Shivani: Lauren Salzman Wanted to Be One of the Head Rats, Monsters, Jackasses

By Shivani

Lauren Salzman testified, “It means that anything they want – your goal is to be able to serve them regardless of what it is and… whatever it is, it is just all to serve them, and to do that.”

Assistant US Attorney Tanya Hajjar asked Lauren “and who is ‘them.?’

Lauren answered, “the Master.”

Perhaps Lauren’s use of a plural term, used to signify her Master, indicates that Lauren perceived herself as in servitude to more than only Raniere.  She might never have developed an independent sense of self with Nancy Salzman as her mother.

Some of Lauren’s least guarded testimony came out whenever she was talking about her personal struggles with feeling “lesser than” other women, who were being given more attention by Raniere than she got.

She struggled contending with women as competitors, especially if she perceived the competition as more vivacious than she, as being ones who were receiving more attention or being of more sexual interest to Raniere than she found herself to be.

She cooperated with training herself, no matter what she was experiencing, to blame herself.

This could be the story of Lauren’s life, that she was unable to learn any self-respect or how to think things over for herself, as doing so could mean that she was not staying true to her expected form – as “less than,” – as unworthy – as merely being an accessory to her mother.

On another note, Lauren was assigned to supervise the imprisonment of Daniela for almost two years. Lauren was willing to contribute directly to her imprisonment, and supposedly Lauren was being a dutiful slave herself.

Removing someone’s human rights and freedom for 23 months was one of Lauren’s tasks.

The girl being held in a room was not an American citizen, yet Lauren cooperated with confiscating the girl’s identity papers, passport. The girl was allowed to have a pen and some paper, not much of anything else.

The girl was told to write about how wrong she was and to make a few book reports for Raniere. She couldn’t return to her own country without considerable risk; no money and no identity papers.

But Lauren was well aware of Daniela’s youth, her vulnerabilities, her attractiveness to Raniere as a sexual object and that her prisoner had more liveliness within herself than Lauren ever did.

Lauren does not acknowledge that she herself took grim pleasure in getting someone who was a sexual rival out of the way.

This is one of the fundamental acts of dishonesty Raniere made up to entrap his harem. He was insistent that each person had to deny their own emotions, particularly concerning his sexual interactions and his dominance.

Unless Raniere sanctioned rejecting someone to teach that person “a lesson” – and then everyone was expected to jump on that condemnation and be part of it – otherwise, Raniere insisted that each individual was to blame the self for every “uncooperative” thought, word or action.

Lauren and every DOS first line “slave” lied by omission, concealing that the women’s secret sorority was really commanded not by the women’s fledgling slave-collecting hierarchy, but that Raniere was the only one in charge.

Everyone, while pretending to look for personal integrity or group integrity, was lying to everyone else. This was one of Raniere’s requirements. His subjects had to uphold all of his deceptions, as their sacred truth and duty.

Lauren was completely accustomed to lying for Raniere benefit. She was also lying to herself. She wanted to be one of the head rats, monsters, jackasses. She juggled her own feelings of status vs. not having or feeling any status, and she was on that treadmill constantly, nonstop for twenty years.

She was too caught up in this worthiness/unworthiness to think it over or try to reckon with it.

Lauren takes her self-deception for granted as her reality. She saw herself as a “very high-level” person in Nxivm, one with an “executive” position. She talks in her testimony about having assistants and a housekeeper and refers to cleaning as low-level work.

Yet Lauren’s status and her conceptualizations about her importance see no conflict with regards to her identification as a slave. Lauren Salzman, executive slave and blackmail gatherer. She actually seems to think that she and her associates can be “executive slaves.”

She was satisfied with scraps of prestige, gratified to be completely subservient to Raniere, running around like a chicken with her head cut off, perpetually gauging her own tenuous role.

Was she “better than” this one? Should she act as boss this moment and then act as a slave with her next breath?

It is as though Lauren never developed a capacity for critical thinking.

She was unable to notice that a “confederate” was simply another very stupid Raniere-ized conceptualization.

Lauren talks about “confederates” putting on acts together to deceive others, to get someone to behave according to the will of Raniere and his representatives or as a recruitment trick. Lauren and her associates were fine with lying and deception, as slaves to their supposed higher cause, wherein the means always justified the insanity of accomplishing their ends.

Her plea bargain was not fashioned to say that her mindset was off the deep end and she was guilty of irrationality or living with a disorganized psyche. Lauren received federal charges for her actions, her deeds.

Lauren wanted to be essential to a sadistic monster.

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