Terry:

Okay, this is Terry Tracy with Broad and Liberty, founder and CEO. Today I am here with Mr. Steven Martino, who is the author of the book Welcome to America: How Cultural Marxism is Slowly Destroying America. Steve, welcome to Broad and Liberty.

Steve:

Thank you for having me.

Terry:

Before we get into the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, so thank you for writing it– because I think that there are a number of very important points here that are critical to understanding what’s going on in the world around us today. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about yourself, because you have a really interesting background and you’re an author of several books, but you have a day job in addition to that. And I also know you have a young and growing family. So just tell us a bit about yourself to start off with.

Steve:

Okay. Yeah. Well, you know, by trade I’m a board certified neurologist. I have five kids. I mean, ironically, my oldest one now is 23, and in some ways I don’t feel older than 22. So it’s a, it’s a, nice mix <laugh>. I also, as you’re saying, I also am a fictional writer, and I’ve written three science fiction novels which went Amazon bestsellers, and I was able to present with all the big names at the Javits Center. On a side note, my son and I also build robotics, for competitions. So, you know, I try to do it all. And I thank you for having me on the show.

Terry:

So you’re a Renaissance man.

Steve:

Oh, I appreciate the kind words. <laugh>

Terry:

So, Welcome to America: How Cultural Marxism is Slowly Destroying America. Why did you write this book?

Steve:

Well, I think it’s come to a point we all need to wake up and see exactly what’s going on around us. You know, we always ask ourselves, why is the media so biased? Why don’t they listen to reason? Why don’t they listen to facts? Why has the school system changed their agenda? Why did they get rid of Dr. Seuss and Dr. Seuss Day? What’s the purpose of political correctness? What’s the purpose of Critical Race Theory? And what’s it mean? And most people look at all these things in individual boxes, but it all really comes into one major rubric of what’s the driving force behind each of these little things. So not only do you have to understand each component to it, but you have to understand the big picture, the history of the big picture, and how to beat the big picture. Because we don’t understand exactly what’s going on– it’ll be too late when we finally can do something about it.

Terry:

So tell me what’s going on. What is the, what is the thesis? The big, “so what” of the book?

Steve:

Well, the “so what” of the book is that we, we call it the cultural Marxist; the people behind the mainstream media, the people behind pushing political correctness. Their goal, in fact, is to destroy all of Western culture. It goes all the way back to the Communist Revolution back in 1917 with, uh, the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. It was to overthrow capitalism and usher in an era of communist utopia. 

As we all know, the communist utopia has never arrived. And actually, it’s anything but a communist utopia. It’s more of a dystopia. So the question was, why in 1917 did the Bolshevik Revolution really stall? So the thought was, at that time was that instead of culture being downstream from economics, economics is downstream from culture, and that the workers of America and all Western society were not going to unite, you know, in order to take down capitalism it wasn’t the workers that are gonna overthrow it. What had to be overthrown was all of Western society, Western culture. So it means destroying the religion, destroying the institutions, destroying family beliefs. So what’s left? You’re left with nothing. You’re left with government. So that’s what they’re trying to do, tear down everything we believe in.

Terry:

I think the point you make about the Russian Revolution, about midway through the book is a really interesting one. But before we get into some of the details, I have two questions about how you stage this argument. The first is you just spent a couple minutes defining what cultural Marxism is in practicality, right? In sort of how it plays out day to day in our lives. How is that different than how it’s defined popularly? How is it defined in academia? How is it defined in media? If one were to do a Google search about cultural Marxism, what would they find that might be different than what you’re saying it actually is?

Steve:

Well, in the book I referenced this. Wikipedia actually refers to it as a far-right or alt-right conspiracy theory that’s anti-Semitic in nature. So they want to dispel the idea that cultural Marxism is an actual thing. So in order to have people, you know, doubt it’s legitimacy they will, you know, not give it any legitimacy and equate it to fascists, far-right people. They’ll equate it to Jordan Peterson, Andrew Breitbart, Donald Trump. Now, for a lot of America, those people may have negative connotations. So they say, oh, that’s something Donald Trump believes in. Well, you know, if you hear those words, a lot of people will tune out the message. So that’s the goal of the cultural Marxist or the leftist. They want to change the argument. They want to put it in their own terms.

