➡ Paranoid American, a comic publisher, has been exploring the world’s mysteries since 2012. They delve into topics like mind control, secret societies, and hidden symbols in pop culture. They also host a podcast where they discuss these topics and more, including American cults. The podcast features guests like Cameron, who shares insights into dark personalities and cults, and promotes his book on the subject.
➡ The text discusses the allure of cults and how they can draw people in by offering a sense of belonging and purpose. It also explores the manipulative tactics used by cult leaders, such as claiming to have high intelligence to impress followers. The text further delves into the concept of eugenics in cults, where leaders aim to create more followers through reproduction. Lastly, it questions the potential scale of Charles Manson’s cult had he not been stopped.
➡ The author promotes their book and podcast, both titled “What’s Under the Mask”, available on Amazon and podcast platforms, covering topics like serial killers and con artists. They also mention an upcoming live event with Jay Dyer, featuring stand-up comedians and conspiracy theorists. Additionally, they advertise “Conspiracy Cards from Paranoid American”, a set of over 200 cards about conspiracy theories and cult leaders. The text ends with a rap verse, expressing the author’s thoughts and feelings.
➡ The text discusses theories about Keith Ranieri, Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Epstein, suggesting they might have been controlled by unknown entities. It also explores the idea of these figures using their influence to manipulate and control others, particularly women, under the guise of self-improvement. The text also mentions a subgroup within NXIVM, led by Ranieri, that branded women with his initials, indicating ownership. Lastly, it questions why these high-profile individuals engage in such activities and whether men or women are more susceptible to their influence.
➡ The text discusses the power dynamics in cults, focusing on NXIVM and People’s Temple. It highlights how leaders like Keith Raniere and Jim Jones used their charisma and manipulation to gain power over their followers. The text also explores the appeal of these cults, noting that they often start off as self-improvement or spiritual groups, making them seem more believable and attractive to potential members. Lastly, it discusses the rating system for joining these cults, with NXIVM scoring higher due to its initial self-help branding.
➡ The text discusses Jim Jones, a controversial figure who used religion to gain power and influence. It suggests that Jones may have genuinely believed in his faith, but also manipulated it to control others. The text also explores Jones’ interest in communism and socialism, and his ability to attract followers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds by promising a better life. Despite his negative actions, the text acknowledges that Jones did some good, such as advocating against racism, but questions whether these actions were genuine or just another way to gain favor.
➡ A socialist utopia in Oregon attracted homeless people from across America due to its free lifestyle and provision of weapons. However, it fell apart due to internal issues and conflicts with neighboring towns. The group’s leader, who claimed to have universal secrets, is still popular despite the group’s dissolution. The discussion also touched on other similar groups and their leaders, highlighting the dangers of such cult-like communities.
➡ The text discusses various cults, focusing on NXIVM and Heaven’s Gate. It highlights the experiences of a former NXIVM member who made a documentary to expose the cult’s activities. The text also delves into the bizarre practices of Heaven’s Gate, including the leader’s self-castration and the belief in aliens. The discussion speculates on the possible influence of drugs in these cults and the motivations behind their extreme actions.
➡ The text discusses a group called Heaven’s Gate, where members were encouraged to castrate themselves and commit suicide by eating poisoned applesauce and suffocating themselves. The group targeted tech-savvy individuals and Star Trek fans. The text also mentions the Oneida community from the 1860s, led by John Humphrey Noyes, who introduced a positive eugenics movement in the U.S. This community practiced a unique form of Christianity, believed they were living in a post-revelation paradise, and had a democratic process for selecting breeding pairs to create a better class of people.
➡ The text discusses a community where children are raised collectively, rather than by individual parents. This approach, however, led to neglect and lack of education for the children. The community also had issues with incest and lacked a charismatic leader. The text also explores the role of sex and rituals in cults, referencing figures like Aleister Crowley and his influence on modern cults.
➡ The text discusses a ritual performed in the desert, believed to increase the chances of encountering spirits. This ritual was reportedly practiced by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard at Zorro Ranch, which is seen as a larger-scale version of the ritual. The text also explores the idea of cults and secret societies using humiliation and blackmail to maintain control over their members. It mentions Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged use of blackmail and questions the true power and influence of such individuals and groups.

Good evening, listeners, brave navigators of the enigmatic and the concealed. Have you ever felt the pull of the unanswered, the allure of the mysteries that shroud our existence? For more than a decade, a unique comic publisher has dared to dive into these mysteries, unafraid of the secrets they might uncover. This audacious entity is paranoid American. Welcome to the mystifying universe of the Paranoid American podcast. Launched in the year 2012, Paranoid American has been on a mission to decipher the encrypted secrets of our world. From the unnerving enigma of mkultra mind control, to the clandestine assemblies of secret societies, from the awe inspiring frontiers of forbidden technology to the arcane patterns of occult symbols in our very own pop culture, they have committed to unveiling the concealed realities that lie just beneath the surface.

Join us as we navigate these intricate landscapes, decoding the hidden scripts of our society and challenging the accepted perceptions of reality. Folks, I’ve got a big problem on my hands. There’s a company called Paranoid American making all these funny memes and comics. Now, I’m a fair guy. I believe in free speech as long as it doesn’t cross the line. And if these AI generated memes dare to make fun of me. They’re crossing the line. This is your expedition into the realm of the extraordinary, the secret, the shrouded. Come with us as we sift through the world’s grand mysteries, question the standardized narratives, and brave the cryptic labyrinth of the concealed truth.

So strap yourselves in, broaden your horizons, steal yourselves for a voyage into the enigmatic heart of the paranoid american podcast, where each story, every image, every revelation brings us one step closer to the elusive truth. Another episode of Paranoid American podcast. We got a repeat offender today, co conspirator Cameron harmonization. Uh, if you haven’t seen the initial episode that I had them on, we talked about dark personalities, and we got into serial killers and cults and all the things that the kids love these days. And today, we’re going to get, I guess, a little bit more in depth onto some specific cults, like America.

Good old american cults. I think. I think all of them are good old american cults. Uh, so before we even get into all that, because we were already talking shop backstage, Cameron, please tell everyone where they can find you, or if you got any projects going on, any books, wink, wink. That you want to push, do it. All right now. Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on again. I appreciate it. Yeah, the last time we talked, my book was still in the works, but it’s out. Now, my book, what’s under the, the psychology of dark personalities is out.

You can get it on Amazon, and I’m sure there will be a link for it in the notes. But yeah, anywhere you, if you like paperback or ebook, both are available. And if you want more audio and more in depth analysis than what’s in the book, you can follow my podcast at what’s under the mask, and you can find that anywhere you listen to podcasts. All right, let’s pop you up here because we’re about to get. We’re going to get in the business talk shop. So I guess I’ll just tentatively call this top five cults. Top five american cults.

These aren’t necessarily going to be arranged in my preference. It’s very subjective and it jumps around based on discussions and new research that comes out. It’s like, okay, now this one’s on top. I think what makes the most sense is the one that’s the most recent and that has had the most popularity. So that would probably be NxIvM. NXivm. Two or three different tv shows, slash documentaries. One of them was HBO called seduced. This one was 2020. And then there was a tv series called the Vow, which ran for two years, 2020 to 2022. And both of those kind of are my full insight into it.

So you’ve probably got way more than whatever I was just consuming from HBO and Netflix, right? Hopefully, yeah. So I write about Nixxiom and specifically Keith Ranieri in my book on my chapter on cults, and he’s a fascinating character. But as we dive into this conversation, what you’ll notice is a lot of these individuals have a lot of similarities, and dark personalities usually do. The thing they want the most is power. And it’s just a difference of how they get that power. So in this one, Keith Ranier, I guess he starts to set the course. And one of the rules that I’ve made up in my own mind isn’t based on any good research, just, like, noticing patterns that are interesting to me.

But most really good cults have some kind of sex element related. And I’m going to say in that vague way so that Marshall Applewhite can fit in because he won’t fit in the same way that I kind of crafted. But with, like, Keith Raniere or any of these other cults usually have this, like, this daddy figure, and they get the pickings of the entire cult, and it almost turns into a cultish aspect and almost, I wouldn’t say a requirement but a key indicator is that all of a sudden you’ve got, like, the rooster that has this pick of the hens that feels like a very cultish flag, right? 100%.

It should be no surprise, because, again, you know, like I said previously, it’s about power. And Keith Raniere is no different. His brand really was based around. And a lot of. I think we even talked about this in the last time I was on. Cults have this weird connection to religion, but it’s more of new age spirituality. In almost every cult, there is a flavor of new age spirituality. Where that comes from, I’m not 100% sure, but Keith Mernieri even got a chance to go speak to the Dalai Lama, but almost lost that opportunity due to some of these weird allegations that he had before everything came falling down.

He was actually in communication with the Dalai Lama. And it was because of this new agey spiritual stuff he had going on, because, like, Scientology and this is similar with all cults, is that they have this aspect of self improvement and mindfulness. So they take all of these aspects of spirituality and kind of try to rebrand it and make it profitable, because they sell classes like, oh, let’s get rid of your anxiety by spending $800 on this class. That’s just me talking to you for a couple hours, and I’m gonna have you sit and meditate, and you’ll be all better.

