From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: The Newmanites, NAP and Fulani
Date: 12 Dec 92 02:31:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600143:cdp:1299600144:000:24288
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet    Dec 11 18:31:00 1992


/* Written  9:15 pm  Dec  8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
/* Written  7:45 pm  Dec  8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:p.news */
/* Written  2:12 pm  Feb 14, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
Clouds Blur the Rainbow:
   The Other Side of the
   New Alliance Party 

Copyright 1987 PRA

Printing downloaded copies is forbidden.

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Clouds Blur the Rainbow:
   The Other Side of the
   New Alliance Party 

By Chip Berlet 

December, 1987 


PART 1

What is the New Alliance Party? 

The New Alliance Party describes itself as a 
Black-led, women-led, multi-racial, pro-gay 
independent political organization. Its most 
outspoken critics call it an opportunistic 
political movement controlled by an unethical 
therapy cult whose white male guru once led his 
followers into an affiliation with neo-fascist 
cult leader Lyndon LaRouche. 

The actual nature and history of the New Alliance 
Party is complex, controversial, and ultimately a 
matter of individual perspective and judgment. 
The controversy surrounding NAP, however, is 
seldom discussed with candor. With the New 
Alliance Party already well-established in 
several cities, including New York and Boston, 
and with newly-opened national headquarters in 
Chicago, a discussion of the group is long 
overdue. To discuss NAP without reference to the 
political milieu in which it operates is 
impossible. This report attempts to seriously 
analyze the history, activities and internal 
dimensions of NAP in the context of its work in 
the American progressive political community. 
This analysis is highly critical of the role of 
NAP within that community, but is not an attempt 
to bait the organization on the basis of its 
publicly-espoused political views. 


Current NAP Activities 

In May of 1985 the New Alliance Party held a 
national founding convention in Chicago. The 
significance of the event is blurred by the fact 
that its own history dates the original founding 
of the New Alliance Party as 1979. The 
chairperson elected at the 1985 Chicago meeting 
was Emily Carter, an organizer from Jackson, 
Mississippi who joined the New Alliance Party in 
New York in 1981. She calls herself a "former 
organizer, now therapist." 

When the New Alliance Party moved its national 

headquarters to Chicago, it came with a related 
"medical and therapeutic center." In fact, 
wherever the New Alliance Party has a major 
organizing effort underway, there is a related 
"therapy" group reaching out to persons with 
progressive politics who are also seeking 
emotional or psychological counseling. The 
therapy groups use a technique they call "Social 
Therapy" or "Crisis Normalization" designed to 
provide "immediate help for the everyday crisis 
situations that happen to everyone." Both the 
political organization and the therapy institutes 
make a point to involve persons of color, gay men 
and lesbians, and political radicals. 

Closely allied with the New Alliance Party is the 
Rainbow Alliance and the Rainbow Lobby. That the 
slogans of the New Alliance Party, Rainbow 
Alliance and the Rainbow Lobby tend to reflect a 
progressive political framework is not 
questioned. Here for example are some of their 
slogans and issues: 

*** Put teeth back into Civil Rights laws 

*** Repeal Gramm-Rudman 

*** Support the Fair Elections bill introduced by 
Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) 

*** Seek legislation that would "protect the 
democratic rights of gays and all Americans." 

One flyer explains: 

"The Rainbow Lobby is fighting for grand jury 
reform, affordable public housing and Congolese 
liberation from the human rights abuses of the 
Mobutu dictatorship....The Rainbow Lobby is 
fighting against the death penalty, against aid 
for the C.I.A. supported contra terrorists and 
against arming South African supported 
mercenaries in Angola. And the Rainbow Lobby is 
exposing the Right's misuse of federal funds for 
AIDS. "

The New Alliance Party moved its national 
headquarters to Chicago to be closer to Minister 
Louis Farrakhan, The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Mayor 
Harold Washington, according to NAP chairwoman 
Emily Carter. The office is located on Chicago's 
north side (in the 44th Ward), and fundraisers 
are already soliciting support for the "Rainbow." 
The NAP-related Chicago Center for Crisis 
Normalization is open and another therapy center 

is planned for the west side. NAP organizers have 
been recruiting in some sectors of the Black and 
progressive political community for almost five 
years, and have a presence in several Chicago 
colleges. 

