Chapter 136. High Control in the Twenty-First Century and the Counter-Movement: NXIVM, Rajneeshpuram, the Anti-Cult Movement and Deprogramming

This final chapter of the part brings the story to the present and turns to the response to cults: parents’ associations, deprogrammers, exit counsellors, courts, and the scholars who opposed them all. On the “cult” side the cases include a self-help company (NXIVM), a guru commune in county politics (Rajneeshpuram), a therapy commune, prosperity-gospel churches, QAnon and multi-level marketing. On the response side, coercive deprogramming gave way to voluntary exit counselling, the Cult Awareness Network was destroyed in court, and civil-liberties critics turned on the anti-cult movement itself. The chapter ends with the Keshe Foundation’s own statements about religion and “cults,” and with its accounts of its opponents.

NXIVM: “Vanguard,” DOS and collateral

Jim Willis’s account sets out how the company was built. Its Executive Success Program began in 1998 with “a five-day intensive workshop that cost … $2,700,” and it “attracted more than 16,000 people over a five-year period” to study “rational inquiry.” “Raniere was called ‘Vanguard,’ and anyone greeting him had to kiss him on the mouth.” Critics were labelled “suppressives” and “Luciferians.” In 2017 Raniere created DOS (Willis renders it “Dominus Obsequious Sororium,” “Lord over the obedient female companions”). DOS was “a classic pyramid-scheme style” hierarchy of “masters” and “slaves,” with Raniere secretly at the top. Recruits had to give “collateral,” “everything from nude photographs to damaging gossip.” The actress Sarah Edmondson described being blindfolded, held down and told to say “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor.” Willis reports that a Brooklyn jury convicted Raniere of “racketeering, sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy,” that Allison Mack and Clare Bronfman pleaded guilty, and that Raniere is “serving a 120-year sentence.” He adds that the Dalai Lama “visited the cult in Albany in 2009 and gave it his recommendation” [Willis, American Cults, #63203, “Keith Raniere and NXIVM”].

The reference shelf dates the conviction to 19 June 2019. It records that DOS women “were branded, made to record false confessions, and made to provide nude photographs for blackmail purposes,” and that Raniere has continued “to direct a small set of loyal members from his prison cell.” It also notes a link with the anti-cult movement discussed below. In NXIVM Corp. v. Ross Institute (2003), NXIVM sued the cult investigator Rick Alan Ross for publishing a psychiatrist’s assessment of its manual as “expensive brainwashing.” The courts held Ross’s criticism to be fair use [Wikipedia: NXIVM]. The conspiracy literature took the case up quickly. Majestic Messages of Disclosure writes of “violations that Allison Mack and Keith Raniere (Vanguard) were guilty of sex trafficking of Children” [Majestic Messages of Disclosure, #66594]. Fiona Barnett’s Eyes Wide Open has a section headed “NXIVM = MK-ULTRA” and alleges links to leading politicians [Barnett, Eyes Wide Open, #68782]. These are the authors’ own readings and go beyond the trial record.

Rajneeshpuram: a commune in county politics

Rajneeshpuram shows a religious commune entering electoral politics. According to Ross, Rajneesh moved “almost seven thousand” disciples to a ranch near The Dalles in 1981, and they “effectively took over the nearby small town of Antelope.” “Hoping to exercise more political power in the region, the Rajneeshies planned to take over Wasco County judgeships and the sheriff’s office.” In Ross’s account the 1984 salmonella poisoning “was part of an organized effort to incapacitate voters,” a “preliminary test” before a planned attack on the water supply. Rajneesh was later “fined $400,000 for immigration fraud and deported” [Ross, Cults Inside Out, #62875, ch. 1]. Lax adds the electoral mechanics: the group bussed in “thousands of homeless people from around the country to vote for their chosen candidates” and poisoned “10 salad bars,” leaving 751 people ill [Lax, Toxin, #34188, “Deviant biology”]. Willis treats the episode under “Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: Coming to America” [Willis, #63203].

Willis’s wider catalogue

Willis widens the category well beyond religion. In his account the Sullivanians (late 1950s to early 1990s) were a Manhattan psychotherapy commune of some 500 people where “therapists and patients slept together regularly,” a “communal bulletin board advertised who the next sexual partners would be,” and children were sent to boarding schools [Willis, #63203, “Sullivanians”]. His catalogue also covers Jane Whaley’s prosperity-gospel Word of Faith Fellowship, Westboro Baptist Church, Roch Thériault’s Ant Hill Kids, the Nuwaubians and QAnon (“a mysterious, cult-like internet presence”). He extends it to multi-level marketing (“Pyramids, Ponzis, and Profits”), “The Dogma of Politics” and “The Cult of Scientism” [Willis, #63203]. His conclusion turns the question round: “Most major world religions began as cults … at the root of every major tradition lies an original cult.” If so, “virtually every human organization is, to at least some degree, a cult,” and the real question becomes “What’s Ahead for Individual Freedom?” [Willis, #63203, “Conclusions”].

