Allison Mack provided the DOJ with an audio of Keith Raniere and her discussing the protocols and rituals of branding. It was a revelatory audio, since it showed clearly that Raniere was lying when he publicly said he had nothing to do with DOS.
By Aristotle’s Sausage
There are two people at fault here in this recording.
Keith Raniere of course for being an arrogant abusive asshole, but also Allison Mack for tolerating and encouraging him and willingly carrying out his orders.
It takes more than one person to make a cult.
The leader needs a bunch of dumbass followers. The only reason Raniere was able to establish and run his criminal racket was thanks to people like Mack, who eagerly did his bidding.
Mack and Raniere had a fucked up relationship. He was the dominant and she was his submissive, that’s plain as day. It’s there on the recording And it’s there in the YouTube video where he presumes to teach her all about acting.
They were both getting exactly what they wanted. He liked bossing people around and being top dog, and she wanted to be told what to do and think. She thought she was stupid, and she was right.
I have no respect for people who let themselves be kicked around. I have even less respect for people who kick other people around when told to do so.
The philosopher Seneca
Seneca defined virtue as having four parts: justice, a moral sense, self control, and courage. The last, courage, tends to be forgotten about these days.
Mack lacked the courage to break free from Raniere. As did all the other weak-willed fools (mostly women) who stuck by him and his cult. Instead of telling him off and leaving, Mack continued to collaborate with Raniere even after it became obvious the man was a monster. Branding women with his initials, for chrissake.
Now turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise….
Keith Raniere compared the brand he authorized to mark on his slaves to those of Abraham Lincoln and Bill Gates. He told Soukie when she asked about the brand, after reading about the brand in the Frank Report, “If it were Abraham Lincoln’s or Bill Gates’ initials no one would care.”
She collaborated. That means she had no sense of morality. She collected blackmail, which means she had no inkling of justice.
Oh, but he “forced” her. He had her collateral.
That’s where courage comes in. She lacked the guts to risk possible embarrassment if he released it. Instead, she continued to victimize other women.
Allison Mack- did she lack the courage to stand up to Keith Raniere?
That’s cowardice. I have no respect.
But, she was a victim! She was gaslighted (gaslit?) Gaslighting has become a popular term lately, which is strange because it derives from an old black and white movie whose plot depends on the cliche of the high strung woman given to bouts of “hysteria”.
Gaslighting is one of those nonsense ideas, like brainwashing or NLP, meant to excuse bad behavior and expunge blame. Nothing’s every anybody’s fault.
And of course, we are in the era of celebrating victimhood.
Pardon me, but I’d rather celebrate courage.
Gaslighting be damned. Mack collaborated. Listening to that recording, I am disgusted.
Raniere specifies the details of his pornographic torture-branding fantasy, and Mack responds “uh-huh… yeah… okay”.
What, “no” isn’t in her vocabulary? She couldn’t say “nope, I’m not going to do that”?
She could have exhibited a little courage. Instead, she fucked over a bunch of other women, women who trusted her, to save herself some potential embarrassment.
This is why I can never see her as a victim.
At any point in this descent into crim inality she could have told Raniere she was done, gotten in her BMW and driven away.
She was never a Daniela, a kid with no money, no papers, no prospects and no way out confined to her room by crazy parents. Daniela was trapped. Mack wasn’t.
In feminist theory, the idea of woman as victim has real validity when applied to women like Daniela. Or the woman with three kids and no job prospects stuck with an abusive drunken brute husband. The theory does not apply to millionaire actresses infatuated with a sleazy con man. Nor to the upper middle class silly fools who devoted themselves to Raniere and his cult.
These aren’t victims. They acted badly and bear full responsibility for what they did.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
The branding has 4 letters: KRAM
“Let he who us without sin cast the first stone.” So Jesus told to his disciples according to the Bible. Lots of irony here, since early Christianity was itself a cult from the Roman perspective, as of course were all other nascent religions. The most religious people can sometimes be the least moral – just look at the Iranian Ayatollahs or the Witchfinder general. The point about this alleged utterance is that none of us are infallible (including the Pope if you’re not catholic!).
I’m not disputing that Allison Mack and others did terrible things, and supported an inherently evil system of exploitation, torture, blackmail and misery imposed on vulnerable young women. However, there can be little doubt that they were ‘brainwashed’ when they did these things, as to a lesser extent were their victims. You only have to look at how the population of Germany ended up overwhelmingly supporting Hitler, and how that is being mirrored in Russia today. Indeed, according to recent reports, Putin is currently building up a whole army of Russian teenagers to embrace his authoritarian fascist ideology based on the Hitler Youth model, and according to reports, there are more of them than in the entire Russian Army (what’s left of it!).
