On Keith Raniere & NXIVM 2: Matt Bywater, M.Sc. on NXIVM

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/09/11

Matthew Bywater, M.Sc. is a researcher, educator, and activist who has delved into the criminal and rights abuse case of Keith Raniere.  

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was DOS?

Matt Bywater: DOS was the inner core of NXIVM. DOS stands for Dominus Obsequious Sororium, which translates into English as “lord over the obedient female companions.” It was a secret group within NXIVM, composed almost entirely of women, except for Keith Raniere. DOS was a pyramid structure where each master had several enslaved people beneath them. The enslaved people would report to and obey the master. However, only the upper echelon knew that the true leader, the “grand master,” was Keith Raniere.

Within NXIVM, DOS was presented to participants as a female empowerment group designed to create strong, powerful women. The way they marketed it was, “Do you want to be the toughest woman you can be? Do you want to be as strong and as powerful as a man? Then this is what you have to do. Do you want to push yourself to the limits? Do you want to be the best and strongest version of yourself?” Through this rhetoric, they managed to sell the concept of slavery.

Jacobsen: Now, something I did not realize. NXIVM was founded on July 20, 1998. Key people involved included Keith Raniere, Nancy Salzman, Allison Mack, Clare Bronfman, and Emiliano Salinas. This was an old organization that had built a manipulation scheme for a long period. Were there early indications of suspicion about this organization?

Bywater: The suspicion goes back to the early 2000s. It was on the radar of some cult exit counsellors, such as Rick Ross, whom they sued for over ten years. So, it was definitely on the radar of cult watchers and exit counsellors.

Keith Raniere’s previous company was a semi-pyramid scheme called Consumers’ Buyline, which the New York Attorney General the authorities shut down for constituting a pyramid scheme. Raniere ultimately paid a $40,000 fine and was permanently banned from participating in a chain distribution scheme. So, NXIVM may have been officially headed by Nancy Salzman or another NXIVM member.

Jacobsen: Were there any indications of mass resignations or departures from the NXIVM organization earlier on?

Bywater: Typically, as with cults, there isn’t a mass exodus at one point; it usually follows arrests or other major events. However, there are phases when people catch on to what’s happening and leave. Approximately 17,000 people took NXIVM courses over the lifetime of the organization. Most people came, took the six-day seminar, got something out of it, and then moved on with their lives. They took the bait but didn’t get sucked in.

On one occasion, seven women resigned en masse. They were experiencing a range of problems within NXIVM and raised these concerns directly with Keith Raniere. There’s a recorded video where the seven women confront Raniere, only to be completely gaslit and manipulated by him. This mass resignation of seven members was probably the biggest departure of NXIVM members before the New York Times exposé article in 2017. That article, which exposed the branding and the sex cult to the wider world, led to a significant departure from the organization.

Jacobsen: Notable experts like Rick Ross, Diane Benscoter, and Steven Hassan declared their opinion of Raniere as a cult leader. 

Bywater: Steven Hassan and Rick Ross have written articles about him, spoken in the media, and firmly deemed him a cult leader. You could add Rachel Bernstein to that list. She ex-counselled one famous NXIVM member, India Oxenberg, the daughter of Catherine Oxenberg, part of the Yugoslav royal family. 

Jacobsen: Regarding Raniere’s early life, he was born on August 26, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the only child of James Raniere, an advertising executive, and Vera Oschypko, a ballroom dancing instructor. Were there early indications of things that might have been off psychologically or developmentally for him in your research?

Bywater: It’s really hard to know what caused him to become the person he was, but what we can judge is his behaviour. From an early period on, there were accusations of sexual harassment and stalking. Early on, he was known for harassing women and generally behaving in a predatory way. 

Jacobsen: He went to Suffern High School for 9th grade and then transferred to Rockland Country Day School, graduating in June 1978 at 17. Isaac Asimov’s Second Foundation inspired him at age 12. He credited this as an inspiration for NXIVM. That’s an interesting tidbit. Any thoughts on this?

Bywater: So, I was aware that he had read the book. It’s a three-part series by Isaac Asimov. I haven’t read this book; it’s on my to-do list, but there are things he learned about how to influence people and the psychology of mind control that he drew from the books.  I believe he mentioned that to people within NXIVM, and that’s how it’s part of the public record. If you look at the NXIVM curriciulum, it actually draws far more significantly from Scientology.

Jacobsen: He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His grades could have been better. Some early psychometric data indicate that he scored quite high on the Mega Test. So, if his scores are legitimate, the question wouldn’t be about intelligence. The question would be about the personality or social factors leading to failing classes with a 2.26 CGPA.

Bywater: As I see it, part of the issue here is that if someone has a penchant for being lazy, that may not be a consequence of their intelligence. Still, it’s a contributor to their need for greater academic achievement. If someone doesn’t want to take the time to read and learn, that will affect their academic performance and their recorded intelligence levels will be lower. So it’s part and parcel of the same problem.  