Now, I mean, I know we’re talking NXIVM, but there’s another acronym, sort of self help cult, that I’d say NLP almost fits that exact same description that you just described, at least the whole, like, practitioner certificate route. I don’t know how. How much you know about this, or if you’ve looked into this before. I’m not. Not super deep, but I’m. I’m actually really familiar. Um, I was involved with some, like, spiritual esque type people after getting out of the army. I kind of just fell into this. Like, I was meditating a lot, and it helped me.

And then I was surrounded by people who were like this, who were in this kind of, like, new age spiritual stuff. I couldn’t just. I just could never really get behind it. You know, the minute that they would talk about chakras and crystals and stuff, like, you completely lost me. And then at some point, it always kind of goes down a rabbit hole into paganism, where they’re talking about black magic. And again, like I said, you’re losing me. Meditation is a good thing, and I really do enjoy it myself, but it does seem that, like, it’s almost like a gateway thing.

Like, it’s a foot in the door method to get you into stuff that’s deeper, and that’s. These groups feed off of that, and they look for individuals who are susceptible to that kind of thing. Like, if you’re already kind of in that way of life, like you’re meditating or, you know, you’re just even just a little woo woo, those are the people. That’s who they’re looking for. It’s basically the audience watching right now. So be careful out there. You might be, like, prime real estate for any up and coming cults. And I guess, speaking of, I mean, NXIVm sounds like it would have been a cool one to be a part of, at least on paper.

I know. Let’s just say that you can get over the branding and the blackmail thing, right? Those. Those two things. And maybe the starving yourself thing, you can get over those three things. And I’m sure there’s a few more. The rest of it sounded pretty cool, right? It was almost like a miniature version of Scientology where it promised some next level thinking, maybe positions and shows and movies and just networking beyond anything else to some people, right? So, I don’t know. Like, isn’t it this a good one? Would you join nexium without those? We just got rid of the three things that I mentioned.

No, because, like, see, but that’s how they get people, right? Because it’s people who want to do better in life. Like, you know, the simple thing, like, we were both in the military, right? The military made our lives better to some degree, because we were exercising, because we had to do things that required us to be disciplined and use our brain for problem solving skills, right? But you don’t have to be involved in groups like that to do those things, right? Like, once you kind of figure out that you can do those things on your own, you become immune to the cult mentality.

But for people who maybe want, it’s. It’s like a gang, right? I mean, like, why do people. Lots of people say, I would never be in a gang. But if you’re in an environment where that’s really your only option, and these people are offering you family, they’re offering you an opportunity to make a living and to make friends, and it becomes clear, and it’s. Again, and I was explaining this to somebody else recently, you don’t get, like, with Scientology, for example, you don’t get all the Xenu, alien God and volcanoes until you’re already tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and you’re paper in that crime.

I mean, that’s the climax of it all. You don’t want to get that whole thing the first day you sign up. I don’t know. Right, right. Well, and people would. Obviously, people would not be interested. They’d be like, no way. Right? Watch any of those documentaries on Scientology, and that’s what they tell you. And they’re so elaborate. That’s one thing I think is fascinating about Scientology. It’s so elaborate. Once you get to these upper tiers, you know, you’re paying all this money, and then they take you to a secret room, and they’ve got a metal briefcase, and, like, this is the secret knowledge that’s been passed down for generations, and now we’re giving it to you.

And then you read it, and it’s like, alien gods and fucking dropping bombs into volcanoes. Then at that point, you’re. I mean, you’re already in, like, there’s no way to get out of it. You know, they all kind of have those versions, right? I mean, I would almost say, and maybe this is right or wrong thinking, but it’s almost like Christianity was supposed to be the anti cult, ironically, or at least like the modern version of it, in that there aren’t supposed to be any secret meetings or anything that’s outside of the Bible. There might be different interpretations and different sects.

Although there’s Opus Dei, which is literally a secret society within. Anyways, the point that I want to get into with that qualifier is that it’s almost like you don’t lead with Zenu the same way that Catholics don’t lead with the Trinity. They’re not like, all right, let’s just get into it. God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, they’re the same, but they’re not the same. Like, you would just confuse people right out the gate, and they would be like, okay, this is probably not my thing. This is almost like doing algebra. You know what I mean? I didn’t show up to do algebra.

So I think that there’s also, like, a point of working towards it, but there’s got to be people that show up and say, what the hell? So, in NXiVm, what is that moment, do you think? What’s the briefcase moment? See, that’s where Nixiom actually did better than other calls, relatively speaking. And it’s crazy, because Keith Ranieri claims that he has a 200 plus iq. We don’t even really have the ability to test for iq that high. That’s literally like, the 1% of the 1%. If somebody’s iq is that high, you’re not even going to be able to test it appropriately.

So, like saying, and I’ll tell you this, when I was working in the jail, I met an individual, and we. He was extremely intelligent, and I interviewed him. He’s one of the people in my book that I interviewed. And I asked him straight up, I was like, have you ever taken an iq test? And he said, oh, yeah, sure. He’s like, I got a one. A 146, I think, is what he said. Again, a 146 is still like Albert Einstein level iq, okay? That’s still really, like, even up at that level, that’s still hard to test for.

But there’s a reason he said it. I don’t think he really took an iq test. I think he said it because he’s a narcissist and he wanted to impress me and he wants people to be impressed by the things he says, you know, like, I think Keith Ranieri is the same way. He’s a. He’s a narcissist. He’s a sly talking. Now, I will say he is smart. No doubt he is smart, but that’s not the point. The point of saying I have a 200 iq is to impress people beyond recognition. Like, oh, man, this guy really is all the things he says he is.

But when you look at these cult leaders, they all have the same kind of thing. They are all that way. Oh, well, Keith Ranieri is also a sponsor of the show. I just wanted to point that out. So if you wanted to go a little bit lighter on him, then it seems like you’ve been focus in a little bit unjustly on someone that has such a high iq. And. And I guess, slight tangent, but this is something I always like to bring up when you make these points about proving how smart you are through the IQ test.

My understanding is that even the original IQ test and all subsequent IQ tests for the next generation or two, it was really about identifying kids that were so dumb that they needed to sterilize them and their parents to just be like, you don’t belong in society. So this is like the nice way of weeding you out of society, aside from taking you out on the side of the barn, which I guess would have happened maybe a century earlier. So that was my understanding of IQ tests. They were never really intended to show smart people. It was to identify someone that had such extreme learning abilities that some kind of action needed to be done.

I guess now it turns into, like, special ed learning, that’s how you kind of identify. But it’s a little bit ironic that people prove how smart they are by comparing themselves on a test made for education challenged people. Yeah. No, and you’re not wrong. I actually, I’m in a class right now. We’re talking about this. The person, one of the people involved in creating some of these very early intelligence tests, they were created by people who were involved in eugenics. And if you and your audience are familiar, which I’m sure you are, with eugenics, you can kind of smell where that comes from.

No good intention there, certainly. Well, and without jumping ahead. But one of the, what I would almost argue all the cults that we can bring up have a certain version of eugenics built into them. So nexium would be no different that it’s a little bit more subtle in nexium, but in nXivm, it kind of feels like Keith Ranieri just bangs all the smart, hot actresses and makes more Keith Ranieres. And maybe there’s a dangling promise that, and you, too, can have your own harem I subtext without being cheesy and advertising that part. No, 100%, you’re not wrong.

I mean, you have to wonder even this is not necessarily cult related, but even Jeffrey Epstein, his. Some of his stuff was really bizarre. Like, why did he have these, like, you know, borderline medical facilities in some of his houses? Like the. I believe it was the ranch in Texas. There was Zoro ranch. Yeah, there’s some really odd stuff in that, uh, in that house or ranch or whatever. He had a really weird interest in, like, making more little Epstein’s in a weird way. Like, I believe some of the indictments were even that he was paying women or forcing women to, like, carry, you know, carry his children or something like that.

I forget that goes down the rabbit hole pretty deep, but something weird there. But, yes, you’re not wrong. I mean, think about Charles Manson and the Manson family. That’s, you know, almost one of the classic examples of, you know, this strong, like, intelligent, charismatic male figure having women around him that he kind of possesses and owns. And in Charles Manson’s case, though, you know, he used these women as pawns to get things. Like, even with the Beach Boys guy, he sent his, you know, some of his female members. Right. Yes. To go basically seduce that guy.

And then he let them stay at their. His house for a while until they got kicked out. So it makes sense, you know, I mean, again, even though they’re, you know, have a dark personality, psychopathic individuals still very intelligent. They knew what they were doing. Well, I guess that that’s a really good bridge here, because Manson, when Manchin comes up, I think he’s such a microcosm of this cult mentality. I truly wonder, how big could Manson, like the person Charles Manson, how big have he had scaled that cult? Because I don’t know if I see him as someone being able to manage people the same way Keith Ranieri or Jim Jones or some of the other people that we’re going to talk about.

It almost seems that he would lose control a little bit because he himself lost control a lot. Anyways, that leading to a popular theory that I hear come up a lot, is that Manson was kind of controlled. He was. He was like an MK ultra attack dog by fill in the blank. And that’s why, you know, he had all this access and why he got all this popularity was because he kind of ran to his. He wasn’t running by the beat of his own drum. Maybe he was convinced that he was, but he was sort of weaponized and allowed to.

So is there anything like that that comes up with Keith Ranieri? Is there any speculation on someone that’s like the puppet master behind Keith Ranieri himself? Or was Keith Ranieri sort of like his own entity? I don’t know for certain, but I could see, I mean, just. And I guess I keep going back to Jeffrey Epstein, right? Like I said, right. That’s the. The idea is that his puppet master was Mossad, right? Something like. And it could. I mean, maybe it was multiple entities that were controlling him, but there. I mean. Or how about even more recently, p.