On the micro scale you only have to look at the Milgram and Asch experiments of the 1950s to see how an individual’s behaviour can often be determined by the role they are given, or how group dynamics influences people to accept group decisions and mirror group thinking. On the macro scale there is the pernicious influence of companies like Cambridge Analytica on world politics. It’s comforting to think of ourselves as rational beings that are capable of weighing up right and wrong, and correctly assessing our best course of action. Unfortunately, as Kahneman and others have shown beyond doubt, this is often not the case.
I would agree that ‘gaslighting’ is a term like ‘coercive control’ that has exploded in the media, resulting in a dilution of its true meaning. That is not to say these terms are meaningless or made up, though there is a certain hysteria surrounding their use that has sometimes resulted in their inappropriate application. ‘Gaslighting’ was a great film; though made in a different era when women were viewed as the weaker sex, its eponymous message still holds sway: one dominant person can misrepresent reality to another in order to further their own interests at the other’s expense.
In the specific instance of men ‘brainwashing’ and ‘gaslighting’ women to financially and/or sexually exploit them, there are plenty of real world examples that have been dramatised:
Simon Leviev -‘The Tinder Swindler’
Charles Sobhraj – ‘The Serpent’
Robert Hendy-Freegard – ‘The Puppet Master’
It’s almost certain Keith Raniere (‘The Vanguard’) will not be the last.
Clyne and the Dossier Project would certainly subscribe to the notion that ‘brainwashing’ is a myth, though they are all living proof that it isn’t. Similarly, they have also denigrated the ‘culture of victimhood’ (where women have legitimate concerns regarding misogyny and male abuse), though DOS itself perpetrated just that. So, we need to be careful we don’t fall into the right wing trap of Nicki Clyne Thought. In fairness, Clyne did not come up with all these ideas, but has no doubt embraced them from social media in an attempt to justify her warped belief system, and amplify her appeal to the loonies and misfits who follow her online.
Ultimately, I believe it is a measure of any civilised society to try to understand why people do what they do. Only then can it hope to put in place effective measures to try to prevent the bad stuff from happening. Our collective humanity should be about understanding and forgiveness, just as much as appropriate punishment.
Be careful of quoting scripture (read at least the paragraph before and after the quote). I have explained scripture on more than one occasion at the FR, and I will do so again, since it does fit here, and not just for the OP.
The quote is from John 8. In Mosaic Law, adultery was punishable by death. Witnesses were required; there had to be two, and they had to agree on what they saw.
The Pharisees thought they had Christ. Mosaic Law demanded her death, but only the Romans could execute people. You will notice that the drug out one person and demanded “justice”. Just how many people does it take to commit adultery? And just what were you doing watching them?
Christ wrote two things on the ground; we do not know what. Whatever He wrote, it diffused a blood thirsty crowd. Not an easy task.
There is a great deal of debate on what Christ wrote. One possibility is that he agreed with them, and then reminded them of what Mosaic Law says regarding false accusations. You can find this in Deuteronomy 19:18-19. In a nutshell, if you falsely accuse a woman of adultery, and the punishment is stoning, then you get stoned.
It this is what the Christ wrote, then according to the very law the Pharisees were demanding to be enforced, backfired. The woman would go free, and the crowd would be stoned. And Christ showed them mercy.
Christ got himself nailed to a cross, so I wouldn’t be in any hurry to listen to his advice.
He’s also a fictional character in a book, just like Thor or Harry Potter. Except the Harry Potter books are a lot more entertaining and the Eddas contain better advice.
“He’s also a fictional character in a book”
He’s also a successful cult leader who was the Middle-East judo champion and concert-level pianist.
You do know that you contradicted yourself. Then again your posts rarely make any sense, and are the rants of an angry person.
I’m glad you brought up the example of Hitler and Germany, as it must always be remembered that the German people ELECTED Hitler. He and his policies were quite popular. And no, Adolf Hitler did not somehow brainwash a nation.
Brainwashing makes a fine excuse for people who do terrible things. Problem is, there is no such thing as “brainwashing”
“the CIA and the Defense Department conducted secret research for twenty years, attempting to develop practical brainwashing techniques. The research was a complete failure”
https://www.cesnur.org/2003/smart_anthony.htm
I’m all for forgiveness and understanding. I also believe in justice and personal responsibility, and holding people accountable.
Raniere’s co-conspirators committed these crimes and excesses of their own free will. It couldn’t have been “brainwashing” because 20 years of well-funded academic research has proven that there is no such thing as brainwashing. It’s pure myth.
Were these Nxians influenced by Raniere? Sure. Did he manipulate them and pressure them? Of course he did. But they still had the ability to exercise free will.
