Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti
Born	30 September 1933 (age 91) Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	Statesian
Political orientation	Anti-imperialism Communism Statesian nationalism
Political party	Liberty Union Party (1974)
Website
https://www.michael-parenti.org

Michael John Parenti (born 30 September 1933 in Manhattan, New York City) is a Statesian political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who wrote on scholarly and popular subjects. He taught at US and international universities and was a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences. Michael Parenti is the father of Christian Parenti.

Parenti's writings covered a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life.

In 1974, Parenti ran in Vermont on the democratic socialist Liberty Union Party ticket for U.S. Congress and received 7.1% of the vote. This run was done with Bernie Sanders who at the time was friends with Parenti. This friendship ended when NATO waged war on Yugoslavia. While Bernie stood with the imperialists, Parenti stood with the anti-imperialists.

Political views

Statesian nationalism

Parenti is a Statesian patriot. While he is very critical of Statesian policy (both domestic and foreign), while he acknowledges that the United States has always been imperialist since its very inception, and while he criticises the patriotism of the ruling class, he nonetheless upholds the existence of the United States and advocates for Statesian patriotism.

Parenti condemns anti-Americanism and the desecration of Statesian national symbols, arguing that it alienates the Statesian people and allows US leaders to brand all opposition as "anti-American". He calls it a "mistake" to blame the United States for what was being done in its name, even when the country is intrinsically linked to those things. Furthermore, he attributes the hatred of the US by many people in the New Left to its supposed "anarchist tendencies", noting that anarchists likewise view the state as the problem rather than the class it serves.

Parenti tries to distinguish between the jingoistic, chauvinistic, imperialistic patriotism of the ruling class which he dubs "superpatriotism" and his brand of "real patriotism". According to him, the "superpatriots" don't actually love their country, its history, its people, its culture, or any of its supposed virtues (freedom, democracy, or economic opportunity). To them, "America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag." "Real patriots" by contrast, he writes, "care enough about their country to want to improve it." "Real patriots" advocate for a different United States, a United States by and for the Statesian people. "Real patriots" find other things in their history to be proud of than the "superpatriots" and champion other figures.

This is why unlike many other Statesian patriots, Parenti does not glorify the Founding Fathers or figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He argues that those rulers, who overwhelmingly came from wealthy, affluent, propertied backgrounds, actually opposed popular rule, and that many of their supposed "achievements" (such as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the reduction of child labour, and the New Deal) came in whole or in part as reluctant concessions from the ruling class in light of popular agitation.

What Parenti fails to realise is that there is no other United States. Capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism are intrinsic to the United States, and trying to remedy these issues would mean the death of the state. Patriotism in the Statesian context is not a love of the people, the culture, or of democracy, but of the settler colonial project, i.e., the state.