Diddy, right. Why does that look so familiar? Why is there so many weird happenings going on with these individuals where they’re high level celebrity esque types with lots of money and influence? Like, why do they need to do these things? And why does it always involve blackmail? And we know in Epstein’s case, so many people have come out and testified or made public statements saying, like, yeah, my whole purpose, or I was there to service or be with a public figure, or these people, well, actually wrote about Epstein in my book. And there was something I read that I hadn’t actually heard when the Epstein thing was going on.

It’s just kind of bizarre. It was like a one off thing. But I read that there was a news story that had come out about a woman, a journalist. She said she went to Epstein’s house in New York, and he gave her the tour and all that good stuff, and then he took her into a room, a secret room, where all the cameras were monitored from basically like a. You know, like a central command where all the tvs were. But she said that there were people in there monitoring the cameras, that it wasn’t him doing it.

It was. There were people in there watching the videos. I thought that was kind of strange, because I don’t remember ever hearing any of that during the trials or any of this other stuff. It always was centered around Epstein. But, like, who are the people in those rooms watching the cameras? I mean, it makes me immediately think of operation midnight climax, where a guy, George Hunter White, was literally recording, but watching behind these mirrors and getting military and politicians and anyone that had secrets to see how much they would divulge if he just gave him a bunch of drugs and hookers and just recorded it for a while.

Yeah. And, like, why. Why is there someone behind that in these cases? I don’t know. Fun, maybe that’s like the, like, if you get. You get a bonus at work and you get to go and be the camera guy at Epstein’s for. Yeah, that’s a wild gig. And then you see it all implode, and you’re on the. You just watching the news, like, oh, whoa, that’s wild. So. And then also. And this is, I think I. Maybe the best point out of all the cults we’ll talk about, because I’ve got an a question that’s really general, but are, like, men more susceptible or women more susceptible? And the case NXIVM ranieri specifically focused mostly on women.

Right. He got a whole bunch of women to join his cole. Or was it. Was it more balanced? Like, what. What is a guy? Am I gonna join Nexium for, aside from the generic reasons, like, you know, networking. Great question. It actually was balanced, to my understanding. Nixiom was balanced between men and women. The reason why the women are. The emphasis in this story is because of the subgroup that they formed. And that was kind of one of the things NXIVM was known for, is that they had, like, these different little groups within the big group, the original group.

Just like a lunchroom, right? Yeah. Like. So the original group starts out, and I think that, again, the reason why this attracted so many people is that it was about self improvement. Very stoic, very. Almost like, spartan. Like, you know, there’s a documentary, and I forget which one it was that I watched, but there’s clips of him getting the men together, and he shoots him a text. It rhymes. Me, the military, he shoots him a text at three in the morning, it’s like, all right, maybe here at this time of place, we’re going for a run.

Right. In the thought process here, is that like, okay, we’re testing your discipline. Are you disciplined enough to get up? Right. But it’s like, also, why do you need to do that in the military? It makes sense, you know, we’re training you to be a soldier. We’re training you to battle ready. Yeah. You’d be ready to go at any given moment. Yeah. But, like, why do these civilians, you know, like, if your thought process is just to build discipline, I could think of easier, less stressful ways to do that. But what it really makes me think is that this is just the indoctrinate.

The indoctrination. This was the soft push towards getting you disciplined because it’s just like the military, you know, not to. Not to bag on it, but the military is breaking you down so that you do what you’re told. I think that this is the same thing, what seems maybe innocent. And it’s like, oh, yeah, we’re trying to build you up and make you tougher. And, you know, we’re going to help with your discipline. Really was like, I’m building you in again. Maybe this speaks to Ranieri’s intelligence, but I’m breaking all of you down because I’m going to train you to be the way that I want you to be, which is to be disciplined and to do exactly what I tell you without asking questions.

And the men, in this case, in their program, were just as susceptible because their wives and their girlfriends were the ones that he was sleeping with. And some of them knew that and others didn’t. But to me, it just smells like grooming, right? In every sense of the word. It was grooming. He got the one female, Katie Mack, something or other, and Alison Mac. Yeah, Alison Macdje, because he also had Kirsten Kruk, who was also a Smallville girl. But she got Alice Mack to join and then she bounced and Max stayed and then became the queen.

Is that the right way to consider that? With Keith Ranieri, the king? And she became the queen at some point? Yes, because. And now this is probably a good time to talk about this. That subgroup I was talking about with the women I. For, there’s. It’s some latin term, and I forget what it was, but I think it meant something to be with submissiveness, like, and what their original thought process, what they were telling these women in this group, was to teach them how to become better wives by being submissive to their husbands. Very sort of archaic and old way of thinking.

But they phrased it in a way that seemed right. And again, like this whole program is about discipline and whatever. So it’s like it was programmed around like, we’re making you a better wife. We’re helping you become more respectful towards your husband. But then in the same breath, the brand, that these women would get a brand right above their vagina, and it would. The brand was Alison Mack’s and Keith Raniere’s initials. That’s what the brand was. It was their initials molded into this weird symbol. That’s what they got branded on them. And that is no other.

That’s there only for one reason. That is to show that you are their property, and there’s no discipline about that. That is just, you’re my property. And the guys didn’t get brands. This was just for the women, as far as I know. And, I mean, if they did, I don’t think anybody’s come out publicly and said that also, just the way that you’re describing it, too, because I have a really weird Twitter algorithm. But I know that there’s a very modern subgenre of people that follow this trad wife feel and trad wife, but this is more of a conservative sometimes, like, catholic leaning.

I’m not really sure exactly where to pinpoint it, but I almost, I’m thinking that Keith Ranieri doesn’t seem like someone that would project himself as being a conservative right wing Catholic. No. Seems like he would help as the opposite. But ultimately, in, like, if, like, all roads lead to being a trad wife, is that kind of how this is? I think for them? In their case, yes, that’s what they were doing. Because it’s like, okay, we’re, you know, we’re jokingly saying trad wife, but what are we really saying in this sense? You know, I’m not saying that everybody that is in this subgroup of trad wife is, is this way.

But yeah, when every, when it’s used in this group mentality, whether it’s Keith Ranieri, Charles Manson, and it’s used, again for power, everything about dark personalities, the psychology of dark personalities, it is always coming back to power. Right? Serial killers want power over their victims. Rapists want power over their victims, but in a different way. And psychopaths that are in the workplace, they want power, too. But again, they attain it differently. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is power. All right, so let’s wrap up next. Seem a little bit, and I guess instead of doing a paranormal conspiracy probe and the whole, I should have made like a little.

Maybe I will, maybe in the future I’ll make, like, animatic for this, but I want to just rate on one to ten how. And you have to join a cole. Just say that, like, you gotta join any of them, one to one to ten. And don’t think ahead or anything. Just like gut instinct where you are joining nxium. Like, Keith Ranieri himself is like, hey, man, you heard about this thing called, uh, nexium? I want you in and we’re going to put you up kind of high. Like, how likely are you to join this if you have to join a Cole? Shit, I don’t know.

I mean, honestly, the way that they brand it at first, right, it’s, it’s believable, it’s viable, right? It’s about improvement. Like, if you’re not selling the chicks, getting branded above their vagina at the front door, then you’ve probably got a good chance of bringing people in. I mean, yeah, I mean, anybody that wants to self improve, part of that stoic philosophy, I could see, yeah, I could see out of the others, I could see this one being more believable. So, I mean, we gotta, I’ll give it a rating for, I’ll say, I’m gonna give this one a seven.

And it’s only at seven, down from maybe an eight or a nine, because I know that Keith might be messaging me at 03:00 a.m. to go for like a run. And I, that’s, that’s like taking out a solid one to two points easily for me. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, it’s very, yeah, I would rate, I’d probably rate it an eight. Out of all the cults. I probably rated an eight because it’s the, like I said, it’s the most believable. And most of the people in it didn’t really understand what was happening until it kind of all exploded.

When you say most believable, that’s another good point. Was there any supernatural promise whatsoever? Because even in some of the other cults that lean on, you know, Jesus or Christianity and, like, their own little flavors, that still incorporates supernatural by default. But Keith Raniere, was it all self help or was there one level of, like, and you can levitate and you can see through walls, or was that never part of it? No. You know what it really reminds me of? Are you familiar with Frederick Nietzsche? I mean, the philosopher? Yeah, yeah. We can start just talking about nihilism, right? Now, no, no, I was just going to say the idea of what Keith Raniere was trying to do reminds me of the Ubermensch, which basically loosely translates to the Overman or the Superman.

That’s the idea. It’s the Superman. And Nietzsche believed that humans had this innate ability to become Superman, and that’s what we should strive for, to become that what Keith Ranieri was trying to do in the way that he talks. Because there’s videos. You can go on YouTube and go watch some of their lectures. They’re still around. Um, it reminds me of that. So not supernatural powers, but just like, again, it’s the same new age spirituality of, like, unlocking your, you know, subconscious spiritual potential. You know, like, so it’s not as wild as Scientology, but there is still a spiritual element to it.

