contemporary days of [[Jim Crow]] laws.”}}
*[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oversight-jonestown/id1483843988?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_content=11/18/2019 Oversight: Jonestown], ''CQ Roll Call'' Apple Podcast, November 18, 2019.
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