April 4, 2024 • 25 mins
Andrew is joined by Mia to tell the story of how Fred Newman merged 60's Maoism with 70's psychotherapy to build a string of political cults.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A zone.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Media welcome, take it up here. I'm Andrew Sage of
the Future Channel and Andeurism, and hap been digging into
political cults there drawn from the work of Dennis Turish
and Tim move Fourth in their book On the Edge
Political Cults Left and Right. I've spoken before about the
cult recruitment process, the contradictory positions held by cult members,
(00:25):
ideological totalism, and the commonalities of political cults, including rigid
belief systems, immunity to falsification, authoritarianism, arbitrary leadership, deification of leaders,
intense activism, and the use of loaded language. If you
want the details on all that, you can check out
the first episode in the Political Cult series, or you
(00:47):
can check out my video on the topic, or you
can pick up the book on Political Culture yourself. As
I said, on the Edge Political Cults left and Right. Previously,
i've touched on the Laruche movement and the United Red
Army of Japan. Today we'll be looking at another key study,
this time of the various groups associated with Fred Newmann
(01:08):
refused politics seamlessly with psychotherapy. Today I'm joined by.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh this is my cue. Oh No, I've been waiting
for que and I've missed it. It's me a long
misser of queues. Uh sometimes host of this podcast. I
don't This guy's name sounds really familiar, but I cannot
remember what he was up to, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, yes, he has some interesting connections, very interesting connections.
If people want to learn more about him, they can
of course pick up the book, or they can check
out Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Attachments and Cults and Titalitarian
Systems by Alexandra Stein. But anyway, let's get into it.
Fred Newman was a Korean War veteran who earned a
(01:55):
PhD in the philosophy of science from Stanford University with
no formal training in psychology. Newman took a turn towards
Maoism in the mid nineteen sixties, as one is apt
to do. In the mid nineteen sixties, in a time
when the mantra the personal is political was coming into prominence.
(02:16):
There was a greater interest in fusing personal development and
political action, so that era bothed new psychotherapies cateringto a
mass market that sought both happiness and social justice. Psychotherapy
became something like a secular religion, which of course opened
it up to Charlatan's who would propagate their innovative therapies
and gain a following without actually testing or without any
(02:39):
scrutiny of the effectiveness of the ideas. By nineteen seventy,
Newman assembled a small collective in Manhattan, sharing an apartment
on the Upper West Side. By this time post By
this time, post the collapse to the Students for a
Democratic Society in the Broaden You Left, and coinciding with
the fervor of the Cultural Revolution, people were looking for
(03:02):
a new direction in a time when the psychotherapy bubble
was growing. Newman, as another of those charismatic therapists, would
attract a group of individuals who were yeunion for Hope.
New One's collective was first named if dot dot Dot then,
and it was indeed a fusion of radical sixties politics
(03:25):
and the New Age therapy of the seventies. Newman's concept
of social therapy or crisis normalization blurred the lines between
therapy and political activities, and the group would give rise
to the Centers for Change the CFC by nineteen seventy three,
which proudly identified itself as a Marxist Leninist Maoist organization.
(03:45):
The communal Roots of Newman's group had cast a cult
like aura from its inception. Core members were expected to
leave their jobs, sell their possessions, and sustain themselves through
activities like fundrais and on street corners, while embracing shared
living spaces within the group. Now buckle up for a
(04:05):
bit of a crossover episode here, because from nineteen seventy
three to nineteen seventy four Newman crossed paths with Lyndon LaRouche.
Oh God, yes, of course he did, mind you. He
links up with Laruche just after Laruche had completed Operation
mop Up, So he was just attacking his enemies on
(04:27):
the left and started shifting right wood if the use
those terms, and Newman is like, yeah, this is my guy,
this who I want to link up. So their collaboration
formed the United Front, comprising of Laruge's National Caucus of
Labor Committees, the NCLC at Newman's Center for Change, and
(04:47):
a third group led by Eugenio Parenti Ramos, which later
transformed into the Communist Party USA Provisional, which I have
to note. I have to note is distinct from the
Communist Part USA that most people know about.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure there's another. I'm pretty
sure it's also distinct from the Communist Party USA Revolutionary
Committee and also the Communist Party USA Provisional Committee. I
think those are if I'm remembering correctly, those are all
separate organizations.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, yes they are. Yeah, Parentes group is actually connected
with the National Labor fre Federation. So anyway, these joint
forums were established and activities were coordinated among these groups.
By nineteen seventy four, in fact, the Center for Change
disbanded and Newman and his followers merged into the NCLC.
