How Fred Newman Built a Maoist Therapy Cult Ft. Andrew

Political Cults Left and Right. I've spoken before about the cult recruitment process, the contradictory positions held by cult members, 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 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

refused politics seamlessly with psychotherapy. Today I'm joined by.

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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.

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. 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 NCLC to established the International Workers Party or IWP, which he declared was the vanguard of the work in class.

and the principles were free society. Yet, despite dismissing most 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 looking off himself. So that was a fun of a side, right, little collaboration with the FBI.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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

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.

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

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. 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.

would engage with people like Lewis Farkhan, Al Sharpton and else. Yeah, However, and political incoherence goes BurrH, he'd also link up with 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

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 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. I mean, who says a cult of revolution and therapy can't be profitable, right?

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 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 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. 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

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

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, 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 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.

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.