July 22nd, 2025

On Tuesday’s Mark Levin Show, ‘On Power’ discusses negative power, which is defined as coercion, control, and force, acting as the antithesis to individual liberty, consensual government, and civil society. It rejects biblical teachings of individual sovereignty and Enlightenment principles of distributed power, favoring centralized authority as seen in ideologies like Marxism, fascism, and authoritarian democracy. Wokeism is a modern authoritarian tool that enforces specific language and behavior, punishing non-conformity with social and professional consequences. Negative power dehumanizes individuals, viewing them as part of a collective to serve the ruling class or state, undermining personal well-being and autonomy. We need to confront and debate negative power to protect liberty and representative government. A new ruling class, the new bourgeoisie, is emerging in the U.S. and the West, defined not by wealth but by their pursuit of power. Soft negative power drives policies like controlling grocery stores, housing, or targeted taxation to consolidate influence, often at the expense of others’ freedom. This creates an authoritarian democracy, where democratic appearances mask authoritarian control. Recognizing these dynamics is key to understanding today’s power struggles. Also, former President Barack Obama should face a criminal investigation for his alleged role in efforts to undermine the 2016 election and the Trump presidency, despite claims of immunity based on a Supreme Court decision. While official presidential acts are protected, crimes like attempting a coup are not immune from prosecution after leaving office. Afterward, a look back at March 2017 when Mark Levin broke the Obama spygate scandal wide open. Later, Special Envoy Thomas Barrack told Reuters there is no evidence the Syrian government is involved in the horrendous atrocities committed against the Druze and Christians and other minorities in Syria. This is a disgrace, the evidence is everywhere.

The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.

Rough transcript of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. Interesting how you’re not allowed to investigate Barack Obama as a former president, you know. I had to subpoena him. Not allowed to criminally examine him. Bring him in front of a grand jury to see what he knew, when he knew it. With respect to the effort to overthrow the 2016 election and destroy the Trump presidency and to launch criminal investigations. Now. That’s pretty precious, isn’t it, considering what they did to Donald Trump. No, it should be full steam ahead. I also hear one of the reporters talking about the Supreme Court decision on immunity, that it benefited President Trump. And so hence it now benefits Obama while maybe he’s reading a different opinion and I am or these people are whispering in his ear to give me a bit different advice. Yes, the president has immunity from his official acts, but if a president in the United States it. To advance a coup. To meet crimes of other sorts. They’re not immune from that after they leave office. That’s for sure. But in any event. A full fledged investigation. Criminal investigation is absolutely warranted. Despite the best efforts of some Never Trumpers with law degrees and left wing Democrats and so forth with law degrees trying to tell you that what’s the big deal? We already knew the Russians tried to intervene in the election, but they failed. Is the line that they use, That’s not the point. That’s not the point. The point was the allegation that Donald Trump work with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. That’s the point. And the leaks that transpired as a result of that. Now we have documents out of the intelligence agencies that were released by Tulsi Gabbard. And we’re told to move along. We’re not going to move along. I want to get into that a little bit more thoroughly in the response from the Obama. President’s office. But the precedent that’s been set here, of course, is that a former president can be criminally investigated. They came up with their phony claims against Donald Trump and they spent years investigating him. Grand jury’s indictments at the federal, state and local level. Apparently, we don’t have any attorneys general at the state level have the guts to do a damn thing, let alone at the local level. I’m just being honest. But before we get into all that. You know, this book on power. It’s been distributed widely. By the publisher to various press people, various hosts, various columnists will see if they write something or say something. But it’s interesting, already saw one that pretty much was picking and choosing information that’s in the book. That’s always kind of troubling to me. Bothersome to me. And this is an individual that would never actually interview me. So I discuss this stuff with you directly. Now, the reason I mention this book in the course of a radio show like this that’s talking about current events and so forth. Although we do history and philosophy and so much more here is because this book relates to all aspects. Of human behavior, whether it’s ancient, more modern history, whether it’s current, whether it’s in your individual lives, your familial lives, your job, your community, or the country generally. And every book I write really does have that kind of a reach. But this one especially. So this book is broken