(05:40):
Oh God, there was sort of a convergence between l
Arusha and Newman and their perspectives of leadership, contre formulation,
and the manipulation of membership as Lucia's Apocalypse, Fair Moongarin and
elitism would merge very well with Newman's use of psychotherapy.
Of course, and you learn this quickly with cult leaders.
(06:02):
They don't get along well for along with other cult leaders.
So the fusion with Laruge led to inevitable clashes, while
within the NCLC, the Newman Group continued its operation and
tensions eventually reached a breaking point later in August nineteen
seventy four, Newman and his thirty eight followers left the
(06:23):
NCLC to established the International Workers Party or IWP, which
he declared was the vanguard of the work in class.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Oh, I love the seventies.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Indeed still you know Newman's association with Laruche had a
big impact on his thinking and future development. He aligned
with a lot of Larusie's ideologies and was just as
dismissive of various left movements. Even though they split, they
still shared a distain for common citizens, their group's members,
and the principles were free society. Yet, despite dismissing most
(07:00):
left movements and saying that liberalism is fascism, Newman would
occasionally dip his toes into democratic primaries infortate existing leftist organizations,
and utilized prominent black leaders to advance his own objectives.
But I realized I haven't fully explained the focus of
Newman's ideology. In most cases, cult leaders' ideologies ultimately hinge
(07:22):
on follow me. I'm the best, but you know they
have their unique quirks. Hey in there as well. Lucky
for us, Newman published a book on his ideas the
same year he parted with Rouge. In nineteen seventy four,
so the book was called Power and Authority, and he
basically cooked up a theory about the mind and society.
They became the gospel for his cult and the ultimate
(07:43):
manual for keeping his followers in check. According to Newman,
revolution wasn't just about overthrowing the bourgeoisie. He also had
to overthrow the bourgeoisie ego inside people's minds. So in
a sense, we cook in, you know, because you do
you have to sort of undo that brainwashing that you
get in a capitalist society. I mean, there's nothing wrong
(08:05):
there necessarily, but you see, he was taken cues from Marx,
Lenin and LaRouche, and his solution involved something called the
proletarian psychotherapy, where the workers of the mind took down
the rulers of the mind through therapy sessions that would
attack the bourgeois ego. Of course, he would be the
one lead in the therapy, because you know, he hated
(08:28):
Freudian and other psychotherapies as just boosting the bourgeois ego,
and he especially hated that regular therapy is aimed to
cut the emotional umbilical cord with the therapist and restore
a healthy, independent ego. When his social therapy meant to
build up a forever dependent proletarian ego that would only
wither away when the proletarian stayed with us away, so
(08:52):
basically never Newmann's doctrines worked for his purposes, though his
followers were stuck in this sloop of dependency for over
twenty five years. He had an additional component his control mechanisms, though.
He developed a concept called friend or sexuality. So in
his organizations, casual sexual relationships were arranged where a designated
(09:17):
friend that you also had sex with monitored and critiqued
individuals to maintain control. If pregnancies ever arose, they were
usually told to get abortions. And as for new And himself,
his inner circle was referred to as his haram or
his wives, and they served as both trusted lieutenants in
(09:40):
the administration and trusted lieutenants in the bedroom if you
dig ah, So yeah, now let's get into those segments
that we can call Newmann and the FBI sitting in
the tree essig. Because after the IWP was formed and
(10:06):
briefly flirted with Marlene Dixon's Democratic Workers' Party, which was
another cult, Newman ended up contacting the FBI. By the way,
we are still in nineteen seventy four, very eventful year.
So what happened was a guy named Jim Rutherford bailed
on Newman's cult and took the child that was probably
(10:27):
conceived in the cult with him. But you see, the
child's mother and Green, who stayed in the cult, and
she wanted her child back. So Newman recruited two cult
members that were also lawyers to get the FBI involved
and finding Rutherford and the child. So the dial of
the FBI set up a meet in between Green and
the agents, and then Green spilled a tea that Rutherford
(10:50):
used to roll with the Weather Underground and also had
connection to the fugitive named Jane Albert. Fast forward to
nineteen seventy six and Newman's IWP gets exposed by a
splinter group for working with the FBI. But instead of
denying it, Newman pins the blame on Anne Green and
the two lawyers and basically pretends that they acted on
their own without his direction, because obviously the man's only
(11:13):
looking off himself. So that was a fun of a side, right,
little collaboration with the FBI.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, it's like if you're going to be a snitch
at least have like at least have the basic decency
and self respect to admit that you were the snitch
and not blameing and on someone else.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No better cultader would ever do that, though no terrible
stuff carrying on chronologically. In nineteen seventy seven, Fred Newman
shifted his focus to the political scene of New York
(11:52):
City's Upper West Side and basically rebranded his group as
the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council. At this point,
he abandoned the idea of an open vanguard formation and instead,
while recruiting through therapy, gained political influence within other groups
and formed a broad and ill defined front organizations that
(12:14):
could pursue the cult schools without too much heat on
himself personally. Newman was actually able to get one of
his cult members elected on the local school board, and
that led to some liberals digging into Newman's background and
group dynamics, where they found that indeed he was running
a therapy cult where they relinquished jobs, severed political ties,
and surrendered all property and savings. The cult, cut off
(12:38):
from the outside world, busy with group activities and trapped
in endless meetings, the Newmanites lacked feedback from reality, which
kept them in line. So Newman's electoral victory in the
form of the school board member of his own cult,
gave him a taste a little for electoral activism. So
(12:58):
when he crossed paths with Black nationalist Leonora Fulani, together
they formed the New Alliance Party or NAP in nineteen
seventy nine. I'll just call it the NAP, right.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
If I feel like we need to start like a
party counter we're at like four five already.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, IWP, THENAP, yeah, the Communist Party professional yeah.
