Editor’s note: A reader took exception to Anthony Ames email to Nancy Salzman.
The critic said that Anthony Ames appeared to be a “self-absorbed, wanna-be-superior failure…. All talk and bravado; no actual accomplishments….”
The critic also chided Anthony and his wife, Sarah Edmondson, for leaving too late:
Too bad you didn’t leave when you started seeing the abuses and half starved women. No, you and Sarah Edmondson stayed as long as you were making $$$, bringing suckers in, feeding people what you knew to be lies… until your names were published online as being associated with human branding. Don’t kid yourself. You’re not ethical and you deserve no accolades. Let yourself move through the stages of grief, until your ‘outrage’ finally turns to acceptance of YOUR role in this ongoing disaster.
Following the criticism, a reader wrote to defend Anthony Ames and Sarah Edmondson:
I have known Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Ames longer than most.
Let me assure you that AS SOON AS THEY SAW actual destructive behavior, they were out. They didn’t wait until their names were published to grow a conscience – they always had one.
Once upon a time, they, like me, truly believed in what the company stood for. Yes, it was a closed system of information and, in hindsight, everyone that has left admits they we were ALL duped by Keith.
The commenter who laughs at those that are now standing up for what is ACTUALLY RIGHT is likely a troll who is trying to shift attention elsewhere. Look at what Anthony Ames is saying in his letter. In this post-truth culture, he’s standing up to a company that can shift words and values like no other. Don’t make shit up about what his intention was or is.
In my long experience, SE and AA have good intentions and hearts of gold. They were doing the right thing before (not just to “make money,” but to help individuals actualize themselves – and a lot of us did) and are doing the right thing now to correct it.
That takes courage, which is far harder than anonymously making fun of someone on the internet. In my opinion. 🙂
Anthony Ames and Sarah Edmondson have broken from Keith Raniere. Witnesses have told me that Mr. Ames, upon discovering the blackmail and branding scheme of Keith Raniere, immediately confronted the SOP men and High Rank of ESP – and that he and his wife immediately quit all businesses associated with Keith Raniere.
Sources tell me that Mr. Ames was shocked and outraged and confronted the devilish cult in a very pro-active way.
Sarah Edmondson could not stand by and allow the bullying duo of Keith Raniere and Clare Bronfman to continue intimidating, branding and blackmailing women.
With Sarah’s departure, the entire population of students in Vancouver sought to escape from Keith Raniere.
Raniere responded by having the wicked one, the ghoul Clare Bronfman, spend money to try to criminalize Sarah’s whistle-blowing.
No, this couple does not strike me as being the demons; no, not in this story.
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This so called critic’s argument dissolves into nothingness as soon as they suggest that Sarah and Anthony knew of it and DIDN’T leave as long as they were making money. They were still making money even when this came about.
This argument is verging on straw man and is certainly a fallacy in any respect.
Really, the smartest man in the world should know how to attract intelligent defenders.
The argument is baseless, reaching and worthy of barely a high school debate team. Sorry. Fail.
My two cents.
ESP follows the standard LGAT (large group awareness training) model that Werner Erhard’s “est” made famous in the 1970’s (but he copied from many previous emterprises). The model has been tuned to reliably convince anyone that goes through it that they have made breakthroughs in self-knowledge and power.
Sarah and Anthony had the expected reaction to their first Intensives: “This was wonderful, I am eager to encourage everyone I know to sign up.”
It’s hard to believe that they did not know that Raniere was boffing every attractive young woman that he could get to Albany. But there isn’t much evidence that the sex was not consensual (although not necessarily above the legal age of consent). The “consent” likely involved “brainwashing” but the legal system isn’t equipped to, deal with that. And reasonable people could disagree about the moral or “ethical” issues….
Personally, I can’t blame them much if they made money funneling other people through the entry-levels that had helped them.
“Higher” levels of ESP seem, in my judgment, reverse the usually positive results of the entry level trainings. “Exploration of meaning” sessions “discover” new “issues” faster than they resolve old ones. This is by design, to induce dependency, and thus continue the cash flow.
People like Anthony and Sarah were somewhat naive and/or gullible if they did not realize this was not happening. And they deserve blame if they did realize it but continued enrolling people for personal profit.
There isn’t enough public evidence to make that call.
Whether DOS really was just Allison Mack’s idea, or if Raniere was on board from the start, I can believe that Anthony and Sarah were kept in the dark about the blackmail, slavery, and genital branding of DOS for quite a while. Why tell them?
Of course, the reaction of an adult with actual ethics to revelations about DOS blackmail, slavery, and genital branding is “This isn’t right, you need to stop, right now. And if you don’t, I’m disassociating with you, right now. ”
All available evidence is that Anthony Ames and Sarah Edmondsen did exactly that.
While I don’t think there are any heroes in this mess – just people making up for mistakes they made, at least both of these people are doing the right thing by trying to stop this horrible cult. The sad thing is there’s a lot of other people who recruited many people to join who are doing nothing now. Anyone who brought anyone into the cult should be doing whatever it takes to expose Keith and end the cult. You owe it to the people you brought in. The more people, the bigger a debt you owe. And if you aren’t doing anything about it you are a douchebag.
In some ways I agree. In some ways I disagree. On the one hand, NXIVM is a hidden cult. Such groups hide themselves behind layers, where different people know different amounts of information. What appear to be legitimate businesses are their fronts. This cult purports to be a group about ethics, improving yourself, reaching your potential, executive success, etc., and for the majority of those who decided to partake in it, that is why they most likely chose to do so. They didn’t knowingly choose to engage in any type of destructive behavior.
On the other hand, there is plenty of negative information out there (and has been for a while) on this group by people like Rick Ross who has effectively called out Raniere as a fraud and NXIVM as one of the most destructive cults he’s researched. Knowledge of psychological breakdowns during intensives, his abuse of Toni Natalie and others and his harem goes back at least to 2006 or 2007, since that is when I read up on the group. So there was a lot of red flags already surrounding it, yet people still decided to participate for years and recruit others.
The people who should be held most accountable are those in the inner layers, i.e., the most proactive enablers. They helped him do these things for years. How much they were actually duped, and how much were willing participants, is only truly known to them.
Regardless, Raniere is a parasite, which is ironic. He feeds off the credibility of others in the outer layers to establish himself as credible. But within the group, he’s just a sex addicted man-child who dons a mask of the smartest and most ethical man in the world, and using techniques he’s ripped off from other LGATs, attempts to boil the frog on women he finds attractive and wants to fuck. I don’t believe he finds Clare attractive but she has all the money and so he effectively pity fucks her. He does all of this using ethics, because as the saying goes, it’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.