down into a number of areas. And remember what I’ve said. The issue here to me is for people to start to think about liberty and tyranny. To think about private property rights and Marxism and Islamism and so forth. And so in that context of power. Power. And so the book is divided into several chapters, although not many on power is the overarching first chapter negative power and positive power. And tonight, I want to talk about negative power, because it’s affects what’s going on right now. Tomorrow I’ll talk about positive power and I get at a language rights and liberty as well. These are the key aspects of control or freedom. Depending on where your head is. US, We’re on the freedom side. So what is negative power? They develop these categories so we can better analyze what power is and why it’s so important. Again, we talk about liberty, but liberty in and of itself doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. If you don’t have the ability to institute a system that recognizes the individual free will and so forth, and you don’t have liberty. So the issue really is power. Power. Power comes first. Then you determine the extent to which you do or do not have liberty or tyranny or by rights and so forth. As I research this book, it’s very interesting. Power is not the same thing as liberty. Power is not the same thing as rights are unalienable rights. It could sting, and yet they overlap. Power is not the same thing as little democracy or little or Republicanism, although they overlap. But as you can see from what I’m saying now, power is at the core of all of it. Liberty, tyranny, representative government, fascism, Marxism, Islam, as you name it. And this is why honest and thorough investigation of that term and the force of that term is necessary. So when we think of things, we start to think of them, in my view, in a different way. This is how the Marxists, the Islamists, the fascists, or even the the Democrats pushing authoritarian democracy. This is how they get away with what they get away with because will beat our chests about liberty. That’s not free. That’s not representative government. Which is obviously the outcome, the end game. But if we’re not going to debate power and confront and confront this issue of power when it is being used against us and embrace it and nurture it when it is being used on our behalf. Well, we can talk about liberty and democracy all we want. It won’t matter. So what I’m going to do here is it’s a thumbnail sketch. Obviously, the book is much more comprehensive and thorough, but for our purposes here. So what’s negative power? It’s coercion. It’s control. It’s force. It’s the antithesis of what is necessary for individual liberty. Consensual and representative government. A civil society. It involves language control, thought control, manipulation. New words invented. By the state, by the ruling class to advance their cause. Changing the meaning of old words for the same reason. They’re not interested in intellectual engagement or debate or challenges. Propaganda. Repetition. Control communication. They want conformity. Obedience. Regurgitation. You know, I write in the book, this is what Wokeism has been about. And somebody picked up on this today and used it right out of the book. But that’s okay. Wokeism. Wokeism is a new authoritarian and authoritarian tool. It’s a new authoritarian tool. You have to say certain things, same in a certain way. You can’t distinguish between men and women. You’ve got to use pronouns. The whole kit and caboodle of Wokeism. You get a scarlet letter. It can affect your career. It can destroy your reputation if you don’t fall in line. Wokeism is a new form of Marxism, fascism, totalitarianism. Authoritarian democracy. That’s what Wokeism is. It’s just a new way of control, controlling thought, controlling behavior, controlling outcomes. All of this is in the book. So what’s the goal? The goal is to create followers adherence. Fanatics. And anybody who steps out of line. Well, they’re to be diminished, denuded. Smeared. Negative power is unmoored from the Bible. That teaches us that the sovereign is God. And that we his people, his children, when it comes to earthly governance, we’re the sovereign. Over our futures. Here on Earth. Not the ruling class, not a handful of individuals. We are the people. With certain constraints and restraints. That’s what your declaration says for a reason. Negative power rejects this basic biblical teaching. It rejects reformation. It rejects the Enlightenment. It rejects people like John Locke and Montesquieu who talk about the distribution of power. Power versus power. Because the Marxist communists, the Islamists, the authoritarians, they want the centralization of power, as I indicated earlier. So this whole idea divided power, which is central to our republic, which is really the key to our Constitution, which is the key to limiting authoritarianism. This is rejected. By those who embrace negative power like the Democrat Party. But I’ll deal with that later. What else? The dehumanization of the person. You’re not really a human being. You’re part of a collective. You’re part of a collective. This is why people do not on that side, the negative power side. Do not or are not offended when they when you talk about the tens of thousands of women who were sold in the sex slavery, the missing 320, 325,000 unaccompanied minors. They’re