NPR had a story on August 21 called: On The Scale of Evil, Where Do Murderers Rate. I’m posting on it because one of he examples is a man who haunts my nightmares, Jim Jones.
Power-hungry psychopaths who kill when "cornered," or placed in a situation they wouldn't be able to escape with their power intact.
Jim Jones
Born in 1931, Jim Jones was attracted early on to a Pentecostal religious group that practiced "speaking in tongues." He later became a charismatic leader of the Peoples Temple. Grandiose and fanatic, as well as psychopathic and paranoid, he gathered a large group of followers and moved with them to Guyana. In 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and his entourage went to Guyana to investigate; he and four others were shot and killed. Cornered, Jones told his followers to commit group suicide. In all, 914 people died, 276 of them children. He also took his own life.
I’ve always used Jim Jones as my benchmark for individual ultimate evil. I don’t buy number 12 on the graduated list of evil. The Hitlers and Stalins of the world are the worst of the worst, but Jones is right up there with them.