Deprogramming: Ted Patrick and the courts

Ross wrote the history of cult intervention from inside it. “Ted Patrick was the first cult deprogrammer, and he originated the term deprogramming in the early 1970s.” Patrick had infiltrated the Children of God in 1971 after the group tried to recruit his son. He compared his method to jump-starting a car: “Once we get the mind working, we keep it working long enough so that the person gets in the habit of thinking and making decisions again.” “Eventually others copied or adapted Patrick’s method … across the United States.” Ross quotes Margaret Singer’s definition: “Deprogramming is providing members with information about the cult and showing them how their own decision-making power had been taken away from them.” Ross also records the legal costs. Court-ordered conservatorships (“kidnapping by court order”) were ruled unconstitutional. Patrick was “repeatedly arrested, criminally prosecuted, and imprisoned on kidnapping charges” and sued “two dozen times.” The deprogrammer Galen Kelly was convicted in 1992 after seizing the wrong person, though the conviction was overturned on appeal [Ross, #62875, ch. 6 “History of Cult-Intervention Work”]. The reference shelf adds that Patrick was “charged at least thirteen times and convicted at least three times,” including a 1980 conviction in which a Tucson family had paid him $7,500 [Wikipedia: Anti-cult movement].

From deprogramming to exit counselling

Steven Hassan, whom Ross describes as a “former cult deprogrammer,” draws the line clearly. Families “think the only available option is ‘deprogramming,’ without knowing that deprogramming involves forcible a[bduction].” Hassan offers voluntary exit counselling instead, and he warns readers that “most cult groups fear exit-counseling” [Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control, #64506, ch. 7 “Exit-Counseling: Freedom Without Coercion”]. Ross records the change of names that followed: “exit counselor,” “thought-reform consultant,” and his own preferred “cult-intervention specialist.” He quotes Conway and Siegelman: “the precarious deprogramming profession was largely eclipsed by … the new generation of cult ‘exit counselors'” [Ross, #62875, ch. 6].

The word “deprogramming” has since spread into self-help. Richard Grannon applies “the process of deprogramming the cult-style brainwashing” to narcissistic relationships, whether with “a parent, a partner, a boss,” and calls such a relationship “a cult of one” [Grannon, A Cult of One, #63179]. The anonymous Unbrainwashing Yourself extends the frame to politics and business. It cites De Beers “effectively monopolizing” the diamond trade and warns that cults “assert control over even the non-moral parts of your life,” giving the Yilishen Tianxi Group as an example of one “primarily interested in your money” [Unbrainwashing Yourself, #62457, “Politics”; “Relationships”].

The fall of the Cult Awareness Network

The reference shelf traces the institutional line from FREECOG (1971) through the Citizens Freedom Foundation to the Cult Awareness Network (1984). In 1996 CAN “was sued for its involvement in the deprogramming of a member of the United Pentecostal Church International named Jason Scott … this bankrupted the organization. A group which included a number of Scientologists purchased the ‘Cult Awareness Network’ name and formed the ‘New Cult Awareness Network'” [Wikipedia: Anti-cult movement]. Ross gives the view from inside. In 1991 he took part in the failed attempt to deprogram Scott and was acquitted at the criminal trial. After that, “Kendrick Moxon, a lawyer closely associated with Scientology, reportedly recommended to Scott that he file a civil lawsuit,” which produced a judgment of almost $3 million. Scott later said, “I was naïve. I just kind of rode the waves of what they wanted me to do” [Ross, #62875, ch. 6]. A 1990s internet protest file preserved by Jerry Staton urges readers to “keep in mind what Scientology is doing to the largest cult information organization in the United States, which is the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Scientology has sued them 44 times and has driven them into bankruptcy” [Staton, Hollywood, Satanism, Scientology and Suicide, #71559].

The critics of the critics

The anti-cult movement has its own critics. The reference shelf records that “human-rights organizations (including the ACLU and Human Rights Watch) have criticized deprogramming.” NRM sociologists coined “atrocity tales” for apostates’ narratives, and Jeffrey Hadden attributed to secular opposition “the unannounced goal of disabling or destroying new religious movements.” France’s MIVILUDES was criticised for criteria that “could be applied to almost all religions” [Wikipedia: Anti-cult movement]. Ross replies that such scholars defended Aum Shinrikyo, and that the Solar Temple and Heaven’s Gate killed themselves although no one was “persecuting” them [Ross, #62875, chs. 1-2].