not viewed as individual human beings. They’re not viewed as individual human. It’s just a mass, a mob. And the ends justify the means. So your dehumanization and the re-engineering of the individual, the individual, as Marx points out. But he’s not alone. This whole idea of individualism must be destroyed. It’s the collective. It’s the commune. It’s the ruling class. It’s the centralization that is to be embraced. You can’t have that if you have individuals. Who are off on their own, motivated by their own wants and their own needs and. Just their own desires. You can’t have that. You exist for under negative power you exist for and at the behest of those who exercise negative power. You exist for Washington DC. You exist for the swamp, you exist for the bureaucracy. You exist for the politicians. You exist for the health care program. The Social Security program. You exist. For that. You don’t exist for your own well-being. Again, this is a new way of thinking that’s very, very important when we listen to people like Mamdani. But Talib or AOC or Bernie Sanders. And the reason I felt this book is. On point. The reason I’m pressing this issue is because I don’t think we effectively counter these people. We rub our hands about how crazy they are and how wrong they are. And their their ideology doesn’t work. But why doesn’t work? Why doesn’t it work? And what’s at stake. They talk about affordability, but your very existence, your lifestyle. Is it steak when they’re talking about affordability? Now we can address affordability. That’s not complicated. But my whole. Purpose here. My whole purpose in this book, My whole purpose in the presentation. And the media effort that I’m going to make connected to the book here. TV plays, interviews galore. And so we can start perceiving and thinking differently and talking differently about the problem. Yeah, but the problem. When we come back, I want to talk to you again as I continue on this chapter. It’s chapter two Negative power. We’ll pursue it a little bit further. I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
Negative power. So this is the more aggressive form of negative power that I’m describing, too, that you’ll see in communist regimes, fascist regimes, you know, autocracies, Islamist regimes. In the West, in the United States, we’re dealing with what I termed soft negative power. A soft negative power uses the techniques, the language, the approaches and so forth that’s used with negative power. But obviously, for example, in America, it’s an Americanized form. So it’s not the iron fist. It’s not the brass knuckles. It’s more elusive. It’s more ambiguous. And it also is camouflaged in virtuous language like affordability. It’s camouflaged so that a people who are relatively happy. About the nature of their society won’t be alarmed. Unnecessarily. So, you see, because this is it’s more elusive. Now, I want to get into this because this is how this negative power or more specifically soft negative power affects us. Again, I’m just touching the surface, but if this interests you, grab your copy of Aunt Power, go to Amazon right now in the top 100 of Amazon already. I’ll be right back.

Segment 3
Now as you know, I don’t write books on the predictable. I don’t write books about myself. One book, I guess I did was Rescuing Sprite. This is my 11th book. That’s one book. And it wasn’t even really written about The family was written for people who, for recent loss have a dog or a cat and so forth. But I write about institutions, ideas, philosophy, history, beliefs and values. Each book incorporates this kind of an approach. This book. Takes a much different turn. And then I decided, we better look at this whole issue of society, of the culture. Of our future. In a different light. Not through. Liberty or tyranny per se, although that’s crucially important. But through the means by which we accomplish liberty and the means by which evil accomplishes tyranny. And people spend precious little time talking about this issue of power. Now they’re going to talk about it a lot. Now that I’ve written about it and talked about, and I can already see some people who’ve read the book and got early copies. Already. I want you to think how smart they are. But they’re not that smart. They’re just good at reading. So I was talking about negative power. This is just one aspect of it. And then I was talking about a support of negative power, soft negative power. And this is what affects us in the United States and in the West. This soft negative power Marks talks about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the proletariat being the masses that rise up against the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie being effectively the ruling class. The management class, the landlord class. As I explain in the book, there’s a new bourgeoisie. That doesn’t have anything to do with economics per se or materialism per se. It has to do with power. And this is why I think it’s very, very important that we. Focus in on this word, this term and its meaning. The new bourgeoisie is not the wealthy, although they could be wealthy. It’s not about materialism, although there can be materialism. It’s about power. It’s not economic per se. The accumulation of power. There’s some people who accumulate power like they want to, like others accumulate money or they’re hoarders, they’re power hungry, and the more