Book Blog: Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti

Editor’s note: after struggling against online censorship and some procrastinating, I’m getting around to reorganizing my website. As part of that process, I’m posting links to older content that I will never find again otherwise.

This activity is beyond tedious, but necessary for my archives. Please bear with me in the meantime and thanks for all your support.

 

The Tragedy of a Unipolar World Order

Originally published on November 26th, 2020, this essay-length discussion is a better example of what I want out of a Book Blog post in that it’s more than just a quote, a blurb, and a link to a PDF you can read for free. Unfortunately, it still isn’t much of a book review because I spent my time gushing about Michael Parenti and responding to weird faux-left accusations that the professor is an “apologist for Stalin.” This matters because reading Parenti has changed my life and I’d hate for neophytes to ignore his work because of anti-communist ghost stories about dead Russians. You should read Parenti because he’s brilliant, and he’s often right; but factually, he’s not an apologist for anyone.

As for Blackshirts and Reds itself, the book has become a sort of analytical bible that describes not only what a Pig Empire dominated world under capitalist triumphalism looks like, but also why the absence of a left wing alternative has invariably lead us towards fascist police states. Parenti’s clear understanding of the relationship between capitalism and fascism, as well as the importance of a socialist alternative that is now lacking, provide a road map for the post-War on Terror, post-2008 financial tsunami world. Which is impressive because Parenti published Blackshirts and Reds in 1997.

The book has also been called an excellent introduction to Marxist thought, but honestly I just think Parenti writes about basic Marxist concepts because he is in fact a Marxist historian and political theorist. Obviously no man, even a brilliant man like Parenti, is wholly infallible; but I’ve simply never read one of the professor’s books without learning something profoundly important that has gone on to alter my own socialist praxis.

 

“In other words, Parenti is and has always been precisely who he says he is: a Marxist critic of capitalism and imperialism who possesses a profound understanding of class struggle in a fully modernized world. Naturally, that doesn’t make him very popular with sellouts and faux-leftists who seek to square the circle between embracing capitalism and engaging in left wing politics – and those are the folks “on the left” who always get the megaphone in a society utterly dominated by corporate, capitalist ideology.

In the immortal words of Al Pacino (as Satan, in the Devil’s Advocate) you might want to “consider the source, son” when reflecting on the veracity of the numerous smear campaigns conducted against Parenti’s invaluable work – dismissing him as a pie in the sky Red, is a good way to spend the rest of your life believing Noam Chomsky is a revolutionary and never actually challenging the source of the problems that plague labor class life; namely capitalism.”

 

To check it out on my Can’t You Read blog, click on the header or the image below:

 

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti on CYR

 

 

 

• nina illingworth

 

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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