Cult Deprogrammer Rick Alan Ross On NXIVM, QAnon, and What Makes Us Vulnerable

Community as we know it is in a state of decline. People today have fewer friendships than ever, they are lonelier than ever, and religious participation is at an all-time low, with 23% of people in the US declaring themselves as having no religion. Technology has played a big role in this decline in community, with most people preferring to sink into the internet instead of strengthening physical bonds. And with such a gaping hole in our lives, cults are filling the void. Joining us to discuss what's happening is Rick Alan Ross, the world's preeminent authority on cults and head of the Cult Education Institute. He recently appeared on HBO's The Vow, which examined NXIVM, a self-help organization-turned-sex cult. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Community as we know it is in a state of decline. People today have fewer friendships than ever, they are lonelier than ever, and religious participation is at an all-time low, with 23% of people in the US declaring themselves as having no religion. Technology has played a big role in this decline in community, with people preferring to sink into the internet instead of strengthening physical bonds. And with such a gaping hole in people's lives, something has to fill the void. We're going to explore that today. Joining us to discuss what's happening is Rick Allen Ross, an expert on cults. Ross is the head of the Cult Education Institute.

• 1:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  He recently appeared on HBO's The Vow, which examines NXIVM, a self-help organization turned into something of a sex cult, and is the world's preeminent authority in this area.

• 2:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rick, welcome to the show.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you, Alex. Nice to join you.

• 2:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's great to have you on. I saw you in the vow and said, we gotta get this guy on the show. So I really appreciate you coming on. And when I first called you to talk about this possibility, one thing I suggested to you in that initial call was that, you know, technology in some way was playing a role in the decline of community and that might have led, given some oxygen to cults to step in where community is failing in the US and in the world. And you immediately said, oh, yes, that plays a big role. And so just to start off, I'd love if you'd be able to unpack that a little bit for us. Can you share a little bit in terms of, you know, what's going on with

• 2:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  community these days? How is technology impacting that? And then where do cults fit in the picture?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Well, all of us are involved in social media. We keep in touch with friends through Facebook. We follow people on Twitter and, and we, you know, we talk to people on Skype and, and we do FaceTime. I mean, we don't really meet people face to face as much as we communicate online and we, and people may date online and of course shop online, pay their bills online. You can do all of this from your home. And so what, how groups called cults have adapted to this is that they

• 3:38Speaker 01

  realize now that it's much more cost effective and, and much more utilitarian to approach people via the internet online than it is to recruit face to face. So they have, have established their presence online through social media platforms like YouTube where they play their videos to indoctrinate people through their Facebook pages and on Twitter, and they even collect donations through PayPal. So what we see Now are people joining online groups called cults without ever meeting anyone face to face,

• 4:19Speaker 01

  becoming indoctrinated online, which we also saw through the radicalization process, through groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda who recruited online. And now what we see increasingly are cults recruiting online, reaching people through a smartphone or any electronic device.

• 4:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  So they're meeting people where they are. And then there's also the consequence of what the technology is doing to folks. I feel like, you know, I said a little bit in the intro, but it seems like, you know, people are gravitating towards online communities instead of in-person or physical communities. And of course, COVID makes that, you know, a little bit more difficult to be in the physical realm these days. But I'm just curious from your perspective, it looks like, you know, having watched a few of these documentaries and read about people gravitating towards cults, there's always a void that they're trying to fill. And I wonder if you think the decline of, you know, in-person physical community in the world today has played any role in the appeal of cults in general. And then we can get into the recruiting tactics.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think you've hit on something that is very apparent. I think that the nuclear family has deteriorated. The divorce rate is certainly substantial. There are single-parent households. There are parents that both work and are not home with their kids. And people grow up feeling somewhat socially isolated. And I think when you see people interacting through their smartphones and not really meeting people in person, you become isolated and you feel perhaps more vulnerable.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  What I see is a consistent thread that pulls through so many narratives of people that become involved in cults. Is that they're going through a difficult time in their life and they need something. Uh, they may have had a recent breakup with a, a romantic relationship. They may have lost a parent, someone close to them. They're not doing well at work, at school. Something is going wrong. They're not feeling really right, really happy. And then they have the bad luck to have somebody approach them who is involved in a group that could be called a cult. And frequently, the people that approach you are someone, is, is someone that you know.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  It would be a, a perhaps a family member, a friend, a, a coworker, someone at school. And or when they might, they might email, email you about a particular group and point you to a link that you can then hook up with that group. And if you're at a vulnerable time, you're more likely to appreciate that and accept that. And of course, that initial introduction is done by someone who's probably a true believer, caught up in the group. Uh, himself or herself. And, and really they're not disclosing to you the full agenda of the group or telling you everything you need to know to make an informed decision. Their main goal is just to get you through the door.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  And if you're at a vulnerable time, you may acquiesce and think, well, this could be a good thing. It could be helpful to me.

