The following is a guest view by an anonymous commenter who titled it “Will Vanguard Rise Again?”
It bears publishing as a separate post since it points out some interesting parallels between the world Keith Raniere knew as the leader of Nxivm and the world he now knows as federal inmate #57005-177 at the USP Tucson, a federal prison comprised largely of convicted sex offenders.
By Anonymous
Maybe, just maybe, Keith Raniere can be Vanguard again?
Sure, the pool of new students some may consider unsavory or undesirable but with Keith’s passion for humanity and building a better world what better place to continue that pursuit than in United States Penitentiary Tucson?
Since most of his new students aren’t lifers, they could exit the institution as members of SOP (or DOS?). No collateral will be needed from anyone because all of their major, dirty little secrets are public record. Not to mention no one will mind being locked in a room for extended periods of time as it’s the only housing choice available to them.
Same goes for having to maintain an unhealthy diet, there is no other alternative.
Forced and underpaid labor, no objections from anyone there, just a fact of life.
The framework of readiness drills is already worked into the daily prison schedule, a few little tweaks here and there for Vanguard’s preferred readiness requirements to be incorporated and voila, it seems all is right in NXIVM land.
Who could have guessed that this would have all worked out so well?
When you think about it, this place is Keith’s own perfect utopia (sans the unavailability of underage girls) with a population who don’t mind his unconventional lifestyle and could likely benefit from his tech. Let the EMs begin and… Viva NXIVM USP Tucson!
END OF GUEST-VIEW
Editor’s Comment:
While the tone of the article above might be amusing to some and offensive to others, there is a point worthy of consideration: Supposing Keith Raniere has the profound life coaching skills needed to teach others to be more ethical, more joyful, and to be better critical thinkers, could he not ply his skills in a place that houses people who most need these skills? Most of the inmates are sex offenders who will serve out their sentences and return to the outside world.
What if Raniere could be their Vanguard and lead them from darkness to light? He could, if his powers and abilities are true, and he is not just a common grifter and incorrigible sex offender, raise up the entire prison population and perhaps radically change the way prisons operate forever. Could this then not be a truer challenge and opportunity for Vanguard than any he has yet had before?
If he is really as good as his followers claim, then he will have a great and wondrous chance to make Tucson a more noble prison and perhaps revolutionize the way prisons operate throughout America.
On the other hand, if he is as his critics claim, he will just be another prisoner, seeking to get whatever advantages he can from the system, perhaps even cowering and grasping and retreating from life, as it seems most sex offenders naturally do, when their predatory opportunities are taken away.
Here will be the real test of whether it is to be said truly, Viva Executive Success!
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
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Maybe the prison guards can loan him an Atari and he can play his favorite game. Methinks Keith has a thing for pixellated helicopters.
Frank, all kidding aside, was letting “The Followers “ on the Frank Report an experiment, that has gone horribly wrong. They are saying nothing new, just the same old boo hoo’s about Keith and his 120-year prison sentence. They are kinda bringing down the property value here on the Frank Report. I’m not saying Frank, I’m just saying.
“Guest View: Can Keith Still Be ‘Vanguard’ at USP Tucson?” Why would not him? A Man does not depend on his circumstances. Many commentaries are just hate. Do they know the Man behind all the media created? If just part of what was saying were true, will he still be standing?
This is totally unworkable, it lacks three necessary things to succeed:
1. Women, and lots of them;
2. The ability to sleep all day and f*ck women all night; and
3. A steady diet of pizza with hot sauce.
I believe Keith is helping the people he interacts with in prison – he is generous with his insights. I wish I could hear peoples’ stories and impressions of him. I imagine the people in prison are dealing with some difficult things and the bonds and support they can give one another are greatly appreciated.
As is the case for those of us not in prison as well.
Vanguard is a state of mind.
Or a figment of the imagination.
Or a legend in his own mind.
So, yeah! If you live in a fantasy world,
ith a fabricated intellect, made up of athletic ability and superpowers that control the weather and electronics, you can play pretend anywhere.
Just saw a kid being Superman in a dentist’s waiting room. No cape needed.
Keith probably hides inside a make-believe world and sleeps to escape reality.
He is probably van glorious in his head! No sash necessary.
One of two things will happen:
1. Vanguard will thrive in prison, teaching his audience; or
2. He will experience narcissistic crash, and deflate like a basketball.
The latter. Keith is only getting juice from his remaining true believers and his own leftover, inflated ego. He is probably deteriorating at an accelerated rate. If you get your “power” from an outside source, it’s hard to recharge from your own empty soul. His best hope is a lonely, unattractive female prison staffer. Or lots of prison groupie type letter relationships. If he can gain control of their lives, it might empower him. But the complete lack of control in prison is the antithesis of what Keith thrives on.
Doesn’t seem like you know him at all.
Personally, I would love it if Keith could do some good in prison. He certainly is intelligent enough to do so. However, I am doubtful he ever had any good intentions to begin with, in his free life. He might have talked the talk, but when you think about it, he never truly gave to anyone, outside of spouting so-called wisdom, at least as far as I can tell.
