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There is a section in this response I think needs addressing. And that is the section where you say:

"So how can ‘inequality of power’, per se, pose a threat to Western civilization and the freedoms we value given that inequality has always been a condition of such societies (as with all others)? This notion that anything like an equal distribution of power can be achieved is a silly chimera typically raised by those with communist sympathies hankering after a ‘classless society’, the attempt to gain which has produced some of the worst dystopias in human history."

There is a risk here of equivocating the Marxist understanding of 'classless society' with 'powerless society'. The former refers to the means of production being held collectively, with no groups possessing most of the goods whilst other groups possessing the least. The Marxist understanding does not presuppose no one in positions of authority. For example, Marx and Engels describe many pre-argricultural societies as 'primitive communism', because due to no surplus value being accumulated from agriculture, the goods were distributed equally. This one of the initial observations that influenced the Marxist theory of historical materialism.

Marx and Engels were aware that there were Indigenous people in positions of authority, so the 'classless society' they are referring to is the hoarding of the means of production, not the abscence of authority figures. Hence, your claim that classless societies are a silly chimera either faces the problem that classless societies have existed if you use the Marxist sense, or you conflate classless society with powerless society which commits the fallacy of equivocation.

That said, the quote you use from Andris does say "inequalities of power" so similar objections may also apply to him. Nonetheless, this is a distinction worth noting.