Library works by Michael Parenti

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Articles

• Kozy with the Klan (1992), an excerpt from his book America Besieged (1998) published on his website as a standalone article
• Imperialism 101, an excerpt from his book Against Empire (1995) published on his website as a standalone article
• Free Speech—At a Price, an excerpt from his book Dirty Truths (1996) published on his website as a standalone article
• Hidden Holocaust, USA, an excerpt from his book Dirty Truths (1996) published on his website as a standalone article
• The JFK Assassination: Defending the Gangster State (1996, 2013), an excerpt from his book Dirty Truths (1996) published on his website as a standalone article
• Rational Fascism, an excerpt from his book Blackshirts and Reds (1997) published on his website as a standalone article
• The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia (1999)
• Yugoslav Sojourn: Notes from the Other Side (2000)
• The Super Rich Are Out Of Sight (2000)
• The Media and their Atrocities (2000)
• Defying the Sanctions: A Flight to Iraq (2001)
• Monopoly Media Manipulation (2001)
• Terrorism Meets Reactionism (2001)
• Media Moments (2002)
• To Kill Iraq (2003)
• The Demonization of Slobodan Milosevic (2003)
• Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth (2003, 2004, 2007)
• Empires, Old and New (2004)
• Are Heterosexuals Worthy of Marriage? (2004)
• Good Things Happening in Venezuela (2005)
• In the Reactionary Era of “No Alternative” (2005)
• How the Free Market Killed New Orleans (2005)
• Right-Wing Judicial Activism (2005)
• Government by Giveaway (2005)
• Custom Against Women, an excerpt from his book The Culture Struggle (2006) published on ZNetwork as a standalone article
• The Hidden Politics of Deficit Spending (2006)
• Still Soft on (Corporate) Crime (2006)
• The Stolen Presidential Elections (2006, 2007)
• Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World (2006)
• The Cuban Five and US Terrorism (2006)
• Globalization and Democracy: Some Basics (2007)
• Gender Savagery in Guatemala (2007)
• Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints (2007)
• Bad Boys, Nasty Boys: Out of the GOP's Closet (2008)
• Dubious Design (2008)
• Afghanistan, Another Untold Story (2008)
• Capitalism's Self-Inflicted Apocalypse (2009)
• North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)
• The Honduras Coup: Is Obama Innocent? (2009)
• Italian American Identity: To Be or Not To Be (2009)
• What Do Empires Do? (2010)
• Cuban Prisoners, Here and There (2010)
• Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle (2010)
• Death and Profits: The Utility Protection Racket (2010)
• Money Is Still the Name of the Game (2010)
• The Mafia and Me (2011)
• Profit Pathology and Disposable Planet (2011)
• Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy (2011)
• Class Warfare Indeed (2011)
• Occupy America (2011)
• Must We Adore Vaclav Havel? (2011), an excerpt from his book Blackshirts and Reds (1997) published on ZNetwork as a standalone article
• Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account (2011)
• Free Market Health Care: True Stories (2012)
• Iran and Everything Else (2012)
• The Nobel Peace Prize for War (2012)
• A Terrible Normality (2013)
• Eating Horses In Paris (2013)
• Requiem for a Dominatrix (2013)
• I Have a Dream, a Blurred Vision (2013)
• Syria, Sarin, and Casus Belli (2013)
• 85 Billionaires and the Better Half (2014)
• What's a Slum? (2014), an excerpt from his book Waiting for Yesterday (2013) published on his website as a standalone article
• Ukraine and Regime Change, an excerpt from Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III (2014) by Stephen Lendman, published on his website as a standalone article
• 1918: On When a War Ended (Though Others Would Follow) (2014)
• A Long Time For Killing (2015)
• The Lost Women (2015)

Books

• The Anti-Communist Impulse (1969)
• Trends and Tragedies in American Foreign Policy (1971)
• Democracy for the Few (1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2011)
• Ethnic and Political Attitudes: A Depth Study of Italian Americans (1975)
• Power and the Powerless (1978)
• Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (1986, 1993)
• The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race (1989)
• Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (1992)
• Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (1994)
• Against Empire (1995)
• Dirty Truths (1996)
• Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)
• America Besieged (1998)
• History as Mystery (1999)
• To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia (2001)
• The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond (2002)
• The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)
• Superpatriotism (2004)
• The Culture Struggle (2006)
• Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (2007)
• God and His Demons (2010)
• The Face of Imperialism (2011)
• Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life (2013)
• Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies (2015)

Interviews

• Exposing the Terrorism Trap (2002)
• Interviewing Michael Parenti about The Culture Struggle (2006)
• The Shape of Things to Come in Libya: Interview with Michael Parenti (2011)
• Reflections on Politics and Academia: An Interview with Michael Parenti (2012)
• The Corporate University: An E-interview with Dave Hill, Alpesh Maisuria, Anthony Nocella, and Michael Parenti (2015)

Journal articles

• Review of A New Survey of the Social Sciences (1964)
• Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants (1967)
• Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification (1967)
• Review of Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (1970)
• The Possibilities for Political Change (1970)
• Power and Pluralism (1970)
• Repression in Academia: A Report from the Field (1971)
• Review of The New Socialist Revolution (1973)
• Reviewing the Reviewers: Ideological Bias in the APSR Book Section (1974)
• The Blessings of Private Enterprise (1974, 1996)
• A Third Party Emerges in Vermont (1975)
• Rocco's Life: A Documentary, Circa 1940 (1981)
• The Untold Story of the Greensboro Massacre (1981)
• The State of the Discipline: One Interpretation of Everyone's Favorite Controversy (1983)
• Socialism, Capitalism, and Militarism: A Reply to Dye and Zeigler (1990)
• Rejoinder to Dye and Zeigler (1990)
• Serving the Few (1995)
• The Increasing Relevance of Marxism (1998)
• Reflections on the Politics of Culture (1999)