Is there anything to it? Like, if. If you were to just remove the whole cult, like, you’re not going to join a cult or anything. You’re just going to listen to his audiobook or whatever. Do you think that there’s merit? Like, you’ll gain confidence or you’ll gain some kind of ability? Just like if you want to go through the military, it’s not all roses, it’s not all positive development, right? Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, probably. Yeah, I bet you. I bet you it. His stuff reads just like any self help book on Amazon. I’d put money on it.

You know, like any, like Ryan. Think about Ryan Holiday. He’s a. He’s an author. He writes books on stoicism. I have one over here to my right, and I stopped reading his books because it’s just the same regurgitated crap over and over again. Like, you know, stows. Like Hans, by the way, I don’t know why you keep doing this. You’re like, laser focusing the people that are making this show happen. Go ahead. Hey, I mean, good for him. I mean, but regardless, philosophies are good, but they’re just philosophies. You read about them and whatever, and if it means something to you, then that’s great.

It does, and it helps you, but that’s what cults take advantage of, because they can find this and they look for people who are prone to it and suck them in. This is actually a good time to cut to a commercial on all of our comics that tell you exactly how to think and what to believe and who to trust. So we’ll go, no, but let’s move on to people’s temple, which I think. Okay. And I think we kind of like smashed it out of the gate with nxivm. I can’t imagine. I guess I’ll read ahead a little bit.

I can’t imagine wanting to join any of the other cults as much as NXIVM, so. Yeah, so let’s go with people’s Temple, I guess right off the bat. I like the rating system. So how likely are you, before we talk about it, to join people’s Temple? And I guess, let’s say it’s nothing. 2024, a two even. Okay, well, okay. In the time it’s probably more relevant because it. And you’re lower class, you got to be going to be lower class as well. Like, like you’re going to fit the demographic, I guess. Yeah, then I. Yeah, then I could see it being more believable, especially if you don’t know him.

Like, if you didn’t know Jim Jones prior to any of this. He’s another charismatic figure. He honestly reminds me a lot of Hitler because of the way he talked and the way that he inspired people. Just very boisterous, just, ah, you know, like he could talk. He was very good at talking and convincing people. So probably more like a five because again, it had such a heavy christian influence. All right, I think I’ll give it maybe a four just because I didn’t like going to church ever as a kid, so that probably that part would have turned me off.

And then I guess there’s another interesting aspect of people’s temple that. And you tell me how true this is because it’s based on maybe documentaries, more so than good old book learning, but that he had somewhat of a. Either a democratic or a dictatorial way of pairing people up. He was like, you two get together, or I’m going to get with your wife. Or did that group setting. Right, like, he would. He would basically, um, like, demasculate guys in front of their wives by saying, like, she no longer belongs to you. Like, she’s going to belong to me in front of everybody.

Yes. Yes. Did Ranier ever do something like that where he’s like, you actually belong to me now, or. Well, probably in that subgroup that we talked about, the. With that smaller group, especially with Alison Mack, because, you know, Alison Mack was like, completely subservient to him. So, yeah, probably within that group, he was saying, making claims like that, like you’re. You’re going to sleep with me because I actually own you and your husband is just a part of this whole thing, you know, again, and I’m sure it always ties back to spirituality somehow. Right? Like, we’re not all, you know, none of us are people.

We’re all God, really. So it’s not really cheating because we’re all the same thing. Right? Like, that’s. That’s probably somehow how they branded it. That’s a, that’s another good point, too, because Jim Jones starts as a kid, he starts out as being like a preacher. He just kind of like his hobby, I guess, instead of fishing or collecting bugs under rocks, was that he was just preached to other kids and he loved it and he thrived off of it. Now, and I want. And I’m going to ask you to speculate here, so this isn’t like, we’re not going to record this and air it or anything for anyone else to hear.

But do you think he actually believed in any of the Jesus stuff? Do you think, like, Jim Jones was actually a Christian? Or do you think that he just saw that as his conduit in order to gain influence and power? Oh, I think probably a little bit of both because I thought the same thing because I wrote about him in my book and that definitely when I was reading about it, it definitely stuck out to me. And I was like, how? Like, deep. Did he really actually believe this? Because. And if you pay attention, his belief changes, right? Like, he’s still Christian.

Right. But he goes from, you know, I believe it’s like Methodist to Protestant to kind of like a new age spiritualism type thing, even though it’s all christian heavy. Yeah, man. His, his belief kind of changes over the years. And here’s the thing you talked about when he would preach to other kids, if other kids didn’t like it and left, he would preach to stuffed animals. He would preach. He would preach to just about anything. Like he needed to do it. Yes. Yeah. It was a compulsion almost. Now, where did that come from? I don’t. I don’t fully know.

Like, he clearly picked it up when he was a kid by going to church. And one of the things I read was that he was enamored by the fact that people loved their priest. You know, this guy gets up and talks and everybody has to confess to him and everybody has to console their things. And for somebody that’s a psychopath or a, you know, has a dark personality, there’s nothing more in the world than they. That they want than that kind of power. That kind. Because it’s. And this is where narcissism comes in, too. It is the power, but for a narcissist, it’s not always about power.

It’s about attention. It’s about unearned power, unearned attention. And for him, there’s nothing more than you can get than being a pastor who’s got all this, you know, power. Like, you have all these people who are just willing to prostrate themselves at your feet and believe that you are really, like, the mouthpiece for God. Could you think of any position more higher than that? I almost imagine this one as the anti nxiom. It’s like the most polar opposite to NXiVM, because Jim Jones, kind of like Keith Ranieri, targeted high performing, famous, rich, you know, Jim Jones, he kind of was the most.

Like, his biggest demographic was lower class and lower educated and just people going through a hard time. And he kind of promise not just the regular old christian salvation, but that, hey, if we all come together and we act as an actual community and help each other out, then life can get better. So there was. He was almost running a mini, like, socialism on a certain level. And. And it seemed that people directly and, like, tangibly benefited from this immediately. Like, you saw the difference overnight, where you’re like, oh, my normal church, they’re just like, nice to you when you show up, and then you go, you know, you see them on the street and they’re like, you know, hey, so this was different from that.

You brought up a really great segue here. You talked about socialism. He. Jim Jones was a hardcore communist socialist. He was all in on communism and socialism. He was at one point even a registered communist in the United States. He would go to these worker parties. Yeah, he was all in. And his favorite people to read about, his number one dictator was Mao. And he loved Mao. Right? And so it’s, again, what it says, like, when you research about it, what it says is that he really was fascinated by how he had power over people and he could command and be in charge.

Right? What does that translate to for normal people? Okay. Mao was one of the worst dictators in human history, and millions of people died as a result of communism in the 20th century. So even when he was a kid, he would actually march around, do the goose step, the Gestapo walk when he was. When he was a kid, and he would get kids to do it with him. He would order kids around to try to reenact being Hitler. And these other kids were like, Nazis. This is like, early fifties or something. Yes, yes. Has to be, because this was when he was a kid.

This is before he actually grows up. But. Okay, so, yeah, there’s so there’s no question he wasn’t doing like a roman morning salute. And then it was like, oh, man, Hitler took it. Now that’s going to look bad in the future. This was definitely a post world war two goose stepping in America sort of practice. Was he anti american? Because it almost seems like a prerequisite if you’re a staunch communist. He kind of got to be anti american. Yeah, I believe probably to some degree. So one of the biggest things that he was, like, one of his big platforms was racism.

And he was always, you know, in to his credit, like, some of the things, like, he was always, you know, he talked to Martin Luther King. Like, he would go to rallies. Like, he was like, he was for it. So, like, there, it wasn’t all bad, I guess. Like, I mean, he’s a bad dude. But one thing you got to question wondertainous, and I talked about this in my book. I talk about, oh, man, what’s that guy’s name? We’ll come back to it. I forget it. But there was another guy down in South America, the cocaine king.

He did all kinds of nice things and bought a lot of stuff, like built soccer fields for kids. And Escobar. That’s right. Pablo Escobar. He did all these kinds of nice things, too, and spent a bunch of money trying to. But again, is he doing it because he’s a genuinely good person, or is this another way for him to look good among other people with dark personalities? You always have to wonder that you cannot take anything at face value. I would be more inclined to say that Jim Jones whole thing with racism was less to do with him actually being a good person and caring about equal rights, and more to do with the fact that it was a hot topic at the time and he was able to use his influence at the time to persuade people to come to his group.

Well, let’s not just start cutting the poor guy down. Like, he’s not here to defend himself. So just to be the default Jim Jones apologist in the room, I guess let’s assume good intentions, even if everything else kind of went to hell. And another thing, too, is when you brought up Charles Manson and this idea that while someone else was pulling those strings, this. The same people that were maybe pulling Manson strings have been rumored to have been pulling Jim Jones strings. And one of those examples, I guess I’ll open this up as a question to you to speculate again, but how was he even allowed to go and form his own country? How was the US? Because it seems that once you start doing something outside of the US.

Now the CIA is, like, officially gets to be involved without having to do anything covert or act like it’s a conspiracy. So it almost seems like he would 100% have been on the radar of the CIA for sure. That’s probably easily provable some aspect. But how much of that was being, like, allowed to happen? Like, it was this a controlled demolition in some way? I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, you do have to wonder. I mean, it was a different time too, right? Like, I don’t think he could do it today. But again, that’s not too different than what if it was ten years earlier and he was like, I’m a communist.

