By Jeffrey Jay, AKA Mockingbird
This is the fourth in a series that examines the similarities of NXIVM and Scientoloy. We are using the excellent book Scarred: The True Story Of How I Escaped The Cult That Bound My Life by Sarah Edmondson to help illustrate our points.
I recommend reading these posts sequentially.
Part 1 NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged;
Part 2: NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged; 12 Point Mission Statement
Part 3: NXIVM is Scientology Repackaged – by Mockingbird
Collateral
Regarding “collateral,” we have a bit to look at.
“Collateral” in NXIVM is material that can ruin an NXIVM member’s life.
Though more specific to NXIVM subgroup DOS, Keith Raniere also collected it on various NXIVM members unaffiliated with the secret female sorority.
Collateral is material a member gives that is embarrassing, humiliating, and could harm the reputation, career, freedom, and standing in the community of that member.
Collateral is nude photos that show both the genitals and face. A video showing a member confessing to a crime or crimes. A video in which a member says exceptionally negative things about friends and family members that could destroy their relationships if their collateral was released.
The contents of the video confessions were often false and intended to be ruinous to the person who provided the collateral if released.
Many people don’t have a list of secret resentments and crimes that could ruin their lives. Instead, they had to make up collateral so that they could ruin their life if released.
I would NEVER believe any statements in collateral unless entirely separate evidence was sufficient to prove them!
Auditing
Scientology has things that serve the same purpose.
If you get auditing in Scientology, you are encouraged to disclose everything you have ever had any negative feelings about, including your actions and thoughts.
Scientologist John Joseph Travolta demonstrates the e-meter, which is used in auditing.
Scientology in many organizations has auditing sessions videotaped, and the organization permanently hangs onto the video.
Scientology tells members that auditing is confidential under a priest-penitent privilege but routinely violates this agreement with members.
You are encouraged to disclose evil and hidden acts and thoughts through “OW write ups.”
OW stands for “overts and witholds” in Scientology.
Many Scientologists spend many hours writing up OWs and filling folders with them. I am sure I have written hundreds.
The most personal and embarrassing things that one may see qualifying as overts or witholds are written up, and Scientology saves these (usually permanently).
Additionally, auditing can include the disclosure of OWs that may involve hundreds of hours of these disclosures.
Scientology and Dianetics auditing uses hypnosis and extreme pressure on members to find and disclose OWs.
Scientology auditors routinely and repeatedly push a member in auditing to disclose many instances of events that never actually occurred to satisfy a requirement!
This is true in auditing and the OW write-up procedure.
Scientists are often convinced they committed many hidden evil acts in both this life and past lives, which they confess repeatedly.
So, in both the statements made for collateral in NXIVM and the crimes and secrets disclosed in Scientology, I find these “confessions” are of no evidentiary value!
Truth Rundown and Ethical Breaches
Scientology’s The Truth Rundown is possibly the most apparent effort at brainwashing in any cult.
Used almost exclusively for Sea Org members, the Truth Rundown is gaslighting.
A Sea Org member who has fallen out of favor with Scientology leader David Miscavige is sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force, a re-education gulag within the Sea Org.
There, a member must do hard physical labor, eat scraps, run everywhere, be considered a degraded being and usually a suppressive person, and undergo “therapy” sessions in which they are asked for negative acts, remarks, or thoughts they had about or toward Miscavige or other high ranking members of Scientology.
The heart of the Truth Rundown procedure is convincing the person that they have done something evil regarding Miscavige or some other high-ranking Scientologist.
If they saw Miscavige beating a staff member, being cruel or unfair, or having flaws of any kind, that means they had done something evil which made them SEE something that NEVER HAPPENED!
In other words, the procedure relies on the assumption that Miscavige is perfect and infallible in word and deed!
It relies on the assumption that every person who observes Miscavige lying, beating people, committing crimes, and so on has a mental deficiency, a character deficiency, that makes them do evil acts, then hide them, then distort their perception, so they see evil in others where it’s not there, and hide evil in themselves that is there!
Vanguard, Keith Raniere with his Prefect, Nancy Salzman
This is how Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman, and other people in NXIVM, used the “tech.”
Nancy and, most of all Keith must be right. When there is disagreement, criticism, or doubt, the person lower in the organization hierarchy is ALWAYS wrong!
Raniere acted like everyone always had to please him, or it was an ethical “breach.”
But what did Keith do about his ethical breaches? What did Keith do about his constant lying about his credentials, education, and achievements? What did Keith do about the fact that gossip was discouraged, but he made negative remarks about everyone?
What did he do about pretending that people should give up attachments, but he wasn’t the celibate “renunciate” he claimed but had numerous sex partners and lied to many of them about the others?
He lied to the group and often the families of the women and girls he had sex with, and betrayed their trust.
Scientology founder Lafayette Ronald Hubbard also had numerous affairs. In fact, he was legally married to two women simultaneously! He abandoned and betrayed each of his three wives.
He even had one wife, Mary Sue, go to prison for him.
And after he shed himself of Sara, he had her removed from his photographs.
Stay tuned for part 5
For more of the author’s work, see https://mbnest.blogspot.com/
