Keith Raniere vs. Jim Jones: How NXIVM's Vanguard Mirrored the Jonestown Cult Leader

Frank Report had articles ready for publication on NXIVM and Keith Raniere but then he got himself arrested and convicted and sent away for 120 years, plus five years probation.

They are sitting in the draft folder, and there are a lot of demented people with too much time on their hands who still like to read about NXIVM and Raniere - mostly for their own perverse reasons, people like the appropriately named Nutjob and the wholly imappropriately named Nice Guy. Here is one we have sat on since 2023.

Both presented themselves as intelligent, sincere, thoughtful men with benevolent ambitions. The kind of guy people listened to.

Each cultivated the posture of selfless devotion to the people who became devoted to him.

They loved the people.

The Leader existed for you, naturally — which was why you would soon discover that you existed for the Leader.

They wished only to improve humanity.

Raniere called the desired condition "more civilized."

They were going to fix the world.

SUPERNATURAL CREDENTIALS

And, as invariably happens when great men obtain religious authority, each acquired supernatural abilities.

Jim Jones staged faith healings, producing tumors that were actually pieces of chicken offal.

Raniere, by his own account, had the highest IQ ever measured.

Judo champion at 12.

And streetlights blinked, radar detectors went off, and computers crashed when Keith entered the neighborhood.

Followers attached significance to December snowstorms in Albany when Raniere announced what he called "new tech."

The cosmos had subscribed to Executive Success Programs.

Jones encouraged followers to call him "Father" and "Dad."

Raniere selected a grander title.

He was "Vanguard."

Or simply "V."

Both built secret organizations inside their public organizations.

Jones had the Planning Commission.

Raniere had DOS, a master-slave sorority hidden from most NXIVM members until its existence became public.

Both imagined communities beyond the reach of American law enforcement.

Jones achieved it.

He moved nearly 1,000 followers to Guyana and built Jonestown.

Raniere explored similar possibilities in Fiji, Mexico, and elsewhere, but the government got to him first.

DISCIPLINE, DEPRIVATION AND THE PADDLE

Both used punishment and deprivation to improve obedience.

Raniere favored the bare-bottomed paddle.

Both treated sleep as wasteful, replacing it with long hours of work.

Both found that ever-vigilant and not overfed followers could interpret what ordinary people would call deprivation as discipline.

And what the world called exhaustion, they would see as growth.

Women faced food controls to counter their natural disposition to be gluttonous.

Jones controlled rations at Jonestown.

In DOS, women were put on vegetarian diets of 500 to 800 calories a day and were weighed regularly.

Emaciation was ethical development. Hungry meant enlightened.

And both men, for the followers' benefit, held blackmail-worthy material on them to keep them true and good.

Jones obtained blank signatures and fabricated confessions, including admissions of child molestation — documents whose spiritual purpose became obvious if the disciple contemplated leaving the higher atmosphere of Jonestown.

Raniere gave the practice a more businesslike name: "collateral."

It included nude photographs, confessions, property interests, and letters accusing relatives of crimes.

You gave something up**,** so leaving the higher teachings would hurt.

DOS members were branded near the pelvis with a cautery pen.

The design incorporated Raniere's initials.

The Vanguard had achieved what cattlemen discovered centuries earlier. There is a way to know what is yours.

THE BOX AND THE BEDROOM

Both confined people in the name of healthy discipline and improvement.

Even confinement could be renamed as therapy.

Jones had "the box," a sensory-deprivation crate, and the medical-sounding "extended care unit," where troubled followers could get needed sedatives and other worthy drugs.

Raniere kept the young and foolish Daniela, a Mexican woman, one of three sisters he was simultaneously bedding, confined for nearly two years to a bedroom in suburban Clifton Park because she had committed an unforgivable Vanguardian offense:

She had feelings for another man. They may even have exchanged a kiss.

This strictly violated the rule that no Vanguardian woman can ever enjoy anything from another man.

It was so precise and perfect a bond that, as Raniere described it, should another man's semen ever touch one of his harem, it could, through a chain reaction, come back and actually destroy the Vanguard, causing the collapse of the entire NXIVM organization and all of the benefits of the world-saving tech.

The woman who did this foul deed, he taught, would be forever remembered as Judith Iscariot to the Great Master.

For it must always be remembered that sexual access to the leader was beneficial to the follower.

