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Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of…
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Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM (edizione 2021)

di Sarah Berman (Autore)

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
1256216,987 (3.88)3
Biography & Autobiography. Religion & Spirituality. True Crime. Nonfiction. HTML:They draw you in with the promise of empowerment, self-discovery, women helping women. The more secretive those connections are, the more exclusive you feel. Little did you know, you just joined a cult.
/> Sex trafficking. Self-help coaching. Forced labor. Mentorship. Multi-level marketing. Gaslighting. Investigative journalist Sarah Berman explores the shocking practices of NXIVM, a cult run by Keith Raniere and many enablers. Through the accounts of central NXIVM figures, Berman uncovers how dozens of women seeking creative coaching and networking opportunities instead were blackmailed, literally branded, near-starved, and enslaved. Don't Call It a Cult is a riveting account of NXIVM's rise to power, its ability to evade prosecution for decades, and the investigation that finally revealed its dark secrets to the world.… (altro)
Utente:burritapal
Titolo:Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM
Autori:Sarah Berman (Autore)
Info:Viking (2021), 336 pages
Collezioni:La tua biblioteca, In lettura
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Etichette:to-read

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Don't Call It a Cult di Sarah Berman

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I've watched multiple docuseries about NXIVM, but this book laid out everything Keith Raniere from the beginning, not just focusing on the sex slave DOS group.

Keith Raniere is so much more evil than these docuseries like The Vow show. Berman starts with Raniere's early scams, lays out the aspects of NXIVM that were stolen wholesale from Scientology, and manipulative ways they garner support.

About halfway through the book, a Mexican family is introduced. They have three smart, talented and beautiful teenage daughters and a young son. Raniere grooms them all to be his girlfriend, manipulating them into sex, forcing them to have abortions, and generally controlling their behaviour. He groomed the middle sister, Daniela, for two years until she turned 18, at which point he immediately manipulated her into a sexual relationship. She didn't know that he was doing the same thing to her sisters, including the youngest who was only 15 when Raniere began a sexual relationship with her. Daniela eventually, in her 20s, decided she no longer wanted to one of dozens of girlfriends to Raniere and attempted to leave him. His control over her family was so strong that they went along with locking Daniela in a room with nothing in it, no bed, no furniture, nothing. They did not speak to Daniela and she only saw Lauren Salzman's face for nearly 2 years. Literal serial killers get treated better in prison solitary confinement than Daniela was treated for wanting to break up with Raniere. I could barely contain my fury at these chapters.

I liked this book a lot, it went into a lot of aspects of NXIVM, some I was familiar with and some I wasn't. I actually wish it was longer. ( )
  xaverie | Apr 3, 2023 |
Stories about cults never cease to amaze me. ( )
  BibliophageOnCoffee | Aug 12, 2022 |
A solid, fast-moving account of the bewilderingly strange NXIVM cult, its followers -- some of whom were beautiful, wealthy, and talented -- and Keith Raniere, its shockingly unimpressive leader. Berman, a journalist who covered the story for Vice, describes Rainere as a teenage try-hard who slapped together some shoddy ideas he mostly borrowed from Scientology and some very basic psychological gamesmanship to come up with his own cult. Despite the fact that he was neither physically impressive nor a particularly magnetic personality, he managed to grow this into an organization that swallowed multiple millions of its followers' money and, often as not, years of their lives. In retrospect, it's rather amazing that such a nonentity managed all of this: Rainere seems to have declared himself the smartest man in the world and gone about finding others who'd buy this line of bullhockey. Like Scientology, he seems to have attracted young actors desperate to get ahead and, like many other cults, he drew young heirs who felt guilty about the ultra-privileged lives that they were born into.