In New York the New Alliance Party offers a free 
legal clinic in Harlem, sponsors lectures, and 
publishes its newspaper, the <National 
Alliance>. <National Alliance> discusion 
groups are held in Chicago, Illinois; Jackson, 
Mississippi; Long Island, New York; Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C. and Boston, 
Massachusetts. 

The New Alliance Party maintains regional and 
state offices in: Alaska, Arizona, California 
(Oakland and Los Angeles), Colorado, Connecticut, 
Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, 
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Ann Arbor and 
Detroit), Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New 
Jersey, New Hampshire, New York (Albany, New York 
City and Buffalo), North Carolina, Pennsylvania, 
Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont 
and Washington, D.C. 


Fred Newman and the Historical Roots of NAP 

The history of the New Alliance Party starts 
with a history of its primary theoretician, Dr. 
Fred Newman. In 1968 Newman and several followers 
formed "IF....THEN", a political collective in 
New York City. "IF....THEN" prided itself on its 
anarchistic and confrontational approach to 
organizing and consciousness-raising. During the 
early 1970's Newman and his followers established 
a group called Centers for Change in New York 
City. Centers for Change (CFC) was characterized 
by a more introspective approach to political 
organizing. CFC described itself as: 

"...a collective of liberation cenu	jD including; 
a school for children, ages 3 to 7; a community 
oriented therapeutic and dental clinic located in 
the Bronx; and a press (CFC Press) operating out 
of the CFC offices....Also, the Community Media 
Project; (an) information service for the people 
of the upper west side.... "

While involved with CFC, Newman and others in his 
circle began developing a unique perspective 
within the evolving theory of radical psychology. 
This movement attracted attention and debate in 
progressive circles; Newman, however, soon 

branched off from the mainstream of the radical 
psychology movement and eventually developed a 
theory of "social therapy". By 1973 CFC was 
offering therapy and counseling at its drop-in 
center. 

At the same time, another New York political 
organizer, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., was also 
espousing controversial psychological theories, 
and Newman began to examine LaRouche's writings 
on psychology and economics which were appearing 
in published collections of Marxist analysis. 

Lyndon LaRouche in 1973 was the leader of the 
National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), a 
Marxist political organization based in New York 
City. LaRouche, using the name Lyn Marcus, had 
led the Labor Caucus of the Students for a 
Democratic Society (SDS) until SDS voted to expel 
LaRouche and his followers in 1969. The 
controversy inside SDS arose when the SDS Labor 
Caucus under LaRouche called for support of 
striking members of New York City's teacher's 
union. A key union issue was opposition to 
community control of schools in New York City--a 
demand of community leaders which had the support 
of many Black parents. The union's opposition to 
community control of schools was widely perceived 
in the progressive political community as having 
racist overtones. After being expelled from SDS, 
LaRouche created the National Caucus of Labor 
Comittees, which in 1973 had at least 1,000 
members nationwide. 

Newman says he first made contact with Lyndon 
LaRouche's forces within the National Caucus of 
Labor Committees (NCLC) in October of 1973. In 
January of 1974 Newman's organization, Centers 
for Change (CFC), published a newsletter <Right 
On Time> which called for the organization of 
leftist political cadres and relied heavily on 
psychoanalytic terminology. LaRouche's theories 
were in many ways similar to those espoused by 
Newman, and in June of 1974, Newman led almost 40 
CFC members into an official political alliance 
with LaRouche and the National Caucus of Labor 
Committees (NCLC). 

Newman's Alliance with LaRouche 

Even NAP supporters concede that Newman and some 
of his followers worked for a time under the 
political leadership of LaRouche. What keeps this 
aspect of the controversy alive is what critics 
feel are misrepresentations regarding the 

character of the relationship and the nature of 
the LaRouche organization at the time of the 
alliance. NAP's position is stated in a letter 
circulated by its supporters under the name "The 
Committee to Set the Record Straight:" 

"Five years prior to NAP's founding, a handful of 
activists, five of whom now sit on NAP's 
40-member national Executive Board, joined the 
National Caucus of Labor Committees, then a left 
organization founded by LaRouche. At the time, it 
was attracting many organic progressive leaders 
from the welfare, trade union, and electoral 
arenas. Dr. Newman was one of those who joined. 
He and his colleagues' membership in the NCLC 
lasted approximately two months. "

"Following their departure in the summer of 1974, 
they began an extensive political and 
methodological critique of LaRouche and the NCLC 
and by 1975 became among the first on the Left to 
explicitly identify LaRouche as a neo-fascist. "

This characterization of the Newman/LaRouche 
relationship is at best self-serving and at worst 
largely fictional. With some ten percent of the 
current NAP executive board comprised of persons 
who at one time chose to put themselves under the 
political leadership of Lyndon LaRouche, it 
becomes crucial to examine the relationship 
carefully. 

