Don't Call It a Cult

Well, that was a RIDE of a read, and also UTTERLY INFURIATING AND TERRIFYING.
I learned about this book after I finished listening to a Cult Podcast episode on NXIVM and did some googling. There are other books out there about NXIVM, with some of them written by victims, as well as some that focus specifically on Keith Raniere, but I was looking for something that was written by someone uninvolved in NXIVM, and this book fit the bill. (Also ngl but the title look interesting compared to some of the other titles of NXIVM-related books out there, which also encouraged me to pick it up.)
Anyway: I think this book???s a very good introduction to what NXIVM did to the people who were involved in it, especially the women. Most people know about the branding and DOS, but the book shows that those were more the ultimate manifestation of what Raniere had been doing for years to those around him. He didn???t start out with those from the get-go; those were things that came about after he???d cemented his hold on the women surrounding him and manipulated and abused them into a mindset where they would do whatever he asked them to do. It was deeply upsetting how he twisted the language of self-help and psychology to prey upon vulnerable women, who should have been seeing qualified psychologists and psychiatrists and not this snake-oil salesman who wasn???t above turning tail and hiding when things weren???t going his way (which is something he did A LOT, often abandoning his loyal followers to the cops whenever the law came calling).
What???s interesting to me is that his victims don???t strike one immediately as being ???vulnerable???. Many of them are white, wealthy, and ambitious, with some working in fields like finance, law, and computer programming, which were heavily male-dominated during the late 1990s and into the early and mid-2000s (and still are, to a degree). I could see why they were drawn to NXIVM???s messaging of self-improvement and ???ethical responsibility???, but it???s disturbing how Raniere was able to con so many of them, to the point that some of them actually helped him perpetrate his abuse onto other women. It got me thinking about the deep-seated misogyny and self-hatred that lives in a lot of women no matter how successful they might seem on the surface, and which Raniere clearly knew how to pull up and prey upon. It also got me thinking about the self-help industry, and how so many people will fall for whatever unproven claptrap self-declared ???gurus??? spout out because they are desperate to find a way to help themselves and maybe others too.
Overall, this was a great overview of NXIVM and what happened before it all exploded in 2019. This has a more journalistic approach compared to some of the other books about NXIVM, which are either memoirs written by victims, or books that focus on Raniere himself, and I think this is useful if one wants to come to grips with what NXIVM was, and what the brouhaha was all about if one was only hearing about it for the first time in 2019.