This is a photo of Lenora Fulani with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg, who was elected twice as a Republican, recently strongarmed democracy and bribed City Council into letting him run for a third term, against the term limits laws twice voted into law by New York voters. Lenora Fulani is a figure in the Independence Party. Since Bloomberg--at least until last week; apparently he will now ALSO be running as a Republican again--calls himself an Independent and "Independent" sounds like "Independence" and he thought that would be a nice way to appear on the ballot.
Bloomberg basicaly agreed to bankroll the Independence Party in return for their party line on the ballot. Nice deal, eh? But who is the Independence Party? Just a bunch of nice independents?
Um, not really.
The Independence Party is the latest incarnation in a mind-control cult half a step away from such outfits as Scientology and with traceable connections to Lyndon LaRouche. Formerly known by such entities as The New Alliance Party and the Institute for Social Therapy and Research, this shady outfit and personality cult for Fulani and founder Fred Newman, used to haunt the left and progressive movement trying to siphon off disaffected questioning individuals into its near brain-washing psychotherapy programs. They would urge troubled people to attend their therapy sessions with a doctrine saying that "the system" was responsible for people's depression or mental issues and that the solution to personal unhappiness or psychological issues was to join their group and fight capitalism.
Now, apparently capitalism is no longer the enemy. As the left and progressive movements faded, providing a lack of recruits for this cult, the Independence Party drifted rightward, toying with all sorts of unsavory right-wing characters. This unholy alliance between a would-be dictator and a power-hungry personality cult should be a major scandal in this city, but it is not. My question is:
WHY?
I moved to New York City in 1981. One of my closest friends was a man names Steve Rose. He had moved to NYC from upstate New York, become an RN, and joined the gay activist world with gusto. He joined GAA, the Gay Activists Alliance--in the late 1970s, and was part of the faction of GAA at its end who became sympathetic to the Revolutionary Socialist League, then one of the left groups most active in that pre-AIDS gay movement. Steve was not drawn to the left through intellectualism, through student disaffection at some ivory tower. He became a leftist because his heart told him it was the right thing to do. He chose the RSL because of its unique attempt to combine socialist orthodoxy with a left libertarian spirit and its complete embrace of the nascent GLBT movement.
Eventually as the RSL imploded in those dark Reagan years Steve and I had a falling out. We both moved on, and sadly, Steve joined those first ranks activists to be diagnosed with AIDS. His first over Alberto passed on first, and Steve himself lost his battle with injustice sometime in the mid to late 1980s. The last time I saw Steve was on a street corner. Although a few years before he made numerous sharp and stingingly incisive polemical attacks against the New Alliance Party and their ilk, by then he was defeated. Facing personal demoralization along with the challenges of fighting HIV Steve joined the NAP. When I saw him on that corner telling me of his new allegiance to NAP I saw such despair behind his eyes belying the wooden and rote recitation of how NAP had helped him to see that his problems were not his own, rather the burden of oppression and capitalism. It was heartbreaking to see him so broken, so surrendered to the easy answers of a cult that could do his thinking for him. I grieve that he spent his last years in such company. While brash and not always sympathetic, Steve was a fighter and a real hero of gay liberation. The cult that parasitically attached itself to him, joining the HIV in sucking out his life force, cannot now go unopposed.
Bloomberg's unholy alliance must be exposed, and Bloomberg's Giuliani-like power grab must be spiked.
update: check out Lyndon LaRouche Watch for a lot of details about the Fred Newman cults.
You're not wrong, but you're not completely right. Everything you say about the Newman-Fulani cult is true but they are not exactly the same as the Independence Party. The party was started by Tom Golisano in the 90s and contained a lot of good people, some of whom have been fighting the party's infiltration by the Newman-Fulani cult almost from the beginning. As you say "The cult that parasitically attached itself to him..." the cult attached itself to the party. It is true they now control the party apparatus in the city and Bloomberg should be ashamed of bankrolling them, but the party as a whole is more than the cult, especially outside the city but even within. It is as much a victim as all the others.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the details...what you say makes sense.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone like La roach anymore. Also,just curious: what's your thought on Obama?
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen LaRouchists around in years, but I bet they're still out there.
ReplyDeleteAs for Obama, my opinion is complicated. I hate what he's actually doing internationally, though he's said a few nice things.
That said, I feel like there is kind of quiet war on here between the forces of decency and the forces of reaction, and as imperfect as Obama shows himself to be--and as true to his nature as any Democratic Party polutician can be--I feel like the right place to be, given the absence of a serious leftwing alternative, is more or less on the side of his defense. I'm surprised to be in that position--I have never felt any allegiance to a president before. But the wave of right-wing extremism that opposes Obama does not distinguish between actual socialists and imagined socialists and so the battlelines are drawn.
When I was still living in San Francisco, the LaRouche folks still had quite a strong presence, and focused particularly on young people on university campuses. I have no idea how much strength they had in electoral issues, however.
ReplyDeleteThe Independence Party was just in court.
ReplyDeleteTheir Chairman, Frank MacKay, attempted to join with John Blare in overtaking Ross Perot's REFORM PARTY. The judge rules on the case tomorrow: looks like MacKay is going to lose. He has been trying to build a national Independence Party, and he hoped that in [illegally] seizing the remnants of Perot's organization, he could pick up ballot access and name recognition.
Posting Anonymously since EVERY Reform Party member who has vocally criticized the "takeover" has been sued by MacKay....
I beileve that Bloomberg won this recent election entirely through his quarter-million dollar purchase of the Independence Party name. My mother voted for him, and she would NEVER vote for a Republican, because she saw on the ballot that he was an "Independent." She was mortified when I told her that was "Independence" and told her a bit about them. Valuable name they got there.
ReplyDelete