The evil that eventually followed seems to have deepened as things went on, however. What started off as a buyers' club Ponzi scheme eventually become a sex cult that involved real physical and sexual abuse, and Rainere's fantasies and ambitions seem to have grown weirder and much more ambitious over time. It's an indisputably good thing that he was stopped when he was. Berman's book is clearly a journalistic account and not a theoretical or forensic take on the cult: it's still difficult to understand why a number of successful actors and other talented professionals agreed to injure others on Rainere's behalf. Despite the crimes the committed, one gets the idea that his followers might have genuinely wanted to make the world a better place. It's a shame that they ever met Rainere, or that they didn't show even a gram of prudence when they did. "Don't Call It A Cult" is a useful document of our time, from an era that seems to be overrun by scammers, conmen and, tragically, a seemingly infinite supply of unsuspecting victims. Recommended. ( )
  TheAmpersand | Jan 9, 2022 |
My TV viewing is usually minimal, sports and nature, history documentaries in the main. So, I knew little of this cult, case nor of the famous people that were involved. I do remember hearing that Raniere received 120 years as the leader. I do, however, have an interest in cults, or rather the psychology of the people who fully embrace this mindset. I think it's doubly important now, as it is my opinion and many others, that a part of our country is now embracing a cultist mindset, believing things that rational people can truly see as lies.

This book and the reporting on this case was well done and informative. Telling the stories of the people involved brought home how insidious the tactics used brought them slowly into a net from which they found not escape. How Raniere used his supposed magnetic personality to convince each woman they were special to him. Branding them with an iron to mark them, unbelievable that this didn't send them running. It would for me. Unbelievable the extent some will go for power over others, and that so many would allow themselves to become victims.

ARC from Edelweiss ( )
  Beamis12 | Aug 2, 2021 |
This is a good piece of true crime that takes on specific acts and events and contextualizes them. It lays out how much of what Keith Raniere did in plain and was sometimes celebrated for simply reflected larger societal views of women's bodies (especially the bodies of young and pretty women) and men's power. (view spoiler) This book does a good deal more than The Vow did to explore Raniere's methods for securing power and money and covers more than the wholly sensationalistic elements of this cult. (I am not immune to the excitement of the sensational, and it is here, but I want more too.) She also writes about events and practices that are worse than what we saw on The Vow, and that set the bar pretty high.

Many questions were not answered of course, and I am not sure they can be. Why did people allow this to happen to them? We do come to understand the brainwashing, which is very similar to that employed by Scientology, especially the tools of building up blackmail material. In Scientology that is done within auditing and in NXIVM less throgh liturgy than thriugh an ongoing series of transactions requiring more damaging info about members and their loved ones simply to move up in the organization. We see that for many (Mark Vicente is the clearest example of this) it was pure vanity -- the desire to be a confidant and advisor to "the smartest man in the world." (Vain and rather dim it must be said. Who calls themselves the smattest man in thr wirld, and who believes them?) But for so many of these people their motivations are still as clear as mud. Someone says tell us your deepest secrets so that if we feel you have moved against us we can blackmail you, actually says that thing, no pretenses, who says yes? Are people that desperate to belong? I guess the answer is yes.

In the end this was fascinating and illuminating. It is not perfect, there is too much editorial in several portions and she raises certain things, particularly about an underage victim, where she does not have real information to share. I think the book Going Clear set the standard for me in covering true crime and cults, and it does not reach that level, in part because as crazy as this is it is not as crazy as the rise of Scientology. Still its pretty great, really engrossing, and a good foundation to think about who we are and how we made NXIVM possible. ( )
  Narshkite | May 9, 2021 |
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Biography & Autobiography. Religion & Spirituality. True Crime. Nonfiction. HTML:They draw you in with the promise of empowerment, self-discovery, women helping women. The more secretive those connections are, the more exclusive you feel. Little did you know, you just joined a cult.
Sex trafficking. Self-help coaching. Forced labor. Mentorship. Multi-level marketing. Gaslighting. Investigative journalist Sarah Berman explores the shocking practices of NXIVM, a cult run by Keith Raniere and many enablers. Through the accounts of central NXIVM figures, Berman uncovers how dozens of women seeking creative coaching and networking opportunities instead were blackmailed, literally branded, near-starved, and enslaved. Don't Call It a Cult is a riveting account of NXIVM's rise to power, its ability to evade prosecution for decades, and the investigation that finally revealed its dark secrets to the world.

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