It Could Happen Here - How Fred Newman Built a Maoist Therapy Cult Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and

expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking.

It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Call Zone Media. Welcome to Crap Media. I'm Andrew Sage of the YouTube channel Andrewism. I have been digging into political cults lately, drawn from the work of Dennis Turish and Tim Walforth 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, 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 Cults series, or you can check out my video on the topic, or you can pick 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 Cults yourself, as I said, On the Edge, Political Cults Left and Right.

Previously, I've touched on the LaRouche Movement and the United Red Army of Japan. Today, we'll be looking at another case study, this time of the various groups associated with Fred Newman, fused politics seamlessly with psychotherapy. Today I'm joined by... Oh, this is my cue. Oh no! I've been waiting for my cue and I missed it! It's Mia Wong, misser of cues, 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 yeah he has he has some interesting connections very interesting connections uh 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 in Totalitarian Systems by Alexandra Stein. But anyway, let's get into it. Fred Newman was a Korean war veteran who earned a PhD in the philosophy of science from Stanford University. With no formal training in psychology, Newman took a turn towards Maoism in the mid-1960s, as one is apt to do in the mid-1960s. 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 birthed new psychotherapies catering to a mass market that sought both happiness and social justice. Psychotherapy became something like a secular religion, which of course opened it up to charlatans who would propagate their innovative therapies and gain a following without actually testing or without any scrutiny of the effectiveness of the ideas. By 1970, Newman assembled a small collective in Manhattan, sharing an apartment on the Upper West Side. By this time, post the collapse of the Students for a Democratic Society and the broader New 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 yearning for hope. Newman's collective was first named If...then and it was indeed a fusion of radical 60s politics and the new age therapy of the 70s. 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 1973, 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. Corps members were expected to leave their jobs,

sell their possessions, and sustain themselves through activities like fundraising on street corners while embracing shared living spaces within the group. Now, buckle up for a bit of a crossover episode here, because from 1973 to 1974 newman crossed paths with lyndon larouche oh god yes of course he did mind you he links up with larouche just after larouche had completed operation mop up so he was just attacking his

enemies on the left and started shifting rightward if you use those terms and newman is like yeah this is my guy this is who i want to link up with so their collaboration formed the united front comprising of larusha's national caucus of labor committees the nclc at newman's 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 is distinct from the Communist Party USA that most people know about. 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. Yes, yes, they are. Yeah, Perenti's group was actually connected with the National Labor Federation. with the National Labour Federation. So anyway, these joint forums were established and activities were coordinated among these groups. By 1974, in fact, the Centre for Change disbanded and Newman and his followers merged into the NCLC. Oh my god.

There was sort of a convergence between LaRouche and Newman and their perspectives of leadership, cadre formation, and the manipulation of membership, as LaRouche's apocalypse, fear-mongering, 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 long with other cult leaders so the fusion with larouche led to inevitable clashes while within the nclc the newman group continued its operation and tensions eventually reached a breaking point later in august 1974 newman and his 38 followers left the nclc to establish the international workers party or iwp which he declared was the vanguard

of the working class. Oh I love the 70s. Indeed. Still, Newman's association with LaRouche had a big impact on his thinking and future development. He aligned with a lot of LaRouche's ideologies and was just as dismissive of various left movements. Even though they split, they still shared a disdain for common citizens, their group's members, and the principles of a free society. Yet despite dismissing most left movements and saying that liberalism is fascism, Newman would occasionally dip his toes into democratic primaries, infiltrate existing leftist organizations, and utilize prominent black leaders to advance his own objectives. But I realize 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 they have their unique quirks here and there as well. Lucky for us, Newman published a book on his ideas the same year he parted with LaRouche in 1974. So the book was called Power and Authority, and he basically cooked up a theory about the mind and society that 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, you also had to overthrow the bourgeoisie ego inside people's minds. So in a sense, we're cooking, you know, because you do 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 taking cues from Marx, Lenin, and LaRouche, and his solution involved something called a 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 leading the therapy because 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 state withers away. So basically never. Newman's doctrines worked for his purposes though. His followers were stuck in this loop of dependency for over 25 years. He had an additional

component to his control mechanisms though. He developed a concept called friendosexuality 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 newman himself his inner circle was referred to as his harem or his wives and they served as both trusted lieutenants in the administration and trusted lieutenants in the bedroom if you dig so yeah now let's get into little segments that we can call newman and the fbi sitting in the tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g 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 1974 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, Anne Green, 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 in finding Rutherford and the child. So they dialed up the FBI, set up a meeting between Green and the agents, and then Green spilled the tea that Rutherford used the child. So they dial up the FBI, set up a meeting between Green and the agents, and then Green spilled the tea that Rutherford used to roll

with the weather underground, and also had connections with a fugitive named Jane Alpert. Jeez. Fast forward to 1976, 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 out for himself so that was a fun little aside right a little collaboration with the FBI yeah and it's like if you're gonna be a snitch at least have like at least have the the basic decency

and self respect to admit that you were the snitch and not blame me on someone else no but a cult leader would never do that though no terrible stuff hey guys i'm kate max you might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

