@@MindlessTube I mean... it was from an interview with the dude who developed the IQ test, who was a child psychologist. You don't have to take my word for it tho, google exists
@@Darasilverdragon IQ is a significantly higher measure of potential success than any other psychological attribute. although I do agree talking about your own IQ is useless as it is only a tool that is used to assist in predicting future success would be more useful to talk about your achievements. but then again. if bragging about your IQ or even spiritual powers for that matter itself provides results in achieving your goals then that is in reality a display of intelligence.
"Things like OCD, migraine headaches, even certain fertility things, maybe fatigue things... who knows?" Sounds like a guy who knows what he's talking about.
He's trying not to make false claims that will get him sued lmao in his cult he most likely says they definitely 100% helped a wheelchair bound woman walk again lol
MJR Schneider Oh don’t forget Autism. As a woman with the condition myself I feel offended that he thinks it can be cured. It is a NEUROLOGICAL DISORDER. it CANNOT be cured.
Andie I think OP is talking about how bad he is at communicating for someone claiming to be brilliant, he is not very well spoken. Talks like an avg IQ guy, to be honest.
I met Allison Mack at a convention a number of years ago. Although it was a brief conversation, she seemed nice when I talked to her, but was also kind of weird... in the sort of way that screams "This person doesn't live in the real world". I thought it harmless, but boy was I wrong.
@Blackfeather 22 But at least some of it will have been stopped, this group in particular (at least the ones they caught and know about). Unless they get away.
As someone who lives not even two minutes from where the NXIVM cult met in Halfmoon, NY I think my perspective might be a bit interesting. I also drive by the building everyday to go to work so yes, it’s still standing kind of abandoned. Everyone in my town knew they were a cult but we all thought it was just a harmless business cult. Everyone always dressed in suits or nice clothing when we did see people or they were always having a party with white tents in the back, all driving nice cars. The building is white and it was extremely hard to make out that the letters on the front said “NXIVM” because of the font they chose. Because it was hard to read, a lot of people also thought it was a restaurant, which is what the building was before the cult leader bought it out. The windows of the building had blackout curtains so no one could ever see in the building either. It was a running joke with my friends and family that they were just having massive orgies in there because of it, everyone thought the cult was harmless and only the rich could even afford to be in it. One night my ex tried to scare me (it worked) and drove around the building while it was dark out. There was a piece of printer paper on the front door that clearly stated in bold font “Women Only” which was extremely creepy. There was one car parked in the back but no lights were on when he drove around so he kept looping and after the second or third time the lights outside came on and there was a shadow of whoever was in there in the doorway. I was terrified and he drove back to my house afterwards. The sign on the door always creeped out any of the local friends I told but no one ever thought it’d lead to what it actually was. We all thought they were your everyday local business cult (as weird as that sounds)
Already has. There is a documentarythat alleges that Raniere murdered, or had murdered, 4 women in the early stages of Nxium. Two of his former partners and lovers died of cancer, and a third had cancer but recovered. Forensic testing revealed that these women had high levels of heavy metals and chemicals found in rat poison. another woman named Kristen snyder was apparently killed by Raniere, set up to look like suicide
This cult is from my town Saratoga Springs, NY / Clifton Park, NY. They would try to heavily recruit young women in the area. I can’t tell you how many times I was approached. I was weirded out immediately. and uncomfortable with the behavior of the women who would approach me. People in our area hated the presence of this cult and tried for years to get them to leave.
im from waterford (but i went to high school in clifton park) and its so off-putting knowing that this was happening so close to me, and i had no idea. was this really only talked about around 2003? or was there any discussion afterwards? im extremely curious and i wanna know more about all this
I’m from Albany, I hadn’t heard of it before it came on the news recently. No one else I know heard of it before either. Crazy to think all that was happening so close to home.
This Keith dude doesn’t understand what equality is lol no one is saying men & women are the same thing, we have obvious differences, but despite those differences we are equal and have the same rights as human beings.
He understands equality, most likely. He's a manipulative cult leader. If he can convince _you_ that men and women aren't equal by redefining equality, then he gets what he wants.
@Julia Mimi I wouldn't say he isn't a genius. The way he speaks about how equality doesn't exist. He is most likely looking to attract certain members to his organization, people who he sees easy to manipulate and indoctrinate. People who hold those ideals probably are not very well liked by people.
even putting him in prison is not good enough. Can't even imagine what could be done with this level of people. Like not only in prison, but torture him for rest of his life and making sure he lives as long as possible.
@@General12th while it is not a good thing. How to make sure person gets actually for his doings ? How many people were tortured and suffered for years. How many families were destroyed. And most of all, the children that suffered. Prison won't make any difference for him, death sentence is even more easy way out. So the only way to make justice would be to do all the things eh did with people to him. And that would go for all this level criminals. So not only they would get back what they done to others, but would be as example to others, to show what can lead these kind of actions. I'm sorry but if innocent people being abused, especially kids, i can't accept, that just prison is enough.
@@Beastlordius "Death sentence is the easy way out"? Not at all. Death sentence means dead: D E D dead. He's not coming back from that one. He's going to die either way. It's not like all this torture is going to make him become a better person. It certainly won't ease the trauma of everyone affected.
@@General12th Exactly, if you're dead, you are dead, that's it, no responsibilities, no judgements or interactions for your actions. We all going to die sooner or later anyways. So you would just see it as the end of race. And while torturing won't make him better, it would show what he have done to others, and as i said, it would show others, that thse kind of actions can bring to something more then just prison or death sentence.
@Amanda Charlebois her tattoo (below her naval) is a cover up of something. She has a scar under it. It looks identical to the kr brand. I'll hav to find the video and link it.
Vicky Avila hmmm... A cult where a man is treated as a god with a superior mind and is Rich beyond his wildest dreams. A cult with a twisted version of BDSM where he (the dom) is always in control and is only concerned about his pleasure. A cult where he can have access to underage girls. That sounds more like Onision's goal in life.
I was thinking the exact same thing! Seems like something that would happen if people were to actually fall for Onision's bullshit.. This whole taking underage girls into his home to possibly groom them.. Yeah, this guy would totally wants his own cult, as a matter of fact he once created his own 'religion'. He also wanted one woman he was involved with to be chained up in his basement for several days as punishment for smoking a blunt. This whole story is an example of what would happen if people didn't push back against Onision.
I live in the neighborhood where Keith walks around in Clifton park NY, they have multiple houses in my neighborhood and no one walks around because they are always watching. Thanks Phil for bringing more attention to this creep.
I'd be very dubious of that test and whether he actually is intelligent and not just extremely manipulative. Not saying he is dumb. Just he might have used his skills to increase his numbers.
While I was still on track to be an educator, I took a class that taught us how to assist psychologists in administering real IQ tests. The truth is, the data that's collected from those tests has very little to do with identifying intelligence and more to do with discovering a child's academic potential. The only time one's IQ actually mattered after testing was in finding major disparities between potential and performance. If a child had a high IQ but got low grades, they were likely to either have a learning disability or some other major life factor getting between them and their education, like poverty or abuse. In any situation, the disparity would be cause for intervention. Having a high IQ and no learning disability just meant you did well on a problem solving test, not that you're in some way exceptional. Adults who brag about their intelligence are all douchebags anyway, which is why I think this dude belongs on r/iamverysmart.
your right. IQ tests is just gauges how well you did on a problem solving test. just like how an obstacle course only proves how good you are at completing the course. although if you are good at that you are most likely good at other physical activities as well. also life is problem solving test. that is all life is. you solve problems you do well in life. you fail to solve problems you don't do well in life.
@@SALSN to a certain extent, of course. As far as academics, the grades a person gets or the degrees one earns tends to be indicative of two things: intellect, and some would argue more significantly, the effort one puts into school. Haven't you ever met anyone a teacher has told, "You have so much potential, if you only applied yourself more!" That's not just a cliche, it's reality for so many people. Academics may be the closest standard we have for measuring true intelligence, but even then, we can't always account for laziness, apathy, or depression altering the data.
Can I just point out that this guy said both that "women are unloyal" and that "women were monogamous"? Meaning he thinks they are both loyal and unloyal which is such an easy to spot glaring hypocrisy.
It's not hypocrisy if we're talking in pure evolutionary / animals terms. Monogamous means the women will have one semi-permanent partner at a time. If she senses an opportunity to trade up she will and thus isn't loyal. This is just him using fancy words to describe hyper-gamy which is a well documented human trait, he's just applying it in a weird way.
Phillip DeFranco!! I appreciate you researching this topic but as an educator focused on cult psychology and new religious movements, I’ve been keeping my eye on this movement for almost 15 years now. I have some corrections I’d like to make to your video that hopefully add some context to why people fell for him and such. One, according to court papers revealed as a result of the FBI investigation, Keith Raniere NEVER graduated with 3 degrees. The FBI found that he never graduated, leaving with around a 2.5 GPA. He was accepted to the Polytechnic Institute at 16 but only because he had dropped out of high school and that university did not require high school transcripts. Two, with regards to the Guinness Book of World Records, this claim is rather dubious as well. The company used to give Keith Raniere the IQ test was also OWNED by Keith Raniere, so it’s easy to guess that like every other aspect of his life, Keith Raniere cheated his way into getting an abnormally high score. At the time, Guinness still published claims of high IQ and merely mentioned him in one of their editions, not specifically awarding him with such an honor. Three, not really much of a correction, but Salinas and Raniere were highly involved with one another at the Mexican chapter of NXIVM. Catherine Oxenberg, the mother of India Oxenberg (heiress and alleged NXIVM slave before escaping), claims that they planned on taking over an entire country and making Raniere leader. He is expected to be indicted since he is a dual citizen and was involving in much of the trafficking and corruption operations.
That makes so much more sense. Didn't believe his intelligence claim for a second after hearing how he fucked up both his former business and his cult. ... and the interview where he doesn't even make a solid claim, just some vague bullshit about what his programm could help people with, possibly. Yeah, right. Low effort. smh
@@seigeengine it honestly just shows how flawed our current system of measuring IQ is in general. There are so many facets of intelligence that its never all covered and a lot of it is more just a state of mind where you can accept and act based on certain things. People in general have an almost faith-like belief in what's classified as intelligence and how all-encompassing they think it is. Intelligent people aren't immune to making objectively stupid choices, in fact often times intelligence can lead to such choices, even if because they forget the human element in their intellectual thought processes.
"Cures ADD, autism, fatigue things, who knows.. the ability of flight, shoots laser out of ur eyes, beating Matt Stonie in an eating competition, who knows.. who knows..." 👍 sounds legit
It's creepy to hear how alike cult leaders sound when being interviewed. I just watched KnowingBetter's video on Scientology a couple of days ago and this Raniere guy sounds eerily like L. Ron Hubbard. Jim Jones sounded like this, too, from what I can recall. People describe these leaders as irresistible/magnetic personalities whose charisma moves masses to act out all this crazy shit... Must be an in-person/had-to-be-there thing because to me they seem deranged/crazy and shady AF.
@@artsy1447 seems that way. Appears there is talks on the dark web/interwebs conspiracy reddits this goes REALLY deep.....like Deep state type of deep. A lot of connections to a lot of powerful people and he is just the one domino about the fall bringing everyone else down.