power they accumulate, the less power you have. So that’s what I call the new bourgeoisie, a ruling class. And they don’t even have to be in the government. Obviously, some do, if not many. If you look at the Democrat Party, they’re pursuing the accumulation of power. When they talk about running the grocery stores, taking over the means of production, taking over the housing market system, how they’re going to tax in order to empower their party, empower themselves. We’re going to attack tax white neighborhoods more than neighborhoods of color. This is all a scheme. That’s what that’s about. So I call this the new bourgeoisie. These people who. Who seek power to Lord over us. They seek to be the sovereign demigods. I call the kind of democracy that they’re proposing and promoting and frankly, instituting authoritarian democracy. That is, I’ve talked about Potemkin democracy in the past. Same thing. Which is. You go through the motions of a small democracy. But you really live in a more authoritarian environment. We have a fourth branch of government with 2 million people. You see how we have a court system? The courts try to protect the unelected fourth branch of government. That’s not in the Constitution. The lower courts that aren’t even in the Constitution are using their power to protect. To protect that bureaucracy and to protect. Authoritarianism by using authoritarianism. They are the bourgeoisie. This is authoritarian democracy. More decisions are made by government, by the unelected, than by the elected authoritarian democracy. That’s what’s meant by that. Now, this is, as I was alluding to earlier, dressed up, camouflaged as virtuous. Now, in the book, I quote Montesquieu and I quote C.S. Lewis, both of whom talk about the fact that the people we have the fear the most is authoritarians, as those are those who are self-righteous. They’re self-righteous in what they’re doing. Because there are no limits to what they’ll do to you. Through your fellow man, to the civil society, to the governing system, if they think what they’re doing is virtuous and righteous. They’re not even doing it for greed in terms of money or anything like that. They’re doing it for greed in terms of power. But they they delude themselves or they at least delude their followers into believing that it is a righteous cause, a virtuous cause. Equality. The environment, the climate. Universal health care. And so forth and so on. So this is sort of negative power that leads to authoritarian democracy. Exercised by this new bourgeoisie. Now, folks, I’m going to leave it there. We’ll talk more tomorrow about what I’ll call positive power. But I have barely touched the surface on negative power. Positive power. Let me just just put it this way and leave you with this thought. Is the opposite. Even though there’s an overlap from time to time. I’ll give you an example. Not to be too complicated, but when you read it, you’ll follow the flow of it. Sometimes soft, negative power. Can be a positive power. Why? Well, the Constitution puts barriers in place. The separation of powers delineating which branch can do what. Or your Bill of Rights, which delineates what powers belong to you as the individual 10th Amendment but belongs to the States. Federalism. And so under those circumstances, a soft negative power is necessary in order to advance positive power. And as I say in the book, that’s soft negative power, but really, in effect, it’s a soft positive power. Now, that’s not a crucial point, but it’s just a point I like to make. Positive power relies on a totally different set of beliefs and values and principles. Then negative power. And once I go through this, once you read through this and then you understand the chapters on liberty and rights and language and so forth, and you finish the book, which is actually very readable. It’s the most concise book I’ve ever written and intentionally so, and I did it that way. So you’ll read it. You’ll have a tremendous perspective on what’s taking place and you will be able to arm yourselves and your brains with the ability to. While to promote liberty and oppose tyranny in ways that you never thought about before. We’ve got to change the way we discuss these things. We’ve got to change the way we digest these things mentally. Are we going to lose our society? I’m not opposed to fighting on economic grounds at all. I’m not opposed on fighting on the old grounds at all. What I oppose is the fact that the core issue that’s on the table. Is essentially ignored. Is essentially ignored. Like this guy Mamdani we talk about. Well, what he’s proposing doesn’t work. True. It’s never worked. True. People will leave the city. True. True. He’ll destroy the tax base. True. Build a spoiler. Employment. True. Okay, now what? But we don’t discuss. The fundamentals of what it does to you as a human being and an individual. It destroys you as an individual. Your motivation to be an entrepreneur or to be successful. It destroys merit. It destroys your investments. What you’ve decided to do with your intellectual and physical labor. And I go on and on, and I want to discuss this more because it’s worse. It’s worse than just an economical outcome, which is bad enough. It’s an attack. It’s a war on your individual humanity, on your belief system, on what the nation is founded on. We’ll get into that a little bit more tomorrow. So you get the book. It comes out