Charles Manson was a very unique figure in the new left. He first began gaining prominence in the mid sixties when he managed to start a Peace and Freedom Party chapter in Orange County. Manson quickly gained notoriety as the “Wild-man of the New Left” he and his followers would run security for protests and help dispute other events but would always go way above and beyond such as when Eldridge Cleaver asked him to disrupt a George Wallace event in Los Angeles. Manson proceeded to call in a bomb threat on the venue and as George Wallace was leaving he had men armed with knives stand across the street behind the venue as he was leaving. The incidents were never pinned on Manson but he was quickly becoming more bold and ambitious he continued rising in stature as finally 1972 arrived. Manson without a podium at a large press conference in his compound surrounded by his followers announced his run for president of the United States.
The race was between him, Eldridge Cleaver and a bevy of lesser known candidates chief among them Sonia Johnson who is also the nominee of the Citizens Party. Manson’s fought very hard campaigning in the primary almost 24/7 and things were looking pretty good he had an endorsement from multiple members of the executive committee of the party and even the all important San Francisco county chair but then trouble arose. Jane Fonda was interested in Manson she believed he may super charge the hippy movement just by being a candidate and some kind of hippy but when her Tom Hayden and Manson met the meeting was a disaster. Manson revealed his racism and got very passionate in his speech he started speaking unsettlingly and seemingly hitting on Fonda who stormed out of the meeting with her husband in shock she revealed the meeting to the press and Manson was hurt. He eventually won a distant third place in the primary which entitled him to 16 delegates but he had a crucial advantage. Due to a messy convention in 1968 a new rule was passed in 1969 that stated all bound delegates were needed for a quorum so Manson’s gathered his 16 bound delegates in his compound in Orange County the day of the convention which was happening in Sacramento and they all agreed not to leave for a month. Eventually after a badly delayed convention that almost kept the Peace and Freedom Party off the ballot the San Francisco county chair finally convinced Manson after many concessions to allow his delegates to go to the convention where they voted for him in a vote Cleaver eventually run.
Charles Manson’s political career was effectively torpedoed after Jane Fonda declared him a racist publicly. Though Manson still controlled the Peace and Freedom Party of Orange County he had little power within the national party. He pulled many other stunts including in 1978 when he had the entirety of his compound run for local office in Orange County sometimes against eachother or in 1982 when he burned the largest ever Effigy of Ronald Reagan in a park in Los Angeles.
By 1986 Manson’s movement had all but collapsed. Many of his followers had left calling him a cult leader he sold his compound and a new rule in the Peace and Freedom Party meant to focus resources on strongholds resulted in Manson’s Peace and Freedom Party of Orange County losing 90% of it’s funding but Manson wasn’t done. After a few years of quiet he was back.
The nineties were a strange time for Charles Manson he moved to St. Paul Minnesota to get closer to a Filipino woman he met through the National Examiner’s looking for love section. Who seemed to soften him. He managed to land a rent controlled apartment and started making moves again endorsing Paul Tsongas in 1992, starting his own vanity press and becoming possibly the strongest and craziest backer of the Y2K panic writing multiple books on the matter. Manson also wrote under another book that was truly fascinating called “Who is Charles Manson?” Which he wrote under the name “Texas Denton” it was an autobiography written as a biography and had enough fascinating aspects to fill another article with excerpts.
In 2000 Charles Manson quickly realized Y2K had been averted and married his Filipino bride becoming Charles Cruz Manson but soon after the world did almost end for Manson he was diagnosed with Stomach cancer. Manson didn’t let cancer stop him his vanity press was quickly growing and he had more money than ever and a woman by his side but the cancer was just not going away. Manson continued to work becoming debatably the first 9/11 truther in a speech outside his hospital in St. Paul, bought the Nazi aligned Antelope Hill Publishing very secretly.
By 2003 the writing was on the wall Manson’s cancer became terminal and he began spending much more time in the hospital where he still stayed active telling the children of the hospital strange enchanting stories after dinner sometimes funny and sometimes terrifying. Manson died on Thanksgiving in 2003 leaving almost his entire fortune not to his wife but to the children’s hospice ward in the hospital which had significant trouble with his gift when they realized a large swath of his fortune came from a Nazi publishing house.
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