system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How are people like Jim Jones (Jonestown Massacre) able to influence people to such a degree that they not only take their own lives but also their childrens.

What events can lead up to someone thinking "you know this guys on to something, I *should* take my own life" and how is this process influenced?
gpt
Jim Jones had charisma, he had the ability to make people believe anything. He picked people who were looking for something, vulnerable and he knew how to build them up into his ideal. Once they had moved out of the US he had complete control. They had given up families, jobs, homes. Everything. He was really all they had left, even if a part of them was doubting they had to keep going because they had no way to leave. 24 hour a day indoctrination and isolation. If you remove someone from reason and create a new reality for them, you can become the reason they live, or die. They took the children because they were lead to believe that life for the children would be suffering without them. Would you die willingly thinking you would be going to a place of salvation without suffering and leave your child behind? Because of the size of the group it became epidemic, they could not fight it. Mob mentality if you will, they were scard to be left behind and those that did fight it were injected. Jim Jones created a reality for these people that revolved around him, he was the only one that could save them.