Jim and John, from the perspective of the average follower of the Peoples Temple, Leo Ryan, the media, and the accompyaning "Concerned Relative" committed morally reprehensible, criminal deeds. So even these events can be explained using the term "deviancy amplification spiral".

I think the average follower could have thought something like this.

"We want to live in peace and we came here all the way to live in peace but still you disturbed us. We cannot live in peace. We wanted to start the revolution that will end the racial discrimation and poverty in the USA. Only Dad (Jim Jones) knows how to do it. We will follow him. Now the media have come. They will spread all kinds of false, defamatory stories about us. They have to be stopped. Besides they will take away our children, like Oliver Schoen, and tear apart our family of believers. People who tear apart families are like what Nazis did to the Jews. They are evil and should be stopped. Such people have been brainwashed into the belief that anything good can come out of the the capitalist society. I would rather die in an act of revolutionary suicide than give up the Peoples Temple that they want to destroy.It is better to die if we cannot live in peace."