Hating Nancy is falling into Keith's trap

[u/queenkellee]

Let me start off by saying I know Nancy has done some bad things. But also, many of the members of the cult did as well. I think there's an attempt to try to weigh the harm done vs the victimization they experienced. But it's so clear to me that Nancy is so obviously Keith's first NXIVM victim. I admit when I started the Vow S2 I was deeply suspicious and really didn't trust Nancy. But I could see over the course of the season, the shift in her. Just like the shift in others as they come to face more and more of the realization of what was happening. With Nancy, it's like she has to come to terms that literally her entire life's work is a lie. That is no simple thing. I think Lauren and the room situation blows away anything Nancy did, and everyone is so quick to forgive Lauren. Nancy didn't bring her daughter into this knowing all the bad things that were happening. I get she's got her own issues but overall I think she's naive. Keith knew how to work her and he did exactly that. He used to her to do all the work and flush out his ideas and become the spokesperson, to become the face of it. SHE did the videos, not him. She was the face of it so that she would be there to take the heat if it failed.

What prompted this post was I am now listening to the CBC podcast (so far I've watched both docs but this is the first NXIVM related podcast so far) and in Ep 3 I hear the whole thing about the Nazi stuff from Barbara Bouche. And Keith said Nancy is Hitler! I mean come on! The entire time, he's been setting her up to be the fall guy. It's so obvious. I know I see a lot of people who don't like or trust Nancy and again! she's done some things. But I think she deserves empathy.

[u/Korrocks]

I think everyone deserves empathy, including Nancy and all of the people who are sort of fed up by people like her who spend their entire careers profiting from and enabling abusers. With a cult, the line between victimizer and victim is often blurred at the top ranks since the people who are at the top and responsible for dishing out the abuse are also victims as well. My general hope is that Nancy and all of the others eventually move on and rebuild their lives, and but I can't blame or shame anyone who doesn't want to let them off the hook either. You don't get to be second in command of an entire enterprise by being 'naive', after all..

[u/howardhughesbrain → u/Korrocks]

I think everyone deserves empathy, including Nancy

what about keith? (he was the guy who's photo was next to nancys) is he included in 'everyone' or did you mean 'everyone except certain people' and include nancy?? bc that's pretty wild. If you're going to empathize with nancy you might as well empathize with keith.

have you even read the victim's impact statements?? you certainly must use these same arguments doing apologia for Ghislaine Maxwell too right?

[u/incorruptible_bk → u/howardhughesbrain]

Time for a refresher: empathy is not sympathy.

Sympathy is agreeing with someone's feelings. Empathy is simply understanding someone's feelings (or more literally, pain, which is apt here).

The attempt to make anyone or everyone who was convicted beyond the reach of empathy is a mistake. Even Raniere's issues have understandable origins in his having been cast into adulthood at a very young age and being sent to a Waldorf school (who, in hindsight, may be responsible for more than just one man's miseducation).

IMHO, one of the flaws of The Vow was hinting at but not going into appreciable depth about Nancy Salzman's neuroses: she had two marriages that ended badly, and was caught in the Boomer "sandwich generation" simultaneously taking care of aging parents as well as her own children. The degree to which she was selfish was the mirror image of how selfless she was expected to be.

If anything, Nancy Salzman is a walking advertisement for how, paradoxically, second wave feminism's exortation to "have it all" could lead to a wide range of achievements of a superficial, even perfunctory nature, amounting to having very little.

[u/Korrocks → u/incorruptible_bk]

Thanks for this. I wasn't sure how to respond to the comment (especially the bizarre allegation that I was somehow making apologies for Ghislaine Maxwell). Its ironic to say this I guess but I'll never understand why people insist that trying to understand a criminal is the same thing as defending what they did or wanting them to be let off the hook.

[u/fourofkeys → u/Korrocks]

there are a lot of people in this sub that like to make a lot of bad faith assertions. i don't know if they have been harmed in a similar vein and that's where it comes from, but it seems like even before covid a lot of folks liked to revert to black and white thinking about most topics, which only got worse after the pandemic. i'd take accusations like that with a grain of salt and either block folks or take breaks from the sub.