Intercourse with the leader was not indulgence on his part.

It was treatment for you.

Jones told followers he was the only true heterosexual on earth and slept with men and women alike to "help" them.

Raniere told women that sex with him could heal them and attributed special properties to his semen.

What luck for the women that enlightenment required precisely what Keith already wished them to do.

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

Both had influence with public officials.

Jones cultivated relationships with prominent political figures, including George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Rosalynn Carter, and Walter Mondale.

Raniere had the Dalai Lama on a stage in Albany, the Bronfman fortune, and Emiliano Salinas, son of a Mexican president.

Both had divine insight into their sexual partners, and women in those relationships were required to terminate pregnancies.

For only they knew who should come into the world and be born at which precise times.

They wanted the women. They did not always want the babies. Some children survived.

Jones displayed his adopted "rainbow family" as evidence of the Temple's racial ideals.

Raniere created the Rainbow Cultural Garden, where young children were placed with rotating caregivers who spoke different languages as part of an educational experiment.

Infancy itself was redesigned by the world's smartest man.

Both granted their followers the right to offer their own mundane personal bounty to provide spiritual enlightenment for others.

Jones allowed his followers to turn over homes, Social Security income, and savings.

Raniere enjoyed the backing of an extraordinary amount of Bronfman money, while less fortunate adherents could still finance enlightenment through loans and mortgages.

Both, by necessity, surveilled enemies, since there is evil in the world. Especially evil people who left.

Both thwarted former members through litigation and investigation, and prevented them from using their darkness to get ahead.

Raniere employed private investigators and made sterling efforts to obtain financial information about enemies, including judges and journalists.

Both introduced death into the language of love.

Jones rehearsed mass death during "White Nights."

Raniere told intimates that people had been killed in service of his mission.

The language of personal development had finally traveled from the selfish "improve yourself" to the unselfish "perhaps die for me."

In both groups, women held important operational roles.

Carolyn Layton and Maria Katsaris helped run Jonestown.

Nancy Salzman, Clare Bronfman, Lauren Salzman and Allison Mack ran NXIVM and DOS.

WHERE THEY PART WAYS

Resemblance has limits, and the differences are revealing.

Jones drew heavily from poor and working-class communities, including Black followers recruited through churches in Indianapolis and San Francisco's Fillmore district.

Raniere attracted a more affluent, White and educated following, drawn from professional and social circles in Albany, Mexico City, Vancouver, and elsewhere.

Keith got people with degrees.

People with money who went to seminars.

These were people prepared to purchase transcendence.

Jones mixed socialist politics with Christian language and religious authority.

Raniere offered something better suited to the professional class: Ayn Rand with therapeutic elements and scientific backing (for he was a scientist), taught as a "technology" of ethics and billed by the course.

Jones became heavily dependent on drugs, including stimulants and barbiturates, and can be heard slurring on the final recording from Jonestown.

Raniere had an ascetic image and said he did not drink or use drugs.

He conquered one of the hardest-to-accomplish goals. He overcame his own sexual desires.

He discovered something he found even more pleasurable: interfering with other people's happiness.

Jones maintained a public marriage to Marceline.

Raniere had none, and said he was a celibate renunciate while sleeping with dozens of women.

Vanguard's renunciation was unusually active.

Jones's organization was responsible for the killing of U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan.

There is no evidence that Raniere ordered a killing.

Jones's enterprise ended catastrophically in a single day.

Raniere operated by accretion.

His story unfolded over more than two decades: one relationship, one defector, one lawsuit, one coercive arrangement at a time.

HOW IT ENDED

When Jonestown collapsed, Jones ordered his followers to die.

More than 900 people were killed or died, including hundreds of children. Jones himself died from a gunshot wound.

Raniere was different.

After DOS was exposed and the FBI investigation became public, Raniere went to Mexico in October 2017.

Mexican authorities arrested him in March 2018.

He later went to trial. Five of his co-defendants pleaded guilty to NXIVM-connected charges.

Jones died with his followers.

Raniere continued to rely on remaining supporters to fund his legal efforts and proclaim his innocence.

Jones is dead.

Raniere is alive and serving a 120-year federal sentence.

Jones's mission died with him on earth. Raniere’s mission lives on.

And some followers still stand outside the apparent ruins and know Vanguard was right.

He lives.

And therefore so does Vanguardism.