Responses By Defenders of Newman
Defenders of Newman note that the report was published and distributed during the 1988 Presidential campaign of Marxist psychologist and political activist Lenora Fulani. Fulani went on to garner a quarter of a million votes and became the first African American and first woman to achieve ballot status in all 50 states.
In a 1991 interview, Newman described the criticisms as "absurd" and the product of jealousies on the left, and claimed that the majority of social therapy clients don't involve themselves in his political activities. In the Boston Globe in 1992, Fulani claimed "the entire thing is a lie", and cited what she described as Political Research Associates ties to the Democratic Party.
Berlet's claims of cultism have been disputed by some of Newman's peers in the therapeutic milieu. According to British psychologist Ian Parker, "Even those who have been marked by the FBI as a 'cult' may still be a source of useful radical theory and practice. Like a weed, a cult is something that is growing in the wrong place. We would want to ask 'wrong' for who, and whether it might sometimes be right for us. We have no desire to line up with the psychological establishment to rule out of the debate those who offer something valuable to anti-racist, feminist or working-class practice."
Read more about this topic: Clouds Blur The Rainbow
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