Jacobsen: In The Times Union, in an article titled “In Raniere’s Shadows.” How was his relationship with his father and his mother?

Bywater: From what people have told me, his father was generally absent when he was younger, so his mother was his primary caregiver. His father, again, from what people have said, seemed to be a tough guy. He was probably a man of his time—it wasn’t common to openly show love and affection to your child. I’m sure he didn’t receive that. So, he was raised by his mother. We know that his mother was sick. He had to take care of her. He would often say to people within NXIVM how hard it was on him, which is a kind of off way of talking about that.  So that was one of the warning signs that there was some possible psychopathy going on because it would always be about him, even when the problem was his dying mother. 

Moreover, he said to other people within NXIVM that his mother would make herself sick intentionally to try to punish him. Whether his mother was doing that, we don’t know. The difficulty is that lying is part and parcel of the condition of psychopathy, so we have no way of knowing if that is true.

What is interesting, however, is that what he claimed his mother did—making herself sick to punish him—is exactly what he accused NXIVM members of when they were asking him questions. He would say that their questions and their criticism were making him feel sick and ill and that they were doing it intentionally to punish him, which is a narcissistic abuse tactic 101.

Jacobsen: Have you gotten any extensive commentaries from psychological professionals that further that analysis?

Bywater: Not specifically. I have a video on my channel called “Possible Origins of NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere.” It shows a video of Keith Raniere talking, intersected with clips of him playing as a child and talking as an adult. For me, what stood out was the following comment “we just needed love. But love’s not allowed to little boys”. He also accuses women of using sex to control men Whatever happened in his childhood, it produced extreme misogyny in him.

Regarding psychopathy or narcissistic personality disorder, the generally understood cause or environmental trigger is an insecure attachment between the primary caregiver and the child. When the child lacks unconditional positive regard from their caregiver, at some point, the child’s emotional development stunts and eventually produces adults who feel no empathy, remorse, or guilt. Those kinds of higher-order emotions are things they don’t experience at all.

If you look at Keith Raniere, he was a little child in a man’s body. From his correspondence with other women and his behaviour, something happened, and his psychological development was stunted at a young age. That also tied in with his sexual preferences. He forced women to go on extreme diets to make them appear almost androgynous, translucent, or just extremely skinny so that they would appear younger. If they weren’t in that state, he was unable to be sexually aroused, which is interesting. Have you read the book Lolita by Nabokov?

Jacobsen: I’ve been aware of it but was only aware of the film. 

Bywater: So, I can tell you a story. There’s a book and two films. The plot of that book is that the main character Humbert Humbert is a boy who is unable to consummate his relationship with his teenage girlfriend. As a result, he maintains that attraction for younger women even after entering into adulthood. Nabokov was not a psychologist, but I wonder—this is my theory—I wonder if he was describing himself. Because there’s much empathy for the character, who is essentially a pedophile in Lolita.  

Jacobsen: Then we come to Raniere’s attempted claim to fame. The Albany Times Union, in June 1988, gave Raniere a profile, mentioning his membership in the Mega Society. I have gone through Noesis, the journal of the Mega Society, the entire thing. He is in it. He was a member. He published occasional commentary or comments about them. [Ed. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] So he scored high on this 48-question Mega Test, which was put out in April 1985 in Omni magazine. This became the basis for getting categorized in the Guinness Book of World Records as having one of the highest IQs in the world, alongside Marilyn Vos Savant and ‘Eric Hart,’ a pseudonym for Christopher Michael Langan. So, how did that happen?

Bywater: I’m aware that it happened. The Guinness Book of World Records subsequently removed him from the book. That’s my understanding. But you can remove someone from a book, but all the print copies remain unaffected if published, right? The Guinness Book of Records may have edited it, but it would have been too late. This was part of the narrative that Raniere was selling to NXIVM members—that he was the smartest man in the world, and the Guinness Book of Records was used to prove that. He also claimed he created his own mathematics. 

Jacobsen: That’s a vague statement (by him). I am still trying to understand what that means in any precise terms. In the research on the Noesis journal recently, again for another project, they did list a letter from the Guinness Book of World Records representative. They stipulated that the highest IQ title was removed. I can pull it up and read it. This editor’s letter is in Noesis issue 56, December 1990. The monthly journal of the “1 in a Million Society.” 

Bywater: Yes.

Jacobsen: So, I’ll read this out:

24th May 1989

Dear Mr Hoeflin,

Many thanks for your letter of 17 May and the latest Information regarding the Mega test.

I had been meaning to write to you for some time to tell you that I have decided to drop the entry for highest I.Q. and to explain my reasons.

It is not that I am in any way against I.Q. tests, nor that I am ‘anti-elitist’ (although I am sure that I will be accused of that).