• 7:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Rick, you, you've said a couple of times what we could call a cult. I think that's a good opening for me to say, all right, well, let's define the term. Uh, and, um, it's an interesting way to put it. You know, I'm saying cults, you're saying what we could call a cult. So why a little bit of the hedge there?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Well, because I have a very narrow definition of a destructive cult. Uh, I acknowledge that there could be, for example, a benign cult. Uh, and many of the groups that are labeled as cults, in my opinion, are not cults. So I would, I would provide this as the nucleus for a definition of a destructive cult. And I write about this in my book, Cults Inside Out, that has an entire chapter to define a, a destructive cult. I, I see there, I see it as having three core characteristics. One, a totalitarian leader who becomes an object of worship, who's the defining element and driving force of the group.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Whatever the leader says is right is right, whatever he or she says is wrong is wrong. And, and you cannot question the leader. Second, that that leader uses what can be seen as a thought reform program, which would be, you know, a synthesis of coercive persuasion and influence techniques to gain undue influence over his or her followers. And then finally, if the group is a destructive cult, that group in by varying degrees, you know, on a continuum for, let's say some groups are not as bad as others. Uh, that group exploits and does harm to the people that are involved.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  So you take those three core characteristics together. Uh, the nature of the leader and the power of the leader and the control of the leader. Uh, the, the coercive persuasion employed by the group to shut down critical thinking, engender dependency and, uh, basically gain undue influence. And then finally, the, the use of that influence to then exploit and do harm to people. That would be my definition of a destructive cult.

• 9:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I mean, when you say these things are on the rise right now, it does seem, and maybe it's just because it's the decisions that the shapers of pop cultures have made, but it does seem like these cults are being something that, that we're talking a lot more about recently. I mean, NXIVM, which is depicted in The Vow, uh, is one, you know, potential example, but it does seem like they're rising. Is that a fair assessment? What's the status right now?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, totally. I mean, in the eighties, there was an estimate given by one, uh, cult watching organization, the International Cultic Studies Association, that perhaps there were 5,000 groups that had been identified in the United States alone. Now, the same organization would put that number based on complaints at over 10,000.

• 10:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  So doubling.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  So it, it's just escalating constantly. And I would say the reason is it's a very lucrative business. Uh, when you look at it as a business model, uh, you, you, you make a lot of money. I mean, when Reverend Moon died at the age of, what, 92 or whatever, a few years back. He, his estate was valued at 600 million.

• 11:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And tell us who Reverend Moon is?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Reverend Moon was the self-styled Messiah. Uh, he came from South Korea. He created a group called the Unification Church, commonly called the Moonies, uh, which, you know, uh, reflected his name Reverend Sung-Mung Moon. And, uh, the Moonies were ubiquitous across the United States in the late seventies and the eighties, recruiting on college campuses. There were thousands of them that would be in fundraising teams raising as much as $200 each a day. And that money was funneled to Moon and he invested it in a fishing fleet, uh, the sushi business.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Uh, it's been reported that he may control or his heirs now, his children, control perhaps 50% of the wholesale sushi business in major metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York. So there's a lot of mu- there, there's a lot of money in the cult business. And, uh, there, for example, L. Ron Hubbard, who was the founder of Scientology. When he died in 1986, his estate was valued at over 600 million as well. And, and now the book value of Scientology is, uh, reportedly over 3 billion. And there have been reports that they have a cash reserve of $1 billion.

