By AnonyMaker
This is in response to Ain’t Nobody Gonna Worship Legatus, That’s for Damn Sure
A good point was made that NXIVM has lost its charismatic and revered leader, Keith Raniere.
Frank’s piece about Raniere’s hagiography gets to the importance in the dynamics of these types of groups, of having a guru who can be put on a pedestal – and that there aren’t any good candidates to take over the role and keep things going.
There might be [redacted] in one Mexican center.
But my guess is that [redacted]’s more likely to just take any remaining followers in some new direction – and that way he gets to be the leader himself, and doesn’t have to send money “upline.”
That points to another problem that hasn’t been considered with respect to how NXIVM might carry on, if at all.
In other examples, such as Scientology, there’s often long-simmering resentment about upper-level management that seems to be misguided and greedy (typically those around the guru are assumed to be to blame, even though the top figure was actually responsible), and so there may be more of an impetus for remaining die-hards to splinter off.
The remaining, dedicated members are stuck with the problem of trying to rationalize some effort to hang on to the “good”.
Scapegoating the Albany-based headquarters would provide a way to lay blame without questioning the “tech” itself (a similar dynamic is often at work in Scientology splinter groups).
Plus there’s also currently the problem of rights to use NXIVM’s intellectual property, which has been seized by the government.
[The US government has moved to seize First Principles LLC which reputedly owns or controls the Nxivm tech].
I’m not sure how, if at all, that affects things in Mexico. Ultimately, I expect that Clare Bronfman may buy the rights back, unless she undergoes a jailhouse conversion to some other sect, but, as we see here, a scenario that ends up with her in charge is not exactly promising.
Does this remind you of anyone?
https://www.hinduwebsite.com/buzz/ten-signs-of-a-fake-guru.asp
[…] Splinter Groups May Arise Out of Ashes of Nxivm […]
Of course there will be splinter groups. There will also be a core group of NXIVM rising if the federal gov’t doesn’t totally destroy it.
Clare has the means to fund the resurrection and Barbara Bouchey has been quite open about wanting to bring the “best” of NXIVM to the world.
History has taught us this lesson thus this is no great revelation.
By the way, Barb, if you’re reading this, give up your dream of doing so.
Decent folk are sick of anything NXIVM and frankly that includes you. Just slip away into obscurity, please.
Just hearing your name is irritating.
You can be taken as a given that none of the core NXIVM membership made a serious study of any of the great western philosophers and theologians. If they had, they would have seen that Raniere’s ideas were absolute drivel.
Here are a couple of genuinely meaningful quotes from minds much greater than Raniere’s:
“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
– Carl Jung.
“…history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.”
– Paul Tillich.
Well, I’d honestly like to see the ESP technology salvaged and kept available (without all the DOS and sexual stuff).
Do the decent scholarly thing. deconstruct your so called tech to its constituent parts. It’s all plagiarised so you should have no trouble finding primary sources. For all of it. In a public Library.
In this day and age, if you have a friend on the faculty of any college, they could run it through plagiarism check software – that way you’d have a report you could use as a handy book list.
There is a proverb which recommends not drinking milk that has been touched by the lips of a serpent.
A profoundly sensible piece of advice!
Give up that dream. The same folks will be involved in some fashion and wheedle their way back into power.
Leopards do not change their spots.
Buy a Dale Carnegie book instead.
People in the area want no more of NXIVM, ESP, etc or these people.
Girls By Design remains GBD but becomes Girls Bondage & Discipline—that was the plan all along.
One thinks of the Mormon church after the murder of its Prophet Joseph Smith in 1844.
The Mormons split into numerous sects, the most powerful of which was the sect that was led by Brigham Young and basically created Utah as a semi-theocracy.
Can anyone imagine the Salzmans and Nicki Clyne inhabiting the same branch of NXIVM after the recent trial?
The real dominant branch of NXIVM will be the people financed by the Mexican elite and the Bronfmans.
See, you get it.
Clare, and Sara, have nothing but $$$$.
So far it has bought others. But, there are those who cannot be bought.
Clare will soon find that out.
I would suspect the Mexican part of this will survive due to sexual slavery.
We do not protect our ypung especially young girls. The Epsteins of the world are many.
I never attended a nxivm class.
But there is room for a non-charasmatic, intellectual, non-predatory type of organization that currently does not exist to spawn ideas and empower.
Not saying its nxivm. Saying a void for a new organization exists.
There’s probably already more than one such organization, that just isn’t on our radar. Remaining members who still have a void to fill, will tend to be pulled away by something that is, for them, new – we’ve seen how Vicente, for instance, cult-hopped from Ramtha to Raniere before finally seeming to wise up about such gurus and their groups. It will be interesting when reports start to trickle in about just what former NXIVM members have found to occupy themselves.
The typical path for splinter groups to form is hampered by the legal problems faced by the prime candidates for leading one, and surrounding the rights to the materials themselves. If it weren’t for that, I would have expected Nancy Salzman to try something based on the lines of providing EM sessions, and classes or intensives put together in a new enough way to be safe from intellectual property challenges (though litigous groups tend to sue anyway, and in this case it might be in the persona of Clare Bronfman if she buys the rights), but I doubt she could pull it off at this point.
Anonymaker, I agree.
But I dont think the material is necessary. I have never seen it, and who knows who owns it now.
I mean a fresh start. Legitimate. Free of mind control. Free of NDAs and trademarks.
Powerful group think.
It can be done legitimately.
My perspective is that Ericksonian hypnosis and the NLP developed out of it, tend to be inherently manipulative tools especially when used in group settings, so I have trouble imagining someone really making something truly positive and beneficial out of them, much less anyone in the crowd that started off with MLMs like CBI and then went down the ESP/NXIVM rathole. Nancy Salzman seems to have some talents and skills that could be used for good, but from accounts she has a rather manipulative bent, so while I think that she might have what it would have taken to salvage something better from NXIVM and keep some of the followers, I wouldn’t expect it to be free of some level excess control and other cult-like elements.
I’d look to someone who was involved with ESP/NXIVM early on, and then left because of philosophical and ethical disagreements with what was being done. But if there was someone like that interested and able to create a more positively oriented group, they’d have already done so. As I think we’re seeing on multiple levels, anyone who got deeply involved in NXIVM is fundamentally compromised.
The most positive take on NLP that I’m aware of is the work of Steve and Connirae Andreas, including the books Heart of the Mind and Core Transformation Process – and I actually worked with them briefly. But they never exactly formed a community that I’m aware of, and their group training work is pretty low key, which may be telling in and of itself.
If you have some take on what might be done “legitimately,” I’d be interested to see you outline it at least briefly.
Yet it always winds up the same.
Power corrupts.
If you want self realization look within yourself.
Splinter groups ALWAYS arise from troubled cults.