{"id":234262,"date":"2021-04-24T00:43:32","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-nxivm-got-smart-women-to-abandon-their-judgment\/"},"modified":"2021-04-24T00:43:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:43:32","slug":"how-nxivm-got-smart-women-to-abandon-their-judgment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-nxivm-got-smart-women-to-abandon-their-judgment\/","title":{"rendered":"#How NXIVM got smart women to abandon their judgment"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How NXIVM got smart women to abandon their judgment<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n A new book, ‘Don\u2019t Call It a Cult,’ delves into the multiple layers to Keith Raniere\u2019s crimes and cruelties and his sex cult’s ugly spin on empowerment\n <\/div>\n
\n Convicted on counts ranging from wire fraud conspiracy to sex trafficking, Keith Raniere was found guilty of crimes as striking in their breadth as the 120-year prison sentence he received for them last October. But even then the founder of NXIVM\u2014an unholy blend of corrupt multi-level marketing company and sex cult, all drenched in the language of self-help and personal responsibility\u2014did not face direct legal charges on his most notorious outrages, including having his initials branded on women\u2019s bodies. As set out in Sarah Berman\u2019s absorbing account, Don\u2019t Call It a Cult<\/em>, there were multiple layers to Raniere\u2019s crimes and cruelties.<\/p>\n

He built a culture of gaslighting, deflection and intense intra-group pressure within NXIVM, says Berman in an interview, that prompted women to somehow see female empowerment in a secret group that called its members \u201cslaves\u201d and allowed Raniere and TV\u2019s Smallville<\/em> actress Allison Mack to record their conversation about branding ceremonies. \u201cIt became evidence at his trial,\u201d Berman says, \u201cbut at the time they didn\u2019t see recording as problematic, since the idea was to get everyone to indicate they were willing participants.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0What it\u2019s like to find out your husband is a rapist<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The story of NXIVM is extraordinary, not least in its many discrete elements. There\u2019s the crucial role of the Bronfman heiresses, sisters Clare and Sara, who poured millions into his failed financial schemes and scorched-earth legal campaigns. Despite being sentenced to nearly seven years in prison after pleading guilty to identity theft and immigration fraud, Clare refused to disavow Raniere, telling the judge in a letter that he had changed her life \u201cfor the better.\u201d According to the court\u2019s sentencing document, she also personally infected the computer used by her billionaire father, a perceived NXIVM enemy, with a virus that allowed the cult to read Edgar Bronfman\u2019s emails. Then there was the Mexican family whose three young daughters became Raniere\u2019s most abject slaves. And there\u2019s the \u201ccollateral\u201d he collected from women, tokens of submissive trust handed over before they could move more deeply into NXIVM\u2019s innermost sanctum. Nude photos were the first step, usually buttressed by confessions of crimes (legal or moral) or accusations against family members.<\/p>\n

Berman was right, though, to focus on the thoroughly modern women of NXIVM\u2014smart, educated, assertive, usually white and privileged. They were figures who raise thorny legal questions about consent (real or coerced) and more existential ones about why so many accepted what they did. More than 100 women became members of late-stage NXIVM\u2019s key subgroup DOS\u2014Dominus Obsequious Sororium<\/em>, <\/em>bad Latin for \u201c[male] master of the female slaves\u201d\u2014offering up their collateral and submitting to their branding.<\/p>\n

A 34-year-old Vancouver investigative reporter, Berman knew many people on NXIVM\u2019s periphery, \u201can array of people who had either been pitched or gone to NXIVM classes or couldn\u2019t afford the $3,000 they cost.\u201d And she dove deeply into the world view of fellow Vancouverite Sarah Edmondson, whose explosive New York Times<\/em> interview\u2014complete with photo of her bikini-line branding scar\u2014was the single most important moment in the cult\u2019s downfall. \u201cThe DOS group was pitched to women in the spirit of empowerment,\u201d Berman says. \u201cAn extreme version, certainly, where it was framed that you just needed to expose yourself to all the worst things imaginable and then [by refusing victimhood] overcome them all. If I had talked to them before all this became known, they would have seemed the bike-riding sort of feminist vegetarian people you have here.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Elizabeth Renzetti on how feminism is changing in the age of #MeToo<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In January 2017, actress Edmondson was 39, a high-ranking, 12-year NXIVM veteran who had met her husband, Anthony Ames, and her best friend, Lauren Salzman, through it. Salzman, the daughter of NXIVM second-in-command Nancy Salzman, arrived unexpectedly in Vancouver to offer her Canadian friend a chance to enter DOS. Information about what that was\u2014and the requirements for joining\u2014were parcelled out drip by drip by Salzman until she had Edmondson\u2019s collateral, and the latter submitted to being branded by cauterizing pen two months later.<\/p>\n

For all its scope, the heart of Don\u2019t Call It a Cult<\/em> is Berman\u2019s nuanced exploration of what drew Edmondson so far into NXIVM and then, with whiplash speed, drove her out. Shades of modern feminism colour it throughout. The women of DOS thought they were helping each other, in part by rejecting notions of victimhood, while Edmondson drew courage from the #MeToo support that had just surged for the film-world women involved after the New York Times<\/em> expos\u00e9 of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Raniere had always claimed that what he purported to preach\u2014female empowerment through overcoming self-chosen adversity\u2014would change everything. In that, if nothing else, he may have been proven right when Edmondson shrugged off the risk of her collateral becoming public and toppled him from his unassailable throne.<\/p>\n\n

This article app<\/a>ears in print in the May 2021 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s magazine with the headline, \u201cA sex cult\u2019s ugly spin on empowerment.\u201d Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here<\/a>.<\/em>
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