SEX CULT SETS UP IN B’KLYN

Nxivm ‘war’ HQ

The Albany-based sex cult Nxivm is in full-out “war” mode — and has moved to Brooklyn, The Post has learned.

And it’s being run and financed by longtime member Clare Bronfman, the multimillionaire heiress to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, according to a former insider.

“Brooklyn is now their wartime headquarters,” said Frank Parlato, a former Nxivm publicist-turned-whistle blower.

“They’re not recruiting” after all the bad publicity, Parlato said Saturday of Nxivm, pronounced “NEX-ium.”

“Right now, they’re in crisis mode.”

With Svengali-like leader Keith Raniere and his accused top slave-recruiter, former “Smallville” actress Allison Mack (right), both jailed on federal sex-trafficking charges, the 200-member cult is now headed by Bronfman (above) — who rules with an iron hand, Parlato said.

“She’s the enforcer — the brutal one,” he said. “Clare’s running the [operation] now, and she’s the most ruthless of them.

“I’m issuing an absolute warning now,” he added. “Clare Bronfman is a true fanatic, and if there’s a Jim Jones situation, everyone will commit suicide but her.”

Bronfman, 38, has moved to be near the federal lockup just east of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, where Raniere is being held without bail, Parlato said.

A strict adherent to the violent cult’s strictures against eating more than 800 calories a day, Bronfman has dropped to 80 or 90 pounds and is certain Raniere will be vindicated and rise again in messianic glory, Parlato said.

“She wants to be close to Raniere, and she is managing his lawyers and his case,” he said.

Raniere is repped by the highpowered, high-priced, firm of celebrity lawyer Ben Brafman.

Another dozen of Nxivm’s toptier slaves and recruiters also live in Brooklyn, Parlato said.

The borough has actually been a Nxivm outpost since last fall, after stories first broke — including on Parlato’s Web site, Artvoice — about the cult forcibly branding Raniere’s harem of brainwashed sex slaves.

And so Mack and a few other of Raniere’s slaves and recruiters moved about six months ago into what Parlato called a “slave pod” apartment in Brooklyn Heights.

Among them was Mack’s new wife, “Battlestar Gallactica” actress Nicki Clyne — a Canadian-born Nxivm member whose visa was about to run out, Parlato said. Also in the pod was “Dynasty” actress Catherine Oxenberg’s daughter, India, who continues to live there while working at an East Village vegan restaurant.

“She’s a true victim,” said Parlato, who speaks several times a day to India’s worried mother.

One of the pod’s recruiting events was held Christmas week at an edgy, graffiti-covered event venue in East Williamsburg.

“Their job was to look for women,” Parlato said, describing Raniere’s ideal recruit as “slender, young, nubile, long-haired.”

“He liked them gullible but edgy,” Parlato said of Raniere, whose slaves called him “Vanguard.”