Steve:

They wanna have thought control. They wanna control what you hear and what you think. In order to control what you think they’re, uh, instead of addressing the point of what is cultural Marxist, but, oh, it’s nothing, nothing. It’s like the Biden son’s laptop. That’s not a story. That’s a conspiracy theory. Never. It doesn’t exist. Well, guess what? It does exist. You downplay it so long, you know, just because you say it’s not true, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But if you say it enough, times, enough, people will believe it. Like, the hands up don’t shoot, wasn’t a true story. But to this day, people still believe the hands up don’t shoot actually occurred. So that’s the frustrating thing about it. There’s a mass misinformation, uh, campaign out there that is trying to dispel the validity of actually what’s going on here. America will wake up.

Terry:

So you set the stage for that argument by using an interesting metaphor. Explain to the readers the Rip Van Winkle metaphor that you used to open the book.

Steve:

Yeah. Rip Van Winkle, it’s actually an old story. It’s something I’ve really not heard of much today. It’s about a farmer or a worker who goes out, you know, actually wants to get away from his wife and goes for a nap. Well, at this point, King George was still the president of the colonies, the United States. And when he wakes up twenty years later, you know, he slept through an entire revolution. Instead of King George’s picture on the bar where he used to go to and talk to his friends, now President Washington, presiding over the thirteen states, not the king presiding over the thirteen colonies, was hanging there. And so I equated it to: don’t be Rip Van Winkled; don’t sleep through this cultural revolution that’s going on. Because if we sleep through it, when we wake up and find out what’s going on, it’s going to be too late.

Steve:

Just look at what happened with the North Koreans. Let’s look at what happened with the Venezuelans. They woke up, and guess what it was? They couldn’t do anything about it. And I don’t wanna be here in America where they — getting into more different topics, you wake up, your guns are gone, your freedoms are gone. Your ability to worship where or what you want to worship is gone. There’s social credits in order to travel. You know, look at what they’re doing to Jordan Peterson up in Canada. You know, he may lose his license if he’s not having proper cultural training into political correctness. So, one day it may be too late. Have countries like Canada, have they, in effect, what they call jumped the shark? Have they gone so far left that the possibility that their freedoms have been indefinitely lost? I don’t know. I just don’t want that to happen to America. And that’s what I’m trying to get out in a book like this.

Terry:

So you mentioned the barrage of critiques of Western civilization as sort of the underpinning of the ideology, right? The underpinning of the cultural Marxist ideology. And you go on to say that the ideology fails to articulate a substantive vision for a post-liberal world order. So, it’s very good at tearing things down, but to the extent there is any kind of strategy or intent to build something new post hoc, that is rarely part of the conversation, or part of the message that’s articulated, or part of the marketing strategy, or organizational strategy of the ideology, right? So, what do you think, well, what do you think is going on there? Why is it that, you know– it’s one thing to tear something down, but usually when you do that, there’s a plan to rebuild, right? It’s, “this is bad and we want to replace it with this.” But that is noticeably missing in the arguments made by cultural Marxists, in your view. Talk more about that.

Steve:

Well, they just think of critical theory, or an offshoot of it is Critical Race Theory. Their goal is not, when they look at history, to talk about history. It’s to look at it through, if it’s Critical Race Theory, a lens of racism. Or, if it is through critical theory, it is through an oppressor versus un-oppressor point of view. The goal is in effect with cultural Marxism, they just want to tear it down, but as you’re saying Terry, there’s no endgame of what happens. Now, there’s some theoretical endgame you may hear of like, a great new society will emerge, but you know, in effect, we don’t know what’s out there. Unlike the Communist Manifesto where they actually promise a communist utopia that the people now who are pushing critical race theory critical theory, cultural Marxism– there’s no utopia at the end of it.

Steve:

And that’s the astounding thing that I have to question I have, and I may wanna parlay this to another book, who is behind it? And what is the ultimate goal? I mean, this is a question that we can even ponder together. Is it for a possible great reset, which they talk about? And you know, look at Davos. Are they trying the great reset in this cultural Marxism, the way that they’re going to bring down government and form one government or one economic world where they’re in control? I don’t know. I don’t know who’s pushing it, and I don’t know, you know, the cause of it. All I know is the net result of it. It will always lead to destruction. It will always lead to the net quality of life going down; misery, poverty, and unhappiness for all. You know, when you look at communism, socialism, or what they preach, it never raises society. It just brings everyone down to a lower level. So what’s the purpose of pushing it? That’s the million dollar question.