• 12:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so that's definitely on the supply side. You know, people will get into this because they want to make money, but in a market, there's supply and demand. And so I think we touched on this a bit at the open, but I'm kind of curious about the demand. Uh, if these cults are on the rise, what do you think is making people so susceptible? And so interested in joining them and getting involved?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think it's just the fact that all of us go through difficult times in our lives. And if the group called a cult can hit, hit someone up at the right time, at the right place, uh, in, in a difficult period in a person's life, that person is susceptible. And I would say all of us want to be happy. We want to have a fulfilling life. And these groups, uh, they will tell you they have all the answers and that they can fulfill your need for happiness and give you a sense of community, inclusiveness. Uh, there's a phenomenon called love bombing.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  When you're initially approached by a group, the seemingly unconditional love they shower you with and make you feel wanted, needed, accepted. And this can be very appealing to people who don't realize that that love is actually highly conditional and completely predicated on your willingness to buy into the group and become an active member and help the group.

• 14:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And, and I guess one question I have is, it seems like people used to get that love from some traditional institutions, their friends, their family and their religious institutions. Um, one of the moments where we saw this stuff starting to go haywire was, uh, when Robert Putnam published his book Boeing Alone, talking about how community and civic participation were going down and people were seeming to watch television instead. So do you think that that's a code that like to start with, is that one of the coinciding forces that helped, you know, this stuff grow, people would love bomb where they weren't getting love bombs elsewhere?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Well, I don't want to, I don't want to pass a judgment on our society, except to say that, yes, in my experience dealing with thousands and thousands of ex-cult members, affected families, and so forth, what I see as a consistent thread is that someone was not happy at the time they were approached. And I think that if you are watching a lot of television rather than being involved with people and you're online and your life is somewhat socially isolated, that does make you more vulnerable. In the sense that, let's say you're more plugged into a community and a family, and you're talking with people every day, you're going

• 15:44Speaker 01

  to bounce off of those people and that community, what's happening in your life? And so if you say, "Well, you know, XYZ group approached me and I've never heard of them, and they seem really nice, and this, they talked about this, and they talked about that." And keep in mind, not all of these groups called cults are religious. They can be political, they can be cultural, they can be based on martial arts, meditation, yoga, or a seminar series that helps you to become successful, or at least that's what they purport to do, like NXIVM. Or it could be a multi-level marketing scheme. So if you are plugged into a community

• 16:28Speaker 01

  and a family, and you have people around you that you can bounce things off of, and they give you more accurate feedback and a different perspective than the echo chamber of the group where they're just constantly reinforcing their message, that gives you the opportunity to hear other voices and mix that as you begin to critically evaluate and analyze what's going on in this new group that you've come into contact with.

• 17:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and it does seem like if television was already driving civic participation and community apart, then the internet must have exacerbated this in some way. I'm curious if that's something that you've seen, if the increase in internet use and forum participation, stuff like that, where people are basically finding these online communities and thinking they substitute for physical communities, has that played a role in making this worse?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yes, but at the same time, the internet also affords all of us the opportunity to do a search and drill down and find out whatever information there is about a particular group or leader, which is what the Cult Education Institute at culteducation.com is all about. I launched the database in 1996 with the idea in mind of that these groups would have to live with their history, whatever it might be. So controversial groups and movements are listed at the Cult Education Institute, and people can find out what the history of that particular group or leader is, and then think about that before they become more

• 18:12Speaker 01

  involved. But having said that, a lot of people don't bother, or they just dismiss such information as being biased, even though it may come from very good and reliable sources, for example, major wire services, or court documents, or police records. And then people, this is an increasing phenomenon that we see in so many areas of our life, people become isolated in a kind of bubble online that they create, or that is created for them that they then

• 18:51Speaker 01

  enter into. And so what happens is they follow people on Twitter, they follow people on Instagram that are involved in this group or movement, and then they also identify with those Facebook accounts, they go to the YouTube channel, the web platform of the group, and they become completely consumed.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  With the information that the group is putting out online. And this is to the exclusion of any other information to balance it. And so in a sense, they cocoon themselves online. And it's very hard to penetrate that. And it can become a reinforcing kind of a wall that is built around an individual that we don't see it, but they live in it on a daily basis.