@@jasonfields7058 Oh, I know. Check out Qanon if you're interested and the stuff Q has been posting. Ever wondered why the media attacks the Q movement so much? Makes you wonder ;D Then again that could also be a lie, but we'll see where it goes.
Thank you Phil for informing us, I'm sure it's not easy to have to talk about these topics on the daily. Some days I choose not to hear the news in general knowing it may upset me, so I appreciate you constantly researching and educating us. Your personality and defense of the victims always helps me get through the stories.
Congratulations and thank you for coming public, I can somewhat understand when you said that somehow leaving the group wasn't a choice and fuck people trying to victim shame people on this obviously horrible binding situation we as a society must recognize that you are a godsent for all those woman PS: fuck those billionaire heiresses, I hope they fucking rot in jail for funding and enabling this as they are fucking educated and shouldn't be dragged into this
Just out of curiosity - in what way are these people victims? Seems to me they were 100% autonomous and made these choices by their own free will. To put it a different way - how is this different than a bad relationship?
@Allan Reford What exactly was the false pretense? Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm defending the 'cult' cause I'm not trying to. I just think this is a case of idiots being idiots
Mark Imagine your mother needs a kidney transplant, but you can’t afford the procedure. A foundation contacts you that they specialise in these situations, they help speed up the donor procedure and pay up front and give your mother the chance to live- like a mortgage for a new home. You sign the paperwork, your mother gets a new kidney and you think you’re starting the payoff. Now they return and say “Hey the kidney came with a kill switch. You have to pay us 50K every month now for the next five years. If you can’t pay, you can choose to pay in other ways or we flip the switch. Oh and your house is ours now so you can come live in our office. That way you can work more hours to pay off your loan!” That’s what this cult did. Sure you can say fuck that and leave. Now your mom’s dead, oh and you’re jobless, homeless and they’ve got custody of your kids. Or you can let your master fuck you 5 times and your month is paid for. It’s not a choice by the time you realise they weren’t a real charity.
Because they have to make sure they have enough evidence to arrest him on. if they just arrested him without much then that's all he's going to get tried for. Anything related to the charge can get thrown out due to double jeopardy laws. He also can't be held in prison while investigators build up a case. He has to be tried in a certain amount of time or he will be let go. And then he can sue for an unlawful arrest
That woman who came forward is very brave. The conditioning one gets while being groomed into a sex slaves makes us forget we have freedom of will and choices. We automatically ask permission, inflict punishment on ourselves when we even just think things the abuser doesn't want us to think. Breaking that conditioning takes years. The trauma that it inflicts is just horrible. I can't imagine what it's like to be in a cult like that. I only know having been with one abuser whom I thought I wanted to be with. All those women have been groomed. I'm pretty sure a lot of men were also conditioned and brainwashed to becomes what that monster wanted men and women to become and take on the roles he assigned them. I pray for everyone to whom that man has caused trauma.
yeah, but how stupid are the woman that they joined the roup to being with? honestly, cults are not that hard to tell. And honestly, who thinks that this kinda blackmail works? the fact that there is blackmail is enough for all legality of what is in the blackmail would be null. Like the stuff about the abuse of the nephew and such. If they went to the police about it, that infomation would have be null until a decision of whether it is blackmail or not.
All of you need to do your homework on cult tactics before you dismiss. Cult leaders are experts at finding people who have experienced loss and who are otherwise susceptible to manipulation.
Shes not brave, she just did what was necessary and there wasnt any risk to her for doing so. Brave would be speaking up when you're under imminent threat.
@Tim Grain You just got my point. Lel. There's honestly lots of things that can be considered conspiracies and fake now, but later on something comes up that makes them pike up.
Im a huge Smallville fan and loved Allison Mack in it. Even when she was on Wilfred, she did a great job. But if shes guilty, i hope she gets the maximum penalty for it.
@@positivevibrations4062 That's not uncommon awaiting a trial. People don't get away with running a sex slave cult, don't listen to the incel above you.
1) she is a victim turned perpetrator so I do have empathy for her. 2) she was sentenced to 3 years and seems to be coming out of the brainwashing. Too bad Nicki Clyne is still brainwashed and defending Keith.
Tbh I would have expected someone with such a high level of intellect and three degrees to be able to do better than using phrases like “fertility things”, “fatigue things”, “attention deficit disorder things” 🤨
it was to protect his statement, so it wouldnt be called a false claim. he didnt say it could help with fertility (which would be specific), just "fertility things"... which could be anything
If anyone is interested in hearing more there is a great podcast by CBC called "Escaping NXIVM". It follows someone who was indoctrinated into the cult.
Some people will fall for everything. Not because they are stupid, but because they are desperate. These people prey on the desperate, people who's lives had spiralled out of control, people who had no one to turn to, people who are terminally ill. These predators should be cracked down, and be held to the highest form of justice possible. Because these predators are definitely some of the most powerful people and we need to make an example out of them. Reminds me of the judge case that sent RDJ to prison and look how he turn out. Some people need that "gentle" reminder they don't have immunity from the law.
that is a little extreme. also you are taking away those peoples agency as human beings by claiming they had no choice but to follow every single word he said. you may as well just classify these people as animals if you are going to do that. also what if he himself was just desperate too.
@@mayainverse9429 You can be desperate, BUT it don't mean that you can commit a crime! So you still can't do the things he did/you can't be like him; a cult leader, who uses womens as a sex slaves, marking them, beating them, threatening them etc! He did all these terrible things, CRIMES to them, whilst forcing them to participate (and do whatever he asked them to, you had to even commit a crime if he asked - or else... he beats you, lies to police that you did something you didn't, sends/shares pictures of you (naked), sells your house etc). So that's why these victims are different than him. That's why it's okay to be desperate, but not okay to do terrible things like these to other human being(s)!! No matter how desperate you are, it still don't give you the right to commit a crime! Just saying. :/
Sad and scary how desperate these people are, and willing to accept ridiculousness to belong and feel included. Charismatic leaders can say or do anything to people who want to believe them. Cult leaders are all very similar. Sad.
It's funny but he's really just a slightly above average asshole who never had anyone tell him that he's not anymore special than the dude next to him. Interestingly enough, not being self aware of how bloated his ego is kind of makes his intelligence null and void.. But hey, people want a leader I guess
CBC: Uncovered - escaping nxivm is an excellent journalistic podcast to hear more of Sarah's details, and to see more inside of nxivm; i definitely recommend listening to the episodes!
Agreed! Excellent podcast. But Sarah is no saint in this. She's on a world tour getting the fame she never got as an actress. She participated in the scheme for 12 YEARS and jumped ship just before the raid, claiming she just all of a sudden became enlightened. She's still rich, hasn't returned a dime to people she took money from.
I started a cult once when I was a kid and I believed I was a chocolate God and to pay tribute to me you have to die by eating a lot of chocolate I was a very emotionally unstable child
I think one of the more troubling things is that self help gurus are able to give people tasks that break people down and might be mistaken as cathartic (thus reinforcing whatever incoherent quasi religion is going caught). the self improvement angle had people (filtered on ambitions, poor judgement or personal problems) queuing up to be broken down, where new debasements might be framed as triumphs over limitation (or whatever). If you wanted to start a cult today, self improvement is the way to package your manipulation.
One of the first things this guy did was take away their freedom to question. I'm glad this is being put to trial, but just how many lives did this man destroy? We should do something to help the victims.
@@pluto8404 that usually means they have a gambling addiction and such help is already out there. I don't see how that disproves his point. Almost everyone in the world has similar weaknesses, just about different things. Lots of people blindly follow one person or another looking for a place to be or meaning in their life. Fraternities and sororities are in many cases the young adult form of such things and many people still join those.
@@GhoulishTeatime I don't really think Trump is actively hunting down the weird cults and societies that lurk in the elite, Hollywood upper-crust. But it IS true that since 2016 a lot of the questionable practices and systems going on in Hollywood and other prestigious institutions have been exposed. These crazy, immoral, filthy rich people aren't as powerful as they used to be.
@@BobDevV Allegedly Kristen Kruek had little to nothing to do with the cult and was never a part of the sex thing. I think eventually the truth will come out though.
I was with the guy up until the kid stuff. Kind of how I felt about LGB until they added the T and the kids. Be as weird as you want, just don't involve me or the kids.
@@WTF3585 a lot of how he handled himself on social media and in interviews was extremely calculated and designed to make you feel a certain way about him. Also he is a confirmed genius..
Insanity and genius were never mutually exclusive in order to be a genius need to be a little crazy Einstein was a little crazy but he had morals and honor this man is just a sleaze ball using his powers of intelligence for evil rather than good
The brand is also made up of Allison Mack's initials AM as well when viewed straight on as opposed to turning it to reveal KR. Anyone who thinks she's not just as complicit as Keith Raniere is fooling themselves.
Psychopaths of this level quite often have very high IQs. This, I believe, leads to the development of a superiority complex, which in turn leads to increasingly disturbing behaviors.
Psychopaths are born with superiority complexes. That's the thing about psychopaths, they actually do not feel empathy, are incapable of feeling empathy. So they are inherent narcissists and view others as people to manipulate. A smart psychopath is just better at it. But they usually always end up like this, unable to understand how consequences can catch up to them and they get caught.
There are psychopaths who have low IQs (like my ex) usually secondary psychopaths who become so through childhood trauma. Primary psychopaths, according to Marc Passio, tend to be the more intelligent ones and can get very far, very fast. This guy from this cult is the exact definition of psychopath as described by Marc Passio.
@@fangsabre Sociopaths actually tend to me more calculated and find ways to bypass laws without getting into trouble more often than psychopaths. It's strange how psychopathy is so often dismissed as non legit, and yet here is a real life example of yet another psychopath.
@@ambujbansal2652 they could kill him off and cover it up as a suicide or something else we don't know how many other people this could have happened to
It could happen to anyone. Even highly intelligent people. Education about mental health and brainwashing is necessary to stop these groups from getting out of control.
Keith can't admit he sucks at driving so he invents a lunatic excuse to hide his inadequacies... A female version is Teal Swan and you can see her narcissistic sh💩 show cult right here on RUclips 😂
Bill Marion Nah, as a charismatic intellectual myself, my astutely thunderous brain waves often hemorrhage out unsuspectingly and cause household appliances to ceremoniously trigger. I often view it as the machines in my home bowing and accepting my superior intelligence.
mangalover0149 A joke? Clearly you are just not an intellectual such as myself. Come back and speak to me when you can microwave a hot pocket using nothing but the thought of calculus.
This just goes to show why we can’t put all our eggs in one basket when it comes to idolizing celebs. You gotta stay skeptical. I had NO idea the Dalai Llama was involved in any organization, let alone THIS. Thanks so much for covering this story, Phil. I’m very interested in hearing updates.
Emily Richardson The Dalai Lama was basically used by the Organization to give them credibility. They hosted an event for him. At that point in time, there were no rumors or information about any abuse. The Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the scandal, nor would I expect him to launch a full-fledged investigation of everyone who invites him to speak. Many good people were involved in NXVIUM programs or associated with them before the craziness broke. Basically, his involvement is a testimonial to how deceptive Keith could be, and what a slippery slope the whole mess was.