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I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Carrying on chronologically, in 1977, Fred Newman shifted his focus to the political scene of New York 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 broad and ill-defined front organizations

that could pursue the cult's goals 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 to 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 Lenora Fulani together they formed the new alliance party or NAP in 1979 i'll just call it the nap right i feel like we need to start like a party counter when we're at like four or five already yeah yeah yeah iwp the nap yeah the communist party professional yeah know yeah flanny ran for lieutenant governor of new york in 1982 and in 1988 and ran for president becoming the first black woman to do so gaining ballot status in all 50 states and receiving nearly 1 million dollars in federal matching funds she ran again in 1992 and again qualified for ballot status in all 50 states, this time receiving $2 million

in federal matching funds. And she secured a whopping 73,708 votes. That's always the depressing thing with these like vanity electoral campaigns is seeing how much money they spent getting like seven votes

yeah but i mean you'll never guess where this money was going oh no in the background new one's financial maneuvers seem to be funneling a lot of the party's funds into other organizations affiliated with newman lauren redwood a 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 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 48 hours to prepare. I quit my job, left my home, my friends, put my belongings in

storage, found a home for my pet and gave the use of my car to NAP in exchange for their taking over the payments. As a working class lesbian, I thought I had finally found a home for my pet, and gave the use of my car to NAP in exchange for their taking over the payments. As a working class lesbian, I thought I had finally found a political movement which included me. What I found instead was an oppressive, disempowering, 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, 16 to 20 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.

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 then later 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 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 MO. 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 IWB the whole time now it's quite interesting to learn the justification for why Newman picked Lenora 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 Gramsci, 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 hegemony. 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. Newman 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 pneumonite fronts but here's the twist he borrowed gramsci's organic leaders term and connected with people of color that had organic bases of support in their communities and would use them to advance the interests of his secretive white vanguard ah the psl 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 farrak Al Sharpton, and others. Yeah. However, and political incoherence goes brr, he'd also link up with vague populist movements like Ross Perot's Reform Party, who he'd worked to register voters for.

And in an effort to gain more voters for the right-winger Ross Perot's Reform Party, Newman and Fulani would encourage the Patriotic Party and the Independence Party of New York to link up with Perot's Reform Party, Newman and Fulani would encourage the Patriotic Party and the Independence Party of New York to link up with Perot. And then, in 1999, the Newmanites threw their support behind the paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign. So in addition to his political activities, Fred Newman wore many hats. He considered himself a playwright and served as the artistic director of the Castillo Theatre. He also directed training at the Eastside Institute for Short-Term

Psychotherapy, authored books featured at the Castillo Bookstore, and operated social therapy centres in various cities, describing them as a unique development community. Despite the deprivations imposed on his followers as you can imagine newman lived quite comfortably of course in 1993 he bought a substantial greenwich village brownstone for nearly a million dollars i mean who says a cult of revolution and therapy can't be profitable right i keep i keep thinking about that uh oh god i forget which of the the nepali maoist parties it was but one one of the the guys who was the head of one of the the nepalese maoist parties who'd 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 uh like nepal's chief security minister that's wild it's like ah it's a revolution because it goes in a circle and you end up right back where you were i don't remember that one that's a that's a good quote yeah a lot of these organizations are like blatantly cults but of course newman fulani and others would always deny that they were in a cult as cultists always do so you look at the evidence and the evidence points to cult yeah my my my not a cult t-shirts raising a lot of questions that are answered by the by the t-shirt yeah yeah i love how when i first introduced my my organization i have to apply disclaimers were actually not

a cult you know like that one meme from um king of the hill right uh so one critic of newman wrote an article called Inside the New Alliance Party, Dennis Surratt. And despite initially thinking that the NAP was a progressive organization, he ended up detailing psychological control, racism, sexism, and the use of millions of dollars to manipulate well-meaning individuals, particularly targeting the black community. The internal structure was of course hierarchical as Newman lived luxuriously while the rank and file members worked long hours and even faced mandatory taxes to support Newman's seaside mansion. Newman's political positions were opportunistic, obviously. They changed based on Oh my god. 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 Ortez, 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 childcare was getting in the way of her full dedication to the cause. So she revealed the NAP did not live up to its claims of promoting democracy, obviously, and would use manipulative tactics and obstruct minority empowerment, and had a long history of attacking progressives and embracing Perot's 1992 presidential bid and the harsh treatment of dissenting voices. In the end, in the book On the Edge, Dennis Turesh and Tim Walforth end up terming 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 knack 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 u.s politics yeah if you want to learn more like i said definitely read on the edge and also check out the article how totalismism 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, please. If it has Democratic Workers' Party or People's Party of such and such. Or popular support.

Scrutinize it a little bit. You know. Let's look at the structure. Let's look at what they're asking you to do. Especially if the leadership considers themselves a vanguard. Despite having like. 15 members. Honestly.

You probably shouldn't follow a group of any size that considers itself a vanguard. But that's typical for someone like me to put forward. That's it. That's all I have to say on Newman. Check on your friend with sexuals. They're probably going through it right now. All power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or 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.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.

After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme,

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