• 19:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's fascinating. I spent a year working in sales and we were already understanding that so much of the consideration part of the purchase, right before people are, you know, they wanted to buy something, they would call up and say, let's, you know, talk a little bit about your product. But now basically people make the decision to buy it by the time they pick up the phone because they're, they've consumed so much information online that they're either in or out beforehand. And maybe there's a parallel happening with with cult, people joining cults right now.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think that there is a parallel and a lot, and many of us, you know, we, we kind of predispose ourselves into being vulnerable because we dismiss cults as crazy. We basically insinuate that the victims are to blame, that there must be something wrong with them. And by doing so, in my view, engaging in a kind of process of denial, we, we eliminate the possibility that we might be vulnerable. And yet we are vulnerable through advertising, negative political ads to propaganda and persuasion techniques on a daily basis.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what advertising and, and political campaigns are all about is persuasion, trying to pull us in. And we see how, how viable that is and how many people are pulled in. So what I would advise people to do is learn the tricks of the trade. The basic building blocks of persuasion techniques. For example, Robert Cialdini's book Influence, which identifies the consistent themes used in advertising and in destructive cults to persuade people and influence them and bring them in. And then Edgar Schein of MIT wrote the book Coercive Persuasion, which is quite good. And then there's the seminal work by Robert J. Lifton,

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. And Lifton studied North Korean POW camps and how the North Koreans were able to break down their prisoners and basically co-opt their critical thinking and create a kind of mindset that they crafted through coercive persuasion. I think if we understand the tricks of the trade, and I have a chapter on that in my book that I call "cult brainwashing", because that's the term that's used so often. If we understand how it works, it becomes much more difficult to trick us if we know how the game is played.

• 22:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no doubt. And there's also, I mean, to me, it also seems like there's an element of like, what can our society do? Because by the time you're already trying to fend off brainwashing, you're already susceptible in so many ways, which is why I kind of thought it was important to go back and think about how our technology is starting to create a sense of loneliness in the world. You know, that may not have been there before. We didn't have so much distraction from the physical world. So I'm curious what you think about that as well. Do we need to address that fundamental?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's true. I think what's really weird, and this has happened a few times in my work, is that young people, could even be a minor child, is alone in their bedroom. They're on their smartphone. They're on their laptop. And they're online. And they are susceptible to being recruited in their own home. And their parents may be, you know, watching cable or, you know, watching Netflix in the next room. And they don't know that their child alone in another room in the house is being indoctrinated on YouTube or has come into contact with people in some kind of conversation.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  That these people are involved in a cult. And I think that families do become very vulnerable in that sense. And I've had families call me and say, I did not realize what was going on under my own roof. And I think in that sense, families need to be more informed and more involved in each other's lives so that they know what's going on before things get out of control.

• 24:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and I do wonder, you know, on a societal level, can we start to build back some of these pillars of family, some of these pillars of community?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Well, I certainly think so. And I think the internet is in and of itself not good or bad. It's the way that it's being used by people. And I think we can use it in a very positive way, or it can be used in a very negative way. And I think it's important not to allow yourself to be consumed in any kind of bubble, where it cannot be permeated by alternate ideas and other frames of reference, so that you can percolate better your critical thinking in your head. And I think so much of what goes on in our society right now, and this is where I see cult-like tendencies,

• 25:03Speaker 01

  is the polarization of people and people basically hunkering down in their respective bunkers, not willing to exchange ideas with the other side of a situation, or whether it be in politics or just in social interaction.

• 25:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's something I definitely want to touch on when we come back from the break. You know, we've covered a lot of ground here in this first half. Second half, I'd love to touch on your personal story, how you got involved in this, and then also dig into stuff like NXIVM, but also QAnon, which is a place that you've been focusing on a lot more, as far as I can tell from your Twitter feed. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, whether that's a cult or not. We will be back here with Rick Allen Ross right after this on the Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Copilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data.