Kate Phillips Thanks, you’re right it certainly isn’t just a one-way association. I should’ve thought of that. It still sucks that he was brought in to it at all though. As you said, a testament to how deceptive Keith is.
I watched this when Phil first posted this. And I just recently watched entirety of The Vow series, and now going back and re-watching this, I've realized he summarized the entire series perfectly and succinctly and I wish I could get back those 8 hours of my life. Put it towards sleep or something.
I give IQ tests for a living. And some surprising information I learned in graduate school is IQ has no exact definition. There are multiple theories of IQ and different IQ tests are based around them. The main thing we use IQ for in my field is determine if someone has an intellectual disability because besides that point it really means nothing. Also if you pay enough money people can pay certain organizations to give them a high score or even help them study for the test (which means the results will be fake).
That's interesting. I've never done an IQ test, but I did Jordan Peterson's personality test. I am very low in Intellect, which is self discipline, focus and concentration. But high in other areas. Someone with high IQ can also be very kind, but IQ does not translate necessarily to being a moral person. That guy seems intelligent enough, but the way he talks, sounds just like sensationalism, manipulation, with not much actual intelligent stuff going on.
@Anzu Wyliei Peterson is not a fringe quack nor discredited within his field. Outside of his field, on the other hand . . . For every die-hard Peterson fanatic there is an equally die-hard Peterson hater, and apparently neither seem capable of objectively critiquing what he says.
When I was 12 I was given an IQ test and scored 128 which is apparently near genius level. It hasn't seemed to do shit for me as I still failed calculus repeatedly in college to the point I had to change my major. All it seemed to actually say is I have good lateral problem solving and an intuition for understanding language. Pretty sure that doesn't make me any sort of genius but that these IQ tests tend to favor these sorts of areas.
@Space Goblin Based on my experience with IQ tests, it seems that they are designed for quick thinking and not deep thinking. In general quick problem solving is the simplest way of measuring IQ, but the problem with that is that patch works do not work on complicated problems, which is why IQ does not always correspond to intelligence.
Yep. I took an IQ test once and scored abysmally low. It was mostly math problems, and I suck at math. I eventually understand it, I'm just really slow. I know I'm not dumb or untalented though. I can write, draw, and sing well. I'm just really slow to solve math problems, haha.
Great work covering this story. Appreciate hearing this story from you and your journalistic standards (don’t care that you don’t call yourself one, you are the gold standard from my knowledge and experience). Thank you for keeping this all up, and I can say whole heartedly that I’ve loved seeing you evolve across your many years on this platform. Don’t usually comment in all my years knowing you, but appreciate you sharing your talents. P.S. Saw your RUclips story thingy with your kids, my god you’ve managed to make such an awesome family mate. Just looking at how you’ve evolved from only 6yrs ago when I discovered you, glad to have that as an example to follow for my own growth.
My heart breaks for the survivors. People make light of emotional abuse, but it was so bad in this "organization, religion, cult" that they had victims holding down other victims.
Thank you for talking about this. It is personally very difficult for me to watch because I basically grew up in a cult. I know how easy it is to get indoctrinated into crazy situations. I think for that reason it is very important for people to hear about this. I'm thankful every day that my parents got out. If your group is isolating you, or saying your loved ones are wrong for their beliefs, get out. It happens so slowly you almost don't notice. Just look out for yourselves and don't be afraid to ask people for help.
EXACTLY! I to was involved in a cult. It happens so slowly and before you know it...it is a cult. Anyone can get stuck in it. Education about cults is the best way to combat them!
I adored Allison Mack. It shocks me and breaks my heart to hear that she would be apart of this. When Smallville was still on TV, I would dress like her and even get my hair dyed and styled just like her. Now that I know she has been apart of a cult and encouraged this awful behavior, it makes me upset to think that I used to look up to her.
This sounds exactly like a company that came and spoke in multiple classes of mine in college called southwestern advantage which was an internship that you have to interview for where they tell you about the “internship”. The basic premise is that you are going to be selling textbooks to ppl door to door, the books are like a k-12 all subject inclusive thing (they aren’t that important) but if you are selected for an “internship” you must go to some state for this “sales school” where they teach you how to sell the books. And then you are shipped off to another state far from home where you will be tasked with selling these books door to door. Here’s the catch, they tel you that you can make 18k minimum (to my memory) and that they have had HIGHER LEVEL members make up to 46k selling these books... but you have to buy these books from the company first in bulk in the beginning and so you must do whatever you can to sell these books. You may be wondering if the internship company will put you up in an apartment while you are selling these books. They put you up but in a house with an “alumni” of the internship so you stay with a random person and that person drives you to a neighborhood and you are on your own. I did some research and often the interns are dropped off In sketchy neighborhoods early morning and are not picked up until late at night. If you look on their website they use similar terminology that Phil mentioned that NXIVM used talking about if you doubt in the company it’s because you don’t have the southwestern edge. It’s worth looking into cause they came to my class and pitched the internship and asked those interested to write their name phone number and email on a card and they collected them. A couple weeks later I got a call and they last said that I could go in for an info session and interview and I went and it was in a small room in my schools library and there were 2 other students at the info sesh with me and the guys gave their whole schpiel and then they were like yeah everything we just told you was off a script and that’s what you’ll learn at sales school because selling the books is just following a script. And then they split us up and had a mini interview and if you get past that interview you go to another stage of interviews because “only the best can get the southwestern advantage” 😂 I was not offered a second round interview but I’m glad now that I wasn’t. It’s a company I would recommend looking into maybe we can find some more dirt and Phil can break the story. Thank you for coming to my ted talk
This is crazy. 3 years ago I was in a recruitment meeting for a very similar program. We sat down in a classroom and there were people drawing diagrams and talking in circles but by the end of it I still didnt know what I would be paying $900 for. The wierdest part was the women who did the class were all sent out to flirt with the men and try to convince them to join. The $900 was for the basic coarse and they wanted you to sign up that night promising a discount that became more and more sweet as you refused. In the end they were quite cold to me when I left without buying into the course like a complete personality change from friendly to snappy. Then they cleared the room for a members only meeting. I did research later that night because I was curious. I found a couple troubling stories with responses saying the negative reviews are from people who never went through the program. I had a couple friends who went through after and I tried to figure out what happened they only told me they loved the program but couldn't tell me specifically what they liked about it just that it was life changing. I haven't heard about it since but I find myself thinking about it wondering if ill ever see it in the news like this. The program was called PSI World Seminars if anyone is curious.
Well, from just a cursory web search, it's not necessarily "bunk-o"... in so many syllables. BUT while there may be positive general effects for a course on the subject of "Large Group Awareness Training"... I can't see why you'd need to fork over $900 (US) for such a thing. AND with apparently at least 3 classes required (each probably longer and more expensive than the last) to be considered "graduated"(?) if not further... I don't see where you'd be doing better than you could be scraping cash together for a short series of lectures and college Psych' courses to work on your personal awareness and focus on benefits to suit your personal journey or intent... so not exactly "anti-bunk-o" either. It's important to point out, that if you find yourself confronting a logic-circle, it's rare that you're about to invest in a really beneficial endeavor. AND I'd feel remiss in my responsibilities for not adding that "Good products sell themselves. They don't need flirtation or hookers." Nothing wrong with a sexually exciting marketing plan, but it shouldn't be required (and usually isn't) for basic sales. To drive a price up at auction, maybe an "illicit" investment, but with most high-end auctions dubiously involved in alcoholic bars, it's not the first thing anyone's implemented to indulge in price inflation from ulterior means. ;o)
I was looking for a job once and found these dudes at a job seminar who basically sold some kind of insurance, and they made it sound really easy. So I went down to their office a few days later for some kind of meeting, a get-together with most of the office's "employees". Everyone sat down together to watch this vid that featured the company's CEO, and basically it was this weird, preachy thing that felt like a sermon at those mega-churches. He was really trying to pump up the audience, praising them alot, saying the employees were "like family". To make it even weirder, a lot of the employees were responding to parts of this vid rather enthusiastically. Anyways, once that part ended the guys I had met at the seminar pulled me into a side office and started talking about what they do. It was the usual MLM spiel: "We sell this product (insurance), if you recruit other people to sell then you get part of their cut, look how successful it made this one young guy with his fancy watch and expensive car". I, at the time, was naive to what a pyramid scheme is or how "multi-level marketing" is similar. So I'm sitting there with the contract in front of me, with the thought nagging me that all of this feels too good to be true, but not able to see the flaw in it. Thankfully, I said I would consider it, and left for the night. Later that evening, I tell my roommate about this, since I couldn't put my finger on what was weird about the company and wanted his opinion. Right out the gate he tells me, "That's a pyramid scheme, dude," and I'm thinking to myself _a fucking what?_ So I research it, and that's how I discovered MLMs. The shysters called me the next day to see if I'd made my mind up--I told them I wasn't interested in a pyramid scheme, and that was that. Unfortunately I've seen both a college friend and my own mother fall to these kinds of fucking scheme, and while my friend finally wised up my stubborn mother won't. These fucking parasitic thieves feed on the vulnerable and I goddamn hate them.
I had the biggest crush on her since I was a teenager, it's hard to accept, but in reality I only knew her character, never knew who she is as a person.
Use to watch Smallvile often, and wondered what happened to some of the actors... googled it to find out about Allison Mack and can never watch it the same....
Some articles I read stated that it was Kristin Kreuk who recruited Allison Mack before she broke away. It's just disappointing and sad from every angle.
keep making these! this shocked me... I know people go through some pretty shitty times and may fall into this bs. But someone orchestrating something like this blows me away. thought that was movie shit
So I’m not unfamiliar with this story. I’m a member of the a cappella community- literally just a group of singers who love singing- and this group back in 2014 I wanna say tried recruiting members from our collective Facebook page. We had to ban them.
Lost so much respect for Allison Mack. This is ridiculous, someone that played a strong female presence in one of my favorite tv shows completely turning the other way around and believing woman should be slaves...I don't understand how that could happen.
Cults use torture and abuse both mental and physical to break down people. Allison and all these women wanted to get better and ended up in the hands of him. Through time people start thinking like their captors.
@@setofreakinkaiba8553 yeah but the fd up part is allison worked her way up to the top. shes one of the highest members and also did a lot of torturing as well, hence the fact of her similar charges to the leader. infact it was her idea to brand the members and what phil doesnt mention is its actually both their initials not just his which is why its shaped like an A with the 2 letters put together. she was just as disgustign and power hungry as he was
@@GreenHatPanda i know this. I know the story before phil covered it. I'm not defending her but she went to the program because of a bad breakup and had depression then this guy basically used her, then like Phil said they are then forced to be in the program. There was no other way out in their minds only going farther up to please him. If u look at the video he tells Allison that she failed as an actress and she didn't have talent, she then apologizes for feeling upset and he dismisses it as if it was meaningless. She is guilty too but that is why it is a cult. You force people to do bad things to others the same way they did to you.