Terry:

So in the chapter on the rise of the Frankfurt School, you say their conclusion was that the only true method to destroy capitalism, this being Marxist generally, was to destroy Western civilization itself. Every institution, code of morality, and basic family unit needed to be abolished. It would only be at this time when the masses had nowhere else to turn. They would trust the state for their total support. And, you know, when you think about the comments that you just made, the closest benchmarks we have to, or points of reference in the real world to what life would be like in a post-liberal; liberal in a classical sense; post-liberal world order would be the Soviet Empire, the Chinese Communist Empire, life under the CCP and their satellite countries around the world. Whether that’s Cuba or what we see going on in South America right now. So, talk more about why the revolution in Russia failed, what that says about the foundations of Marxist ideology, and maybe how do you compare that even to the, to the Chinese regime, which has proven to be more durable?

Steve:

Well, you know, I think the Chinese regime has taken some capitalist views. And the more capitalism they put in their country, the more economically prosperous they’ve become. And look at Russia; what do they have to offer the world besides fossil fuels? Very few things. With regard to why they’re failing, with regard to the end result of communism around the world, it always ends in defeat. There’s never a pure communist or socialist country that’s ever been shown to be successful. And why did it fail? I mean, why did it not take off? Number one, people saw what happened in communist Russia, and it wasn’t something people wanted. You know, remember once the communist took over, lands were taken from the people.

Steve:

There was great poverty and starvation in Russia. It became, even with Stalin, even before the war, there was mass poverty, starvation and unhappiness. So it wasn’t something the West was looking at saying, “hey, this looks great.” And plus, with capitalism, even poor people in effect, through capitalism, were getting jobs, were bringing food in. Even though it was, you know, they were living in poverty, it was getting a lot of masses out of the poverty, into working, into having jobs, into having food, you know, the quality of life. This was better than living in the streets. So it was bringing the masses out of that poverty. So people were like, “we’re working and we’re making money.” And we see what’s happening over in Russia. It’s like, where’s the incentive? There is no incentive.

Terry:

In the chapters on Critical Race Theory and the sexual revolution, and to a lesser extent, identity politics, but in particular the sexual revolution and Critical Race Theory, you raised a concept that I had heard of before, but had not really given too much thought. And that was that of the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci, right? And the concept of the long march. Talk a little bit about that and how it’s relevant to what’s going on with younger generations of the country today, where folks are sort of questioning how issues are being prioritized with respect to voting patterns. And certainly the national debate about parental rights and curriculum and what’s being taught in schools in general, but our public schools in particular.

Steve:

Yeah. You know, here’s the thing that Gramsci talks about the march through the institutions. In order to bring down Western society, he thought and believed and wrote that you had to go institution by institution in order to get the message out. And you could see the march through the entire Western civilization going through– this was colleges, it’s gone from back in World War II. You had “rah rah go America” to an anti-Western sentiment. When I used to go with my kids to colleges, and I walked through the campus bookstore– I used to look at all the campus, how the west destroyed– or the racism of the United States. These were the history books I used to see campus after campus.

Steve:

So they’ve marched through that, they’ve marched through the media. Look at the mainstream media, they parrot the same message. Look at Hollywood. I mean, Hollywood. Yeah. And you can see the repercussions in Hollywood now, how, you know, they are economically doing bad with regard to the movies they’re putting out. People are not seeing them. You know, even Disney, the woker they go, the more their stock crashes. We see it in the military as General Milley talks about the horrors of whiteness and white rage. And we see it as I was saying also in our school system with the way they’re teaching the kids now, the way they wanna teach Critical Race Theory as opposed to teaching you know, real history.

Steve:

So we see it going in order to brainwash the society. They’ve taken over each and every segment of it, from parts of the government to media, to colleges, to the National Educational Association. So, you know, they’ve basically gone onto the marches. And look at why homeschooling has become so popular these days. I mean, what do you see in school? There is a push against God. You know, there is a push against the general nuclear family where they’re pushing an LGBTQ agenda. They are pushing a lot of the schools push Critical Race Theory, where if you read like, books by Ibram Kendi it basically looks at everything through a racial lens, and it makes kids feel bad about themselves.