Flanni ran for lieutenant governor of New York in nineteen
eighty two, and in nineteen eighty eight and ran for president,
becoming the first black woman to do so, gaining ballot
(13:38):
status in all fifty states and receiving nearly one million
dollars in federal matching funds. She ran again in nineteen
ninety two and again qualified for ballot status in all
fifty states, this time receiving two million dollars in federal
matching funds, and she secured a whop in seventy three
thousan seven hundred and eight votes.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
That's always the depressing thing with these like the vanity
electoral campaigns is seeing how much money they spent getting
like seven votes.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, but I mean you'll never guess where this money
was going.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
In the background, new Ones financial maneuvers seem to be
fundling a lot of the party's funds into other organizations
affiliated with Newman. Lauren Redwood, working class lesbian, actually shared
her experiences working under the NAP in a letter to
a gay newspaper in San Francisco. I won't read the
(14:37):
whole thing, but she basically talks about how she was
excited to help a black woman run for president, and
she even found a lover while working on the campaign
in Indiana. But quote, when it came time for NAP
to leave Indiana, she I'm assuming the lover asked me
to go with them, and I did. I was given
forty eight hours to prepare. I quit my job, left
(14:59):
my whole my friends put me belongings in storage, found
a home for my pet, and gave the use of
my car to NAP for in exchange for their take
and over the pay months as a working class lesbian,
I thought I had finally found a political movement which
included me. What I found instead, was an oppressive, disempowered,
and misogynistic organization. All my decisions were made for me
(15:20):
by someone else. I was told where to go and
who to go with. I worked seven days a week,
sixteen to twenty hours a day. I had two days
off in two and a half months. There was an
incredible urgency which overrode any personal needs or considerations, an
urgency that meant complete self sacrifice. I felt totally powerless
(15:41):
over my life, forced into a very submissive role where
all control of my life belonged to someone else. I
had given up everything for the campaign, my job, my home,
and my support system. I felt desperate and late in
the letter, she said that I was completely exhausted, so tired,
I was unable to work well. Being unable to work,
(16:01):
I had no income as I was expected to raise
my salary myself in addition to raising money for the campaign.
And she also spoke about losing herself in this social
therapy thing that Newman was doing, as a lot of
independent thought was discouraged. This was Newman's whole emo, you know,
manipulating individual distress to transform members into political activists under
(16:23):
total control, replacing the traditional support structures that people would
have been coming from with the cult as a new family,
and despite some claims of dissolution, the evidence suggested that
the International Workers' Party continued to exist even as the
NAP was in existence, as members divested assets and funding
(16:48):
towards the idol be the whole time. Now, it's quite
interesting to learn the justification for why new and picked
Leonora Fulani in particular, and then would also link up
later with some of the people that I'm about to
talk about. So you're familiar with Antonio Gramscie, right, Yeah.
(17:14):
He introduced the concept of the organic intellectual, suggesting that
each social class naturally produces a stratum capable of projecting
its historic mission and a Germany on the flip side,
Lenin in his What Is to Be Done Manifesto, envisioned
a vanguard of professional revolutionaries from the intellectual elite to
(17:34):
bring socialism to the working class. Neumann was influenced by
both concepts and considered his core group to be a
vanguard mainly composed of white, middle class traditional intellectuals, often
working as therapists for newmanite fronts. But here's the twist.