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt (force of habit) and in her case maybe she didn't know. It's a very unlikely maybe but it could be possible that it was talked about as if it was a legit mentorship and she didn't think twice to look into it. Of course I could be completely wrong and regret ever voicing this but still innocent until proven guilty right? Except for that disgusting piece of garbage. He can go rot in hell
Woah - When you start to have some faith in the world and feel like our society is so open and something such as a “secret society “ this extreme couldn’t POSSIBLY exist... Well.. turns out it does. Makes me wonder what other extreme groups are out there. Very interesting.. I’m proud of that one actress for coming forward
For The Love Of No kidding! That must have been so difficult, not only for the potential of what the cult could do to her but also for the embarrassment of actually being caught up in something like that.
I legitamitely cannot understand how human beings could do this to other people. I'm not naive to the depth of horror by human actions or deny the reality of it, I just personally can't get in the mindset how someone can be ok with it.
WOW PHIL! I don't know if you will get to see my comment among the rest but these morning videos have been INCREDIBLE! I love the direction the channel is heading in. Amazing work and keep it up!
Men and women are wired different. And we do need each other because the sum of both our parts makes us greater. But not in the way he thinks. We are equal but different. For example, women have higher body fat percentages, higher resting heart rates, more susceptible to certain diseases/syndromes, like osteoporosis, hyperthyroidism and fibromyalgia. Men have more muscle mass on average, have more body hair, and are more likely to have heart disease, Parkinson’s, and ALS. Our bodies work differently. Men are on average better at math while women tend to be better at linguistics and organization skills. “The right and left hemispheres of the male and female brains are not set up exactly the same way. For instance, females tend to have verbal centers on both sides of the brain, while males tend to have verbal centers on only the left hemisphere.” We are different physically and mentally, but no one is less valuable than the other. We need each other, for biological reasons and social reasons. We are equal, and women are NOT meant to be slaves.
yes everyone already knows that. and if someone tells you differently they are irrational. both genders have their roles to play, it doesn't mean you have to play your role to be happy, but it's how a majority of people are wired.
You're right on most of this, but I do need to add this: men tend to do worse in academics compared to women, while women tend to be weaker on average than men. Does that mean a man is dumber than a woman or that a woman can't be as strong as a man? No, it just means we're literally wired differently, but we can always change those things about ourselves.
I’d also like to add that women’s brains develops faster than men’s so naturally they will do better in academics. Also, studies show taller people tend to be smarter than shorter people as the growing body tells the brain to keep growing. Learning and schooling can counteract these things for everyone so smarts is not set in stone. Still I felt assuming women are smarter as a whole was disengenuious.
+Mrs M A E One important caveat to all that is that almost all differences you describe are general differences - there tends to be significant variation within each group. Men and women might be _on average_ different, which might be important in big-picture sociological or political discussions, but applying those differences to individuals is pretty dubious.
NatTheKiwi I’m not assuming women are smarter than men. Just that the male brain excels are certain areas while the female brain excels in different areas. Men are typically better at math and science, women are better at linguistics and identifying patterns, which makes them better at organizations. Equally smart, and of course there is outliers and exemptions like Madame Curie who was fantastic as science and math and Ziad Fazah who can speak and read 58 languages. I’m talking on average which gender is better at which subjects.
Never trust someone who brags about their IQ test score.
especially since those tests are designed for children and don't actually have any meaning whatsoever when applied to a grown adult.
@@Darasilverdragon You really think so? where do you get these facts from, cause i doubt it.
@@MindlessTube I mean... it was from an interview with the dude who developed the IQ test, who was a child psychologist. You don't have to take my word for it tho, google exists
@@Darasilverdragon IQ is a significantly higher measure of potential success than any other psychological attribute. although I do agree talking about your own IQ is useless as it is only a tool that is used to assist in predicting future success would be more useful to talk about your achievements. but then again. if bragging about your IQ or even spiritual powers for that matter itself provides results in achieving your goals then that is in reality a display of intelligence.
“I know the best words”
“I’m like a really smart guy”
This story went 0 to 100 real fast!
LegacyKillaHD ur cute
It was at about 95 the entire time
So pizzagate is real.
I'm left compelled to re-watch Smallville to see if I can see it.
Nice to see you here.
"Things like OCD, migraine headaches, even certain fertility things, maybe fatigue things... who knows?"
Sounds like a guy who knows what he's talking about.
He's trying not to make false claims that will get him sued lmao in his cult he most likely says they definitely 100% helped a wheelchair bound woman walk again lol
Not very well spoken, is he?
MJR Schneider Oh don’t forget Autism. As a woman with the condition myself I feel offended that he thinks it can be cured. It is a NEUROLOGICAL DISORDER. it CANNOT be cured.
Andie I think OP is talking about how bad he is at communicating for someone claiming to be brilliant, he is not very well spoken. Talks like an avg IQ guy, to be honest.
sounds legit
I met Allison Mack at a convention a number of years ago. Although it was a brief conversation, she seemed nice when I talked to her, but was also kind of weird... in the sort of way that screams "This person doesn't live in the real world". I thought it harmless, but boy was I wrong.
I don't believe his intellectual energy can set off radar detectors, but my bullshit detector is off the charts...
Lol
Lmfao good one my friend.
@@santoslara9728 wow so much bullshit it skipped green and went straight to orange
@ted rosa so much bullshit it broke the needle
He can¡ because he is a moron and speed his cars
I saw the interview with the actress when it aired on Nightline. It's like Scientology meets R. Kelly . Super Scary
Just Call Me Wah yeah didnt they brand her with his name?
Its wah!
Sign me up!
"It's like Scientology meets R. Kelly "
Sounds like an amazingly accurate description ... Terrifyingly heinous acts were committed.
daym that's a great analogy
Thank God she came forward. This would likely still be happening if not for her.
They actually caught Allison Mack before this but she didn’t say anything and yes I’m glad the other women came forward
@Blackfeather 22 But at least some of it will have been stopped, this group in particular (at least the ones they caught and know about).
Unless they get away.
As someone who lives not even two minutes from where the NXIVM cult met in Halfmoon, NY I think my perspective might be a bit interesting. I also drive by the building everyday to go to work so yes, it’s still standing kind of abandoned. Everyone in my town knew they were a cult but we all thought it was just a harmless business cult. Everyone always dressed in suits or nice clothing when we did see people or they were always having a party with white tents in the back, all driving nice cars. The building is white and it was extremely hard to make out that the letters on the front said “NXIVM” because of the font they chose. Because it was hard to read, a lot of people also thought it was a restaurant, which is what the building was before the cult leader bought it out. The windows of the building had blackout curtains so no one could ever see in the building either. It was a running joke with my friends and family that they were just having massive orgies in there because of it, everyone thought the cult was harmless and only the rich could even afford to be in it. One night my ex tried to scare me (it worked) and drove around the building while it was dark out. There was a piece of printer paper on the front door that clearly stated in bold font “Women Only” which was extremely creepy. There was one car parked in the back but no lights were on when he drove around so he kept looping and after the second or third time the lights outside came on and there was a shadow of whoever was in there in the doorway. I was terrified and he drove back to my house afterwards. The sign on the door always creeped out any of the local friends I told but no one ever thought it’d lead to what it actually was. We all thought they were your everyday local business cult (as weird as that sounds)
Wtf is an everyday local business cult?
Ultimate Luki THATS WHAT IM SAYING...... I’ve never heard of any variation of a “cult” being mentioned so casually lmao
@@Ultimate_Luki Amway popped into my head lol
Angela Lawrence sounds like society in a nutshell.
*"Fertility things." "OCD things." "Fatigue things." Yep, he definitely knows what he’s talking about.* 🤨
oh woe is me before his intellectual might
I was thinking the same thing.
I was waiting for him to claim to be able to cure physical disabilities. Oh, sorry 'disability things'.
He sounds just like Trump.
Plus a lot of "who knows" as in "i sure af have no idea, but I'm gonna say it anyway"
This is gonna turn into one hell of a documentary.
Low key thought the same thing lol
There’s a podcast series. Uncover Season 1 ( NBC Podcasts)
@@Wrigelsbey CBC
I can’t wait for the books too! A lot of crazy stuff! The podcast was really well done as well!
Already has. There is a documentarythat alleges that Raniere murdered, or had murdered, 4 women in the early stages of Nxium. Two of his former partners and lovers died of cancer, and a third had cancer but recovered. Forensic testing revealed that these women had high levels of heavy metals and chemicals found in rat poison. another woman named Kristen snyder was apparently killed by Raniere, set up to look like suicide
This cult is from my town Saratoga Springs, NY / Clifton Park, NY. They would try to heavily recruit young women in the area. I can’t tell you how many times I was approached. I was weirded out immediately. and uncomfortable with the behavior of the women who would approach me. People in our area hated the presence of this cult and tried for years to get them to leave.
I am glad you didn't join!
im from waterford (but i went to high school in clifton park) and its so off-putting knowing that this was happening so close to me, and i had no idea. was this really only talked about around 2003? or was there any discussion afterwards? im extremely curious and i wanna know more about all this
I’m from toga too and this is WILD
Albany checking in. My buddy actually ran into Mack at Biergarten in Alb. Crazy.
I’m from Albany, I hadn’t heard of it before it came on the news recently. No one else I know heard of it before either. Crazy to think all that was happening so close to home.
This and R Kelly man we lived in a messed up world, we gotta hold all these monsters accountable
Phil: Your Thoughts?
Me: people suck. People suck a lot.
Say it louder for the people in the back.
Lol and here I am trying to think of an elaborate response but yours just sums it all up perfectly
some do, not all.
@@hycron1234 not the right place, really
Phrasing
This Keith dude doesn’t understand what equality is lol no one is saying men & women are the same thing, we have obvious differences, but despite those differences we are equal and have the same rights as human beings.
Yes, in his great IQ world if you treat a black person like you treat white people they'll magically be all the same color.
He understands equality, most likely. He's a manipulative cult leader. If he can convince _you_ that men and women aren't equal by redefining equality, then he gets what he wants.
Haha like reproduction rights and custody rights?
@Julia Mimi I wouldn't say he isn't a genius. The way he speaks about how equality doesn't exist. He is most likely looking to attract certain members to his organization, people who he sees easy to manipulate and indoctrinate. People who hold those ideals probably are not very well liked by people.
@@valodkreslobochi7719 ...what do you think "reproduction rights" are, exactly?
That guy is a literal monster who created a hell on earth. I hope he gets put away for the rest of his life.
even putting him in prison is not good enough. Can't even imagine what could be done with this level of people. Like not only in prison, but torture him for rest of his life and making sure he lives as long as possible.
@@Beastlordius That's disgusting. Torture is never justified. Advocating for torture is mostrous.
@@General12th while it is not a good thing. How to make sure person gets actually for his doings ? How many people were tortured and suffered for years. How many families were destroyed. And most of all, the children that suffered. Prison won't make any difference for him, death sentence is even more easy way out. So the only way to make justice would be to do all the things eh did with people to him. And that would go for all this level criminals. So not only they would get back what they done to others, but would be as example to others, to show what can lead these kind of actions. I'm sorry but if innocent people being abused, especially kids, i can't accept, that just prison is enough.
@@Beastlordius "Death sentence is the easy way out"? Not at all. Death sentence means dead: D E D dead. He's not coming back from that one.