I hope I’m wrong. However, it’s apparent he is a by nature a selfish and uncaring individual. I don’t think he would spit on you if you were on fire or throw you a blanket on an icy Albany street – nor dish out a bowl of hot, 700-plus calorie soup for a hungry one. No, he was always snug in his house with a bevy of servants and all bills paid. I don’t care if he tore paper towels in half.
People can be redeemed. But for that, they must understand their wrongs, even if they did not recognize them at the time.
I still do not understand those who hold he did no wrong whatsoever. Pay taxes, anyone?
I never agreed with those who wished Keith harm in prison, or grossly inhumane conditions. I am satisfied that he’s been stopped from doing further damage. I would like to learn, someday, why Karen U’s hair had poison in it. That did not happen magically, nor do I think she did it to herself.
Keith is undeniably intelligent, and I hope he takes his time now to do some serious reading. I think it would benefit him.
This is a sad story. Here you have someone who has the power to command such affection and loyalty. But IMHO it was put to ill use.
Re Keith Raniere Under the Tucson Sun:
Let’s all face it, the rapists and pedophiles will love Kieth Raniere and embrace him with open arms.
Keith teaches two DISTURBING things sex offenders will love to hear:
1.) When women are raped for the first time, they usually experience their first orgasm.
2.) Children enjoy being molested and pedophilia is only wrong and against the law because of prudish Christian culture.
We have to face the fact Keith Raniere will be ‘simpatico’ with his new peers. After all, he teaches a gospel sex offenders will love to hear.
Vanguard will find his place under the Tucson Sun.
It’s like the book Eat, Pray, Love but for Keith Raniere(pedophile).
If Vanguard wanted to accelerate growth, he should have used Zip Recruiter.
You probably want to portray yourself as funny and sarcastic. However, this is an important stage for Mr. Raniere. The media will take over the advertising and show the potential of NXIVM technology.
“While the tone of the article above might be amusing to some and offensive to others, there is a point worthy of consideration: Supposing Keith Raniere has the profound life coaching skills needed to teach others to be more ethical, more joyful, and to be better critical thinkers, could he not ply his skills in a place that houses people who most need these skills? Most of the inmates are sex offenders who will serve out their sentences and return to the outside world”.
You are here avoiding the most important subject of the matter. A person has to want to change. And not everyone wants that. Not all people want freedom, many like to be just as they are. So the ones that want to become better persons will be. It was on one of the videos that were carefully removed, the one in which he states, “We can not help people to achieve what they want, how can we possibly make them do the things they do not want?”
“We can not help people to achieve what they want, how can we possibly make them to do the things they do not want?”
Dear oh dear, ‘We’ don’t all have the brains of a rocking horse.
HAHA! Always with the weewee. And the questions. Silly Nxians, what will they think of next?
Nothing.
“The brains of a rocking horse” made my day. God bless you.
I think it is not relevant if Keith Raniere is seen as a leader or not in prison. In my opinion, all prison mates decide who to follow and there are possible many leaders inside there that are followed and that does not make them a cult leader
I truly question why you, Frank, scrutinize those who continue to follow K, when you are perhaps the strongest follower he has. For years and years you have followed him, waking up every day wondering what he’s doing, made an entire blog dedicated to talking about him and following his every move. You can say you dislike him all you want. But ask yourself, why would anyone he obsessed with someone they despise? You are a follower too.
Great thought Anna. I am following Raniere, insofar as I am reporting on him. Reporters follow stories. My so-called obsession had something to do with his being where he is today serving a life sentence in Tucson.
I continue to follow him because there is more to report, perhaps a lot more. Meantime, last year, Frank Report had more than 4.2 million page views. I appeared in HBO’s The Vow, where I got credit for stopping the branding of women, and in Starz’s Seduced where I got the same credit.
In addition, last year alone, my work was mentioned in some 200 news stories in various media outlets.
So yes, I am following Raniere and I have been obsessed with the story. I think it is instructive as well as entertaining and it may even be historic.
However, there is one thing I cannot agree with you about, Anna. I never said I disliked Raniere. I think he made some tragic mistakes. I think he hurt a lot of people. He has been punished for almost three years now in prison and has 117 years left to go. But while I deplore what he has done, and is still doing, I do not dislike him. We were once friends, and despite the fact that he attacked me, and I retaliated, I cannot bring myself to dislike him.
In fact, I am looking at the claims his followers are making about due process issues at his trial. I have not yet formed an opinion about their claim that he got a fundamentally unfair trial. But if he did, just as I helped put him in prison, I would fight to get him a new trial. For I am also obsessed with due process.
This is funny and true because any real messiah worth his or her salt would use their powers to help the worst of society, and it would be the true test and proof that genius ethics work for those who most need it, those who have nothing in return to give their Vanguard (No money, no status, no leverage).
This would actually be one of the only ways this crazy story could turn itself around… Thousands of prisoners seeing the light and changing their ways, that is an honestly earned metric (unlike having a billionairess sleeping with a monk to get the Dalai Lama’s white sash of approval).