(17:55):
He borrowed gram Shee's organic leader's term and connected with
pull of color that had organic basis of support in
their communities and would use them to advance the interests
of his secretive white.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Vanguard ah the PSL.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Indeed, so that's why Newman would create his own version
of the Rainbow Coalition with his Rainbow Assembly, and also
would engage with people like Lewis Farkhan, Al Sharpton and else. Yeah, However,
and political incoherence goes BurrH, he'd also link up with
(18:33):
vague populist movements like Ross Peru's Reform Party, who he'd
work to register voters for, and in an effort to
gain more voters for the right winger Ross Peru's Reform Party,
Newman and Fulani would encourage the Patriotic Party at the
Independence Party of New York to link up with Peru,
and then in nineteen ninety nine, the Newmanites threw their
(18:54):
support behind the Paleo conservative pat Buchanans presidential campaign. So
in addition this political activity is Fred Newman wore many hats.
He considered himself a playwright and sales the artistic director
of the Castillo Theater. He also directed train in at
the East Side Institute for Short Term psychotherapy, authored books
(19:15):
featured at the Castillo Bookstore, and operated social therapy centers
in various cities, describing them as a unique development community.
Despite the deprivations imposed on his followers, as they can imagine,
Newman lived quite comfortably. In nineteen ninety three, he bought
a substantial greenwich for thee Brownstone for nearly a million dollars.
(19:40):
I mean, who says a cult of revolution and therapy
can't be profitable, right?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Keep I keep thinking about that. Oh God, I forget
which of the the Nepali Maoist parties it was. But
one of the guys who was the head of one
of the Nepalese Maoist parties been like fighting a guerrilla
war for a long time. The end of it was
he moved into the house of the guy, the mansion
of the guy who'd been like Nepal's chief security minister.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
That's wild.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
It's a revolution because it goes in a circle, and
you went up right back where you were.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I don't remember that one. That's a that's a good quote. Yeah,
a lot of these organizations like blatantly cults. But of
course Newmann, Fulani and others would always deny that they
were in a cult. These cults always do. So you
look at the evidence, and the evidence points to cult.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, my, my, my not a cult. T shirts raising
a lot of questions that are answered by the the
T shirt.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah yeah, I love how when I first introduced my
my organization after apply disclaimers were actually not a cult,
you know, like that one meme from King of the Hill. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So one critic of Newman wrote an article called Inside
the New Alliance Party Dennis Surrett, and despite initially thinking
that the NAP was a progressive organization, he ended up
detailing psychological control, racism, sexism, and the use of millions
(21:22):
of dollars to manipulate well mading individuals, particularly targeting the
black community. The internal structure was, of course hierarchical, as
Newman lived luxuriously while the rank and file members worked
to long hours and even faced mandatory taxes to support
new One's seaside mansion. Oh my god. Newman's political positions
(21:46):
were opportunistic, obviously, they changed based on the perceived benefits
to him and his attacks on individuals. Organizations were ruthless
when they failed to support him. When members joined, whether
through politics or therapy, they were required to reveal all
their resources and turn them over to the organization. They
had to go through mandatory psychotherapy sessions, which served as
(22:11):
a method to recruit vulnerable individuals, exploit their weaknesses, and
control their behavior. Now in another article, Marina Ortiz, who
was a former leader in the New Alliance party, explained
why she resigned from the NAP. What happened was the
leadership told her to put her child in foster care.
(22:35):
I assume because the child and her child care was
getting in the way of her full dedication to the cause.
So she revealed the NAP did not live up to
claims of promoting democracy obviously, and would use manipulative tactics
and obstruct minority empowerment, and had a long history of
attacking progressives and embracing Pero's nineteen ninety two presidential bid
(22:57):
and the harsh treatment dissenting voices. In the end. In
the book On the Edge, Denis Turasi tim more Forth
ended up determining Newman's work new age Leninism, which I
think is a really good phrase to use to describe
what he was doing. He had a strong knock for
(23:18):
manipulating politics, and even with Newman dead and gone. The
Newmanites have already proved themselves skilled political operatives, regardless of
their actual size, so the potential for someone to fill
his role in the future definitely remains, especially given the
state of US politics. If you want to learn more,
(23:40):
like I said, definitely read on the Edge and also
check out the article how Totalism Works by Alexandra Stein,
who was a survivor of a different cult who ended
up doing a dissertation on newman As. For final words,
stay away from cults base if it has democrat actic
Workers Party or People's Party of such and such or
(24:05):
popular support, m hm, scrutinize it a little bit. You know, Look,
let's look at the structure. That's like what they're asking
you to do, especially if the leadership considers themselves a
vanguard despite having like fifteen members. Honestly, you probably shouldn't
follow a group of any size that considers itself a vanguard.
(24:29):
But that's typical for something for someone like me to
put that. That's all I have to say on New One.