He's going to die either way. It's not like all this torture is going to make him become a better person. It certainly won't ease the trauma of everyone affected.
@@General12th Exactly, if you're dead, you are dead, that's it, no responsibilities, no judgements or interactions for your actions. We all going to die sooner or later anyways. So you would just see it as the end of race. And while torturing won't make him better, it would show what he have done to others, and as i said, it would show others, that thse kind of actions can bring to something more then just prison or death sentence.
Wow. Alright. That's ... pretty horrifying.
Its hard to remember there's good in the world sometimes.....
It's actually even far worse than the info revealed here. The info here is just the first few layers....
@@terraglade I already have trouble seeing good in the world most of the time, thanks to crap like this.
Its rumored tht stormy daniels was/is a member nxism
@Amanda Charlebois her tattoo (below her naval) is a cover up of something. She has a scar under it. It looks identical to the kr brand. I'll hav to find the video and link it.
This is Onision's dream cult 💀
Vicky Avila hmmm...
A cult where a man is treated as a god with a superior mind and is Rich beyond his wildest dreams.
A cult with a twisted version of BDSM where he (the dom) is always in control and is only concerned about his pleasure.
A cult where he can have access to underage girls.
That sounds more like Onision's goal in life.
I was thinking the exact same thing! Seems like something that would happen if people were to actually fall for Onision's bullshit.. This whole taking underage girls into his home to possibly groom them.. Yeah, this guy would totally wants his own cult, as a matter of fact he once created his own 'religion'. He also wanted one woman he was involved with to be chained up in his basement for several days as punishment for smoking a blunt. This whole story is an example of what would happen if people didn't push back against Onision.
I was thinking the same thing, it seriously is, thank god Billy got outta there before Onion boy could brand her.
damnit I was going to say that
Onision even looks a little like him
I live in the neighborhood where Keith walks around in Clifton park NY, they have multiple houses in my neighborhood and no one walks around because they are always watching. Thanks Phil for bringing more attention to this creep.
Josh Weaver used to work in that mall. Glad I’m not around the area anymore
Josh Weaver lets rebel and kill them all
It's clear... intelligence does NOT equal virtue or smarts.
Genius can turn to madness
I'd be very dubious of that test and whether he actually is intelligent and not just extremely manipulative. Not saying he is dumb. Just he might have used his skills to increase his numbers.
It kinda does, he was able to scam a lot of stupid people for a lot of years
While I was still on track to be an educator, I took a class that taught us how to assist psychologists in administering real IQ tests.
The truth is, the data that's collected from those tests has very little to do with identifying intelligence and more to do with discovering a child's academic potential. The only time one's IQ actually mattered after testing was in finding major disparities between potential and performance.
If a child had a high IQ but got low grades, they were likely to either have a learning disability or some other major life factor getting between them and their education, like poverty or abuse. In any situation, the disparity would be cause for intervention.
Having a high IQ and no learning disability just meant you did well on a problem solving test, not that you're in some way exceptional. Adults who brag about their intelligence are all douchebags anyway, which is why I think this dude belongs on r/iamverysmart.
your right. IQ tests is just gauges how well you did on a problem solving test. just like how an obstacle course only proves how good you are at completing the course. although if you are good at that you are most likely good at other physical activities as well.
also life is problem solving test. that is all life is. you solve problems you do well in life. you fail to solve problems you don't do well in life.
shiftychaos r/iamverysmart lol
Well isn't academic performance corelated fairly highly with intelligence?
@@SALSN to a certain extent, of course. As far as academics, the grades a person gets or the degrees one earns tends to be indicative of two things: intellect, and some would argue more significantly, the effort one puts into school. Haven't you ever met anyone a teacher has told, "You have so much potential, if you only applied yourself more!" That's not just a cliche, it's reality for so many people.
Academics may be the closest standard we have for measuring true intelligence, but even then, we can't always account for laziness, apathy, or depression altering the data.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The amount of research that must have gone into this video is pretty crazy. Excellent work phil & crew
Can I just point out that this guy said both that "women are unloyal" and that "women were monogamous"? Meaning he thinks they are both loyal and unloyal which is such an easy to spot glaring hypocrisy.
We all accept various levels of paradox and hypocrisy in our lives. All I'm saying is it's easy to get caught in this kind of spell.
It sounds like he meant they were unloyal if they're given equal rights. To him they should be slaves to men or him.
@@iWyLD thats a fundamental hypocrisy in the ideology though. Like it's thr most important part of the ideology, but also hypocritical
The mommy issues are strong with this guy
It's not hypocrisy if we're talking in pure evolutionary / animals terms. Monogamous means the women will have one semi-permanent partner at a time. If she senses an opportunity to trade up she will and thus isn't loyal. This is just him using fancy words to describe hyper-gamy which is a well documented human trait, he's just applying it in a weird way.
*Phil, please do a regular update regarding this case! Thank youu*
Keith raniere: hey can I copy your homework?
L Ron Hubbard: sure but change it a bit so it’s not obvious.
Phillip DeFranco!! I appreciate you researching this topic but as an educator focused on cult psychology and new religious movements, I’ve been keeping my eye on this movement for almost 15 years now. I have some corrections I’d like to make to your video that hopefully add some context to why people fell for him and such. One, according to court papers revealed as a result of the FBI investigation, Keith Raniere NEVER graduated with 3 degrees. The FBI found that he never graduated, leaving with around a 2.5 GPA. He was accepted to the Polytechnic Institute at 16 but only because he had dropped out of high school and that university did not require high school transcripts. Two, with regards to the Guinness Book of World Records, this claim is rather dubious as well. The company used to give Keith Raniere the IQ test was also OWNED by Keith Raniere, so it’s easy to guess that like every other aspect of his life, Keith Raniere cheated his way into getting an abnormally high score. At the time, Guinness still published claims of high IQ and merely mentioned him in one of their editions, not specifically awarding him with such an honor. Three, not really much of a correction, but Salinas and Raniere were highly involved with one another at the Mexican chapter of NXIVM. Catherine Oxenberg, the mother of India Oxenberg (heiress and alleged NXIVM slave before escaping), claims that they planned on taking over an entire country and making Raniere leader. He is expected to be indicted since he is a dual citizen and was involving in much of the trafficking and corruption operations.
I suspected the intelligence bit was fake. Too many stupid mistakes.
oh wow. it just gets worse and worse
15 years? disturbing how long it was known publicly before the FBI started cracking down
That makes so much more sense. Didn't believe his intelligence claim for a second after hearing how he fucked up both his former business and his cult.
... and the interview where he doesn't even make a solid claim, just some vague bullshit about what his programm could help people with, possibly. Yeah, right. Low effort. smh
@@seigeengine it honestly just shows how flawed our current system of measuring IQ is in general. There are so many facets of intelligence that its never all covered and a lot of it is more just a state of mind where you can accept and act based on certain things.
People in general have an almost faith-like belief in what's classified as intelligence and how all-encompassing they think it is.
Intelligent people aren't immune to making objectively stupid choices, in fact often times intelligence can lead to such choices, even if because they forget the human element in their intellectual thought processes.
"Cures ADD, autism, fatigue things, who knows.. the ability of flight, shoots laser out of ur eyes, beating Matt Stonie in an eating competition, who knows.. who knows..." 👍 sounds legit
ilovepork and chicken it may have some positive effects on those things. It may be bullshit
beating matt stonie is no small feat...
@@littleredguitars2 its an impossible feat, just like curing autism
It's creepy to hear how alike cult leaders sound when being interviewed. I just watched KnowingBetter's video on Scientology a couple of days ago and this Raniere guy sounds eerily like L. Ron Hubbard. Jim Jones sounded like this, too, from what I can recall. People describe these leaders as irresistible/magnetic personalities whose charisma moves masses to act out all this crazy shit... Must be an in-person/had-to-be-there thing because to me they seem deranged/crazy and shady AF.
wow I'm loving this morning show, some of the stories you are finding and bringing to our attention are insane!!!
Was thinking this exactly. But ofc the solid investigative stories get less views than the fluffy stuff later in the day... such is life
Christ almighty. For at least half of this video I just kept internally screaming. Some people are just purely evil.
Get ready cause this is just the tip of the iceberg.
@@artsy1447 seems that way. Appears there is talks on the dark web/interwebs conspiracy reddits this goes REALLY deep.....like Deep state type of deep. A lot of connections to a lot of powerful people and he is just the one domino about the fall bringing everyone else down.
@@jasonfields7058 Oh, I know. Check out Qanon if you're interested and the stuff Q has been posting. Ever wondered why the media attacks the Q movement so much? Makes you wonder ;D Then again that could also be a lie, but we'll see where it goes.
Thank you Phil for informing us, I'm sure it's not easy to have to talk about these topics on the daily. Some days I choose not to hear the news in general knowing it may upset me, so I appreciate you constantly researching and educating us. Your personality and defense of the victims always helps me get through the stories.
Congratulations and thank you for coming public, I can somewhat understand when you said that somehow leaving the group wasn't a choice and fuck people trying to victim shame people on this obviously horrible binding situation
we as a society must recognize that you are a godsent for all those woman
PS: fuck those billionaire heiresses, I hope they fucking rot in jail for funding and enabling this as they are fucking educated and shouldn't be dragged into this
Just out of curiosity - in what way are these people victims? Seems to me they were 100% autonomous and made these choices by their own free will. To put it a different way - how is this different than a bad relationship?
@@Mark-ms4ze i guess that part where it transfers their hause, son and etc to the cult leader because they were under this illusion
@Allan Reford What exactly was the false pretense? Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm defending the 'cult' cause I'm not trying to. I just think this is a case of idiots being idiots
Mark Imagine your mother needs a kidney transplant, but you can’t afford the procedure. A foundation contacts you that they specialise in these situations, they help speed up the donor procedure and pay up front and give your mother the chance to live- like a mortgage for a new home. You sign the paperwork, your mother gets a new kidney and you think you’re starting the payoff. Now they return and say “Hey the kidney came with a kill switch. You have to pay us 50K every month now for the next five years. If you can’t pay, you can choose to pay in other ways or we flip the switch. Oh and your house is ours now so you can come live in our office. That way you can work more hours to pay off your loan!” That’s what this cult did. Sure you can say fuck that and leave. Now your mom’s dead, oh and you’re jobless, homeless and they’ve got custody of your kids. Or you can let your master fuck you 5 times and your month is paid for. It’s not a choice by the time you realise they weren’t a real charity.
Forget fantasy... the real world is far more terrifying.
Atleast Scientology was smart enough to legitimize their cult/pyramid scheme by establishing it as a "Church".
They kinda did. They don't even have to pay taxes.
hey law and order put a “what you’re about to see is not based on any real story” which always means “we totally stole this from current events”
I’m from the future. You did it! 🌟
Yep, ripped from the headlines so to speak. There are so many L&O episodes based on actual cases.
Why did it take so long until he was arrested? This is insane.
Cults are goddamn crazy man. It takes a long time to get enough evidence and build a case to be able to actively take down these people. It's fucked
Because they have to make sure they have enough evidence to arrest him on. if they just arrested him without much then that's all he's going to get tried for. Anything related to the charge can get thrown out due to double jeopardy laws. He also can't be held in prison while investigators build up a case. He has to be tried in a certain amount of time or he will be let go. And then he can sue for an unlawful arrest
That's why he blackmailed them.
