A cult is a cult is a cult, and we think we know the signs. There is always a charismatic and power-mad leader with a voracious sexual appetite, like Charles Manson, or Jim Jones, or David Koresh; a remote or easily overlooked location, whether it be a run-down ranch in L.A. County, the jungles of Guyana, or a compound near Waco, Texas; and a hapless collection of lost or vulnerable souls that may include minor celebrities, misfits, and beautiful young women. The recent cult Nxivm, begun by Keith Raniere outside of Albany in 1998, which counted among its members a television actress and a Seagram heiress, fits this pattern.
A cult might start as a self-help group or commune or millenarian sect. Although seemingly hard to comprehend, they lend themselves easily to retrospective analysis. Most of all, they draw in people who are Not Like Us. Or so we like to tell ourselves.