Letters

• Witnesses (1970)
• Newfound 'Brutality' in Iran (1979)
• What If Communists Had Links to Dr. King? (1983)
• Presidential Slander Of a U.S. Multitude (1984)
• What Reagan Means by Judicial Responsibility (1985)
• Politics of the Press (1986)
• In Spirit of Glasnost, a Half-Toast to Perestroika (1989)
• Limitation on Incumbency (1991)

Magazine articles

• The Bogey of Revolution (1968)
• The High Cost of Empire (1981)
• Is Nicaragua More Democratic Than the United States? (1986)
• Bush's Splendid Little War (1991)
• Global Rollback After Communism (2002)

Newspaper articles

• Is It Really Freedom of Speech? Millions of Americans Cannot Be Heard (1975)
• A 'Double Standard' in Reporting News From Portugal (1976)
• The Lies of William Colby (1976)
• Housing Disinterest Has Damaging Impact on Life (1978)
• Winging It In Politics (1980)
• Foreign-Policy Immorality Has No Excuse (1984)
• In "Defence" of "Star Wars" (1986)
• Image is Everything (1991)
• Athletic jingoism (1999)

Speeches

• US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR (1986)

Misc

• Introduction in Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (1998) by Nancy Snow
• Class and Virtue in Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (1999) by Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon
• The Logic of U.S. Interventionism in Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire (2003) by Carl Boggs
• Foreword in Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy (2010) by Matthew Alford

Recordings

• 1986: Monopoly Culture and Academic Freedom at the University of Vermont, 9 April 1986
• 1986: US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR at the University of Colorado Boulder, 15 April 1986
• 1986: Michael Parenti at Loyola University at Loyola University New Orleans, 23 April 1986
• 1986: Anti-Sovietism in the Media at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 20 November 1986
• 1987: The Political Uses of Religion in Denver, Colorado, 18 April 1987
• 1988: Superpatriotism and the Importance of Being Number One in Boulder, Colorado, 1 August 1988
• 1989: The Sword and the Dollar in Thunder Bay, Ontario, 27 October 1989
• 1990: Human Nature and Politics in Los Angeles, California, May 1990
• 1991: Corporatism and the U.S. Political Scene, 1991
• 1993: Conspiracy and State Power at the University of Vermont, 21 April 1993
• 1993: Inventing Reality, 17 October 1993
• 1997: The Hidden Ideology of the News Media at the University of Vermont, Burlington, 9 April 1997
• 1999: The U.S. Empire and the War against Yugoslavia at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, Berkeley, 1999
• 1999: Berkeley Mother's Day for Peace 1999 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park, Berkeley, 9 May 1999
• 1999: The U.S. War on Yugoslavia in Seattle, Washington, 16 May 1999
• 2002: The Corporate War Against Democracy at Portland State University, 14 September 2002
• 2002: Terrorism, Globalism, and Conspiracy at St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church, Vancouver, 9 October 2002
• 2003: The Assassination of Julius Caesar in Venice, Colorado, 29 June 2003
• 2004: Creating a Sustainable Economy at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, California, 24 June 2004
• 2005: Michael Parenti on Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2005), 23 May 2005
• 2005: Iraq and the Future of US Foreign Policy at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, 18 April 2005
• 2005: The Darker Myths of Empire: Heart of Darkness Series at the College of DuPage, 16 November 2005
• 2007: Lies, Wars, & Empire at Binghamton University, 9 October 2007
• 2010: Deep Ideology: How Reactionary Agendas Shape Political Awareness at the University Inn & Conference Center, Santa Cruz, 14–16 May 2010
• 2011: The Face of Imperialism and The 99% Solution at the University of Guelph, 2 November 2011
• 2012: Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth at the La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley, 6 January 2012
• 2013: Michael Parenti on the Threat of US Imperialism in Vancouver, British Columbia, November 2013
• 2015: Capitalism vs. Reality in Springfield, Illinois, 6 October 2015