M
uch fiction, from
Pride and Prejudice to
The Talented Mr.
Ripley, focuses on the male con man—
the lothario who engages with the
aspirations of beautiful, intelligent, and
often wealthy women, enticing them
to relinquish their bodies and fortunes.
Keith Raniere, the 58-year-old leader
of Nxivm, a cult-like organization
based for decades near Albany, New
York, was one such man, though
an unlikely Don Juan. He was a former
IT guy who founded a pyramid-scheme-
like grocery business in the 1980s,
then hawked vitamins, and, some 15
years later, transformed into the guru
to heiresses, actresses, and general
deep-pocketed enlightenment
seekers. But the guru thing was merely
instrumental, a means to an end. In
secret, he was enacting a jaw-droppingly
bizarre sex scheme for his own pleasure,
intertwining themes of madness, pain,
and love like a story by Edgar Allan Poe.
On June 19, Raniere was convicted
of sex trafficking, among other
charges, in the modern New York City
courthouse where cartel lord El
Chapo recently lost his case. Raniere
has a ruddy face, with large blue eyes
concealed by Coke-bottle glasses;
though he used to be partial to casual
clothes and athletic gear, in court,
the collar of a white dress shirt poked
above a monochromatic sweater.
The best way to describe Raniere
is a nerd Charles Manson, though
Raniere didn’t use acid to get people
to believe (or instruct them to butcher
victims); his flock was stone-cold
Unsurprisingly, Raniere’s rap
concealed another motivation,
according to the prosecution: having
sex with as many women as possible.
He was a horny holy man, and far
from the first. Raniere’s inner circle
was like an episode of Big Love;
his girlfriends, who the government
said were monogamous with him
and numbered about 20, lived in
houses and town homes in a totally
conventional, characterless corner
of a nice Albany suburb, sometimessober, and his tricks mixed those of a
pickup artist, like negging, with the
vernacular of many a modern lifestyle
business. Just as Manson capitalized
on the imperfections of the free love
movement, Raniere enticed women into
believing he could take the 2010s
empowerment smorgasbord—wellness,
activism, feminism—to its highest,
purest level. Those who followed him,
he insisted, would become stronger,
emotionally and physically, or, as some
of them called themselves, “badass.”Cult Life
by Vanessa Grigoriadis
The Horny Holy Man Keith Raniere
duped followers that power and growthcame through submission