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