If people not say something nothing happens
Because we do not care about stupid too much.
That woman who came forward is very brave. The conditioning one gets while being groomed into a sex slaves makes us forget we have freedom of will and choices. We automatically ask permission, inflict punishment on ourselves when we even just think things the abuser doesn't want us to think. Breaking that conditioning takes years. The trauma that it inflicts is just horrible. I can't imagine what it's like to be in a cult like that. I only know having been with one abuser whom I thought I wanted to be with. All those women have been groomed. I'm pretty sure a lot of men were also conditioned and brainwashed to becomes what that monster wanted men and women to become and take on the roles he assigned them. I pray for everyone to whom that man has caused trauma.
yeah, but how stupid are the woman that they joined the roup to being with? honestly, cults are not that hard to tell. And honestly, who thinks that this kinda blackmail works? the fact that there is blackmail is enough for all legality of what is in the blackmail would be null. Like the stuff about the abuse of the nephew and such. If they went to the police about it, that infomation would have be null until a decision of whether it is blackmail or not.
@Arwyn .... Arrogant in an attempt to be consoling.
All of you need to do your homework on cult tactics before you dismiss. Cult leaders are experts at finding people who have experienced loss and who are otherwise susceptible to manipulation.
Shes not brave, she just did what was necessary and there wasnt any risk to her for doing so. Brave would be speaking up when you're under imminent threat.
She "bravely" held someone down while they got branded too lol
Any else smell a Netflix documentary on its way?
I'd watch
@Jocelyn Jigsby Thank you for that, I've been waiting a year to find one.
He’s a genius yet can’t seem to grasp that equal doesn’t necessarily mean same?🤦🏼♀️
Ikr!!!
This is just beyond messed up!
Hollywood is so strange. So many celebrities involved in weird cults... 😮
@@iHasaComputer actually it does, because it was made up by a bunch of alt right basement dwellers, unlike this which is actually true
Daniel Still the world is so strange. so many regular people involved in weird cults.
@@PeachT87 With stuff like this... :V You never know; pizzagate might be true after all. I thought cults like this was destroyed back in the 90's
@Tim Grain xD You won't until way down the line most likely. But we can't ever be truly sure.
@Tim Grain You just got my point. Lel. There's honestly lots of things that can be considered conspiracies and fake now, but later on something comes up that makes them pike up.
Seems like the more money you get the weirder things get....
Nothing messes people up like a ton of money.
the more money youre getting, the more you'll put up with.
Tru that.
Mo money, mo problems.
WTH is Bezos up to then?
Im a huge Smallville fan and loved Allison Mack in it. Even when she was on Wilfred, she did a great job.
But if shes guilty, i hope she gets the maximum penalty for it.
Oh she's crazy guilty. She even said in an interview that she came up with the branding ritual
I'd be surprised if she even gets probation. She's female. The rules are different for females. #entitled
@@finkemon9 I think she's on house arrest
@@positivevibrations4062 That's not uncommon awaiting a trial. People don't get away with running a sex slave cult, don't listen to the incel above you.
1) she is a victim turned perpetrator so I do have empathy for her.
2) she was sentenced to 3 years and seems to be coming out of the brainwashing. Too bad Nicki Clyne is still brainwashed and defending Keith.
Tbh I would have expected someone with such a high level of intellect and three degrees to be able to do better than using phrases like “fertility things”, “fatigue things”, “attention deficit disorder things” 🤨
His intellect takes too much space in his brain he can only store basic English words.
He probably uses unspecific terms for a reason, like it covers anything you might have.
it was to protect his statement, so it wouldnt be called a false claim. he didnt say it could help with fertility (which would be specific), just "fertility things"... which could be anything
He is being deliberately vague to avoid legal consequences of said claims. This a true intelligent predatory psychopath.
You forgot "uses Yahoo!"
If anyone is interested in hearing more there is a great podcast by CBC called "Escaping NXIVM". It follows someone who was indoctrinated into the cult.
Great podcast. I was hooked.
Was looking for this comment. That whole podcast was such a wild ride.
I'll check it out
Yes! Amazing podcast, I was about to comment the same thing.
Yea I just commented this same thing, that was a great podcast.
Some people will fall for everything. Not because they are stupid, but because they are desperate.
These people prey on the desperate, people who's lives had spiralled out of control, people who had no one to turn to, people who are terminally ill.
These predators should be cracked down, and be held to the highest form of justice possible. Because these predators are definitely some of the most powerful people and we need to make an example out of them.
Reminds me of the judge case that sent RDJ to prison and look how he turn out. Some people need that "gentle" reminder they don't have immunity from the law.
that is a little extreme. also you are taking away those peoples agency as human beings by claiming they had no choice but to follow every single word he said. you may as well just classify these people as animals if you are going to do that. also what if he himself was just desperate too.
No, not for everything, but there are weak people out there who can be pressured into stupidity, and there are people who want to manipulate them.
@@mayainverse9429 You can be desperate, BUT it don't mean that you can commit a crime! So you still can't do the things he did/you can't be like him; a cult leader, who uses womens as a sex slaves, marking them, beating them, threatening them etc! He did all these terrible things, CRIMES to them, whilst forcing them to participate (and do whatever he asked them to, you had to even commit a crime if he asked - or else... he beats you, lies to police that you did something you didn't, sends/shares pictures of you (naked), sells your house etc). So that's why these victims are different than him. That's why it's okay to be desperate, but not okay to do terrible things like these to other human being(s)!! No matter how desperate you are, it still don't give you the right to commit a crime! Just saying. :/
So many IQs but so little brains
FixItNick haha 😂 good one!!
Sad and scary how desperate these people are, and willing to accept ridiculousness to belong and feel included. Charismatic leaders can say or do anything to people who want to believe them. Cult leaders are all very similar. Sad.
As you said, it's not necessarily that the victims are desperate. Cult leaders are just very, very good at emotional manipulation.
Religion is no different...
It is a cult tho
They’re all narcissists
It's funny but he's really just a slightly above average asshole who never had anyone tell him that he's not anymore special than the dude next to him. Interestingly enough, not being self aware of how bloated his ego is kind of makes his intelligence null and void.. But hey, people want a leader I guess
Surprised he didn't call them, "autism things," totally broke the thingy flow.
I was expecting him to say the same...thing.
I'm really glad you are covering this story, because I probably wouldn't have known about this without you.
CBC: Uncovered - escaping nxivm is an excellent journalistic podcast to hear more of Sarah's details, and to see more inside of nxivm; i definitely recommend listening to the episodes!
Agreed! Excellent podcast. But Sarah is no saint in this. She's on a world tour getting the fame she never got as an actress. She participated in the scheme for 12 YEARS and jumped ship just before the raid, claiming she just all of a sudden became enlightened. She's still rich, hasn't returned a dime to people she took money from.
When has joining a cult ever been a good idea?
Rigging Doctor it’s not. It was advertised as a wellness program :(
People don't know it's a cult when they join. The dodgy stuff is kept secret.
I started a cult once when I was a kid and I believed I was a chocolate God and to pay tribute to me you have to die by eating a lot of chocolate I was a very emotionally unstable child
What if religious groups are just cults who lost their edge?
Idk I heard Jim Jones made really good kool-aid
It was called a 'women's mentorship program'.. excuse while I vomit.
Any women need mentored in love-making?
Im available.
I think one of the more troubling things is that self help gurus are able to give people tasks that break people down and might be mistaken as cathartic (thus reinforcing whatever incoherent quasi religion is going caught). the self improvement angle had people (filtered on ambitions, poor judgement or personal problems) queuing up to be broken down, where new debasements might be framed as triumphs over limitation (or whatever). If you wanted to start a cult today, self improvement is the way to package your manipulation.
One of the first things this guy did was take away their freedom to question. I'm glad this is being put to trial, but just how many lives did this man destroy? We should do something to help the victims.
o0Avalon0o if you’re dumb enough to fall for something like that, it’s your problem
Should we also help people that lose all their money gambling?
@@pluto8404 that usually means they have a gambling addiction and such help is already out there. I don't see how that disproves his point. Almost everyone in the world has similar weaknesses, just about different things. Lots of people blindly follow one person or another looking for a place to be or meaning in their life.
Fraternities and sororities are in many cases the young adult form of such things and many people still join those.
How is this real? I'm glad this cult is being ended, but how many more sick things like this exist?
Many many more
Too many
Alf-Einar Sivertsen xD yeah ok; the man who cant even say origins.
Whats the Orange of this and where does this claim oranginate?
Source please!
@@GhoulishTeatime I don't really think Trump is actively hunting down the weird cults and societies that lurk in the elite, Hollywood upper-crust. But it IS true that since 2016 a lot of the questionable practices and systems going on in Hollywood and other prestigious institutions have been exposed. These crazy, immoral, filthy rich people aren't as powerful as they used to be.
Evidently there are thousands of cults in the U.S. as we speak.
If it sounds culty or like a pyramid scheme GFTO!
IzzyGoneCrazy Get Fucked Thieving Occultists?
Unless you were raised in it, then it's not culty.
Why would u get involved in any group in the first place. Do your own thing. Dont be a follower.
They don't look culty numb nuts. That's how they work!
You're in a cult, CALL YOUR DAD!
I wondered what happened to Allison Mack after "Smallville" ended.... what a shame.... I will never look at the show the same again...
I loved that character, now it's tainted with the reality of the actor =(
@SoundwaveSinus9 they where also involved in childtraffiking so the smallville theme song gives me the chills now.
I never finished Smallville and kinda wanted to go back and watch it. Very glad I’m watching Eureka Seven AO instead.
Always the cute ones that are extra crazy.... shame
@@BobDevV Allegedly Kristen Kruek had little to nothing to do with the cult and was never a part of the sex thing. I think eventually the truth will come out though.
Keith Raniere - proof that insanity and genius are not mutually exclusive.
Honestly bro, he seems like a fucking Hannibal villain.
I was with the guy up until the kid stuff. Kind of how I felt about LGB until they added the T and the kids. Be as weird as you want, just don't involve me or the kids.
how is he a genius ? he seems completely stupid and deluded to me...
@@WTF3585 a lot of how he handled himself on social media and in interviews was extremely calculated and designed to make you feel a certain way about him. Also he is a confirmed genius..
Insanity and genius were never mutually exclusive in order to be a genius need to be a little crazy Einstein was a little crazy but he had morals and honor this man is just a sleaze ball using his powers of intelligence for evil rather than good
The brand is also made up of Allison Mack's initials AM as well when viewed straight on as opposed to turning it to reveal KR. Anyone who thinks she's not just as complicit as Keith Raniere is fooling themselves.
Yeah I'm just going to stay inside... forever.
Same but I'm gonna take one last trip to McDonald's, u want somthin?
duck Can I have a motherfucking uhhhhh.... Filet O Fish? & Some duck meat 😈
@@LilLeanCuisine ...jokes on you I'ma cannibal duck.
@duck damn I'd ask for a McFlurry, but you already know their machine is down 🙄
best thread here
Psychopaths of this level quite often have very high IQs. This, I believe, leads to the development of a superiority complex, which in turn leads to increasingly disturbing behaviors.