Check on your friend with sexuals. They're probably going through
it right now. Or power to all the people please.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visitor website cool
zonemedia dot com, check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
A zone.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Media welcome, take it up here. I'm Andrew Sage of
the Future Channel and Andeurism, and hap been digging into
political cults there drawn from the work of Dennis Turish
and Tim move Fourth in their book On the Edge
Political Cults Left and Right. I've spoken before about the
cult recruitment process, the contradictory positions held by cult members,
(00:25):
ideological totalism, and the commonalities of political cults, including rigid
belief systems, immunity to falsification, authoritarianism, arbitrary leadership, deification of leaders,
intense activism, and the use of loaded language. If you
want the details on all that, you can check out
the first episode in the Political Cult series, or you
(00:47):
can check out my video on the topic, or you
can pick up the book on Political Culture yourself. As
I said, on the Edge Political Cults left and Right. Previously,
i've touched on the Laruche movement and the United Red
Army of Japan. Today we'll be looking at another key study,
this time of the various groups associated with Fred Newmann
(01:08):
refused politics seamlessly with psychotherapy. Today I'm joined by.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh this is my cue. Oh No, I've been waiting
for que and I've missed it. It's me a long
misser of queues. Uh sometimes host of this podcast. I
don't This guy's name sounds really familiar, but I cannot
remember what he was up to, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, yes, he has some interesting connections, very interesting connections.
If people want to learn more about him, they can
of course pick up the book, or they can check
out Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Attachments and Cults and Titalitarian
Systems by Alexandra Stein. But anyway, let's get into it.
Fred Newman was a Korean War veteran who earned a
(01:55):
PhD in the philosophy of science from Stanford University with
no formal training in psychology. Newman took a turn towards
Maoism in the mid nineteen sixties, as one is apt
to do. In the mid nineteen sixties, in a time
when the mantra the personal is political was coming into prominence.
(02:16):
There was a greater interest in fusing personal development and
political action, so that era bothed new psychotherapies cateringto a
mass market that sought both happiness and social justice. Psychotherapy
became something like a secular religion, which of course opened
it up to Charlatan's who would propagate their innovative therapies
and gain a following without actually testing or without any
(02:39):
scrutiny of the effectiveness of the ideas. By nineteen seventy,
Newman assembled a small collective in Manhattan, sharing an apartment
on the Upper West Side. By this time post By
this time, post the collapse to the Students for a
Democratic Society in the Broaden You Left, and coinciding with
the fervor of the Cultural Revolution, people were looking for
(03:02):
a new direction in a time when the psychotherapy bubble
was growing. Newman, as another of those charismatic therapists, would
attract a group of individuals who were yeunion for Hope.
New One's collective was first named if dot dot Dot then,
and it was indeed a fusion of radical sixties politics
(03:25):
and the New Age therapy of the seventies. Newman's concept
of social therapy or crisis normalization blurred the lines between
therapy and political activities, and the group would give rise
to the Centers for Change the CFC by nineteen seventy three,
which proudly identified itself as a Marxist Leninist Maoist organization.
(03:45):
The communal Roots of Newman's group had cast a cult
like aura from its inception. Core members were expected to
leave their jobs, sell their possessions, and sustain themselves through
activities like fundrais and on street corners, while embracing shared
living spaces within the group. Now buckle up for a
(04:05):
bit of a crossover episode here, because from nineteen seventy
three to nineteen seventy four Newman crossed paths with Lyndon LaRouche.
Oh God, yes, of course he did, mind you. He
links up with Laruche just after Laruche had completed Operation
mop Up, So he was just attacking his enemies on
(04:27):
the left and started shifting right wood if the use
those terms, and Newman is like, yeah, this is my guy,
this who I want to link up. So their collaboration
formed the United Front, comprising of Laruge's National Caucus of
Labor Committees, the NCLC at Newman's Center for Change, and
(04:47):
a third group led by Eugenio Parenti Ramos, which later
transformed into the Communist Party USA Provisional, which I have
to note. I have to note is distinct from the
Communist Part USA that most people know about.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure there's another. I'm pretty
sure it's also distinct from the Communist Party USA Revolutionary
Committee and also the Communist Party USA Provisional Committee. I
think those are if I'm remembering correctly, those are all
separate organizations.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, yes they are. Yeah, Parentes group is actually connected
with the National Labor fre Federation. So anyway, these joint
forums were established and activities were coordinated among these groups.
By nineteen seventy four, in fact, the Center for Change
disbanded and Newman and his followers merged into the NCLC.
(05:40):
Oh God, there was sort of a convergence between l
Arusha and Newman and their perspectives of leadership, contre formulation,
and the manipulation of membership as Lucia's Apocalypse, Fair Moongarin and
elitism would merge very well with Newman's use of psychotherapy.
