NXVIM Cult leader combines elements of Scientology and Ayn Rand's objectivism .
What I came to understand is that Raniere is not an original thinker. He is really a copyist, which is typical of LGATS,” Ross says referring to Large Group Awareness Trainings. (Another example of an LGAT is Landmark Forum.) “All Raniere did was combine elements of Scientology, the Landmark education seminar structure, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, plus a mul
The "information gathered" is second-hand malicious gossip, mostly repeated and recycled for years by mud-slingers. The "information" ranges from the smears in the original Life Magazine "cult" article, to the smears from the Brandens and anarchists like Rothbard, to the worst of Jennifer Burns' incompetent pseudo scholarship making false pronouncements. The characterization of Atlas Shrugged as being about promoting "gassing the poor" is repeated without even mentioning the original source in Whittaker Chambers' in Buckley's magazine. Their "information gathered" is an alternate reality taking on a life of its own and presented as fact.
These supposed specialists in "cults" see everything in terms of "cultism", which they find everywhere based on second hand smears from others, uncritically accepted as authoritative sources. To the extent they do that they understand nothing and undermine their own cause of fighting cults as they repeat and spread misrepresentations taken second hand from a collection of other smear artists spanning decades of mud slinging. They lack the most basic objectivity. It seems that they have become a cult themselves.
That is how they combine Ayn Rand with the likes of Scientology, but it isn't Ayn Rand they are combining.
The unethical use of selected aspects of Ayn Rand's Philosophy to promote a nefarious criminal enterprise is in no way reflective of Objectivism.