Talk about differing views. In 2010, Susan Dones warned everyone that NXIVM was dangerous.
In 2018, months after the FBI arrested Keith Alan Raniere, he sought bail. His lawyer Marc Agnfilo presented a different view of NXIVM than Dones. No doubt this view was informed by Raniere and his followers’ ideas.
Agnifilo presented this view to Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis to get the Vanguard out on bail. It did not work. Garaufis felt Raniere was dangerous to the community and that he might fly the coup.
But it is interesting to see Raniere and his loyal followers’ view of themselves. Or at least the idea they pretended to have to persuade the judge to set their Vanguard free.
By Marc Agnifilo
The Teachings of Keith Raniere and Nxivm
The work Keith Raniere and others, many of whom are his co-defendants, have done is a source of great pride. Executive Success Programs (“ESP”) was founded in 1998 by Mr. Raniere and Nancy Salzman, the predecessor to Nxivm which was founded in 2003.
The company is a for-profit business entity that sells professional success training programs. The programs Nxivm offers include, among others, ethics, logical analysis, and problem-solving skills based on a patent-pending system called Rational Inquiry.
Rational Inquiry is a complex, essential concept to the Nxivm teachings. However, in the simplest terms, it is the Socratic Method of pointed questioning. As any law student knows, a law professor may call upon him or her during a lesson and ask well-placed questions to determine what the student believes about a certain topic and where, if anywhere, that belief comes from.
What the law professor does in a law school classroom, Nxivm does elsewhere regarding how we view ourselves, form relationships, and make decisions for ourselves and others.
Just as Socrates challenged the young people of Athens to question sacrosanct beliefs of (1) the time, and indeed was executed for his disruption of a closed-minded system of government, Nxivm challenges participants to question, rather than blindly accept, the fundamental content of their lives.
Socrates — you’re no Keith Raniere….
Why, for example, are we practicing the religion we are? Do we really believe its precepts or is it just easier to not disappoint our parents? Do we have the relationships with our parents or our children that we really want? If not, why not? What can we do to have better relationships with the people we love?
Nxivm challenges people to ask these questions and challenge one’s own limiting beliefs that prevent attaining one’s goals. The fundamental premise is that people are not made happy or fulfilled by material items. We are not happier because of a car or a house. Rather, we are happier when we have thought through the true content of our lives and have made a plan to improve ourselves and our relationships by thinking deeply about them, rather than taking them for granted. Nxivm provides its students with effective tools to achieve success and greater happiness.
Two hundred years ago, these may have been some of the questions taken up by traditional religion or by students of philosophy. However, as mankind has generally become untethered from (2) religion in favor of a version of spiritual and intellectual freedom, many people find value and content in developing a system of thought and belief through which to address these eternal questions.
An overriding theme of Nxivm is that we strive to be part of something larger than we are. That something is humanity. We participate in the progress or lack of progress of humanity in each of our choices.
Another important premise of Nxivm is that each of us harbor emotional associations with different events or triggers. Some of these experiences are positive; others are decidedly negative. If we can free ourselves of the negative ones—the ones that restrain our decision-making — we can be more free and happier…
Nxivm is interesting to certain people because it challenges their existing belief systems, and even what it means to believe something. The valuable intellectual property of Rational Inquiry includes the technology, methods, procedures, discoveries, understandings, course-work, coaching materials and other aspects of a highly developed body of knowledge memorialized, in part, in written materials that Nxivm has developed over many years and which it is continuing to refine.
Intelligent, successful executives, politicians, actors and actresses agree to pay Nxivm for its training services, and decide to continue such training, precisely because of the company’s well-developed methods and the confidential and proprietary information it has developed. …
One of the intelligent actors who bought into the brilliance that is NXIVM was Allison Mack. Art by MK10Art.
In an attempt to show Judge Garaufis how wise and philosophical the grandmaster Raniere was, a footnote on the bail application offered the following
(2) The European existential philosophers saw this problem coming. Soren Kierkegaard, a devout Christian, heralded religion and the “knight of faith” as the bulwark against meaninglessness and internal suffering; the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre studied the condition of man, alone in the absence of an involved God; Frederich Nietzsche famously said “god is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves?” Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, The Gay Science at p. 125 (1974)…“
Eat your heart out Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Shopenhauer, Spinoza, Emeson, Thoreau, and the rest of the rabble. As Nancy Salzman said – Rational Inquiry is the greatest invention since man invented writing. And she and others explained that Raniere’s IQ of 240 was higher than Albert Einstein’s IQ.
A final note on the author, Marc Agnifilo.
Keep in mind that Agnifilo is an attorney. It was his job to represent Raniere and advocate for him. Remember Clare Bronfman set up a trust with about $12 million to pay lawyers.
The trust paid Agnifilo and the other 20 or more lawyers who represented NXIVM members.
The government charged six defendants. There were several dozen others who the DOJ might have charged who got Bronfman lawyers. I estimate Agnifilo billed $3 million over the three years he represented the lordly one. So if his work is good, Bronfman paid for it. It was not forced labor.