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• 27:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for the second half on the Big Technology Podcast with Rick Allen Ross, an expert on cult behavior. And we talked a little bit in the first half about how community is disintegrating in some ways in our society and how cults are filling the void, and also how cults use the internet to recruit, which is something I hadn't thought about, but, or too much depth, but it's also, you've got to meet people, you know, where they are, and people are looking at the internet, it's something to fill the void left behind by the lack of physical community and in step the cults with the solution and also with the recruitment pitch. Pretty fascinating. Rick, let's start our second half. I love to hear, usually we start the podcast with this, but I was so excited

• 28:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  about the subject matter I just jumped in. But how does somebody become an expert on cult, on cult behavior and cult deprogramming? How did you end up doing this?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Well, Alex, in my case, it was very spontaneous and kind of serendipitous. My grandmother was confronted by a radical fringe group that infiltrated the paid professional staff of the nursing home that she lived in. And she told me that she had been accosted by one of these people that tried to recruit her. And I dug into it because I wanted to protect her. She was at the time 82. And I talked to the nursing home director and found out eventually through an investigation that was conducted, that there were five members of the paid staff that were affiliated with this group. Needless to say, they were

• 29:31Speaker 01

  fired, and I found myself being an anti-cult activist slash community organizer in Phoenix in the early 80s. And that evolved to working at a social service agency, an educational bureau, being appointed to various committees. And then I started doing intervention work with the staff psychologist at the social service agency that I worked at. And all kinds of people came in that were followers of seminar gurus, religious cults, political cults, a wide spectrum.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  And by the end of the eighties, I started traveling, doing individual interventions for families all over the US. And that led to going on my own as a private intervention specialist. And since then, I've done 500-plus interventions, not only across the United States, but in Canada, Europe, all over the world. I've worked in Australia, Israel, Greece, just you name it, I've been there. And I found that this is a global phenomenon. And also, my work, beginning in the nineties, included testifying as an expert in court cases.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  And I've been qualified, accepted, and testified in 10 states, including United States Federal Court. And so, that has been my work. And then, one interesting thing that happened to me that was very unusual, is that I did consult, as part of the creative team, that Ubisoft put together to release Far Cry 5, which is a very, very popular video game. And Far Cry 5 is about a fictional cult that was created through consultation with myself and others, to, more or less, a composite.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  And in the game, you are dropped into a cult compound in Montana, and you have to figure how to get out alive. And it's a, was, has been a very successful video game marketed by Ubisoft. And it was the first time that I had ever been involved in, in the creation of a video game. It was very interesting for me, another interesting part of my work.

• 32:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that's fascinating. And what about, so it all started in that nursing home, which is, which is a wild story. I guess it goes to show you, it could really show up anywhere. What, what is the typical, when you are brought in to try to get somebody out of a cult? What's the, if there is a typical process? What's that typical process like?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, the family has, has become alarmed, concerned about the influence of a group or leader over a loved one. And they go through a process of assessment and study. And then they contact somebody, they may contact someone like myself if they decide that they wish to do an intervention. And then I work with families to prepare them to do such an intervention. And they'll typically, it's very similar to a drug or alcohol intervention, in which the family is directly involved. Could be parents, could be the adult children of a parent that they're concerned about that's involved. Could be

• 33:04Speaker 01

  a boyfriend, spouse, girlfriend. And you bring together people that really care, that are involved in that person's life, who that person cares about and respects. And you stage an intervention, which begins as a kind of surprise. And then the person agrees to continue to discuss the family's concerns over a period of typically three to four days. So the intervention may last eight hours a day for, for three or four days. And during that time, we discuss, what is the definition of a destructive cult? And