It just would have been, like, straight to jail. You know what I mean? Yes. You’re not doing anything else. But, you know, if you waited your time another 1015 years, now, it’s like, okay, we can’t say straight to jail because freaking COINTELPRO and MK Ultra came out in the family jewels. And I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, my thought process is like, he would. Probably would have been a good patsy, like Manson, but to what end? You know, that’s, I guess, where I. Because it’s also, at the same time, you got to think the CIA probably has bigger problems than some dude, like, you know, pretending to bring people back to life and heal them, you know, but to, you know, to bring it to another group is Osho.

Are you familiar with Osho and his group? Yeah, I have to refresh me because the name sounds familiar, but it’s the. I think they were called the rational she’s. Or rationeeshis, something like that, right? Yeah, they had wild, wild country or something. Yes. And so what they did. So he was a guru in India, and he bought land in Oregon and created this, like, you know, again, socialist utopia in Oregon. And it fell apart because they opened it up. And all of the homeless people around America were like, dude, this is the place. Like, everybody’s banging and there’s drugs.

Like, I’m coming, I’m coming. They got guns. They just give you an AK 47 when you show up. They’re like, here you go. I gotta say, higher than people’s temple. I know this one wasn’t on our list, but I don’t know, a five. I’ll give this one a solid five. The rich knees or temple. The reish knees. I would give them temple. I give a four. I think the rich knees. I’d give a solid five. Assuming I was already in their demographic. Yeah. Okay, if you’re in their demographic. Well, shit, at the time. Yeah. If you’re in their demographic, that’s probably a solid seven.

Like, that’s something the other groups didn’t have, is like, he offered them a place to go. They had food, you know, sex, drugs. Like, you’re out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, that’s. Are they still accepting people? Is there still. Is there any remnant at all of that community? Because I still see people sharing his videos all the time on social media. Like, look at this guy. He’s dropping some serious gems right now. It’s like. Oh, yeah, they haven’t heard. Yeah, no, the group, I don’t believe exists anymore because they, you know, they basically. One of the members basically tried to poison the town in Oregon that’s next to them that was trying to.

They tried doing that one time. Oh, just one time? Yeah, it’s fine. It was just a one time. It was one person. Yeah. And then, like, just the random firefights they’d get into with the people in the town, you know? That’s fine. You’re. Honestly, I’m at a six now. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just added another point. Yeah. No, but he is still popular. I’ve actually read a couple of his books out of curiosity. But again, it’s the same kind of thing. You know what I mean? Like, all of these spiritual, cultish, new age stuff. It’s all got the same fling and flavor, and if you read them, if you get it.

I’ve read hundreds of books like this from people like him. It’s the same shit. It’s. They’re trying to rebrand and resell that they know the secrets of the universe. They’re all knowing. And if you read their book and meditate the exact way that they meditate, you’ll transcend reality and whatever. Right. Well, I guess that’s. That’s a good point. And maybe another metric that we can measure up to. I won’t have to make this all formal, but. So I’m just thinking, like, Keith Raniere, you made a really good comparison where he’s almost like a military version of new age, where it’s more believable, it’s a little bit more practical.

He’s got, like, an actual roster of people. And then if you get to the. To Osho, he also maybe, like, you might actually find merit and stuff, he says, which is why people share it on social media, because he’s got some kind of merit to it. So if you’re like, it’s a little too woo woo for me. Ranieri might be more your flavor because he can remove some of the woo woo and add some other crap to it. Jim Jones, though. So I guess now that we’re talking about this, as I’m thinking, right, I’ve only ever heard his death tapes, which are really dark and maybe not the best example of his skill and rhetoric.

Right? Like, maybe that’s not his rhetorical best, because I think he was already drugged out of his mind. And then they put out an album. The people’s temple has, like, a vinyl album. I haven’t got a digital. It’s not very good. Neither of those things would have sold me. I can’t imagine coming across a transcript of a Jim Jones sermon that would sell me either. Maybe just because his flavor wasn’t mine, but on this scale. Right. I’m almost like, I would probably listen to Raniere and then Osho and then Jim Jones out of those three and probably wouldn’t even really listen to the Jim Jones.

Yeah. Hell, no. Jim. Yeah, Jim Jones. It was, like I said, very christian. And it has, honestly has the same kind of. Of smell as Charles Manson stuff. The helter skelter shit. It’s apocalyptic in nature. You know, it’s this, that. And that’s why they moved out to their own country. Yeah. Guyana. That’s why they did that, because they were preparing, you know, what was that other group. What was that other group in Texas where they got into that massive shootout with the ATF and buildings? Like, we’re exploding. Oh, yeah. I don’t know the name of top of my head awake.

It was in Waco, Texas. So I think that’s enough for people. Are you talking about the David Koresh? I think that was not recently, then. We’re talking 80, and that was nineties, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. Like in the nineties. The Branch Davidians. All right. Yes, yes. Very similar. Right. So, like, it doesn’t start that way. Jim Jones didn’t start that way. Started pretty traditional christian, you know, for the time. And. But where things start taking a turn is that he starts doing these, like, healings, right? Like, and you’ve seen videos of this kind of stuff where people are, like, on the ground shaking, and he’s like, rise.

And the person gets up from the ground and they’re, you know, magically better or whatever the thing was, is that he would pay people to do that. Right. As probably most of these people are. Right. They’re paying people to perform. So he pays people to sit in the audience and he knows who they are, so he calls them up and you’re healed now, and bam, now they’re healed, right? You see that enough times, you might believe it, right? Especially if you’re already very religiously minded, you know, not to pick on anybody, but if you’re already in that mindset and if you’re maybe doing a lot of drugs, like, you’re like, yes, yes, I’m in it.

Let’s do this, right? And again, foot in the door method. That’s the psychological term for all of this stuff, right? You’re not bringing XEnu and the volcanoes and the bombs, right? At day one that comes down the ladder after you’re already, you know, thousands of dollars in debt and your family hates you and you’re isolated. Right? Now, it’s like, all right, here’s the briefcase with the alien shit. Same thing with Jim Jones, right? Like, now that I’ve moved you all to Guyana and we’re in our own little communist world, now I’m partnering all of you up, I’m going to bang your wife.

You’re going to do what I tell you to, and by the way, we’re all going to die. End of the world. Well, and I guess, at least in the miracle preacher way. And great movie if you haven’t seen it. For anyone watching a leap of faith with Steve Martin basically reenacts this fictionalized version of. Of pop off Timothy Popov that had, like, the miracle water and all this stuff. Like, I grew up to those infomercials waking me up in the middle of the night constantly. And I would almost say that, to their credit, they kind of put Zeno first, right? You might just be some bumpkin.

And I guess this is where a lot of those, that sort of preaching came popular. Was that America? I’m just going to throw a number out without being accurate, but I would say, like, I don’t know, 1850s or like, late 18 hundreds. But you almost had a lot of christians that didn’t necessarily fit easily into certain denomination, and these traveling pastors would come around and you’d go and you would see them, like, just healing people, and they kind of became that, like, I don’t know if you can categorize that, but it got people of these different sort of beliefs that were vaguely similar now under this literal tent, and now they’re, like, all together and they’re seeing this, and you don’t have to wait for years to see, like, oh, this dude’s like, taking cancer out of grandma’s and he’s making people walk again.

It’s just like, day one. That might actually be the selling point. I can almost imagine. If you show up to Scientology and they’re like, bro, we got aliens. We got volcanoes full of dead spirits. They’re going to, like, latch on to you. We’re going to clean them off you. That’s what. Or if you go to Rainier and he’s like, we’re going to brand you. What if that was the pitch? Shit, I don’t know. Maybe that might work for some people. Again. It almost seems like you’d be a little bit more karmic debt free if you just led with, hey, we’re going to brand you.

Just let you know that comes later. But you wouldn’t be able to come out with a big, well, I guess tv show would still be made, but you’d be like, oh, I couldn’t believe it. Once I got deep into it, then they were like, we’re going to brand you. Because if I’m the, you know, the. The little, like form you got to fill out that says, I want to join your cult, I hereby have read that you’re going to brand me and make me wake up at 03:00 a.m. and all this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe they were just bought in.

I mean, I think that’s why the documentaries, at least for NXIVM, are good, because they really. There’s the one I watched, it was from one of the members who was really deep in it, and he was bought and sold on this thing the whole time. And then it was his documentary because he felt so guilty about what happened to the people in the group that he was trying to be one of the people to expose it. And I think that watching it from that perspective, because he’s honest, you know, he says, like, yeah, man, I was.

I was in. You know, I really liked what we were doing. I’m. I was friends with Keith Raniere. Right? Like, I think that’s good to see that kind of stuff, because we don’t. There’s not much of that that exists today about, like, the Jim Jones temple. Well, Manson family. For specific reason. On the Jim Jones. Yeah, for very specific reasons. Well, I guess great segue to our next cult, which will also rate ahead of time. Heaven’s gate. Hell yes, man. I’ll give this one a six. Six and a half, maybe I’ll give it an eight. Okay.

But really, so the main reason that I don’t see this one as high for me as Nexium was, just because there’s not really any guarant promise of sex. It’s almost the opposite. Although maybe this is their xenu because. And I guess jumping ahead a little bit, but heaven’s gate, the guy that ran it, Marshall apple. And I’m going to state some of this, like, so simply, then you’ll have to go back and correct me while you’re here. It’s good he starts this cult maybe before it becomes heaven’s Gate. I don’t know if it went through some name changes, but it was him and chick that he was with.

