Political Fringe Figure News: David Duke’s Presidential Speculation Blast, and Fred Newman’s Death

David Duke has given indication that he is contemplating a campaign for President.  Or, he is embarking on “a tour of 25 states to explore how much support he can garner for a potential presidential bid.”  Which means that strictly speaking, his Presidential bid compares to that of Newt Gingrich’s moreso 2008 but 2012 is an extension of the thing– there is no run there, but there is a use for Presidential Speculation.

It’s a long line of “moderating” history that the KKK is drawing about in its current “moderating” crusade — shown most visibly in actively protesting the Westboro Baptist Church / Fred Phelps family.  There was a Saturday Night Live skit from the early 1990s, after one of David Duke’s two Republican nominating victories, where David Spade played David Duke at a victory rally proclaiming he would unite both the radical and moderate wings of the KKK.

I do not know “Republican Presidential Candidate” gets him a further entry point to one of David Duke’s current places — a commentary in various media outlets in the Middle East — but I guess it’s a useful title to throw about.  His first presidential bid in 1988, in the Democratic Party, was designed mostly to heckle Jesse Jackson — his second bid in the 1992 Republican Party was the sputtering off out of his brief period of electoral success, said to have been choked off completely by the Presidential bid of Pat Buchanan.  The only thing I can say about 2012 is that it does not represent any nascent racist political undertoe, or even repudiate the claim of nascent racist undertoe.  It just kind of is.

Don’t worry, these crackpots will all lose: Running is one thing, says David Weigel at Slate, but “these idiots aren’t winning.” Only one of these “racist (or, fine, neoconfederate) candidates” has actually won a race in the last year — “Loy Mauch, a batty neoconfederate in Arkansas” who once protested a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Even “near the peak of his fame” in 1988, David Duke got a quarter as many votes for president as “the decidedly black, female, and odd Lenora Fulani.” He’d be even more of a “fringe” candidate now.

I can’t read that David Weigel quote without suspecting that David Weigel had just recently read the news about the death of Lenora Fulani’s mentor and partner in political electioneering, Fred Newman.  I stop and throw up my hands, figuring I know everything I really need to know, when I read that he advocated something called “friendosexuality”.

The founder of the controversial New York City Independence Party has died.
A friend of Fred Newman says he died late Sunday night of renal failure that led to cardiac failure.
Newman first entered politics and psychotherapy in the 1970s, branding his philosophy “Friendosexuality.”
His Independence Party began in the 1980s as the New Alliance Party.
It went on to help provide the margin of victory for Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2001.

Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani struck an alliance with a rather motley crew of politicians.  They wound their way in and out of the La Roachers.  They, reportedly, provided half of the marchers for Al Sharpton’s various protests in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  They, reportedly, gave Ross Perot the necessary signature drive for ballot access in all 50 states.  And then there was Patrick Joseph Buchanan

… together, being interviewed on Fox News Sunday, on November 14, 1999 — an excerpt:

…………………………………………

SNOW: You have, in the past, been associated with Fred Newman   who has been accused of…
FULANI: I am also associated with him in the present and I plan to be associated with him in the future.
SNOW: Do you agree with his comments that Jews have been the storm troopers for industrial capitalism?
FULANI: And participated in oppressing groupings of people of color. I actually — one of the things I’ve been waiting to ask is what is anti-Semetic about that. In fact, there is an Algerian psychiatrist whose name is Frantz Fanon, who talks about victims of oppression, taking on the roles, if you will, of people who oppress them. He talks about
that among people of color, amongst Jews.
So, yes, he said that and almost everything that he, I have said, Pat, Minister Farrakhan and others have been taken out of context. But what is wrong with saying that? Why won’t people speak to the issues of these things rather than doing the politics of remarks? I find that ridiculous.
SNOW: Do you agree?
BUCHANAN: Well, Frantz Fanon was that “Le Damne de la Terre,” I think was the book.
SNOW: “The Wretched of the Earth.”
FULANI: Yes.
BUCHANAN: “The Wretched of the Earth.” I’ll be honest.
FULANI: Oh, I’m impressed.
BUCHANAN: Well, I can see. I wrote some blistering editorials against that book in the 1960s or ’60s and ’70s.
FULANI: My favorite book when I was in college.
BUCHANAN: I have to say it’s not my favorite book. Look, no I don’t believe it is fair. I do not believe it’s fair to say that Jewish Americans have oppressed people. I do believe they’ve made enormous contributions to this country in every profession and every calling. And there are bad people of all groups. And there are good people of all groups. And I would not associate myself with that statement, certainly.
SNOW: So she’s going to introduce you to Sharpton, to whom will you introduce her?
BUCHANAN: I’ve introduced her to Bay Buchanan which is about as far right as you can go.
SNOW: OK.
FULANI: May I say something quickly? I would love actually for there to be a dialogue with Dr. Newman. He’s Jewish by the way and he has been very strongly involved and passionate about the Jewish community and he has some shots about it as a Jew, relative to what’s happened to his people.
But again I think that what we’re creating in this new coalition is going to be responded to by a whole host of people across the political spectrum. You should definitely keep an eye on it.
………………………………………

… Of course, none of those alliances ended well.  For the last one, the Newmanite New Alliance wing of the Reform Party ended up in the forces running against Pat Buchanan’s takeover of the Reform Party with the John Hagelin Natural Law Party Transcendental Meditation take-over attempt.

But, Fred Newman

“All who knew him will remember him as a fierce champion for giving the best, most sophisticated, most far-reaching tools of postmodern philosophy to ordinary people,” supporters wrote in a paid obit that appeared in the New York Times today.

Or maybe…

The state party chairman, Frank MacKay, was constantly at war with Newman’s faction, and at one point, kicked Fulani off their executive board. Today, MacKay said Newman would be missed.
“I’ve disagreed adamantly with Fred on the handling of issues…and have not spoken to him in the last six years,” said MacKay. ” But I would be remiss not to acknowledge the body of work that Dr. Newman has amassed in the field of independent politics. When the ultimate book is written on independence politics, there would have to be a whole section devoted to Fred Newman.”

Or maybe…

He also maintained a regular email blast about his ruminations and reactions to the Sunday political talk shows that I found quite addictive.

I think that last one is the best bet on what use I’d have for him in the final parts of his career.

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