Of course, and you learn this quickly with cult leaders.
(06:02):
They don't get along well for along with other cult leaders.
So the fusion with Laruge led to inevitable clashes, while
within the NCLC, the Newman Group continued its operation and
tensions eventually reached a breaking point later in August nineteen
seventy four, Newman and his thirty eight followers left the
(06:23):
NCLC to established the International Workers Party or IWP, which
he declared was the vanguard of the work in class.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Oh, I love the seventies.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Indeed still you know Newman's association with Laruche had a
big impact on his thinking and future development. He aligned
with a lot of Larusie's ideologies and was just as
dismissive of various left movements. Even though they split, they
still shared a distain for common citizens, their group's members,
and the principles were free society. Yet, despite dismissing most
(07:00):
left movements and saying that liberalism is fascism, Newman would
occasionally dip his toes into democratic primaries infortate existing leftist organizations,
and utilized prominent black leaders to advance his own objectives.
But I realized I haven't fully explained the focus of
Newman's ideology. In most cases, cult leaders' ideologies ultimately hinge
(07:22):
on follow me. I'm the best, but you know they
have their unique quirks. Hey in there as well. Lucky
for us, Newman published a book on his ideas the
same year he parted with Rouge. In nineteen seventy four,
so the book was called Power and Authority, and he
basically cooked up a theory about the mind and society.
They became the gospel for his cult and the ultimate
(07:43):
manual for keeping his followers in check. According to Newman,
revolution wasn't just about overthrowing the bourgeoisie. He also had
to overthrow the bourgeoisie ego inside people's minds. So in
a sense, we cook in, you know, because you do
you have to sort of undo that brainwashing that you
get in a capitalist society. I mean, there's nothing wrong
(08:05):
there necessarily, but you see, he was taken cues from Marx,
Lenin and LaRouche, and his solution involved something called the
proletarian psychotherapy, where the workers of the mind took down
the rulers of the mind through therapy sessions that would
attack the bourgeois ego. Of course, he would be the
one lead in the therapy, because you know, he hated
(08:28):
Freudian and other psychotherapies as just boosting the bourgeois ego,
and he especially hated that regular therapy is aimed to
cut the emotional umbilical cord with the therapist and restore
a healthy, independent ego. When his social therapy meant to
build up a forever dependent proletarian ego that would only
wither away when the proletarian stayed with us away, so
(08:52):
basically never Newmann's doctrines worked for his purposes, though his
followers were stuck in this sloop of dependency for over
twenty five years. He had an additional component his control mechanisms, though.
He developed a concept called friend or sexuality. So in
his organizations, casual sexual relationships were arranged where a designated
(09:17):
friend that you also had sex with monitored and critiqued
individuals to maintain control. If pregnancies ever arose, they were
usually told to get abortions. And as for new And himself,
his inner circle was referred to as his haram or
his wives, and they served as both trusted lieutenants in
(09:40):
the administration and trusted lieutenants in the bedroom if you
dig ah, So yeah, now let's get into those segments
that we can call Newmann and the FBI sitting in
the tree essig. Because after the IWP was formed and
(10:06):
briefly flirted with Marlene Dixon's Democratic Workers' Party, which was
another cult, Newman ended up contacting the FBI. By the way,
we are still in nineteen seventy four, very eventful year.
So what happened was a guy named Jim Rutherford bailed
on Newman's cult and took the child that was probably
(10:27):
conceived in the cult with him. But you see, the
child's mother and Green, who stayed in the cult, and
she wanted her child back. So Newman recruited two cult
members that were also lawyers to get the FBI involved
and finding Rutherford and the child. So the dial of
the FBI set up a meet in between Green and
the agents, and then Green spilled a tea that Rutherford
(10:50):
used to roll with the Weather Underground and also had
connection to the fugitive named Jane Albert. Fast forward to
nineteen seventy six and Newman's IWP gets exposed by a
splinter group for working with the FBI. But instead of
denying it, Newman pins the blame on Anne Green and
the two lawyers and basically pretends that they acted on
their own without his direction, because obviously the man's only
(11:13):
looking off himself. So that was a fun of a side, right,
little collaboration with the FBI.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, it's like if you're going to be a snitch
at least have like at least have the basic decency
and self respect to admit that you were the snitch
and not blameing and on someone else.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No better cultader would ever do that, though no terrible
stuff carrying on chronologically. In nineteen seventy seven, Fred Newman
shifted his focus to the political scene of New York
(11:52):
City's Upper West Side and basically rebranded his group as
the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council. At this point,
he abandoned the idea of an open vanguard formation and instead,
while recruiting through therapy, gained political influence within other groups
and formed a broad and ill defined front organizations that
(12:14):
could pursue the cult schools without too much heat on
himself personally. Newman was actually able to get one of
his cult members elected on the local school board, and
that led to some liberals digging into Newman's background and
group dynamics, where they found that indeed he was running
a therapy cult where they relinquished jobs, severed political ties,
and surrendered all property and savings. The cult, cut off
(12:38):
from the outside world, busy with group activities and trapped
in endless meetings, the Newmanites lacked feedback from reality, which
kept them in line. So Newman's electoral victory in the
form of the school board member of his own cult,
gave him a taste a little for electoral activism. So
(12:58):
when he crossed paths with Black nationalist Leonora Fulani, together
they formed the New Alliance Party or NAP in nineteen
seventy nine. I'll just call it the NAP, right.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
If I feel like we need to start like a
party counter we're at like four five already.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, IWP, THENAP, yeah, the Communist Party professional yeah.
