Is Landmark Forum a cult? (2023)

Introduction

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Rick Ross is an expert on cults who has led over 500 interventions to deprogram people, and help them get out of cults. He is also the founder and executive director of the Cult Education Institute.

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Content

I'm curious to know have you ever heard of a group called Landmark or landmark forum.

Most definitely that is a group founded by Werner Earhart, uh, his given name is Jack Rosenberg.

He created what was called Earhart seminars training or asked the introductory course, is called The Forum and Landmark education is the name that they changed S2 after Erhardt, supposedly, sold the company around 1992., uh.

But in my book, it's my belief that he still pretty much runs the show he's, uh, what is he now he's in his 80s, I think and he's still going still running around, uh doing lectures and whatnot? Uh and Landmark education is a multi-million dollar Global corporation.

That is probably making more money now, uh from selling courses than they ever have.

And if people go to education.com, you will see one of the largest archives on Landmark EST in the Forum that you can access online.

And if for this reason Werner Earhart, sued me for a million dollars, oh I, didn't know that, oh, yeah, I'm like have you ever heard of? Oh, yeah.

He sued me for a million dollars.

And after about a year, he apparently I mean, he The Landmark dismissed their own lawsuit, which was very humiliating, uh.

And the reason they did it I think is because we were in federal court and I was represented pro bono for free by a wonderful, Law, Firm, Lowenstein, Sandler in New Jersey.

And by Peter skolnick, who was then a partner at the firm.

And his work was brilliant, uh with his associate Michael Norwick.

An attorney that also worked at Lowenstein Sandler in New Jersey.

And they just beat the crap out of landmark in Discovery and in in motions and so forth.

And landmark realized that they weren't going to bankrupt me through legal fees, and that they were going to have to surrender documents and information through Discovery.

And they went to the federal judge.

And they said, look, will you seal everything in Discovery? And the judge said, no, no, which means that you could go online and and probably see things that were being disclosed through Discovery or eventually find that these documents.

And what what my lawyers asked Landmark is look.

We want to see every personal injury claim that you've settled out of court.

We want to see, uh, all of the times that you have threatened people with litigation in order to get them to shut up and uh, Landmark decided no, you know, if we have to start releasing all that it's not going to go well for us.

And so they dismiss their own lawsuit Megan I've been sued five times by different groups called Cults Keith renery, sued me for 14 years before the lawsuit was dismissed.

He wasn't like Werner Erhard who I regard as a pretty smart guy.

He knew when to cut and run cut his losses and move on Keith.

Ranieri was like, uh, fanatical.

I mean, he just kept going after me.

And that was one of the reasons that he ultimately imploded and he's.

Now in prison, serving 120-year sentence.

The reason I asked about landmark was actually because for some reason I'm from Vancouver I, no longer live in Vancouver.

But for some reason there was a number of people that I knew in Vancouver who got involved with Landmark, um.

And the reason that I know about landmark is because more than one of them tried to recruit me into life that's, what they do and I thought, this seems sort of like a cult did they invite you to their graduation? They did but I didn't.

Go I.

Did when I was when I was young like when I was like maybe 20 or something I went with a couple friends because a friend of ours was involved and wanted us to come to one of their I, don't know, like recruiting seminars, essentially I can't, remember what they called it and I left halfway through, because it started to get to the point in the seminar where they started to try to pressure people to to break off into separate rooms.

It was like I think I'm gonna leave.

And then, but a couple of my friends went and got involved.

And even even more recently, I've known people and people who are really intelligent people people who know a lot about psychology who are still involved and who you know asked me out for a drink for food.

And then at certain a certain point we're like so you know, we're thinking that you should don't even think about it just come and I was like, uh, they don't really tell you what it's all about no I mean, look look.

Landmark became part of what later became known as Nexium and I'll, tell you how that works.

Okay, Keith Ranieri was a plagiarist.

I mean, he sued me for copyright violation trade.

Secret violations, supposedly because uh, in critiques of Nexium, I published on culteducation.com, the writings of two doctors that were the first critical analysis of Nexium, uh to be to be put out for public consumption and Renee wanted to take that offline.

He wanted to kill it, and he never did.

And what those doctors found.

And what I found was that Ranieri copied much of of of what became the seminar series for Nexium from Landmark Education.

And it was infused with teachings from Scientology, such as negative.

People are suppressive persons.

Those exact words in nexium's training manual.

And then in addition to that, he would use the philosophy objectivism by on Ein Rand.

And of course, reneri who had one time been a Amway distributor, then Incorporated multi-level marketing into the way Nexium was sold, and how people could supposedly get some money.

If they sold a friend on Nexium Landmark education is what generically is called large group awareness training or an lgat and that's when you bring a bunch of people together for a weekend typically and you sequester them they're isolated, they might be sleeping in a hotel together coming back day after day for the seminar.

And what you do is you're you're using coercive persuasion techniques thought reform techniques to essentially break people down change them.

And then lock them in and landmark has a kind of subculture, including dating children's courses, social, uh interaction.

So that people can be kind of locked into a subculture after becoming a landmark enthusiasts.

But basically what landmark is all about is downloading the the philosophy of Werner, Earhart, its founder.

And that philosophy, according to Landmark is a cure-all for everything I mean, problems at work.

We solve it with this problems with your marriage solved with this problems with whatever solved with this and it's, a combination of, ironically, again, bits and pieces of Scientology, which Earhart studied, uh, the large group seminar approach of esselen and also, uh, the philosophy of a German philosopher Heidegger, which is all Incorporated in in Earhart's training.

The thing that really understand about landmark and other groups like Landmark that tell you that their program will solve all your problems.

And then they have all these testimonials about how how great my life is since I did Landmark since I did The, Forum, etc, etc.

Is there's never been a uh, a research paper that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal that establishes objectively that there are any benefits from this type of training.

For example, you take a group of people that go through landmark.

And you ask them going out a year going out two years going out five years, uh, are you making more money? Um are you making grades at school? Are you? Are you going to marriage counseling? Or is your marriage just going? Great? You never go to marriage.

Counseling are you on any medication for anxiety or stress? Uh, you know, there are ways to objectively measure whether the training is effective and landmark has never done that.

None of the lgats do even though they have millions and millions of dollars that they may make from participants which could easily.

They could just take some money and fund a research project and then publish a paper in a scientific peer review journal.

They haven't done that because they know that they don't have objective measurable results.

And so what they do is they do surveys and people come out, and they ask them.

What do you feel you got out of it? Do you feel good about it? Do you feel that it's fantastic? And of course, the landmark is great at manipulating people, psychologically and emotionally to have subjective feelings that it's great.

The training is great, and but that isn't scientifically, measurable objective results.

And and again, you want to see lasting results over a period of years as established by meaningful research and publish it.

If you really believe that your training is so effective.