• 33:44Speaker 01

  how might it apply to the group or leader that you are now involved in? Two, what forms of influence can we identify as typical of cults? And how might they parallel the group or leader that you have become involved with? And then what are your family's concerns? Why are they here? Why are they alarmed about your life now? That, quite frankly, they weren't before. So what has changed? And the family then basically talks about what has occurred in recent months or recent years that has escalated to the point that they decided to do an intervention.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  And then finally, what is the history of the group that you're involved in that you don't know, that you probably should know in order to make a more informed decision about continuing with the group or leader? And so those four basic building blocks are drawn upon during the intervention, which is an ongoing discussion. There may be documentation shared, court records, police records, et cetera. And the person then at the end will decide whether they want to continue with the group, take a break, or drop out of the group entirely. My success rate has been about 70%,

• 35:13Speaker 01

  which means seven out of 10 people that I work with will decide to terminate their involvement with the group or leader at the end of the intervention. With three out of 10, they'll leave probably in the first day or two, saying that they don't wish to continue, and then they will move on with the group.

• 35:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And is there like a certain demographic that tends to join cults or like socioeconomic bracket? Because it does seem, at least from the stuff that I've taken a look at, that it just really spans the gamut.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Alex, it really does. I've done interventions with five medical doctors, including an orthopedic surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a gastrointestinal specialist. I mean, one intervention I did was with a woman who was a clinical psychologist, board certified. And so it can happen to anyone. I've worked with people that come from very wealthy families, people that come from very typical middle-class families. People that are very educated, people that are a blue collar and, and working in a trade. So it, it, it, it varies very much. There's no one consistent profile

• 36:31Speaker 01

  of a person that is involved in a destructive cult. But rather, as I said before, there may be a thread that you could pull that the, the person or people that are involved are frequently going through a difficult time in their life when they're initially approached. And therefore more susceptible, more vulnerable to the recruitment process.

• 36:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And um, let's talk a little bit about Nxivm, which is, you know, the subject of two recent documentaries, which you were both in. Um, about, uh, you know, this, this cult in upstate New York. Can you give us a little bit of the background? To it because it is, you know, we're talking about backgrounds. And people, you know, came from fascinating backgrounds, Hollywood, uh, stars that ended up joining this thing. So, um, I'm kind of curious why, you know, what, what happened there? And why did it get all this attention recently?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the, my first encounter with Nxivm was doing a, a series of interventions for a family in New Jersey. In, uh, I believe it was two thousand and, and, uh, one and two thousand and two. And then I published, uh, analyses by two prominent doctors, one a forensic psychiatrist and one a clinical psychologist who reviewed notes from the training manual of Nxivm, which was then known as executive success programs. And subsequently I was sued by, uh, Keith Rennery, the founder of Nxivm. And he pursued me and harassed me in court for

• 38:12Speaker 01

  a- almost 14 years until shortly before his arrest.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  And what Rennieri did, and they called him Vanguard, that was his name in NXIVM. He created a seminar series of courses to educate people, he said, about how they could become more productive and more successful in business or whatever they pursued in life. He called the philosophy that he downloaded through his seminar series Rational Inquiry. And he recruited many notable people. For example, two heiresses to the Seagram's liquor fortune. Claire Bronfman, who's now in prison for her part in NXIVM, and her sister Sarah Bronfman.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Briefly, Edgar Bronfman, Sr., a multi-billionaire, and the father of the Bronfman sisters, attended NXIVM. But he quickly realized that something was terribly wrong. And he called it a cult, which would cause him a great deal of grief for many years, being estranged from his daughters. Other people that became involved were like Alison Mack, the TV star from the Superman series Smallville. Kristen Krueg, also from that series. Nikki Klein from Battlestar Galactica. And she's still a diehard follower, as recently as a month or two ago, of Keith Rennieri.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  There are still probably 100 people that even though Rennieri has been convicted of multiple felonies, including sex trafficking and racketeering, and he's now sentenced to 120 years in prison. He still has devoted followers that feel that he is a martyr, that he was persecuted. And they will say, as Claire Bronfman did when she was sentenced, that she derived much good from NXIVM regardless of how many people were hurt.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  But Nxivm created a kind of community in Albany, New York, where people would travel from all over the world to be near Keith Rennery, as they would regard him the font of knowledge, this incredible philosopher king, this guru, who taught them a philosophy that they felt would cure anything in their lives. And over a period of years, there were thousands and thousands of people that would go through this seminar series. Many would become disenchanted and would leave. Many of those people would call me. And I would talk to, I would guess, hundreds of people over the period of more than a decade

• 41:03Speaker 01

  that had been affected by Nxivm.

