News just came this week that they arrested Keith Raniere in Mexico City. Keith was the founder and leader of the NXIVM organization which started as a series of self-help seminars attended by people as successful as Richard Branson, a former US Surgeon General, the daughters of Edgar Bronfman Sr., the Seagrams billionaire, two children of Mexican presidents, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, and many more. In 2009, Raniere even sponsored a visit to Albany, New York from the Dalai Lama.

Which made it all the more shocking this week when he was arrested for sex trafficking and it was alleged that former  Smallville star Allison Mack was his second-in-command for luring women into a special branch of his Executive Success Programs (ESP, get it?). In this special “sorority”, there was a hierarchy of women who performed slave labor and sexual acts for their master (Raniere made everyone call him “Vanguard”.)

Who wants to join a sex cult? Superman will be there!

Now, there’s been rumors of NXIVM basically being a cult since at least 2003 with an article in Forbes magazine  and in this episode we go through a newspaper article written by Rick Ross (no, not the rapper!) about the tell-tale signs of a cult and we compare those signs to the reports about what was going on inside the NXIVM organization. Who knew that the real secret to a successful Multi-Level Marketing downline was blackmail? Keith Raniere did!

So what does MKUltra, A Clockwork Orange,  L. Ron Hubbard, The Manchurian Candidate,  and Dionysus have to do with the NXIVM cult? Well, you’ll have to listen to find out!

I’m like the Jesus who brands people…

One of the nastiest stories about the NXIVM cult is how the women thought they would be getting a tattoo when they joined his secret sex organization and instead they were branded. There were also reports of extremely restrictive calorie diets (because the Vanguard liked ’em thin), forced labor, and sick experiments showing women scenes of violence while observing their brainwaves. One of the aspects of a cult is that “you’re never good enough for the leader” and that’s what Raniere was certainly doing to these women.