During most of 1974, the NCLC under LaRouche was 
primarily attracting middle-class and upper-class 
white intellectual students from prestigious 
eastern and mid-western college campuses--hardly 
a core of trade unionists and welfare recipients 
as characterized by Newman's supporters. 

A former member of LaRouche's NCLC remembers the 
arrival in 1974 of what were called the 
"Newmanites:" 

"They put themselves under the actual political 
leadership of LaRouche for a few months, and we 
came to believe that what Newman really wanted 
during that period was to act as an understudy to 
LaRouche --to learn his methods and techniques of 
controlling persons in an organization. "

"The individuals in Newman's group seemed to lack 
clarity and political focus and were obsessed 
with psychology and sexuality. Newman was clearly 

the leader and it was obvious that LaRouche's ego 
and Newman's ego were too big to allow them to 
work together in the same organization for long. "

While actual membership by New Alliance Party 
executive board members in LaRouche's NCLC may 
have lasted only a few months, the working 
alliance between groups led by LaRouche, Newman 
and a third New York political leader named Gino 
Parente lasted far longer. Some activists 
from New York remember the three groups working 
in a loose alliance around issues such as welfare 
reform, farm labor, and organizing the working 
class for a period as long as one year. One 
internal NCLC discussion of the Newmanites 
describes "ten months of serious political 
discussion" before several months of actual 
membership. "Joint forums" between the Newmanites 
and the LaRouchites were held in November and 
December, 1973, and the Newmanite split took 
place in late August, 1974. 

Even after officially leaving NCLC in August, 
1974, Newman and his followers continued to 
debate and criticize LaRouche and the NCLC over 
issues of shared political ideology as if it 
represented legitimate leftist theory long after 
the rest of the American Left had denounced NCLC 
as either proto-Nazi Brownshirts, a sick 
political cult, or outright police agents. 

Fred Newman insists his group was not 
sophisticated about the American Left when it 
joined with LaRouche, yet when the Newmanites 
split from NCLC, they announced the formation of 
a "vanguard" Marxist-Leninist political party. In 
the resignation letter signed by Newman and 38 of 
his followers, there is a significant use of 
Marxist-Leninist terminology which suggests a far 
greater degree of political sophistication than 
admitted. Announcing that Newman's International 
Workers Party (IWP) had "now become the vanguard 
party of the working class," the letter went on 
to say: 

"The organization of the vanguard party is, as 
Marx makes clear, the organization of the class. 
The formation of the IWP has grown from our 
attempt to organize the [NCLC] from within that 
it might move from a position of left hegemony to 
a position of leadership of the class. "

When joining the NCLC, Newman announced he was 
putting himself and his followers under the 
political "hegemony" of LaRouche. After leading 

his followers out of the NCLC, Newman continued 
to struggle with LaRouche over theory within the 
principles of criticism among friends. None of 
this indicates a casual, naive or short-lived 
relationship. 


The Nature of NCLC During the Newmanite 
Alliance 

Still, Newman's merger and split with LaRouche 
would have little merit as a criticism of NAP 
(after all it is a sign of political maturity to 
recognize mistakes) were it not for how 
supporters of Newman relentlessly misrepresent 
the nature of LaRouche and the NCLC in late 1973 
and 1974--the period when Newman grew close to 
NCLC and then put himself and his followers under 
the political leadership of LaRouche.In 1974 NCLC 
was not attracting "organic progressive leaders " 
from the welfare rights movement, as claimed by 
the Newmanites. In fact, it was having trouble 
attracting significant Black support at all, 
since it was leading a successful attempt to 
destroy the Black-led National Welfare Rights 
Organization and defame its popular leader, the 
late George Wiley. 