• 41:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it seems like these self-help groups tend to be sort of a perfect breeding ground for cult-like behavior. Do you agree with that? And if so, why do you think that is?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think that the bottom line is, what is a self-help seminar group all about? I called them LGATS, Large Group Awareness Training. And you get in a room, you do a weekend. Some of these programs can last more than a week. Rennery had, I think, a 14, 16-day intensive. People pay a lot of money for this. There's a lot of money moving, millions of dollars in many of these groups. And basically, what you're paying for is to have this seminar guru tell you the meaning of life and download their philosophy as a kind of panacea cure-all for everything. They will say it will heal your soul.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  It will take care of your personal problems, your business problems. It's one cure for everything. It's a, you know, a cure-all. And and people become involved in it. And once they do become involved, many of them become kind of seminar junkies. And they and of course, this is encouraged by and enabled by the group and the other people around you. And you become embedded in a kind of subculture of these of of these guru junkies, and you're not really hearing other voices. And in the case of Raniari, the group evolved from a seminar group to a full-fledged cult

• 42:45Speaker 01

  when he became an object of worship and exercised totalitarian control over the people in the group. And for those that don't know, it became a sex cult, and Raniari would use and abuse women to the point where finally he tortured them.

• 43:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, some branded, yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  He branded more than reportedly 100 women with his initials engraved in their flesh with a cauterizing iron wielded by a doctor who was devoted to Raniari and assisted by people like Alison Mack, who would literally hold victims down as they screamed in pain without any painkiller, any anesthetic. And this cauterizing iron would be used to brand their their pelvis with Raniari's initials.

• 43:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's pretty horrifying. And it sort of goes back to this theme we've been touching on throughout this show, which is just the idea that when community is lacking, something can come in and fill the void.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Well, I think Raniari, there were many people that left. For example, as you know, from watching The Vow or or Seduced on Starz Network, Catherine Oxenburgh and her and her ex-husband Casper Van Deem, the actor, became involved. And but they realized that there was something wrong, and they left. Unfortunately, India Oxenburgh, Catherine's daughter, continued with the group, and she was involved for years before finally, after Raniari's arrest, she got out. She actually was being micromanaged by her coach, Alison Mack.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Who was a kind of slave master or mistress over this inner group that Renary created called DOS, in which all of these women were were told that they had to obey this hierarchy, with supposedly Alison Mack and Lauren Salzman at the top. Right now, Alison Mack is awaiting final sentencing. She probably will go to prison for a number of years. Claire Bronfman was sentenced to almost seven years and fined millions of dollars for her involvement in enabling Renary and financing him.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  The Bronfman sisters gave Renary reportedly over a hundred million dollars during their involvement with the group. And then a woman that was a co-founder of NXIVM, Nancy Salzman, is also awaiting sentencing. And a bookkeeper, a woman by the name of Harris, who was also involved.

• 45:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm. So to switch tacks a little bit, I want to spend the last few minutes that we have together talking about a group or conspiracy that, you know, most people wouldn't think to put in the traditional cult box, but, you know, might be getting closer, might actually be in there, which is QAnon, this this group that believes in the fact that there's a great, you know, there's folks that are coming after Trump and that he is the one that's going to, you know, save people from this cabal of pedophiles, something along those lines. So I'm curious how, you know, you began to be interested in QAnon and whether

• 46:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  they fit your, you know, the definition of something that we would call a cult.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  When they began having community activities, when it became apparent that they were highly organized and that they were involved in many activities in which they were targeting people, issues, politicians, etc., I think that QAnon fits the criteria for a destructive cult with one exception: we don't know who Q is. In my opinion, QAnon would fit the basic definition of a destructive cult, with the exception that we do not know who Q is. Who is the person that perpetuates these conspiracy theories