A fringe literature built on the brainwashing debate claims vast state programmes of “trauma-based mind control.” Cathy O’Brien’s Trance Formation of America claims she was a victim of “MK-Ultra Project Monarch trauma-based mind control” and asserts that psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West “had worked for the CIA in Project MK Ultra” [O’Brien, Trance Formation of America, #72019]. This is the same West whom Ross cites as an expert on Heaven’s Gate. Lebreton presents MK-Ultra as a tool of a “Nameless Religion” [Lebreton, MK ULTRA: Ritual Abuse & Mind Control, #84346], and Jim Keith collects such cases [Keith, Mind Control, World Control, #61941]. These are the authors’ claims. Dimsdale describes what is documented: CIA-funded LSD experiments, Frank Olson’s death, and Ewen Cameron “drugging, shocking, and brainwashing patients.” In his account these programmes produced litigation instead of a usable weapon, and he traces brainwashing’s “beleaguered persistence” into the era of social media [Dimsdale, Dark Persuasion, #62993, Parts I and III].

The Keshe Foundation on religion, cults and its opponents

The Knowledge Seekers Workshops address the same debate from inside a new movement, and their claims are attributed here to Keshe. In KSW 303 he predicts that “with the flick of a finger there shall be no Vatican, Mecca, or Jerusalem,” because “man stopped worshipping stones and statues,” and true worship moves into an inner temple of the “Soul of the Man” [Keshe, KSW 303, #378015]. In KSW 403 he says that “if we are all Messiahs and we all teach the knowledge, … there is no more need for temples, no more need for Mosques, and … churche[s].” The session index summarises it as “We do not imprison soul, religions frighten man from God” [Keshe, KSW 403, #378115]. KSW 357 argues that the Foundation must not become a rigid religious organisation like Christianity or Islam [Keshe, KSW 357, #378069, “Critique of Religious Structures”]. KSW 477 is explicit: “We don’t create a cult. We are not a religion. We are a scientific organization … it’s your home. It’s a home of knowledge” [Keshe, KSW 477, #378189].

Keshe also describes his opponents in terms that recall those of other new movements. In KSW 338 (23 July 2020), after a female staff member left, he warned that a group calling itself “sisters” was “a group of satanic” who had “infiltrated right at the top” and “brought a lot of damage to KF.” He called it “a highly organized satanic organization” and told men to protect their wives and bank accounts [Keshe, KSW 338, #378050, “Caroline and Satanic Cult ‘Seven Sisters'”]. In KSW 450 he says that, since certain people left, “we don’t see much of the pedophiles in the KF. We got rid of the root” [Keshe, KSW 450, #378162]. In KSW 303 he makes grave criminal allegations against a former associate, Alan Sterling, and against the “Red Circle” [Keshe, KSW 303, #378015]. The transcripts present these as Keshe’s own statements and cite no supporting documents. Ross describes cult leaders who claim they are “persecuted,” and NXIVM labelled defectors “suppressives” and “Luciferians.” Keshe likewise frames defection and opposition as infiltration by hostile forces, even as he denies that his foundation is a cult.

Key points

• Willis records NXIVM as a self-help pyramid (“Vanguard,” DOS, branding, “collateral”) that ended in Raniere’s 2019 racketeering and sex-trafficking conviction and 120-year sentence. Conspiracy writers later recast it as an MK-Ultra or trafficking network [Willis, #63203; Wikipedia: NXIVM; Majestic Messages of Disclosure, #66594; Barnett, #68782].
• Rajneeshpuram is the clearest case of a commune entering electoral politics. In Ross’s and Lax’s accounts the 1984 salmonella attack was meant to suppress voters in Wasco County [Ross, #62875; Lax, #34188].
• Ross calls Ted Patrick “the first cult deprogrammer.” Coercive deprogramming produced repeated prosecutions and was replaced by voluntary exit counselling, which Hassan argues “most cult groups fear” [Ross, #62875; Hassan, #64506].
• The reference shelf and Ross record that the Jason Scott litigation bankrupted the Cult Awareness Network in 1996 and that its name passed to a group including Scientologists [Wikipedia: Anti-cult movement; Ross, #62875].
• Critics, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and NRM sociologists, charge the anti-cult movement with violating religious liberty. Willis asks whether “every organization” is a cult [Wikipedia: Anti-cult movement; Willis, #63203].
• The fringe mind-control literature (O’Brien, Lebreton, Keith) builds on documented CIA programmes that Dimsdale describes, but its claims go far beyond his record [O’Brien, #72019; Lebreton, #84346; Keith, #61941; Dimsdale, #62993].
• Keshe declares that his foundation is “not a cult” and that temples, mosques and churches will become unnecessary. He also describes his opponents as “satanic” infiltrators, a pattern seen in other new movements [Keshe, #378015; #378115; #378189; #378050; #378162].