Flanni ran for lieutenant governor of New York in nineteen
eighty two, and in nineteen eighty eight and ran for president,
becoming the first black woman to do so, gaining ballot
(13:38):
status in all fifty states and receiving nearly one million
dollars in federal matching funds. She ran again in nineteen
ninety two and again qualified for ballot status in all
fifty states, this time receiving two million dollars in federal
matching funds, and she secured a whop in seventy three
thousan seven hundred and eight votes.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
That's always the depressing thing with these like the vanity
electoral campaigns is seeing how much money they spent getting
like seven votes.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, but I mean you'll never guess where this money
was going.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
In the background, new Ones financial maneuvers seem to be
fundling a lot of the party's funds into other organizations
affiliated with Newman. Lauren Redwood, working class lesbian, actually shared
her experiences working under the NAP in a letter to
a gay newspaper in San Francisco. I won't read the
(14:37):
whole thing, but she basically talks about how she was
excited to help a black woman run for president, and
she even found a lover while working on the campaign
in Indiana. But quote, when it came time for NAP
to leave Indiana, she I'm assuming the lover asked me
to go with them, and I did. I was given
forty eight hours to prepare. I quit my job, left
(14:59):
my whole my friends put me belongings in storage, found
a home for my pet, and gave the use of
my car to NAP for in exchange for their take
and over the pay months as a working class lesbian,
I thought I had finally found a political movement which
included me. What I found instead, was an oppressive, disempowered,
and misogynistic organization. All my decisions were made for me
(15:20):
by someone else. I was told where to go and
who to go with. I worked seven days a week,
sixteen to twenty hours a day. I had two days
off in two and a half months. There was an
incredible urgency which overrode any personal needs or considerations, an
urgency that meant complete self sacrifice. I felt totally powerless
(15:41):
over my life, forced into a very submissive role where
all control of my life belonged to someone else. I
had given up everything for the campaign, my job, my home,
and my support system. I felt desperate and late in
the letter, she said that I was completely exhausted, so tired,
I was unable to work well. Being unable to work,
(16:01):
I had no income as I was expected to raise
my salary myself in addition to raising money for the campaign.
And she also spoke about losing herself in this social
therapy thing that Newman was doing, as a lot of
independent thought was discouraged. This was Newman's whole emo, you know,
manipulating individual distress to transform members into political activists under
(16:23):
total control, replacing the traditional support structures that people would
have been coming from with the cult as a new family,
and despite some claims of dissolution, the evidence suggested that
the International Workers' Party continued to exist even as the
NAP was in existence, as members divested assets and funding
(16:48):
towards the idol be the whole time. Now, it's quite
interesting to learn the justification for why new and picked
Leonora Fulani in particular, and then would also link up
later with some of the people that I'm about to
talk about. So you're familiar with Antonio Gramscie, right, Yeah.
(17:14):
He introduced the concept of the organic intellectual, suggesting that
each social class naturally produces a stratum capable of projecting
its historic mission and a Germany on the flip side,
Lenin in his What Is to Be Done Manifesto, envisioned
a vanguard of professional revolutionaries from the intellectual elite to
(17:34):
bring socialism to the working class. Neumann was influenced by
both concepts and considered his core group to be a
vanguard mainly composed of white, middle class traditional intellectuals, often
working as therapists for newmanite fronts. But here's the twist.
