A reader writes:
Keith Raniere himself has identified Isaac Asimov as one of his heroes, and his classic science fiction “Foundation Trilogy” as inspirational to him.
It has already been noted here that mind-control, by the tragic antagonist who styles himself “the Mule,” is the concluding premise of the Foundation Trilogy.
Given the overwhelming volume of reports of Raniere’s sex-addiction, and of women being promised that they would bear his blessed child, is it not strange that only a single child, Kristen Keeffe’s son, has ever issued from the compound in Clifton Park?
Given the data, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Keith Raniere may be (nearly) infertile.
And one could easily believe that this would infuriate him. In his own mind, he is the smartest man in history. How tragic that an heir is denied to him.
And this brings us back to the Foundation Trilogy, and the reason the tragic antagonist adopts the title “the Mule.”
The Mule is actually a small, skinny, and deformed man, who poses as his own escaped court jester Magnifico, to trick agents of the First Foundation into finding the Second Foundation for him. The young woman protagonist Beyta Darrell is able to halt his rise, because he chooses not to control her mind, because she is the first woman who had ever liked Magnifico without being controlled emotionally. After foiling him, she says
“You shall be the last ruler of your dynasty, as well as the first!”
Something caught Magnifico. “Of my dynasty? Yes, I had thought of that, often. That I might establish a dynasty. That I might have a suitable consort.”
Bayta suddenly caught the meaning of the look in his eyes and froze horribly.
Magnifico shook his head. “I sense your revulsion, but that’s silly. If things were otherwise, I could make you happy very easily. It would be an artificial ecstasy, but there would be no difference between it and the genuine emotion. But things are NOT otherwise. I call myself the Mule — but not because of my strength — obviously –”
So Raniere is inspired by The Mule as a character that he has an affinity for and wants to possibly be like? It fits since Raniere’s been accused of running a mind-control type cult by Rick Ross and psychomanipulative powers are The Mule’s thing.