There is convincing evidence from academic research that the people who join cults are predisposed that way. https://www.cesnur.org/2003/brain_conv.htm
In other words, cults don’t sweep up you and me off the street and Svengali us into obedient minions.
Or to put it yet another way, people like Mack and Clyne are cut from the same cloth as Raniere. Birds of a feather. Simpatico. Natural allies.
That’s why they ended up in bed together, literally as well as figuratively.
Allison Mack is none of these: insane, stupid or blind.
She’s a sadistic, insecure, narcissist. Raniere saw that in her and used it to his advantage. She saw Raniere’s power and sadism and followed him eagerly because of the sadistic power over others he shared with her.
She only turned on Raniere and pleaded guilty because it served her sadistic narcissistic purposes.
Everyone with a yellow sash and higher in the NXIVM criminal cult deserved one another. They are special in the bad sense of the term. Most people who took one course walked away and never returned.
Stop picking on Allison. If she’s good enough for Nice Guy and Thomas Sekera to get together in the bushes you can see why Keith used her. Think of how bad it was for her. Keith then Sekera then Nice Guy and none of these dicks loved her. Your just mean Aristotle Sausage. Seneca was kind.
Allison got branded too. So she is a victim. She gave collateral.
Allison took collateral too. She’s also a victimizer as well as victim. She hurt others. She’s scum.
Gaslighting is real.
In the movie the term derived from the messing about with the literal gas lights. And denying it. Thus making the woman doubt herself and her reality. She knew she hadn’t turned the lights down… Or had she?
It’s a form of crazy making.
Once worked with an extremely OCD person and watched another employee slowly drive them crazy by ever so slightly moving precisely lined up items just slightly whenever the other employee wasn’t right there and then deny doing it.
There was a nightmare actress. The costume department stayed after hours to take her costume in with microscopic stitches so that slowly over time it became snug on the mean woman.
The actress could be heard screaming, ” I am not eating ANYTHING”. When the actress weighed herself in front of the entire wardrobe department to prove she hadn’t gained an ounce they just shrugged and suggested maybe she was bloated.
The actress left in tears.
Gas Lighting is real.
Otherwise tend to agree with SOME of this post about Allison.
Gas lighting is quite real. If you are tricked into performing a criminal action, you will still go to jail.
this site should be renamed Allison Daily, because out of ten published articles, nine are about her, the fixation is bizarre and disgusting.
People are interested in Allison. Her celebrity, plus her deep involvement in the most astounding idiocy, is interesting. The big mysteries are, was she just insane, stupid or blind – did she really think she was doing good or was she evil like Raniere?
I think she was not evil but fooled. Given that’s true, what lesson can we learn from this? And what is the role of personal responsibility?
But… https://frankreport.com/2022/11/18/kevin-two-greedy-critics-should-be-ashamed-while-danielle-roberts-suffered-the-most/ had 124 comments as of 11/25/22 at 3pm.
I disagree, I only see allison, allison and more allison in the last pages, it seems that she was alone in this scheme, articles like this, do not bring any new information, just repeat what has been said thousands of times before.
Yet you keep reading.
Tough to disagree
I think Allison is stupid and suffers from low self esteem.
These women did not challenge Keith. When he was challenged the coward ran to the bathroom or the closet. The biggest coward I have ever met. He was not capable of even having his position questioned. The sign of a stupid fragile fool. Florence Colorado has a vacancy awaiting him.
It used to be the Kreuk Kronicle. It was better then.
I have to agree Frank. She was fooled, and got played. She is still guilty, of course, and must serve her time. I also agree with the OP. Some folks here are fixated on Allison, and it is not bizarre but is disgusting. Some people like watching train wrecks, and she certainly destroyed her life.
I do not know her (and really do not care to), but I suspect the issue is a spiritual problem. You cannot rely upon your own morality. I doubt she thought much about the situation before her arrest. Hopefully her head is clearing.
I have seen some pretty stupid things, but this one does take the proverbial cake. Never assume malice when stupidity will explain a situation.
Raniere excelled in selecting his victims. His skill as a charlatan is nearly as impressive as his capacity for self-delusion.
Vocal commentators here are very easy to play. Just post something, and wait for it. Just do not expect any Grace or courtesy. They will always have a reason why they are owed, but you are not.
She’s worth nothing but eye candy…that was what she sold people on then….and what still sells now post Keith. Shes just a body.
She speaks for you, she is beautiful and attractive but without a doubt she was not at the level of Erica Durance, what really stood out in her was her charisma, talent and her smile that made her shine like a sun, I honestly think that Allison is one of those people who does not recognize their own inner light and seeks it outside of it.