He is the “Vanguard”, Keith Raniere, and he teaches profound mysteries.
Nancy Salzman is the “Prefect” and she teaches that whenever you disagree with Mr. Raniere, it means you are defiant. It is you who have an ethical breach and it is you who do not understand his higher ethical teachings.
While Ms. Salzman has taught Intensives – five or 16 days of classes, lasting 14 hours per day – Mr. Raniere generally teaches students on a one-on-one basis.
Although Mr. Raniere has never been known to have taught an Intensive, there were times during the early days in Clifton Park, when he would make a stunning, surprise visit in the evening and teach a special class [called a Module].
It was observed that he often dropped in when there was a young women in the Intensive who was especially precocious. A number of these young women became eligible for actual one-on-one sessions with Mr. Raniere.
On one memorable occasion, Mr. Raniere surprised a lucky class and taught about a technique mothers used in famine stricken tribes of Africa to soothe their starving sons.
He told the students that mothers perform oral sex to take their sons’ minds off the pain of hunger.
“What is the difference between the skin on an elbow and the skin on a penis?,” he asked the class. “It is skin. And what’s the difference between a mother giving a child fellatio, a mother soothing her starving children by giving hers sons fellatio. To take their minds away from their hunger and child molestation. Is there really a difference?
“You’re in Africa and he is starving and the only way you can stop your son from crying is to give him oral sex. Are you molesting your child?”
If any woman thought this was wrong, Ms. Salzman would be quick to remind her that it was because the woman was having an ethical breach.
In another class, Mr. Raniere explained that fathers often become sexually attracted to their daughters when they reach their teenage years since they remind the proud papas of their young, nubile mothers.
Mr. Raniere said that there is nothing wrong with a daughter stroking her father’s penis.
Now, many people reading this may be disgusted by such teachings.
But as Mr. Raniere teaches, skin is skin. How is touching someone’s elbow any different than touching a penis. It is, after all, only skin.
There are those, of course, who will not believe this post, but there are those who attended these classes. And there are those to whom he taught these lessons.
Some people will object to the lesson and maintain that the incest taboo is the foundation of culture, one of the few known cultural universals.
These people according to Ms. Salzman have ethical issues.
Some will remember a promotional video of a V- Week made long ago where a young Keith Raniere, after playing tennis, accepts the adoring embrace of 14-year-old Marianna Fernandez. The sweet young child comes running to him like a father and Mr. Raniere embraces her and gives her what could best be described as a lover’s kiss.
When some of the young Mexican men saw it, they were offended and argued with Ms. Salzman about whether such a kiss was appropriate.
One of the Mexican men objected fiercely. “That is not how a 40 year old man kisses a teenage girl,” he said.
Ms. Salzman explained to the man that he had defiance issues and was having an ethical breach. She almost certainly offered to provide him with an EM [Exploration of Meaning] session in order for him to determine where his ethical breach came from and how to cure it.
On multiple occasions I heard these exact same points. This is all a process Keith uses to get women to slowly be open to the kind of relationship he wants to have with them. “Don’t lie/cheat when people think you are” – that comes after you’ve gotten them to buy into your logical, yet outlandish, statements that forced their minds to question prior beliefs. HE DOES EVERYTHING HE TEACHES YOU TO WATCH OUT FOR. If Nancy would only look at it all from that angle, she’d quickly be enlightened and could help end this games he’s concocted.
I have wondered for a long time whether Raniere’s mistreatment of women – and his bizarre sexual needs – might be related to some incest in his own life. I have been told that his parents split up when he was in his early teens – and that, thereafter, he lived alone with his mother. Don’t know if anything inappropriate happened there but that sure would explain a lot of his current psychoses.