• 47:11Speaker 01

  and drops them online? According to the organization or according to the followers, Q is some high-level, top-secret clearance individual in government with access to secrets that none of us could ever have access to without Q. But that isn't necessarily the truth. I mean, it's very likely just a myth. And Q could be a person or a collective or just a scam. What's interesting is that, like many cults, Q uses a kind of front organizational name in order to attract attention and recruits.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  They post behind the moniker "Save the Children." Now, there's a real organization called "Save the Children" that is very reputable and has been around for a very long time. But QAnon would like to take that mantle and say, "Oh, we're trying to save children from this pedophile conspiracy that includes all kinds of political leaders, etc." And at times, this can be very volatile. And when you look at the QAnon demonstrations and you see the mindset of the people and how they don't question anything.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  That is coming from QAnon by and large. And that they're also very evasive, even deceptive about who and what they are all about. They don't want to divulge some of the more bizarre aspects of their conspiracy theories, but rather would say, oh, we're just here to save children, when in reality, that is not all that they're about.

• 49:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you find it concerning that some of this sort of, and I guess we'll just end on this. Do you find it concerning that some of the behavior you've seen in cults has started to make its way into our mainstream politics? I mean, it's on the top of your website right now. We have a congresswoman who's about to be sworn in who believes in this stuff.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very scary. I mean, it's scary to think that someone in a position of power is making decisions based on their acceptance in some way, shape or form of conspiracy theories that have been debunked and disproven repeatedly over and over again. And I just, you know, what, what kind of national secrets? Or what position in national security will a person have who's elected to Congress? And how will it affect their thinking and their performance on the job? If they bought into bizarre conspiracy theories perpetuated by QAnon?

• 50:01Speaker 01

  It's, it's a, it's a real conundrum and a real problem. And I don't think it's going to get better. I think before it does get better, it'll get worse.

• 50:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And just closing the loop, I mean, we talked, we started at the beginning here talking about, talking about how the internet can be a fertile recruiting ground for cults. And what do you know? It's, this is something that lives entire, almost entirely online. And now it's kind of seeping into the physical world. Crazy stuff.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Alex, what I said about cocooning yourself in a bubble online in an echo chamber is exactly what so many QAnon supporters do. They feed off of each other, they reinforce each other, they follow each other on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and they watch each other on YouTube. Now, some of the social media platforms are beginning to regulate this and kind of purge some of this from their platforms. But by and large, these people can create their own kind of alternate reality online, which is very scary. I mean, I've

• 51:13Speaker 01

  dealt with them trolling my sites, trolling my social media, and when I interact with them, they're so detached from reality, it's almost impossible to communicate. Very much like a person that's delusional and under the undue influence of a cult.

• 51:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, wild stuff. I had never thought of it as a traditional cult until I looked at your site and started reading about it and said, okay, well, this is an issue. So, okay, let's end talking about how we can use the internet for good. Where can people follow your work?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can follow me on Twitter, they can follow me on Facebook, the Cult Education Institute has a Facebook page. They can also go to culteducation.com, which is probably the largest database of its kind online, and they can find archives of information about controversial groups and movements, including Scientology, QAnon, the Unification Church of Reverend Moon, etc., etc. And I also have a YouTube channel for the Cult Education Institute where they can look at educational documentaries about cults and how they operate.

• 52:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, great. Well, I found your stuff fascinating. I do appreciate the time you're willing to spend with me here on the podcast. And, you know, I'm wishing you luck, Rick. It's important work and, and, you know, I appreciate you doing it. Thank you very much, Alex. Well, thanks, everybody, for listening. If you enjoyed the show, and this is your first time here, please hit subscribe. We do this every Wednesday. And if you're a long time listener, I'll make the ask once again, a rating would go a long way. So if you can rate us, it will help us with discoverability and allow us to keep doing this, which is, of course, one of the goals. I will see you again next Wednesday. We have a great show coming up. And, you know, I promise not to let you down. So I hope to

• 53:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  see you there. This is the Big Technology Podcast. I'm Alex Cantor. We will see you again soon.

• 53:27Speaker 02

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