During the same period, LaRouche also propounded 
ideas which were widely perceived to represent 
outright racism. LaRouche, for instance, 
offended the Hispanic community in a November, 
1973 essay (published in both English and 
Spanish) titled "The Male Impotence of the 
Puerto-Rican Socialist Party." An internal memo 
by LaRouche asked "Can we imagine anything more 
viciously sadistic than the Black Ghetto mother?" 
He described the majority of the Chinese people 
as "approximating the lower animal species" by 
manifesting a "paranoid personality....a parallel 
general form of fundamental distinction from 
actual human personalities." 

As early as the spring of 1973 LaRouche had begun 
to articulate a psychosexual theory of political 
organizing and began descending into a paranoid 
style of historical analysis that stressed not 
Marxist dialectical materialism and class 
analysis, but macabre conspiracy theories and a 
subjective egocentric analysis. LaRouche warned 
of a global plot by the CIA/KGB to kidnap and 
program his membership to assassinate him. His 
homophobia became a central theme of the 
organization's conspiracy theories. He said 
women's feelings of degradation in modern society 

could be traced to the physical placement of 
sexual organs near the anus which caused them to 
confuse sex with excretion. 

A September, 1973 editorial in the NCLC 
ideological journal <Campaigner> charged that 
"Concretely, all across the USA., there are 
workers who are prepared to fight. They are held 
back, most immediately, by pressure from their 
wives...." Writing in an August, 1973 memo, 
LaRouche propounded the startling and sexist 
psychological theory that "the principle source 
of impotence, both male and female, is the 
mother." LaRouche claimed only he could cure the 
political and sexual impotence of his followers. 
NCLC members were forced into what was called 
psychological therapy and "deprogramming" but 
were what former members call "brainwashing" and 
"ego-stripping" sessions. The NCLC rapidly became 
totalitarian in style, with a peculiar obsession 
with sexuality and homophobia used as a weapon 
against internal dissent. "To the extent that my 
physical powers do not prevent me," LaRouche told 
his followers in August, 1973, "I am now 
confident and capable of ending your 
political--and sexual--impotence; the two are 
interconnected aspects of the same problem." 

By 1974 LaRouche had started his swing toward 
fascist economic and political principles--well 
before Newman and his followers joined NCLC and 
announced that they would place themselves under 
LaRouche's political leadership and "hegemony." 
It was during this period that LaRouche began 
talking of the need for rapid industrialization 
to build the working class. He talked of a 
historic tactical alliance between 
revolutionaries, the working class and the forces 
of industrial capital against the forces of 
finance capital. He began developing an 
authoritarian world view with a glorification of 
historic mission, metaphysical commitment and 
physical confrontation. He told reporters that 
only he was capable of bringing revolution and 
socialism to the United States, and his speeches 
began to take on the tone and style of a 
demagogue. LaRouche, in short, began to adopt the 
same ideas and styles which had formed the basis 
of National Socialism, a political tendency that 
historically became part of the European fascist 
movement and eventually played a key role in 
Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany. In fact, 
LaRouche was denounced as a Nazi by U.S. 
Communists following physical attacks on them in 
1973 by NCLC members who were likened to 

Hitler's violent Brownshirts. 

From May to September of 1973, LaRouche followers 
engaged in "Operation Mop-up" which consisted of 
NCLC members brutally assaulting rivals such as 
members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and 
the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). NCLC thugs 
used bats, chains, and martial arts weapons 
(<numchukas>) in their campaign to control and 
establish "hegemony" over the American 
revolutionary movement. There were many injuries 
and some persons required hospitalization. 

"Operation Mop-up" was front-page news in 
virtually every American progressive newspaper 
during 1973, and it is difficult to believe it 
was not known to Newman and his followers when 
they first contacted NCLC a few weeks after 
Operation Mop-Up was declared a success by 
LaRouche. Furthermore, physical assaults by NCLC 
members against critics were reported regularly 
well into 1976, and periodic assaults by LaRouche 
fundraisers still occur. In 1974, many former 
NCLC members report, they were still required to 
take paramilitary training classes led by fellow 
members. 