And then she dies and he castrates himself. And then after he castrates himself, he’s. He can’t join a sex cult now, right? He kind of screwed himself out of that path. I guarantee you he woke up one night, was like, what have I done? Like, I’ve got other elements here, but I’m missing this one. But he castrates himself and then he requires everyone else to castrate themselves, too. How much of that is accurate? Do I have any of that kind of misstated? Yeah, no, that sounds about right. It. I did. I do think that it went through some, but I don’t know if it was so much of a rebranding is it was just him and this woman.

So the way that it kind of comes down is he was going to school, he was going to college, and he was kind of, like, doing the thing where he’s, like, learning about different religions. He was also, like, religious, but not religious again, this one, out of all of them, is the most new age spiritual type. And I say that because of how they got into it. And he started kind of like, getting really interested in, like, past lives, out of body experiences, all of that kind of stuff, which makes me believe, because I don’t know that I’ve ever read this.

I don’t know if this was part of the group or not, but you got to imagine for the time and the stuff they’re talking about, heavy drug use. That’s the only way I could really fully understand why. Because the progression from how he goes from being kind of like quasi religious to a new age spiritual to there’s a fucking comet coming and the aliens are taking us up, baby. I don’t know how that progression happens without there being a heavy use of drugs. Was drug. Were drugs used by heaven’s gate members that you know of? See, that’s the thing.

No, I don’t know that I. I’m only speculating because of the nature of what they believed and what was happening. But nothing that I read, no literature that I read suggested that it was part of, like, the necessary part of their group. Because Manson, for sure, drug use. Right. I. People’s tendency was just Jim Jones doing the drugs. Yeah. And I imagine that there was drug use in the group, but not, like, cult mandated. Right. But interestingly enough, and you probably know this, but Manson was involved in LSD studies. That was what happened prior to all of the Manson family stuff.

He was actually, like, participating in research involving LSD. This was in jail. I believe he went to a certain jail for. I got the details murky, but it was, like, assault or attempted murder or something. He went to jail for something pretty serious, and while he was there, corresponds to the exact location of the jail and the time period in which Mkultra was doing what they would consider indiscriminate LSD studies. So just put. Put it on the coincidence counter and just wait until, you know, it, like, rings a bell or something. Yeah. For real? Yeah. Anyways, back to heaven’s gate.

Yeah, I just. It seems right for the time and for the topics that they’re kind of going into. Like, it just seems really hard for me to believe that they’re not also doing copious amounts of drugs because of. Just because of the nature of some of the things that I believe. And, you know, so, like I said, so those two, they get together, and the woman is the one that suggests that they have known each other in past lives and that they were destined to be together and that it was this, you know, like, some kind of, like, ancient prophecy that they would come together and that this was going to happen.

That’s where it starts. All right, if. If we add drugs, I’ll give heaven’s gate a seven. We’ll see how we do. Why does he cut his dick off? I have no idea. I quite honestly, I don’t know. And I would be surprised if anybody really truly knows what’s going on there. Like, unless he. Like, unless there’s a member who survived and. And his member didn’t survive. His member. Rest in peace, zero seven’s in the chat. Yeah, but I don’t know why he specifically did that. But again, like, some of what they did defies logic, right? I mean, like, their end, you know, their final event makes no sense.

So I’m not surprised he would do something as drastic as cutting his unit off. Oh, man. You know, it’s crazy, though. There’s another person that did this the exact same castration thing. But it was a rapper, man. It was. It was like a west coast Wu Tang guy. They were trying to start like a west coast version of Wutang. It wasn’t the. There’s a total tangent, I know, but it wasn’t the Black Knight. I want to say it was like North Star or something, but, um, he takes LSD, and I think his name was, like, christ something or other.

He takes LSD, talks to some entity, slash spirit, slash Jesus, alien. Like some amalgamous thing, right? And it tells him, like, cut off your dick. Like, in order to reach the next level, you got to cut off your dick. Like, I wonder what. Maybe it’s just like a. So we’ve all got weird brains, and maybe they just had two of the same model of weird brain that when you hit that switch, that that thought comes up, but it’s weird that that is just a thing. And he does this after his partner dies, right? Marshall? Apple. Right.

So the speculation, I can’t remember where this came from, maybe even my own head, was that it was almost like, well, if I can’t, I, uh, you know, have a partner. No one can have a partner. And that it was even that now it’s a distraction. Like my soulmate, I know. Like, if I’m waiting for her to come back or there’s gonna be a baby, and I gotta wait for this freaking baby to grow up, right? He’s already an old dude, so it’s like, I don’t have any need for this part of myself anymore. It’s just a distraction.

I just need to work on the website, you know, twenty four seven and run this cult. So chop chop that guy off. And now all of a sudden, you got laser focused. I don’t think that’s how it worked out, but maybe that was some of the logic. If you have to push logic into where maybe it doesn’t belong. Right. Well, you know, you got to wonder, too. Is this, like, did this actually happen? Or did he say, you know what I mean? Like, that one makes me skeptical because that kind of injury, like, if you didn’t go get medical help, I mean, you would bleed out within minutes.

The. The amount of blood you would lose for just chopping your own genitals off, it would be massive. Like, you would die within minutes if not. So I’m skeptical. Would I be surprised if he actually did that? No, not at all. But I am skeptical if he actually really did do that. So, that said, there was other people that joined heaven’s gate that are encouraged to castrate themselves as well, kind of in following his footsteps. Right. And in some of those instances, they don’t go to the hospital and say, hey, here’s what I want to do.

They just kind of take it into their own hands, literally. And some of them, it doesn’t work out very well because they don’t know what arteries are and how to cauterize things or did anyone die over doing this or. I don’t know that for a fact. My guess is that if they did, they probably did a good job of covering it up. They probably did not want that advertised that they had members chop off their members and die like that. Because that’s not a good selling point if you’re trying to recruit. Yeah, we’re going to go down to a one.

Yeah. Instantly. Yeah. And a weird tangent, but I think just to try and figure out some of the reasoning behind this, this particular aspect of castering yourself. Because this was male only. Right. Like the women didn’t do anything. They didn’t have to like cut their. Their. Any parts of their body off. Right. This was just for the men. Yeah, as far as I’m aware. Yes. Because again, it’s so, you know, like there’s only so much information. And for the same reason that we don’t 100% know what happened with temples, you know, the. The temple group is kind of the same thing that happens in this group.

Well, so, yeah, the temple group, to speculate and go back just for a second on that, is that he. There’s a couple of lines of thought, but the death tape seemed to imply at least part of this, is that some people knew that it was poison and that they were going to be leaving this life in order to go to a different one. That was the belief. But then there were also some people that were maybe on the fence, and that’s who that death tape was. He was like, all right, get your children. Have them drill.

Like he was trying to convince people. And then there’s like a third group of like, hell, no, I’m not doing any of this, so you’re not talking me into this. And then they were either forced to drink in some instances, or in other instances, maybe just taken out, you know, externally without them being a willful participant of any of that. So that’s. That’s that part. Heaven’s gate. It seems like it’s been pitched as all voluntary, like. Like no one was held down and forced to eat the applesauce. Right. They all did it by themselves. Right. They ate the applesauce.

And then in, I think probably in air, all the cases, they had bags over their head, plastic bags with ziplocs. Not ziploc, but, like, a zip cough to. To make them suffocate after they ate the applesauce. Plan B. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, like, you want to talk about, like, you know, committing to the role like they did. So, you know, when we’re. When we’re thinking about, like, why would somebody join a group like this? Why would somebody be involved in this kind of stuff? Their ratio for getting people to fully commit to it is pretty wild.

You know, when you’re thinking about, like, people’s temple, the Manson family, and any of these other groups, like, they. They knew they were eating the poison. They were eating the SAP sauce that had the poisonous, and then putting a bag over their head to make sure that there was no getting out of it. That’s crazy. And I guess to the whole rating skill at the cultish, I definitely would have been the most in their demographic because they looked at computer programmers and website and techie people, and if you like, Star Trek and all that, it seemed like that was the pool that they were, like, the lake that they were fishing out of.

A little bit of. Yeah, so that part. Although as soon as I showed it, and I probably. They’re also the only one that I can think of that comes with a uniform. None of the other cults we have, like, and here’s, you know, here’s our outfits or whatever. So I don’t know. Even with adding all those up and they get drugs included, it’s a seven. But the second they’re like. And you got to castrate yourself with this broken CD ROM. Then it goes all the way back down to, like, one f. One bottom. No way. Yeah.

Yeah. So the last one, I won’t expect you to rate it just because we were talking earlier and you haven’t heard of this one as much. And the only reason that I have heard or even care about this one and the reason we’re ending with it is because it’s from, like, the 1860s, 1865 or something, but it’s the Oneida community. And the. And the reason is, the first time it came up, I was like, why do I know that name? And it’s not just because I grew up in a. Upstate New York, which is not far from where this happened, but I grew up in a place called Oneonta, which kind of sounds like Oneida, but I believe that the areas are both named after these native american tribes in upstate New York.

So they’ve got that going for it. But this is, as I was looking into this a little bit earlier. Let me see if I got my note here. Yeah. And this was something that I didn’t necessarily know before. I was looking into this to talk about today. But the United community starts in 1865. It’s matches a cult by any sort of definition of the word, especially between the two of us. But the guy that starts it is John Humphrey Noyes, or Noyes, which is an awesome last name. It’s literally n o y e s. His last name is no.