Steve:

It makes ’em feel bad about America. It makes ’em feel bad about their culture, the color of their skin. I mean, no wonder why we see teen suicides up. Loneliness is up, depression is up. Look at all these markers that have gone skyrocketing through the ages. They’ve marched it through, as we were talking about the sexual revolution. Hey, free sex for everyone. It’s great. Look at the amount of people who want to be married, who are getting married and who are making families. It’s just not there. You know, look at the divorce rate. The divorce rates are skyrocketing. So this is a society where we’re living in.

Terry:

Right to that point, in chapter four, you say, in addition to attacking traditional Judeo-Christian values, Gramsci believed that the entirety of Western culture needed to be eroded into nothingness. As the entire culture rotted Gramsci proposed that the people would be less self-reliant and more dependent on the state when this occurred. It would usher in a great communist state and abolish self-governance. His goal was to accomplish this task, which was a process he labeled the long march through Western culture. And I want to underscore this point, he sought to capture the youngest and most impressionable in society first.

Steve:

Mm-hmm. Correct.

Terry:

That’s powerful stuff.

Steve:

Yeah. And that’s the goal of it. I mean, you know, he, they saw back then a hundred years ago that the workers were not gonna rise up. So they want to go for in quotes, “the most vulnerable people.” Who are the most vulnerable people? The young. It’s not because they’re physically vulnerable. A lot of ’em, it’s because they’re mentally vulnerable. They haven’t experienced the world. And there are psychiatry and psychology articles out there where the first time you hear one part of an argument, you’ll be more fav– that’ll be what you remember and believe in. So, it’s a weird thing. Like if you hear five different arguments, you tend to believe the first one, it’s human nature. Studies have shown that. So they want to go after the young. They want to go after the people who feel disenfranchised. The minority groups who, traditionally have had a, you know–African Americans, they want to go after, say, you know, the Mexican Americans, uh, they see them as the vulnerable, the people that they can influence the most and tell them that they’re disenfranchised. So, you know, that’s how you take over the country.

Terry:

So you state, the goal of the book is to detail the history of cultural Marxism from its rise to its indoctrination of the West. And it goes on to basically lay out, as accessibly as possible, their beliefs and agenda, which we’ve spent a lot of time talking about so far, and their tactics to bring down all of Western civilization. Just to the average bear out there that’s listening to the argument that you’re making and saying, “you know, this makes some sense and there is a lot that’s going on in the world that is unsettling. But you know, I’m– I’m not quite sure how to pinpoint it, and I’m not quite sure once I do pinpoint it exactly what to do about it.” I think that you sort of towards the end of the book lay out some general recommendations, strategies, things for folks to consider as they’re digesting the argument. Let’s spend just a couple of minutes laying that out for folks.

Steve:

Yeah. I mean, the first, I mean, as when you look at Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, he talks about knowing the enemy. And the first step in knowing, the first step of beating cultural Marxism is to know it and know the history, know the purpose, and know the tactics. That’s what a book like Welcome to America is about. My goal is to teach people what to look out for, because you don’t see it. You don’t. If you don’t understand what you’re seeing, you won’t understand how you fight it. And in order to fight it, you know, some of the things that we have to do to, we have to take over what sort of the things that the liberals, the left, has been doing. And sort of use some of the same tactics that they use against them.

Steve:

Because remember, the goal of the left is to make it so they think that we’re in the minority. People who believe in God, who believe in family, who believe in government, are in the minority. Well, in fact they’re in the vast minority; the people who are very liberal. So first of all, you know, we do have the power in numbers with the moderates and conservatives. So it, our voices, you know, if we get together far outweigh the minority of the far left of the mainstream media and of Hollywood. So we actually have more power than we actually think we can. Most of us think that we’re alone, oh, we can’t do anything. Well, yeah, you can do something. You could put conservative people or pro-American people on your school board, and on the local level.

Steve:

You can, you can elect people who have a pro-American agenda for all levels of offices. And guess what? If the person you put in, and I could give you multiple, multiple examples of people, even Republicans who were put in that went to a pro-RINO or a pro, uh, you know, a more moderate type of agenda. You primary them out, you hold the people that get into office accountable. You could do that very easy on a state and local level because say your House of Representative, uh, person, doing your district you disagree with, or they voted against you, against what you believe or what you believe is pro-American, you can primary them out, you know? 