Psychopaths are born with superiority complexes. That's the thing about psychopaths, they actually do not feel empathy, are incapable of feeling empathy. So they are inherent narcissists and view others as people to manipulate. A smart psychopath is just better at it. But they usually always end up like this, unable to understand how consequences can catch up to them and they get caught.
@@fangsabre Your head can only get so big before it starts getting you in trouble.
There are psychopaths who have low IQs (like my ex) usually secondary psychopaths who become so through childhood trauma. Primary psychopaths, according to Marc Passio, tend to be the more intelligent ones and can get very far, very fast. This guy from this cult is the exact definition of psychopath as described by Marc Passio.
Fangsabre Psychopaths can feel empathy, Sociopaths can’t. There’s differences between a psycho and a sociopath.
@@fangsabre Sociopaths actually tend to me more calculated and find ways to bypass laws without getting into trouble more often than psychopaths. It's strange how psychopathy is so often dismissed as non legit, and yet here is a real life example of yet another psychopath.
Careful Phil I hear these peeps are dangerous 😯
Phil has such a following that if he were to disappear then we would know,
True
Unless they got to him already..... #GreenScreenPhil
@@ambujbansal2652 they could kill him off and cover it up as a suicide or something else we don't know how many other people this could have happened to
@@avanda.7070 They wouldn't even have to stage it as a suicide. But, let's not jump the gun. I'm sure Phil is taking precautions, he's a smart dude.
I truly feel bad for people that get sucked into cults, etc.
It could happen to anyone. Even highly intelligent people. Education about mental health and brainwashing is necessary to stop these groups from getting out of control.
But police radars? 🙄 A special kind of crazy.
Keith can't admit he sucks at driving so he invents a lunatic excuse to hide his inadequacies... A female version is Teal Swan and you can see her narcissistic sh💩 show cult right here on RUclips 😂
Bill Marion Nah, as a charismatic intellectual myself, my astutely thunderous brain waves often hemorrhage out unsuspectingly and cause household appliances to ceremoniously trigger.
I often view it as the machines in my home bowing and accepting my superior intelligence.
That's cult code for "I speed"
Infanity I know it’s a joke but: r/iamverysmart
mangalover0149 A joke? Clearly you are just not an intellectual such as myself.
Come back and speak to me when you can microwave a hot pocket using nothing but the thought of calculus.
This just goes to show why we can’t put all our eggs in one basket when it comes to idolizing celebs. You gotta stay skeptical. I had NO idea the Dalai Llama was involved in any organization, let alone THIS. Thanks so much for covering this story, Phil. I’m very interested in hearing updates.
Emily Richardson The Dalai Lama was basically used by the Organization to give them credibility. They hosted an event for him. At that point in time, there were no rumors or information about any abuse.
The Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the scandal, nor would I expect him to launch a full-fledged investigation of everyone who invites him to speak. Many good people were involved in NXVIUM programs or associated with them before the craziness broke.
Basically, his involvement is a testimonial to how deceptive Keith could be, and what a slippery slope the whole mess was.
how about you just don't idolize celebs to start with.
@@thekatephillips thank you. I was going to say something similar.
Kate Phillips Thanks, you’re right it certainly isn’t just a one-way association. I should’ve thought of that. It still sucks that he was brought in to it at all though. As you said, a testament to how deceptive Keith is.
Greg Ward I mean if that’s something you choose for your life, that’s fine. But I’m pretty sure most people would argue it’s not that simple.
One thing you missed Phil, the brand wasn’t just his initials, it was also Allison’s (AM), when you turn it sideways.
AmethystEyes I see the AM but I doubt he would share the spotlight and that was more coincidental. Gonna make watching Smallville hard to do though
I watched this when Phil first posted this. And I just recently watched entirety of The Vow series, and now going back and re-watching this, I've realized he summarized the entire series perfectly and succinctly and I wish I could get back those 8 hours of my life. Put it towards sleep or something.
I give IQ tests for a living. And some surprising information I learned in graduate school is IQ has no exact definition. There are multiple theories of IQ and different IQ tests are based around them.
The main thing we use IQ for in my field is determine if someone has an intellectual disability because besides that point it really means nothing.
Also if you pay enough money people can pay certain organizations to give them a high score or even help them study for the test (which means the results will be fake).
That's interesting. I've never done an IQ test, but I did Jordan Peterson's personality test. I am very low in Intellect, which is self discipline, focus and concentration. But high in other areas. Someone with high IQ can also be very kind, but IQ does not translate necessarily to being a moral person. That guy seems intelligent enough, but the way he talks, sounds just like sensationalism, manipulation, with not much actual intelligent stuff going on.
@Anzu Wyliei Peterson is not a fringe quack nor discredited within his field. Outside of his field, on the other hand . . .
For every die-hard Peterson fanatic there is an equally die-hard Peterson hater, and apparently neither seem capable of objectively critiquing what he says.
When I was 12 I was given an IQ test and scored 128 which is apparently near genius level. It hasn't seemed to do shit for me as I still failed calculus repeatedly in college to the point I had to change my major. All it seemed to actually say is I have good lateral problem solving and an intuition for understanding language. Pretty sure that doesn't make me any sort of genius but that these IQ tests tend to favor these sorts of areas.
@Space Goblin Based on my experience with IQ tests, it seems that they are designed for quick thinking and not deep thinking. In general quick problem solving is the simplest way of measuring IQ, but the problem with that is that patch works do not work on complicated problems, which is why IQ does not always correspond to intelligence.
Yep. I took an IQ test once and scored abysmally low. It was mostly math problems, and I suck at math. I eventually understand it, I'm just really slow. I know I'm not dumb or untalented though. I can write, draw, and sing well. I'm just really slow to solve math problems, haha.
you know he's legit when police radars can detect his intelligence
OR maybe the radars can detect he's speeding because he's actually too stupid to understand a spedometer! ;oP
Don't know about police radars, but he's definitely setting off my bullshit detector
Lmao. If i ever heard this i would laugh so hard...
Great work covering this story.
Appreciate hearing this story from you and your journalistic standards (don’t care that you don’t call yourself one, you are the gold standard from my knowledge and experience).
Thank you for keeping this all up, and I can say whole heartedly that I’ve loved seeing you evolve across your many years on this platform.
Don’t usually comment in all my years knowing you, but appreciate you sharing your talents.
P.S.
Saw your RUclips story thingy with your kids, my god you’ve managed to make such an awesome family mate. Just looking at how you’ve evolved from only 6yrs ago when I discovered you, glad to have that as an example to follow for my own growth.
This makes me sick to my stomach.
My heart breaks for the survivors. People make light of emotional abuse, but it was so bad in this "organization, religion, cult" that they had victims holding down other victims.
I can't wait to see this on Netflix
Why would it be on Netflix in the first place?
@@Cyph3rHaxPalm bc the are colts documentaries on Netflix that kind of sound like this one. I recommend holy hell. It's crazy
In a year or two
Hope they cast Allison Mack to play the part of that high ranking woman in the group who got arrested.
that’s the real tea sis!
There he is!
Found you
lmaaaao Jarvis. That was unexpected.
Jarvis Johnson hi
Brother?
Thank you for talking about this. It is personally very difficult for me to watch because I basically grew up in a cult. I know how easy it is to get indoctrinated into crazy situations. I think for that reason it is very important for people to hear about this. I'm thankful every day that my parents got out.
If your group is isolating you, or saying your loved ones are wrong for their beliefs, get out. It happens so slowly you almost don't notice. Just look out for yourselves and don't be afraid to ask people for help.
EXACTLY! I to was involved in a cult. It happens so slowly and before you know it...it is a cult. Anyone can get stuck in it. Education about cults is the best way to combat them!
I adored Allison Mack. It shocks me and breaks my heart to hear that she would be apart of this. When Smallville was still on TV, I would dress like her and even get my hair dyed and styled just like her. Now that I know she has been apart of a cult and encouraged this awful behavior, it makes me upset to think that I used to look up to her.
I used to like her too.😢
I know - Bitch has ruined blazers with cute little broaches for me now. Among other things. :(
Me too at least we still have Kristin kreuk.
That's why you shouldn't idolize people.
Maybe they had videos of her so she was forced to
i dont litterally watch this. i kind of let it play and hear it while doing something. and at a point i was like "wait what??!!"
Same with me, I just usuaully play it out, and then I'm like wait what the hell
Yeah, I had it playing in the background while doing something else, and I was like "Wait..what did he say?"
Me too- I was getting ready to head out for the day listening, and literally out loud said “Oh my god are you kidding me?!”
sofiane destro you hear the part about underaged sex and got interested?
Jesus, I guess the norm for me now is being punched in the face on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
Why is the world so awful?
Because society is Trash.
It used to be waaaaay worse
It's actually not a bad place. There is far more good in the world than evil.
Because we live on a society
(Not to make jokes on a super serious topic but)
It wouldnt be so schocking if youd study history and naybe leave your own bubble every now n then
This sounds exactly like a company that came and spoke in multiple classes of mine in college called southwestern advantage which was an internship that you have to interview for where they tell you about the “internship”. The basic premise is that you are going to be selling textbooks to ppl door to door, the books are like a k-12 all subject inclusive thing (they aren’t that important) but if you are selected for an “internship” you must go to some state for this “sales school” where they teach you how to sell the books. And then you are shipped off to another state far from home where you will be tasked with selling these books door to door. Here’s the catch, they tel you that you can make 18k minimum (to my memory) and that they have had HIGHER LEVEL members make up to 46k selling these books... but you have to buy these books from the company first in bulk in the beginning and so you must do whatever you can to sell these books. You may be wondering if the internship company will put you up in an apartment while you are selling these books. They put you up but in a house with an “alumni” of the internship so you stay with a random person and that person drives you to a neighborhood and you are on your own. I did some research and often the interns are dropped off In sketchy neighborhoods early morning and are not picked up until late at night. If you look on their website they use similar terminology that Phil mentioned that NXIVM used talking about if you doubt in the company it’s because you don’t have the southwestern edge. It’s worth looking into cause they came to my class and pitched the internship and asked those interested to write their name phone number and email on a card and they collected them. A couple weeks later I got a call and they last said that I could go in for an info session and interview and I went and it was in a small room in my schools library and there were 2 other students at the info sesh with me and the guys gave their whole schpiel and then they were like yeah everything we just told you was off a script and that’s what you’ll learn at sales school because selling the books is just following a script. And then they split us up and had a mini interview and if you get past that interview you go to another stage of interviews because “only the best can get the southwestern advantage” 😂 I was not offered a second round interview but I’m glad now that I wasn’t. It’s a company I would recommend looking into maybe we can find some more dirt and Phil can break the story. Thank you for coming to my ted talk
Yep, sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.