Yes. I. Which just feels like you’re already in a trance now, right? I’ve already kind of made you believe in some weird thing. But he’s been credited as being the first person to introduce what would be considered a positive eugenics movement in the United States. And this is maybe even predating the term eugenics by two full decades. That said, the eugenics as a concept, I think, kind of came out of, like, darwinian thought, and it came from a few other Gouthen, Gauten. I can’t remember all the different people’s names, but it’s not like this guy invented the entire concept of selective breeding.

But to actually say, let’s put this into action, let’s find people that are human beings in the society and have them breed with the explicit intent of creating a better class of people. He’s kind of credited, like, an unsung hero in the eugenics community of being the first one that does this in 1865 or so. But it’s got a very specific flavor of Christianity to it, although it’s got, man, I love this time period because it also has, like, a weird Mormon influence. But it’s not Mormonism, it’s Christianity. But they believe that Jesus had already come back and everything, and now we were in paradise, or we were, like, in post revelation.

So that now you’re kind of living on paradise on earth, and there is nothing better than that. And that he was trying to use, and I’m simplifying a little bit, but he was trying to use this positive version of eugenics to kind of prove that, like, look, we’ve got all the tools that the, you know, he died, he came back to life. He came back to earth. He absolved everyone of sins. Like, we’re good. Like, now we just have to make this paradise back into what it needs to be. And he starts this entire christian sort of community around this.

It eventually turns into, because of that eugenics aspect, where he originally was like, okay, you two pair up. Kind of like that Jim Jones way. But over time, the way that I’ve understood this is that it became almost a democratic process where the whole town would show up to church and they would kind of collectively decide, and I don’t know how they did it, the mechanism. Like, maybe they just pull someone up, like a cattle call auction, and they’re just like, all right, here we got, you know, Jessica Lang here, who, like, who’s. Who do we think would be the best match for her? You know, it’s like voting prom king and queen, but they got a bang immediately after.

Immediately. And then. And also in the Oneida community, this was an interesting aspect, is that they believed in the whole, like, village raising the child aspect to the point where they would allow a mother to breastfeed the child, but only because they needed the child. They really learned over time and through experience that the child needed to bond to someone, but they came to identify as a caretaker. Like, you need to let this child bond to what it perceives as a caretaker, and that the relationship between the mom to the child, that’s different now. Like, that’s the mom bonding to the kid, which has no social value whatsoever in anything.

It might actually be, like, detrimental to the society for someone to think like, oh, that’s my kid, or, I have some sort of ownership or influence over that kid. It was really just an upward, like, the kid needs to bond to someone so that when they get old enough, they can be raised by the rest of the community. Because if you didn’t breastfeed them, they wouldn’t develop that, I guess that mentality of like, oh, I need a caretaker. Oh, I’ve, you know, I can look towards someone for guidance and support. So they left that part in, but as soon as they were old enough to stop breastfeeding, then it just became the group raises these kids, huh? Yeah.

Different. It’s unique. That that seems like more of a process, really, than, like, some of these other cults. That one that reminds me similarly to more of, like, Keith Raniere and Nixxiom. Right. Although this one, the. I mean, it’s a little bit hard because there are some documentaries on this one, but the documentaries are pretty stark. Most of it is about the kids. There was a lot of incest, I guess, that occurred in this community, but also the kids were sort of trapped in here. Like, they didn’t have a say on how they were raised and that they didn’t have, like, a family unit, so, which led to a lot of neglect and a lot of the records.

People just go back and they read, like, the kids diaries and stuff. And they just weren’t educated. They weren’t really. It was such an isolated community that it came with all the downsides of that and maybe only a couple of the upsides because they were very focused on this weird eugenic aspect to it. But it was interesting that it kind of lacked this singular, charismatic leader to guide the entire thing. I assume that someone was running the show, but they didn’t necessarily have a Jim Jones or a Keith Ranieri. Yeah, no, that is fascinating. And in an earlier group like this, that’s even more fascinating because you’re talking about post civil war and you’re talking about before people like Alastair Crowley are around because a lot of the cult stuff that you and I know of and the stuff that we talked about today comes from Alastair Crowley and some of the weirdos he was hanging out with.

So anytime you get a group like that that happened before the time of Aleister Crowley, you’ve got something interesting there. And I’m not particularly surprised by the eugenics thing because it seems like earlier times, right? I mean, just think of the royal family, right? Like there’s a reason that some of that stuff exists. Yeah. They’re all, they’re all chasing that, that perfect blood that lets them do who knows? Whatever that cult believes, if it. Maybe they can levitate or see through walls or, like, breed the perfect human. So I get. Yeah, so we went through a lot of them and I guess final tangent, too.

That’s sort of on the castration but secret society and like, the ancient thing is that, and I don’t know how true this is, but I have heard that there’s supposed to be this link between Egyptians that wore these white lambskin aprons and then Freemasons wear the white lambskin aprons, and then Marshall Applewhite cuts off his dick. The three might be connected, but hear me out is that I’ve, I’ve heard this, is that it’s related to almost like a chakra that you’re kind of bypassing your base chakra by. Just like in the case of a white lambskin apron, it’s a little bit less invasive of an operation than applewhite took it to, but it represents this, like, subdued feeling towards your passions or like your base mammalian urges that you’re kind of, like, covering it up with like a blocker.

Like, oh, I was about to go and do something. Oh, I got blocked. Oh, that’s right. You know, think outside of that, and maybe that was just a more extreme version of that. But I think a lot of these cults, it almost seems that that would be a requirement. Like, um, are there any, like, aside from the Manson family, but are any of them are just like, free sex, non stop? Like, even in nexium? Is it just like, bang all day, bang all night? Or do you have to be, like, regimented and strict about it? I don’t.

I don’t know the answer to that question. But what I would say is that with. With cold sex is always one of the top. The top priorities, one of the top things, because it. That kind of plays into the idea of ritual magic, and that’s something that’s tied specifically to Alastair Crowley. And that’s, you know, even today, with all the reading I’ve done and kind of the deep dives I’ve gone into, from what I understand, is the belief, especially with Aleister Crowley, is that the sex is involved, that’s involved in cult work is of a magical purpose.

Like that’s. Or even. Maybe even demonic or the spirit realm, that that’s what it. It’s tied to. And they believe that if you have sex in a certain way or if you use sex in a certain way, that it. It has power attached to it. And that that symbolism is involved in a lot of things. You even see today with, you know, the quote unquote Illuminati, you know, whether they believe it or not. Like somebody that’s really interesting, you may know who this is, but for your viewers, if they’re interested in this kind of stuff, a guy named Jay Dyer, he has a YouTube channel and he’s written a couple books, but he’s really well versed in this stuff.

And he can go down. I mean, honestly, if you could have him on your podcast, that’d be a great episode, because he is like an encyclopedia for everything related to cults and ritual magic shit. And one of the things he said that I really appreciate that makes a lot of sense, is that all of these groups have kind of levels, right? Whether you’re somehow Freemasons, you know, illuminati, quote unquote, or whatever this thing is, is that there’s the people at the bottom who believe something very basic, which is like. And he talks about the industry a lot, like the music industry, moving industry, and that term selling your soul.

There’s kind of two meanings to it, because there are people who are using that term as meaning to sell out. So I’m giving up the rights to my music so that I can do this thing, or I’m giving up the rights to my likeness so you can have this or go be in this movie or get this publishing deal, whatever it is. And then there’s people on the other side of the spectrum who fully believe this. They really are, like, bought in on Satanism, you know? Again, I’m not saying that it’s real or not, but there are people who believe in that.

And then this all ties into these cult groups because there’s some element of it along the way. And a lot of it, especially in a modern cult, is a lot of this goes back to Aleister Crowley. And the stuff that Alastair Crowley kind of picked up and brought and believed in, bought into, is, again, this new age spiritualism stuff goes all the way back to egyptian times and has a little mix of satanism mixed in there, too. Right. So that’s what it’s always coming back to. Right. The branding thing should make no surprise when we’re talking about the Nixium group, it was somebody’s initials, right? They probably believed that there was some kind of spiritual meaning or symbology to it.

But in the end, really, what is it? It is. They were branding people with their initials because this is power. It’s what you do with cattle. I guess Crowley’s the best place to end this on, too, because that he’s sort of the epitome of drugs, sex, rock and roll, aliens. Right? All of that stuff. He was one of the. He was doing mescaline before people even really knew about it, necessarily outside of the midwest, in the US, he was doing that stuff as part of magical rituals. He was in a few different flavors of masonry and Oto and Salema, which he started.

So, yeah, he kind of becomes that epicenter. Which makes sense on why all these other cults have this sex magic aspect, because they’re kind of based off of what he started and incorporated, maybe outside of the Oneida community, which maybe is kind of interesting for that regard. And just to bring it full circle, because you mentioned, Epstein, when we were talking, Ranieri, that there are some pretty good speculations that Zorro Ranch was a literal branch of what Alistair Crowley was originally doing. But more specifically, that Crowley wrote the book Moonchild. Right. And in Moonshine, he describes a very specific process and how you can create this kind of homunculus, that you bring them out to the desert and that you have a woman that’s ready to be pregnant, and then if you get it at the right star times, right, like astrologically aligned times, you find a partner.

You go into the desert. Because the desert is where these disembodied spirits are wandering. So you’ve got a much higher chance of running into a spirit in the desert than anywhere else. And that this specific ritual, as described in moonchild. Was taken upon by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard. This is the Babylon working ritual. That Zorro ranch is basically a like a permanent fixture version of that moon child ritual. And that all the weird breeding and all the stuff that Epstein was doing. Specifically out in the middle of nowhere in his desert. Zorro Ranch was just a like an industrial version of what Babylon working was.