Steve:

Number two is, if a company like Bed Bath & Beyond says, “hey, we’re not gonna have My Pillow,” guess what? You don’t go to them. You have enough. You have enough people who say, you know, we don’t want your product anymore. Guess what? These big companies that have been pushing pro-left agendas like Disney, Coca-Cola, even we’ve seen some with Home Depot. You know, they’re not gonna survive if they take a 10-20% cut, and their sponsorship or sales. So we have the power of the purse as a minority. So that’s another thing we could do. Another thing we could do is, you know, have a family, have kids, go to church, go to the synagogue, and live the American dream. Nothing you can do to piss off a liberal than doing just those things, <laugh>. So, and the last thing I always talk about is a lot of people want to, you know, left wing people want to pick arguments with me about their agenda or about cultural Marxism.

Steve:

One thing I’ve learned about the people on the left and trying to argue with them, as someone else says, like arguing with, with your dog: you are not gonna get very far because to argue with a left-wing person who is not listening to reason, not listening to facts, not listening to any sort of coherent argument is a waste of time. You gotta change the argument on them. You gotta put you– instead of trying to answer the questions, you either say, “hey, listen, you’re not worth my time to argue with” or, or put it up against them. Bring up a different topic or switch the topic on them where they no longer have their left-wing platitudes and a groupthink slogans to try to bring you down. So those are some of the things that I say, acknowledge power of the purse, power of voting, and living just a great American life.

Terry:

You know, I do think the isolation that you talked about a few minutes ago is real. You know, when there is a certain perspective that’s being not just pushed, but sort of just repetitiously constantly, in a sort of exhausting fashion, pushing one sort of worldview– and it’s coming at you from every angle, from all from institutions all around at your workplace, right? Every time you turn on the TV, every time you’re going through your kids’ homework, every time you just wanna sit down and watch a movie, at some point, you do go, you know, is it me? And so I think the point you make about sort of investing in the American dream in whatever that looks like and means to you and living it actively and with pride and, and earnestly, and sharing it with others, those close to you and those with whom you just interact with in an ancillary way on any given day, is really how ultimately folks who are perhaps not as engaged in this as you are as an author, as I am as a publisher can still in the aggregate at scale, make a significant impact.

Terry:

You know, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that you have a co-author on this book, his name’s, Daryl Brooks. And, I look forward to hopefully having a conversation similar to this with Daryl in the near future. Tell me a little bit about Daryl and his contribution to this project and how you guys intend to work together going forward.

Steve:

Well, it’s the second book that I have with Darrell. We also have a first book together called 37 Days. He’s an interesting guy. He wanted to say how disillusioned the inner-city African-Americans, and he’s watched the poverty grow, lack of education grow, drugs grow, incarcerations grow throughout Trenton and in Philadelphia while nothing was being done. So his eyes were awoken to the fact of what he saw around him. And actually he became a very strong political activist in line with Martin Luther King Jr. And with that brought social change to his local community, changes to the state, and actually was one of the poll workers in Philadelphia who worked with Giuliani to show that there was a problem with the voting system in Philadelphia.

Steve:

And he was actually up there on the podium with him, uh, back in the 2020 election, saying, “hey, listen, we– there’s a red flag here.” So that was sort of his claim to fame besides, he ran for office a couple of times trying to become a representative or senator. And he also does political marches, he does speeches across the country. So we work together. Actually, I met him years ago and we’ve done multiple podcasts together. We go to CPAC together, we speak at CPAC. In the future, we hope to have more collaboration with different books or even, um, some, you know, a new, a different podcast, just him and I– he has an on fire network. We’re looking to make a podcast together and possibly go on and have some educational movies out there that may be just as enlightening, or even turn our book into some short movie or short YouTube or Netflix film.

Terry:

Fascinating. Well, I look forward to speaking with him. Steve, where can people find Welcome to America? How do they buy it?

Steve:

You could go right on Amazon. I mean, Amazon’s a big, biggest seller. You can get it on Kobo, you can on Apple, you can get it at Barnes & Noble. Um, it comes in ebook, hardback, and paperback.

Terry:

Great. We will be sure to link to the easiest and most successful places for folks to pick up a copy at their convenience. So well, Mr. Steven Martino, author of Welcome to America: How Cultural Marxism is Slowly Destroying America, in partnership with his co-author Darryl Brooks. Thank you for your time today. Fascinating discussion, very important issues. Look forward to sharing your thoughts and comments with our audience. And I thank you very much, not just for your time today, but for the love you have for God and country and for the good work here.

Steve:

Well, thank you.

Terry:

I greatly appreciate your time. Thanks, Steve.

Steve:

Thank you.