This is crazy. 3 years ago I was in a recruitment meeting for a very similar program. We sat down in a classroom and there were people drawing diagrams and talking in circles but by the end of it I still didnt know what I would be paying $900 for. The wierdest part was the women who did the class were all sent out to flirt with the men and try to convince them to join. The $900 was for the basic coarse and they wanted you to sign up that night promising a discount that became more and more sweet as you refused. In the end they were quite cold to me when I left without buying into the course like a complete personality change from friendly to snappy. Then they cleared the room for a members only meeting. I did research later that night because I was curious. I found a couple troubling stories with responses saying the negative reviews are from people who never went through the program. I had a couple friends who went through after and I tried to figure out what happened they only told me they loved the program but couldn't tell me specifically what they liked about it just that it was life changing. I haven't heard about it since but I find myself thinking about it wondering if ill ever see it in the news like this. The program was called PSI World Seminars if anyone is curious.
Jake M sounds scary..
Well, from just a cursory web search, it's not necessarily "bunk-o"... in so many syllables. BUT while there may be positive general effects for a course on the subject of "Large Group Awareness Training"... I can't see why you'd need to fork over $900 (US) for such a thing. AND with apparently at least 3 classes required (each probably longer and more expensive than the last) to be considered "graduated"(?) if not further... I don't see where you'd be doing better than you could be scraping cash together for a short series of lectures and college Psych' courses to work on your personal awareness and focus on benefits to suit your personal journey or intent... so not exactly "anti-bunk-o" either.
It's important to point out, that if you find yourself confronting a logic-circle, it's rare that you're about to invest in a really beneficial endeavor. AND I'd feel remiss in my responsibilities for not adding that "Good products sell themselves. They don't need flirtation or hookers."
Nothing wrong with a sexually exciting marketing plan, but it shouldn't be required (and usually isn't) for basic sales. To drive a price up at auction, maybe an "illicit" investment, but with most high-end auctions dubiously involved in alcoholic bars, it's not the first thing anyone's implemented to indulge in price inflation from ulterior means. ;o)
I've read this exact comment before on another video...
Really word for word?
I was looking for a job once and found these dudes at a job seminar who basically sold some kind of insurance, and they made it sound really easy. So I went down to their office a few days later for some kind of meeting, a get-together with most of the office's "employees".
Everyone sat down together to watch this vid that featured the company's CEO, and basically it was this weird, preachy thing that felt like a sermon at those mega-churches. He was really trying to pump up the audience, praising them alot, saying the employees were "like family". To make it even weirder, a lot of the employees were responding to parts of this vid rather enthusiastically.
Anyways, once that part ended the guys I had met at the seminar pulled me into a side office and started talking about what they do. It was the usual MLM spiel: "We sell this product (insurance), if you recruit other people to sell then you get part of their cut, look how successful it made this one young guy with his fancy watch and expensive car". I, at the time, was naive to what a pyramid scheme is or how "multi-level marketing" is similar. So I'm sitting there with the contract in front of me, with the thought nagging me that all of this feels too good to be true, but not able to see the flaw in it. Thankfully, I said I would consider it, and left for the night.
Later that evening, I tell my roommate about this, since I couldn't put my finger on what was weird about the company and wanted his opinion. Right out the gate he tells me, "That's a pyramid scheme, dude," and I'm thinking to myself _a fucking what?_ So I research it, and that's how I discovered MLMs. The shysters called me the next day to see if I'd made my mind up--I told them I wasn't interested in a pyramid scheme, and that was that.
Unfortunately I've seen both a college friend and my own mother fall to these kinds of fucking scheme, and while my friend finally wised up my stubborn mother won't. These fucking parasitic thieves feed on the vulnerable and I goddamn hate them.
Why did Allison Mack have to be a fkn crazy cult leader? Now that'll be in the back of my mind when rewatching my favorite show Smallville.
yeeeep, that's gonna suck
Can’t watch it now lol
"favorite show Smallville" is probably the first time those words have been in that order.
Everybody needs somebody
Chloe was into conspiracy theories and such, wasn’t she?
Sorry to anyone that liked Smallville before this episode
I had the biggest crush on her since I was a teenager, it's hard to accept, but in reality I only knew her character, never knew who she is as a person.
I'm still recovering from my shock.
You can enjoy shows regardless of what the actors/directors/etc. are themselves.
Why haven't I heard of this until now, something this awful needs to be headlined everywhere to protect people and to help the people in the cult.
Use to watch Smallvile often, and wondered what happened to some of the actors... googled it to find out about Allison Mack and can never watch it the same....
@@darraghtate440 From what I've read, originally Allison was trying to get Kristin out of the cult, but got sucked into it in the process.
I know... I'm struggling with that too...
Some articles I read stated that it was Kristin Kreuk who recruited Allison Mack before she broke away.
It's just disappointing and sad from every angle.
This is usually my internet education before bed. Thanks
Good night
Sam Pollerd 11:22PM here
Ayyy my fellow Aussies
Literally me rn lol 3am in Hawaii
I love watching Philly when I'm heading to bed. Too bad I take in like no information and end up rewatching them in the morning
keep making these! this shocked me... I know people go through some pretty shitty times and may fall into this bs. But someone orchestrating something like this blows me away. thought that was movie shit
"..his intellectual energy sets off radar detectors."
r/heisverysmart
Anyone can have an audience with his honorable holiness The Dalai Lama, for a modest sum of course.
Yes he probably didn't know shit just came for the money
"God isn't real we made him up for money"
So I’m not unfamiliar with this story. I’m a member of the a cappella community- literally just a group of singers who love singing- and this group back in 2014 I wanna say tried recruiting members from our collective Facebook page. We had to ban them.
6:40 - He's "sooo smart" that he doesn't know the difference between radar, and radar detectors. Let that ALSO sink in
I've stopped watching this channel a long time ago, but this was incredibly informative. Thank you!
Wow
I know right, former Mexican president’s son is part of this. What’s next Obama being part of a Blue Oyster Cult?
So many likes for a comment that just says, “WOW”
Same
Michael Ortega more like Shmashmeal Smegma
What did I just hear? Wow. How long did this go on for?
Lost so much respect for Allison Mack. This is ridiculous, someone that played a strong female presence in one of my favorite tv shows completely turning the other way around and believing woman should be slaves...I don't understand how that could happen.
Cults use torture and abuse both mental and physical to break down people. Allison and all these women wanted to get better and ended up in the hands of him. Through time people start thinking like their captors.
@@setofreakinkaiba8553 yeah but the fd up part is allison worked her way up to the top. shes one of the highest members and also did a lot of torturing as well, hence the fact of her similar charges to the leader. infact it was her idea to brand the members and what phil doesnt mention is its actually both their initials not just his which is why its shaped like an A with the 2 letters put together. she was just as disgustign and power hungry as he was
@@GreenHatPanda i know this. I know the story before phil covered it. I'm not defending her but she went to the program because of a bad breakup and had depression then this guy basically used her, then like Phil said they are then forced to be in the program. There was no other way out in their minds only going farther up to please him. If u look at the video he tells Allison that she failed as an actress and she didn't have talent, she then apologizes for feeling upset and he dismisses it as if it was meaningless. She is guilty too but that is why it is a cult. You force people to do bad things to others the same way they did to you.
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt (force of habit) and in her case maybe she didn't know.
It's a very unlikely maybe but it could be possible that it was talked about as if it was a legit mentorship and she didn't think twice to look into it.
Of course I could be completely wrong and regret ever voicing this but still innocent until proven guilty right?
Except for that disgusting piece of garbage. He can go rot in hell
@@setofreakinkaiba8553 So basically he's the Emperor to her Vader.
Woah - When you start to have some faith in the world and feel like our society is so open and something such as a “secret society “ this extreme couldn’t POSSIBLY exist... Well.. turns out it does. Makes me wonder what other extreme groups are out there. Very interesting.. I’m proud of that one actress for coming forward
For The Love Of No kidding! That must have been so difficult, not only for the potential of what the cult could do to her but also for the embarrassment of actually being caught up in something like that.
Excellent content. Good to see real journalism again please keep up the high quality work.
I sense that Keith will be in for a branding session of his own in Federal prison... Hopefully in the very near future.
@tlessmo Suicide sounds likely.
@LooneyPlootzy i dont get the hobbit reference
I will be sipping only the hottest of teas for this trial.
Synonymous clock it the house!!!
I legitamitely cannot understand how human beings could do this to other people. I'm not naive to the depth of horror by human actions or deny the reality of it, I just personally can't get in the mindset how someone can be ok with it.
Crazelord91 people do things cuz other people are dumb enough to fall for it
@@logicalmillenial9657 You're partly right but let's not put the blame on people that were taken advantage of but the fuckers that did the taking
This. This is the comment that I find to be the most appropriate. (Edit: OP’s comment)
Andrju I’m not saying the guy isn’t an evil fuck who should be castrated I’m just saying the people who fell for it are morons
Logical Millenial They were mentally weak
Why does this seem like something out of a South Park episode?
WOW PHIL! I don't know if you will get to see my comment among the rest but these morning videos have been INCREDIBLE! I love the direction the channel is heading in. Amazing work and keep it up!
So it basically Scientology.... with a little fewer aliens blowing up volcanos.
Scientology for C-listers.
the guy even mimmicks hubbard's tactics
Scientology lite
Men and women are wired different. And we do need each other because the sum of both our parts makes us greater. But not in the way he thinks. We are equal but different. For example, women have higher body fat percentages, higher resting heart rates, more susceptible to certain diseases/syndromes, like osteoporosis, hyperthyroidism and fibromyalgia. Men have more muscle mass on average, have more body hair, and are more likely to have heart disease, Parkinson’s, and ALS. Our bodies work differently. Men are on average better at math while women tend to be better at linguistics and organization skills. “The right and left hemispheres of the male and female brains are not set up exactly the same way. For instance, females tend to have verbal centers on both sides of the brain, while males tend to have verbal centers on only the left hemisphere.”
We are different physically and mentally, but no one is less valuable than the other. We need each other, for biological reasons and social reasons. We are equal, and women are NOT meant to be slaves.
yes everyone already knows that. and if someone tells you differently they are irrational. both genders have their roles to play, it doesn't mean you have to play your role to be happy, but it's how a majority of people are wired.
You're right on most of this, but I do need to add this: men tend to do worse in academics compared to women, while women tend to be weaker on average than men. Does that mean a man is dumber than a woman or that a woman can't be as strong as a man? No, it just means we're literally wired differently, but we can always change those things about ourselves.
I’d also like to add that women’s brains develops faster than men’s so naturally they will do better in academics. Also, studies show taller people tend to be smarter than shorter people as the growing body tells the brain to keep growing. Learning and schooling can counteract these things for everyone so smarts is not set in stone. Still I felt assuming women are smarter as a whole was disengenuious.
+Mrs M A E One important caveat to all that is that almost all differences you describe are general differences - there tends to be significant variation within each group. Men and women might be _on average_ different, which might be important in big-picture sociological or political discussions, but applying those differences to individuals is pretty dubious.
NatTheKiwi I’m not assuming women are smarter than men. Just that the male brain excels are certain areas while the female brain excels in different areas. Men are typically better at math and science, women are better at linguistics and identifying patterns, which makes them better at organizations. Equally smart, and of course there is outliers and exemptions like Madame Curie who was fantastic as science and math and Ziad Fazah who can speak and read 58 languages. I’m talking on average which gender is better at which subjects.
Great and concise summary! I've always been fascinated by these cults and the depths of the shenanigans they are able to pull off...