The United States is in a cold civil war in which “the woke regime is a hostile occupying power not so different than Germany when it occupied France during WWII,” presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says in an interview released today.
“If we lose this war, we will have full-fledged tyranny,” Ramaswamy tells Claremont Institute Chairman Tom Klingenstein in an interview transcript released to The Federalist. “You see, if people are free, then there will be group differences in outcomes because often groups have different preferences and talents. The only way you can make groups equal in terms of outcome is by force.”
Since cultural Marxists’ leading demand is forcing an unnatural equality of outcomes, he said, that necessarily makes them pushers of totalitarianism.
“Woke America hasn’t yet achieved full Stalinist status. But if you want to see gulags being built, you don’t have to look any further than the treatment being given by the Biden justice system to the so-called ‘insurrectionists’ of January 6,” Ramaswamy says in the interview. “This is the treatment being prepared for all who oppose the woke tyranny, who are already branded ‘domestic terrorists.’ And while they are preparing these gulags, the woke Left can accomplish their purposes in other ways. They censor, shame, spy on citizens, fire them, require loyalty oaths, deprive people of services—all totalitarian tactics that get to the same place as gulags; they neutralize dissenters.”
Fearing smears has effectively tied conservative Americans’ hands from defending America’s founding principles, Ramaswamy said. Among other efforts to deprive all their opponents of basic constitutional rights, Democrats are working to deprive Republicans of due process through a competent legal defense.
“Not only are the woke zealots weaponizing the financial system, they are also weaponizing the practice of law. Lawyers who represented Trump are now the target of organizations that seek to disbar them. It won’t stop there. If we do not do something pretty soon, any lawyer associated with an anti-woke cause will be unable to practice law. This is more evidence that we are in a war,” Ramaswamy said.
Vivek on DeSantis and Haley
Ramaswamy also echoed fellow presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ attacks on their primary competitor, Nikki Haley, saying, “She’s a RINO who doesn’t know what time it is, and she hasn’t met a foreign war she doesn’t love. She has no vision. Also, today she is critical of BLM but at the time of the riots she was busy honoring George Floyd as some kind of patron saint.”
DeSantis has been pointing out Haley’s tweet above as “an example of her adopting this left-wing mindset and accepting the narrative.” The RealClearPolitics polling tracker shows former President Donald Trump with a commanding primary lead since the beginning of the 2024 cycle. DeSantis has held a diminishing second place in the tracker, while Ramaswamy and Haley have traded spots at third place. Currently in the aggregate, Trump holds 61 percent support, DeSantis 13.8, Haley 9.9, and Ramaswamy 4.8.
Ramaswamy said DeSantis is “competent” and he’d consider him for a cabinet post, but dinged DeSantis for accepting Democrat weaponization of the justice system against Republican voters and the last Republican president to represent them: “I will pardon Trump on my first day in office. DeSantis has made no such promise. And he has adopted DOJ/Special Counsel Jack Smith talking points about Trump and J-6; DeSantis has done nothing to help the Floridian J-6ers who have been and still are being persecuted.”
Concerning the culture war over whether the United States will remain a free country, Ramaswamy said most Republican politicians refuse to acknowledge it’s a war because, “Like most people, political leaders have a strong inclination to delude themselves rather than face harsh truths. I think if we don’t face these truths, we will lose our country.”
Then Ramaswamy and Klingenstein had this exchange:
List of ‘Woke Generals’ Coming Out in January
To make administrative war on the destructive Marxist infiltration of U.S. government, Ramaswamy said he plans to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, “which is using $80 billion a year to effectively force schools to adopt the DEI, anti-American curriculum.” President Ronald Reagan promised to end the then-new USDOE in his presidency and never did.
Klingenstein pointed out Republican presidents since Reagan have made that promise and failed to follow through. Ramaswamy said they lacked the will and a favorable Supreme Court, two conditions that have changed especially since parents now are becoming more aware of their kids’ anti-American curricula.
Not just in education, but throughout the federal bureaucracy, Ramaswamy said, “under some conditions, mass layoffs are permissible. The president already has the authority to shut down agencies and that’s just what I’ll do.”
Ramaswamy said he’s working on a list of the “woke generals” whom he’ll fire immediately if elected president. He promised to release the list in January 2024.
“Citizens must understand that it is the administrative state that carves the channels through which wokeness flows. It is the administrative state that executes the woke agenda. The war I wage as the next president will not be against non-threatening foreign states, it will be against the administrative state and that most definitely includes our security apparatus, which, as we saw in the Trump administration, has been weaponized by the woke Left.”
Vivek Interview PDF (1) by The Federalist