The trigger for Operation Mop Up was a March, 
1973 warning by NCLC to the Communist Party, USA. 
to stop opposing the creation by LaRouche of an 
alternative to the Black-led National Welfare 
Rights Organization (NWRO) which LaRouche 
denounced as being part of a "union-busting 
slave-labor" alliance. LaRouche set up an 
alternative, the National Unemployed and Welfare 
Rights Organization (NUWRO), and, according to 
LaRouche, NCLC then sent delegations into public 
Communist Party meetings, "demanding that this 
criminal behavior of the CP leadership"--that is, 
support for the original NWRO--"be openly 
discussed and voted down by the body assembled." 

Eyewitnesses recall this "discussion" usually 
consisted of primarily-white and young NCLC 
members standing up and disrupting meetings of 
the primarily-Black and older NWRO with calls for 
a debate on LaRouche's charges against NWRO 
leaders until members of the audience were forced 
to physically drag the NCLC members out of the 
meeting. These confrontations became formalized 
under Operation Mop-Up. 

When the Socialist Workers Party joined in 
supporting the original Black-led NWRO, they too 
were attacked by the predominantly white NCLC 

supporters. While the Operation Mop-Up attacks 
were officially ended in late 1973 or early 1974, 
another campaign of assaults was launched in 1974 
against local rank-and-file leaders of the United 
Autoworkers and other industrial unions. Reports 
of these assaults continued through 1976, and 
NCLC members have continued until recently to 
assist in assaults on members of Teamsters for a 
Democratic Union and another rank-and-file 
Teamster reform group, PROD. 

In 1974, according to former NCLC members, 
LaRouche first began to seek contact with 
extremist and anti-Semitic right-wing groups and 
individuals around the idea of tactical unity in 
opposing imperialism and the ruling class in 
general, and the Rockefellers in particular. 
LaRouche's obsession with conspiracy theories 
blossomed in 1974, and during this period he 
began expounding a view linking certain Jewish 
institutions to a plot to destroy Western 
civilization and usher in a "New Dark Age". 

This is the character of the NCLC that attracted 
Newman and his followers in early 1974. In his 
1974 book <Power and Authority>, Newman wrote 
that his followers would "organize in the spirit 
outlined" by LaRouche. The question is not how 
long the Newmanites worked under the political 
leadership of Lyndon LaRouche, but how they can 
explain what attracted Newman and his followers 
to LaRouche in the first place. To this day NAP 
leadership has refused to renounce or to deal 
candidly or accurately with the fact that the 
Newmanites at one time joined an organization 
which was at best a collection of paranoid sexist 
homophobic thugs and at worst a nascent fascist 
political movement. 


Using the FBI to Harass Dissidents 

It was during the period that the Newmanites were 
involved with NCLC that NCLC began to collect and 
disseminate intelligence on progressive groups. 
It is well documented that NCLC went on to 
provide intelligence to domestic and foreign 
government agencies. While documents released 
under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 
U.S. government agencies frequently dismissed the 
material provided by the NCLC, it was provided 
nonetheless. As early as February, 1974, NCLC 
representatives met with an official in the U.S. 
Department of Commerce to "provide substantial 
evidence which would exonerate President Nixon 

from Watergate charges," according to a Commerce 
Department memorandum released under the Freedom 
of Information Act. 

The Newmanites were at the center of the first 
documented instance of NCLC collaboration with 
U.S. intelligence agencies. In 1974, several 
Newmanites in NCLC attempted to use the FBI to 
locate and spy on a former Newmanite who had left 
at the time of the NCLC/Newmanite merger and 
taken his child with him. Jim Retherford had left 
the Newmanites citing psychological manipulation 
among other reasons. His spouse, Ann Green, 
remained in the organization and quite reasonably 
sought access to their child. Green and Newmanite 
Harry Kresky, an attorney, contacted the FBI and 
suggested that Retherford was a former member of 
the Weatherman faction of SDS, had harbored 
Weather Underground fugitives, and was in contact 
with Jane Alpert, a fugitive the FBI was 
particularly keen on locating. 

Supporters of Newman claim he was unaware of the 
contact with the FBI. However, a former member of 
Newman's Centers for Change who joined and left 
NCLC with Newman, and then later split with the 
Newmanites, recalls the FBI incident was widely 
known within NCLC and the Newmanite faction. "The 
CFC [Centers for Change/Newmanite] people for the 
most part stuck together while in the 
NCLC....denying Fred Newman knew about the 
communications with the FBI is utterly absurd." 
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