Don't Call It A Cult

 Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman, 289 pages

In 2018, shocking headlines announced that a little-known professional development company called NXIVM hid an inner circle of advanced students, all of them female, who had vowed themselves as slaves and been branded with their master's initials.  That the slaves included millionaire heiresses and recognizable Hollywood actresses only made the news more sensational and seemingly inexplicable.  What really happened, and more importantly, how could it have happened?

Sarah Berman was not among those who were blindsided by the revelations.  She had already been investigating the group for years for VICE, one of a number of investigative journalists who had begun to explore the dark business going on behind the bright facade.  Her account of the group and its development, from its roots in a multi-level marketing company through its remarkable growth to the final breakdown, follows a journalistic model.  This is not a comprehensive history of NXIVM, but a series of perspectives anchored in the experience of those who were actually there.  This is both an advantage and a disadvantage, but in this case it is unfortunately weighted towards the latter.  One problem is that there are key perspectives missing - most obviously that of Raniere himself, a problem which Berman is aware of but which is beyond her power to correct.  Another, more subtle, issue arises from Berman's framing.  Early on she describes the different reactions NXIVM inspired from different parts of the political spectrum, the right citing it as an "example of moral breakdown among the monied elite," the left "textbook toxic masculinity blown up to epic criminal proportions."  That these are not contradictory she does not seem to have noticed, and in her eagerness to prove the latter she almost entirely neglects the former.  That Keith Raniere was a manipulative, abusive guru is well established, but how strong, successful women were duped by such a shallow conman into becoming not just his victims but also his enablers is scarcely addressed.