(17:55):
He borrowed gram Shee's organic leader's term and connected with
pull of color that had organic basis of support in
their communities and would use them to advance the interests
of his secretive white.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Vanguard ah the PSL.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Indeed, so that's why Newman would create his own version
of the Rainbow Coalition with his Rainbow Assembly, and also
would engage with people like Lewis Farkhan, Al Sharpton and else. Yeah, However,
and political incoherence goes BurrH, he'd also link up with
(18:33):
vague populist movements like Ross Peru's Reform Party, who he'd
work to register voters for, and in an effort to
gain more voters for the right winger Ross Peru's Reform Party,
Newman and Fulani would encourage the Patriotic Party at the
Independence Party of New York to link up with Peru,
and then in nineteen ninety nine, the Newmanites threw their
(18:54):
support behind the Paleo conservative pat Buchanans presidential campaign. So
in addition this political activity is Fred Newman wore many hats.
He considered himself a playwright and sales the artistic director
of the Castillo Theater. He also directed train in at
the East Side Institute for Short Term psychotherapy, authored books
(19:15):
featured at the Castillo Bookstore, and operated social therapy centers
in various cities, describing them as a unique development community.
Despite the deprivations imposed on his followers, as they can imagine,
Newman lived quite comfortably. In nineteen ninety three, he bought
a substantial greenwich for thee Brownstone for nearly a million dollars.
(19:40):
I mean, who says a cult of revolution and therapy
can't be profitable, right?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Keep I keep thinking about that. Oh God, I forget
which of the the Nepali Maoist parties it was. But
one of the guys who was the head of one
of the Nepalese Maoist parties been like fighting a guerrilla
war for a long time. The end of it was
he moved into the house of the guy, the mansion
of the guy who'd been like Nepal's chief security minister.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
That's wild.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
It's a revolution because it goes in a circle, and
you went up right back where you were.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I don't remember that one. That's a that's a good quote. Yeah,
a lot of these organizations like blatantly cults. But of
course Newmann, Fulani and others would always deny that they
were in a cult. These cults always do. So you
look at the evidence, and the evidence points to cult.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, my, my, my not a cult. T shirts raising
a lot of questions that are answered by the the
T shirt.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah yeah, I love how when I first introduced my
my organization after apply disclaimers were actually not a cult,
you know, like that one meme from King of the Hill. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So one critic of Newman wrote an article called Inside
the New Alliance Party Dennis Surrett, and despite initially thinking
that the NAP was a progressive organization, he ended up
detailing psychological control, racism, sexism, and the use of millions
(21:22):
of dollars to manipulate well mading individuals, particularly targeting the
black community. The internal structure was, of course hierarchical, as
Newman lived luxuriously while the rank and file members worked
to long hours and even faced mandatory taxes to support
new One's seaside mansion. Oh my god. Newman's political positions
(21:46):
were opportunistic, obviously, they changed based on the perceived benefits
to him and his attacks on individuals. Organizations were ruthless
when they failed to support him. When members joined, whether
through politics or therapy, they were required to reveal all
their resources and turn them over to the organization. They
had to go through mandatory psychotherapy sessions, which served as
(22:11):
a method to recruit vulnerable individuals, exploit their weaknesses, and
control their behavior. Now in another article, Marina Ortiz, who
was a former leader in the New Alliance party, explained
why she resigned from the NAP. What happened was the
leadership told her to put her child in foster care.
(22:35):
I assume because the child and her child care was
getting in the way of her full dedication to the cause.
So she revealed the NAP did not live up to
claims of promoting democracy obviously, and would use manipulative tactics
and obstruct minority empowerment, and had a long history of
attacking progressives and embracing Pero's nineteen ninety two presidential bid
(22:57):
and the harsh treatment dissenting voices. In the end. In
the book On the Edge, Denis Turasi tim more Forth
ended up determining Newman's work new age Leninism, which I
think is a really good phrase to use to describe
what he was doing. He had a strong knock for
(23:18):
manipulating politics, and even with Newman dead and gone. The
Newmanites have already proved themselves skilled political operatives, regardless of
their actual size, so the potential for someone to fill
his role in the future definitely remains, especially given the
state of US politics. If you want to learn more,
(23:40):
like I said, definitely read on the Edge and also
check out the article how Totalism Works by Alexandra Stein,
who was a survivor of a different cult who ended
up doing a dissertation on newman As. For final words,
stay away from cults base if it has democrat actic
Workers Party or People's Party of such and such or
(24:05):
popular support, m hm, scrutinize it a little bit. You know, Look,
let's look at the structure. That's like what they're asking
you to do, especially if the leadership considers themselves a
vanguard despite having like fifteen members. Honestly, you probably shouldn't
follow a group of any size that considers itself a vanguard.
(24:29):
But that's typical for something for someone like me to
put that. That's all I have to say on New One.
Check on your friend with sexuals. They're probably going through
it right now. Or power to all the people please.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visitor website cool
zonemedia dot com, check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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