drink the Kool-Aid

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drink the Kool-Aid

verb (US colloquial) To adopt the dogma of a group or leader without fully understanding its ramifications or implications; to participate in dangerous or lethal activities, or in something destined to fail, due to peer pressure.

The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” comes from the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, in which hundreds of members of the People’s Temple Agricultural Project in Guyana died after consuming a cyanide-laced powdered soft drink as part of a ritual suicide under the instruction of the cult leader Jim Jones. Many of these deaths are believed to be forced suicide or murder, rather than voluntary.

References in periodicals archive ?

McCaughey that said, "all it takes to see the fallacy of "health-care reform" is to read the various bills and not drink the kool-aid being poured.

Re: health care reform

Which must mean that soon the socalled "Dignitas" Swiss finishing-off school, where sad cases go to drink the Kool-Aid, will be coming to a street like yours.

Hamlet may have been in two minds.. but I'm not

Hopefully, by the time our three kids are socially conscious adult consumers, gender will be acknowledged as a wide spectrum, and toys will be available in a variety of colors for kids to choose from, without having to buy in to sickly-sweet or testosterone-fueled visions of childhood, or drink the Kool-Aid, to get the toy.

Girl toy or boy toy? One lesbian mom struggles to teach her kids that gender is a spectrum, despite the best efforts of America's toymakers

Fewer cities seem as interested in being held hostage by team owners, and fewer people drink the Kool-Aid that says a professional team is the answer to the difficulties of a city.

A languid sporting year: it begins to look as if St. Louis fans will keep their team because no one will want to buy it

The young man and his companion looked at me as if I had suggested they drink the Kool-Aid.

The world beyond the ivy-covered walls: the community of scholars must overcome its disdain for all things nonacademic

You gotta drink the Kool-Aid," our publisher says when he wants us all to buy into a new idea, especially a risky one.

The recovery begins now

One source compared the men to a suicide cult dying by poison and said: 'We know that even with suicide cults, several members have to be forced to drink the Kool-Aid.

War On Terror: Did hijackers know this was how it would end?

The Wall Street Journal quoted one individual saying, "They don't drink the Kool-Aid over there," referring to the level-headed reporting that characterized the magazine.