by Michael Bielawski
Former independent candidate for the Chittenden-13 District, Tom Licata was interviewed by TV news commentator Linda Kirker earlier this month on her show Sound Off, he gave warnings about our society sliding towards totalitarian tendencies.
“They believe in the collectivist ideology,” he said of America’s current ruling elites.
“They don’t believe in Constitutional Republicanism, and they want to destroy the Constitution,” he added. “And other examples are they attack institutions such as the Supreme Court, they want to delegitimize the Supreme Court.”
He further explained how the ongoing split in American politics today is the manifestation of competing ideologies.
“You have an ideology that believes that your rights come from God, a transcendent God gives to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he said.
Of the other ideology, he said, “It does not believe that your rights come from God. They believe that the best society can be run by a strong centralized government and they want power to do that.”
He further described this as a struggle “between the human soul and the collective society.”
Other concerning trends include the ongoing inflation and what that means for the economic health of the lower and working classes.
“And each time they print more money they flood the market with more dollars and so that’s another precipitation for inflation, and we’re almost in a death spiral at this point,” he said.
He said this process will result in increasing economic hardships that are going to cause working-class Americans to struggle. He suggested this economic squeeze will hopefully help to wake up Americans that they need to get more politically involved.
He explains how each political cause that emerges from the ruling class has a common feature which is that the solutions are always for greater government control over the public.
“They use things like the environment, climate change, and those are means, it’s not an end,” he said. “Anti-racism is a means, transgenderism is another means, and the end game is a totalitarian society defined by Mussolini as everything in the state, nothing against the state.
He noted that the family unit was identified by early Marxists as an obstacle to be dismantled.
“They don’t believe in the nuclear family,” he said. “You’ve heard the founders of Black Lives Matter, they’ve said on TV in interviews that they are trained Marxists. That’s public knowledge and Black Lives Matter is painted on Main Street in Burlington.”
Licata added that during the early 20th century it was observed by Marxist leaders that citizens were most loyal to “family and love of country” which is incompatible with the Marxist agenda. He referenced the writings of Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci who identified capitalism as another obstacle.
“He said that you had to attack the culture, he saw that the economic Marxism of Marx and Engels didn’t work because capitalism actually did work, it created a mass middle class,” he said.
When they realized that the capitalist-created middle class wasn’t interested in overthrowing their economic systems, Gramsci said the Marxists should refocus on attacking the nation’s culture. Licata talked about what these efforts have meant for the U.S.
“And so then they went after race, you know blacks versus whites, they went after sexualities, homosexuals versus heterosexuals, now they are going after the whole concept of male/female,” he said. “Now it’s not God or nature that determines reality but mankind himself, he can be his own God.”
On what to do, he said that Vermonters and Americans need to be brave and speak out on issues. He said running for local office such as select boards or school boards is a great way to start.
The host Kirker commented on this.
“It’s going to take one heck of an effort, awareness, and disgust about what is being done to this country and to our children and to just about every facet of our lives,” she said.
The whole interview can be seen here.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle