A New Year for NXIVM and Raniere is no longer the Vanguard
With the new year came many changes for Nxivm and the people affected by its existence.
Keith Alan Raniere began the year in a prison, held in federal custody having been unable to persuade a judge he should be granted bail.
A year ago, he was in Mexico, enjoying a luxurious life, attended by doting slaves, although not without a new kind of worriment.
He knew he was under federal investigation for various crimes. In fact, the government believes he went to Mexico to escape jurisdiction. His sudden shift to Mexico from his longtime home in Clifton Park, a suburb of Albany, was cited as a principle reason for his being denied bail.
So now he lives in one of the most punishing and cruel environments in the USA – the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, a place so cruel and barbaric that prisoners living within its walls never get outdoor recreation, they eat food that most of us wouldn’t allow our pets to consume , live with mites, too cold in summer, too warm in winter, with lights on 24 hours per day.
Keith has been convicted of nothing yet, but his trip to Mexico was evidently one of the dumbest things he ever did. Had he stayed put, he might have had a chance at home detention – like Allison Mack.
It is much harder to defend oneself against charges when you are in prison. It is harder for attorneys to meet their client. It is harder to think, to rest, to have access to resources like for instance paper and pen. Not that you can’t get this in prison, it is just harder. Everything is harder. And in prison, how can anyone have good health?
Your health zaps away, your physical condition ebbs slowly – or quickly – at places like MDC. When a person is unhealthy, he cannot defend himself well. When he is isolated from his lawyers and cannot even see them without a strip search before and after – all these work against a sound defense.
Keith Raniere has been in custody since March 26. That means he is now nearly 9 ½ months in a cage.
He is told what to do – given orders constantly – every day. He is no longer the Vanguard who had eager slaves awaiting his instructions. He no longer has to merely hint to get, or scare his women, to do his bidding.
He is now a slave. When for years he was their slave master.
He was once a man who had sex with many women. He is now forbidden sex with any women. That’s more of his punishment. He used to eat whatever he liked. Now he eats whatever slop the BOP chooses to feed him. He controlled other women’s caloric intake – as part of his severe discipline of women, to keep them super skinny, the way he like them.
Now his caloric intake is controlled for him.
He had women to take care of his personal needs and his possessions. Now he has to carefully guard his few possessions from being taken away from him.
He used to tell women what to wear. Now he cannot even choose for himself what he will wear. He is told what to wear.
Before he occupied his time considering how to punish his enemies. Now he has to occupy most of his time strategizing on how to avoid his enemies destroying him.
Before he had access to millions of dollars to punish his enemies. To try to put them in prison. He could sue the daylights out of them using Bronfman money.
Today he has access to millions of Bronfman dollars – to defend himself and try to keep from spending the rest of his life in prison. And in MDC he never sees daylight. The government already has sued the daylight out of him.
Unless he takes a plea deal, someday he will go to trial. Maybe in March, more likely in the fall of 2019. Maybe even later. He will either be convicted for one or more crimes he has been charged or will be charged with, or he will be acquitted.
Even if acquitted on all charges – an event that seems unlikely – it will not be easy for him to resume his old life – of vengeance and sex. Of war and sex – the two pursuits of the beastly.
He is now well known – at best as a notorious rascal, and more commonly an evil man, a wicked monster and abuser of women. It will be hard for him to rise again. He was once known as the world’s smartest man and now exposed as a phony who did a take home IQ test- he is considered by many to be incredibly stupid.
A short term conman. [20 years is short term in the scheme of things. Especially if you do 20 years in prison for it.]
Keith Raniere will be forever remembered as a man who branded women. Who took collateral – blackmail worthy material and even if he did not release it, it showed his sick warped mind.
He was a cult leader, a manipulator of people who trusted him and a monster to those who crossed him or those he hated – while all the while preaching that he was spreading love and trying to create a more noble civilization.
It may be irrelevant to most of us what he has done in the past. It is the future we are concerned with. His future is grim. Keith Alan Raniere is likely to spend many years in prison. And when he gets out, if he ever gets out [which might be the only plea deal available to him – release sometime perhaps in his late 70’s or 80s], he will no longer be a cult leader.
Not the Vanguard of a new thought movement, or head of a great noble mission. He is and will be just a loser. A guy who tried the big long con game – serving himself at every level, every moment, dreaming he would never get caught or that there is no law of karma.
That you can go out and hurt everyone you like and somehow – just because you got more money and think you are more strategic, karma will not have its sway.
He was a great believer in karma – for others. He told others that he knew their past lives even and that he had the remedy for their bad karma incurred in their past lives: Do what the Vanguard told them to do.
He couldn’t solve his own karma. And he is now paying. He is no longer the Vanguard.
He is just plain Keith Raniere. He was called Vanguard in the indictment – i.e. Keith Raniere AKA Vanguard. But the fact is he is no longer the Vanguard.
This arrogant man – with his foolish idea that he was untouchable is now for all practical purposes an idiot respected by almost no one.
And in the coming years it doesn’t promise to get any better for him.
Adios Vanguard.