on Tuesday on power. On Amazon.com. It’ll be available on every major retail outlet that sells books, some that you don’t expect. They will be fully supplied. I hope you’ll take advantage of the pre-order, but if not, I hope you’ll take advantage of the fact that the publishers work with all these retail outlets to to provide them. And again, those of you who once signed copies, there’s only certain ways to get them. The Reagan Library and Saturday, August 2nd at 1 p.m. ET Books and greetings. It’s located in North Vail Square, North Vail, New Jersey. This is a new location for us. We’re very excited about it. The ownership’s are excited. It’s a beautiful, family owned, independent bookstore. Again, books and greetings located at Northwell Square, Northfield, New Jersey. On August 2nd, 1 p.m. will have a book signing August 9th, the next Saturday at 10 a.m.. Brand new Barnes Noble. The Spectrum at Reston Town Center is beautiful. I’ve been there in Reston, Virginia. Again, August 9th, 10 a.m.. Barnes and Noble, the Spectrum at Reston Town Center, Reston, Virginia. They also want to thank all the affiliates that are participating in this. I want to thank. How do I thank all the other platforms that are involved in this FOX that’s involved in this? I want to thank all of them as well. Very gracious with their, uh, with their time and availability. Most of all, I want to thank you. You know the publishing business right now. Book sales are way, way down. But I don’t believe that’s the case with you. It’s never been the case with you. You’re inquisitive. You want to learn as much as you can, and there’s multiple ways to do it. You can listen to certain radio shows, watch certain TV shows. But reading is, as they say, fundamental. And as I developed these thoughts and developed these these arguments. Which I hope you’ll find both compelling and intriguing and worthy of of your advancement. The only real way to lay it out is in the book. We’ll be right back.

Segment 4
The issue when it comes down to Obama and what he and members of his Cabinet did to President Trump and others was there was an effort to. To undermine his election and then undermine his presidency. I mean, I’m watching TV. I’m listening to legal analysts who say a lot of this information we already knew. That’s not the point. A lot of this information we already knew. Here it is in black and white from the government, because the Republicans, the Trump administration, now run the government and these agencies. And so the question is whether any crimes were committed. Now you don’t know. No, no. You don’t need to know definitively if crimes were committed before an investigation. But if you’re concerned about what took place in a significant way, that it could have undermined an election and undermine a presidency, it seems to me there’s precedent for an investigation. We just went through one and that was phony. It was a fraud. It was a fake involving Donald Trump. And January 6th here, the instrumentalities of the government were used against Donald Trump, and Barack Obama’s name now comes up more than once. The point is, he orchestrated it just as I suggested he did. He’s it. What is it? Over eight years ago now, which I guess eight and a half years ago. The idea that, as I said then, that Obama didn’t know what was going on right under his nose and in one or more meetings that he held in the Oval Office is preposterous. Congress has every right to subpoena him and question him. As a private citizen now, the January six committee. And are they going to have a special committee or just their usual committees of oversight? I mean, they they appointed a special counsel, a.k.a. prosecutor, to pursue Trump. The middle of an election. Obama can’t run again. He’s not running again. So to me, the argument that he should be investigated is a very strong one. The downside is a very weak one, including the argument that immunity the Supreme Court ruled for a president doing his official duties is not subject to charges and so forth. The issue there is and they made it clear in the opinion that during the course of the official duties, if it is believed that they committed a crime, then that’s prosecutable. But we’re not at that point, are we? The point we’re at is whether we launch or they launch a criminal investigation, which they should. And it is really precious to hear people now, particularly on the left and in the media, saying, we already knew most of this. Right, Mr. Producer? While they already knew most of it. They knew most of it because they printed most of it because they were they were collaborators. They aided and abetted. They used their news organizations to propound what was given to them by the Obama regime. That’s how I figured it out. Well, everybody else was snoring, I guess, but that’s how I figured it out, putting one piece together with the next. So this argument move along. We already knew this is not an argument at all. It’s an excuse. Intended to whitewash this. I’m going to discuss this on Saturdays. Life, Liberty and Levin. Even though it’s only Wednesday, I’ve decided. We’ll bring Brett Tolman, the U.S. attorney for Utah, on, and we will discuss this at some length. I haven’t done it yet, but that’s what I’m going to do. So all you other hosts out there are going to try and steal bread. It’s not going to work. So I swim in shark infested waters. We’ll be right back.