Simply, I feel that to include an entry for the ‘Highest I.Q.’ implying, as it does, that this is the world’s most intelligentperson, is invidious. Also, unlike the process of putting someone on a racetrack against a stopwatch, there are many different types of test, kind we are talking about such minute differences between individuals that I feel we could not be considered to be making valid comparisons.

I’m not sure if you will agree with my thinking but I am sure that The Guinness Book of Records is not in a position to monitor the highest I.Q.

Yours sincerely,

Donald McFarlan 

Editor

We know it was removed for those reasons. We don’t know how he got there other than scoring high on the Mega Test and then being listed among people. In the 1980s, Keith Raniere was involved with Amway, a multilevel marketing company. How the hell did he get involved in that? 

Bywater: Obviously, his motive was financial. When he was involved in Amway, this would have been in the run-up to the creation of Consumers’ Buyline, which was his company. hat would have been the same period I mentioned earlier, when the authorities shut Consumers’ Buyline down for constituting a pyramid scheme.

There would be some detail in Toni Natalie’s book. Toni Natalie, his former girlfriend, wrote a book about Keith Raniere called The Program. The details are in it because she was involved with Keith when Consumers’ Buyline was shut down. They were running the company together. It was a buying club offering discounts in exchange for some form of recruitment.

Jacobsen: Oh! They were together for eight years.

Bywater: Yes, 8 years. So, she knew Keith before he became the “Vanguard”, and he started claiming he was a renunciate and a monk-like figure. One thing about the transition from Consumers’ Buyline to NXIVM is that, essentially, the model remained. The only difference was that the Consumers’ Buyline was a pyramid scheme based on goods. In contrast, NXIVM was a pyramid scheme based on services. You’d need to talk to a legal expert about this. Possibly, a pyramid scheme selling services is harder to regulate and potentially shut down than one selling goods.  

Jacobsen: It’s amazing how bad, as an independent judgment, he was at keeping any of these secrets or anything successful and legal. It’s astonishing. I’m saying this as an ordinary person who knows how to do some types of research well, how to ask questions, and then put that stuff into words. That’s my skill set. And so, I can’t imagine how far it goes when you have legal experts, psychologists, and cult experts who then do a further analysis.

Bywater: Yes.

Jacobsen: Where people, the ones you mentioned before, are saying it exerts coercive control and manipulation, which I’m sure they have more precise concepts in mind when stating these things.

Bywater: Yes. To answer what you said before about how Keith Raniere’s various projects ended in collapse and failure, that reflects the destructive nature of psychopathy. It’s a destructive condition. We call it a disorder for a reason. It’s a mental health disorder, a personality disorder. And that disorder is destructive to themselves, but most of all to others. What can change and what can make some cult leaders more durable will depend on the lieutenants around them. How much can they rein him in? How much can they restrain the leader’s worst impulses? It’s never ever just one guy or woman in charge. 

Jacobsen: So, with NXIVM and Executive Success Programs, let’s do a teaser for the next session. I mentioned the people involved deeply at the outset. How did he meet Nancy Salzman?

Bywater: I believe it was through a business introduction, and Nancy Salzman had expressed a wish to work with him. She had heard about his work with Consumers’ Buyline. Nancy Salzman came into the equation later on. She had a background in hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming. Keith effectively recruited her for those skills. If you watch The Vow season 2 episode 2, — you’ll find the answers to that question. I’ve also produced a YouTube video ‘How NXIVM cult co-founder Nancy Salzman woke up which documents her waking-up process from the cult programming.’

Jacobsen: By the way, what episode do they start showing interactions with Keith in The Vow? I haven’t seen the fullseries.

Bywater: He never agreed to be interviewed in The Vow. So, what are the interactions between Keith and whom?

Jacobsen: Any followers, clips, videos, or promotional material?

Bywater: From the first episode. In that episode, it shows audio footage from when film-maker Mark Vicente met Keith for the first time.

Bywater: So, yes, from the first episode. That’s what makes The Vow such a rich documentary—their incredible access. You can see what it’s like to be in a cult, and the filmmaking style is a kind of fly-on-the-wall, verité style. That’s what makes it so valuable. Steve Hassan described The Vow as a gift to humanity, and I 100% agree with that.

Jacobsen: This series could add a nice little drop, a unique perspective because Keith was trying to make his claim to fame by being super-duper smart. I interview people from the Mega Society, including one of my friends in the Mega Society. I could add a slightly different angle and deliver something that people from these communities might read, which is valuable. If people will try to use that for nefarious purposes: “Here is a cautionary note.”

Bywater: Yes, exactly. 

Jacobsen: And I’ve gotten offers to join some high-IQ societies. I said, “No, thank you.” I resigned from one. But basically, I said to the others, “I don’t want even to give the appearance of partiality.” That can also be the ideal way to do these things. 

Bywater: Yes, that’s exactly what you should be highlighting that your article could serve as a deterrent to future cult leaders by educating people in positions of power. Because I could give you an example. It’s about another cult, but people don’t—judges, police officers, investigators, even politicians—they can’t understand.

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