Frank… I have one question throughout all this: At what points (if there were any) were you, Frank Parlato, unsure of what you were doing and if your plan would work? How much of a Hail Mary was this whole case and how much was it a Slam Dunk?
I think I had some kind of inner certitude that the Frank Report would ultimately work. I had surface doubts for a time and I even stopped writing for a time, then Catherine Oxenberg called me and told me about the branding of women with Keith’s initials on the groin, and then I knew I had him. I did not know how, or if this would be criminal, but I knew at least that this would discredit him.
Before then, I had financial issues and minor offenses that were hard to pin down. Who cared if two heiresses allowed some guy to squander $90 million? But branding women was something everyone could imagine and most would understand it was wrong.
I did not know it would be a criminal prosecution, however, but I created a blue print of other crimes I believed Raniere had committed and had hoped it would catch fire from the publicity I thought I could generate from the branding.
You’re equivocating on the terminology of what it means to be a follower.
Raniere has followers in the sense of them being acolytes.
And then he has followers in the sense of them being interested in him as a personality for subjective reasons outside of the former.
Heh heh. Nxians always think they are oh so clever with their word play. They can’t figure out it doesn’t fly outside the cult bubble.
You seem like a very ardent follower, too…commenting everywhere
Rubbish. That’s like saying Tony Ortega is a follower of David Miscaviage.
If Keith Raniere is able to improve the lives of prisoners, or rehabilitate them in some way, I support him in doing so.
So. what is the objective of this post?
Mockery is a kind of hate!! This article is biased and making fun of what is a serious matter.
Seriously, if Keith is a humanitarian, he will touch every place he is at with his values. No wonder.
If he is not, he will choose anger and hate instead. Time will tell.
Even though for the time being the odds are not in Keith´s favor, the game is still not over.
Some great people spent a long time in prison and went back to lead again.
That the justice system is corrupt is claimed by many, even some innocent people, and the question is when and how this wrong system will have the consequences they deserve and the citizens have the honest justice they deserve.
We, as the citizens, must keep on pushing for due process for every citizen.
Keith’s never coming out of prison.
I’m not sure that you understand what happens to people in prison who do not accept responsibility for their actions(like Keith). They become increasingly bitter, vengeful and stuck in their thinking. (That last one you may relate to). They do not go on to be world leaders. Because, like Keith, they weren’t great people to start.
If “The World’s Smartest Man” plays his cards right, he can become the Vanguard to a group in jail. With his massive brains he can even create his own harem, possibly with branding, so he gets his pick of male ass each day.
He can be the top dawg instead of the bottom dawg. I don’t know, maybe the NXIVM 5 can step in and give us their take on which position their genius would prefer.
Anyone who is not too mentally handicapped can see that in 7 months, Flabturd will turn 61. He hasn’t exactly kept his figure, has chunky thighs, a bad back and has been known to have had scabies. Probably only an abuser would want this schmiel for sex any more.
Why would this character bother to con idiots who have nothing left that he wants to steal? His pitches were only for his personal itches.
Really. The pig festival is over for him. From schlemiel to schlimazel and in only a couple of semi-comfortable transports.
Mazel tov to that. I love an indisputable homerun out past the bleachers. Glory hallelujah. Sailing balls!
Discount on aisle LOSER.
“Since most of his new students aren’t lifers, they could exit the institution as members of SOP (or DOS?)” Guest View
One of the fastest-growing religions in America is Islam.
And Islam is focusing on prisons as a fertile ground for new recruits.
The Islamic Prophet Moohammed, Pox Be Upon Him, had around eleven wives simultaneously.
Islam accepts polygamy and sexual slavery.
One of Mohammed’s wives was Ayesha, who married the Prophet when she was six years old. The marriage was consummated when Ayesha was nine years old.
Islam accepts pedophilia.
Keith Raniere and NXIVM’s teachings should find a receptive audience in the US prisons.
Painting Muhammad with Bob Ross | Louder With Crowder
What is the point of this? Didn’t the Biblical prophet Solomon have hundreds of wives and concubines? Religious myths from thousands of years ago are irrelevant.
Solomon supposedly had 700 wives and 300 concubines. None of them were likely permitted to be with other men, though it seems possible they were permitted to fraternize with eunuchs and each other.
Dear Uncle Frank,
If I had to choose between 700 wives or 300 concubines, should I choose the 300 concubines so I don’t have to pay alimony?
Solomon didn’t bang nine-year-old kids.
In the Middle East, people are still dying over these religious quarrels.
As America inevitably deteriorates, these religious divisions will further speed this country back to the 7th Century AD.
And many aspects of NXIVM will appeal to a primitive mindset.
Just ask Mr. Sara Bronfman, aka Baset-Igtet.
to do good does not require a specific place, it requires will, knowledge and people, good challenge
Skills are personal and he can use them wherever Mr. Raniere chooses, if he chooses to use them for good he can surely transform the lives of many of the prisoners in a positive way
Annonymously written stories like this (where nothing in on the line) are lame.
I agree. They seem to just want to provoke people, not really educate folks.