As like a weekend, you know, experiment by Parsons and Hubbard. So, I don’t know. I think that’s beyond fat. And I think the area in which apparently the original Babylon working ritual was done. In. Where Zora Ranch is located. Is not so far. To make that, like, an impossibility. I wouldn’t be surprised. And for, you know, for whatever deeper context is there, who knows, right? Like, did. Did Epstein really believe in that stuff? Or was he using it to be connected to other people? Who did? Was he using it to have some kind of influence over others? Because it’s clear that Crowley was very much bought and sold into it.

But he also was like an agent for the Mi six during World War Two. Right? Like in some weird capacity he was working so he would want everyone to believe. Which that one makes it so hard because. Because it’s like he would want you to believe that. So I don’t know how much I believe it. I don’t know either. Yeah. I mean, it’s like that. And I think he’s a very interesting character. Because he’s shrouded in so much mystery. There’s so many things about him that don’t really make any sense. Or why he does the things he does.

But the fact that all these people are connected to him is not surprising. Because it. To me, it’s almost like a gigantic, like, weird cult pyramid scheme, right? Like it’s no surprise that all these people are connected to each other. They all know each other, right? They’re always. They’re all going to each other’s houses. They’re all having parties and doing these weird rituals and stuff, right? There’s no surprise why a lot of that stuff bleeds over into Hollywood, you know? So for me, it’s more of like, how much do they really believe in it? How much of it is like, a.

Like a social aspect or the club. Okay, so here’s an example. Like, here’s how we could tie this together in my. In my mind, because when I think of the celebrity stuff that people are always talking about, right. And Satanism and Hollywood and all that stuff, is it. Is it real? Do people really believe that? Or is it more like skull and bones? Right? Is it like skull and bones? At Yale, it’s a fraternity. They do really weird stuff. And why? Because it always comes back to blackmail. There’s a really good movie called the Good shepherd with Matt Damon.

And in this movie, it basically talks about how people from the oss basically started the CIA. But in the very beginning of the movie, Spoiler alert, Matt Damon is in Yale, and he’s getting initiated into Skull and Bones. Well, they have this ritual that everybody has to participate in to be able to get into the club, because it’s humiliating. So that’s why these things kind of show up. But one of the scenes is him wrestling another man naked in a. In a literal, like, pit of pig shit while other people are pissing on them, urinating on them.

It’s all about humiliation. It’s just to degrade you and to have blackmail on you because it’s. How else can you keep people quiet? How else can you keep people, you know, in the group and not talk about the stuff that you’re doing? You have to have blackmail on. That’s why, you know, look at. Look at P. Diddy. Look at Jeffrey Epstein. What were they doing? They were using this blackmail on people for whatever reason. But that’s always this element that’s tied in with these groups. So it’s like, it almost is like a social thing to keep people quiet about the weird stuff they’re doing.

There’s a book, I thought when you were like, there’s a really good movie, I could have sworn you’re gonna say the skulls. Almost like, okay, fair point, maybe. Is it a great movie? It’s kind of like a teen drama about skull and bones. Good shepherd probably was a better example of this. One of the specifics on that, there’s a book called fleshing out Skull and Bones, which I think is the one by Chris Milligan. There’s a few that are really good that are out there, but it kind of recounts that one of the other rituals, in addition to good shepherd, I actually have to watch that.

I haven’t heard of that particular ritual. Oh, it’s good. There’s a spoiler alert, but that’s the kind of spoiler that I needed to hear in order to want to watch the movie. Okay. Okay. Yeah, there you go. There’s two other ones. One of them that seems credible just because it’s been cited in a bunch of different books that I’ve read on it, whatever that means, is that they have to get into a coffin, naked and pleasure themselves amongst all their bonesmen friends, while someone records and they recount every sexual encounter they’ve had, big or small, for throughout their life.

And I assume along with any other, like, naughty or bad things they’ve ever done. And this is pretty much textbook. And I don’t even think that the Bavarian Illuminati invented this. Adam Vysop, though, that ran bavarian illuminati. He had the exact same mechanism. If you want to join this club, you got to start writing a diary. And you got to just write all the bad things you’ve ever done. It’s got to all be true, because I’m going to have people watching you and, like, all this and then. And take notes on all your other people. And it just became a blackmail network.

And it almost seems that that’s the main reason for a lot of these cults to even exist, is just blackmail. That’s the real power. So, with that said, how much power do you think that these people really have? Like, how much power did Keith Ranier actually have? Well, I mean, in their group, it’s smaller, right? Like, so it’s more relative to the people in the group. He had pictures of them naked. Right? Like, he had pictures of them doing lewd things. And that was the black male. So that’s less serious than when you’re talking about somebody like P.

Diddy, who literally has videos of you getting pounded by a, you know, male sex worker. Not male. Right, right. Of the victims. The victims. That’s that. And that’s another reason they waited so long to come out, you know, is you’ve. When you’ve got blackmail on you, that’s what it’s designed to do. It’s designed to keep you quiet so that you won’t say anything. Epstein’s the same thing, you know, I mean, and think about. I don’t. I think less about Ranieri and I think more about Epstein. Epstein had blackmail on Stephen Hawking. I mean, if he had that kind of dirt on Stephen Hawking, of all people, like, who else did he have dirt on? Like, that’s wild, right? Like.

And we only know about this now. And I. And I guess the. On that same note of, like, the whole blackmail it almost seems, in some cases, maybe it was a surprise, but in Epstein, it almost seemed like that was part of the ticket to enter. Like, you knew that whatever you were doing on that island, of course you’re getting. Everyone gets recorded, but it’s like everyone has to, like, I don’t know, like, stab the body once so that you’re all equally, you know? So that’s the reason why, you know, that you’re going into this island.

Like, this is why it’s secure, is because everyone is compromised. Yes. Yeah. And that’s the intent. If everyone’s compromised, then you’re all on an even playing field. Right. Which is why so many things don’t get reported, why so many victims can’t speak up. Because, like, okay, well, I’ve got this horrible thing sitting on top of me. I want to say, speak out. Say something. But if I do, this could potentially ruin my life, you know? And that’s the intent. That’s the reason it’s there. All right. This is awesome. This is a nice little smattering. It was more than just the top five cults.

I think we even got to, like, seven or eight if you were to go back and count them all. And we rated them. So it sounds like NxivM and heaven’s Gate. Top two, right? Yeah. Yeah, I’d say so. Yeah. Easy. Well, I mean, just easy. Top five material. Based on this video alone, they are both got some. Some high ranking in the top five. Give people another shout out to where they can find your book that you wrote about the stuff that we were just talking about. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re interested, my book is called what’s under the mask? And you can find it on Amazon.

It’s in print, hard copy, and it’s an e book, if you’re interested in that. And also if you want to get weekly updates. And I talk about different kinds of stuff like this on my podcast. Serial killers, con artists, organized crime members. My podcast is called what’s under the mask. And you can find those episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts. Appreciate, man. Thanks for coming back. Another great conversation. And you mentioned Jay Dyer. Actually, I’ve heard of Jay Dyer. I’m actually doing a live event with him, barring the next two to three hurricanes. Don’t blow away us.

Summerfield, Florida. But yeah, October 25 26th. I believe he’s going to be there headlining, doing some who knows what. Just doing the Jay Dyer thing. Yo, that’s fun. That’s at Brohemian Grove if anyone wants to go to that it’ll be live streaming, but also, like, you can come in person, but I think you go to brogrove.com and it’ll have a bunch of those details and stuff, but it’s going to have stand up comedians and a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists and maybe even like, a new insurrection crew. J six v two. I think it might be getting his land there.

So God saying show up. Look, you’re gonna have to move fast. Conspiracy cards from paranoid American are here. I can unwrap the truth in these stacks. One, flip. Two, get a few these packs back, slip it up. What’s next? Move, fake reflex, big foot in the woods, they lying, that’s sex. MK ultra, no cap every y’all. 51 is a trap. Roswell crash, what’s that? They hide the truth. What’s that? Conspiracy cause flipping, what’s the deal? Conspiracy cause with that. That’s right. Conspiracy cards from paranoid american. A set of over 200 cards featuring legendary conspiracy theorists, cult leaders, esoteric secrets, and more.

For more details, visit conspiracycards.com. today I scribbled my life away, driven the right to page. Will it enlighten me? The flight, my plane paper, the hides ablaze. Somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real, the real you will engage it. Your favorite, of course, the lord of an arrangement. I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get away. Emotional hate maybe your language, a game. How they playing it? Well, without lakers evading whatever the course they are to shapeshift, snakes get decapitated. Meta is the apex executioner flame you out. Nuclear bomb distributed at war, rather gruesome for eyes to see maxim out, then I light my trees, blow it off in the face.

You’re despising me for what, though? Calculated? You’d rather cutthroat. Paranoid American muscle me all the blood, smoke for real. Lord, give me your day, your way, vacate. They wait around to hate. Whatever they say, man, it’s not in the least bit we get heavy, rotate when the beat hits a thing because you. Well, fucking niggas, for real. You’re welcome. They never had a deal? You’re welcome, man, they lacking appeal? You’re welcome. Yet they doing it still? You’re welcome.
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