Michael Parenti
Biographic Data
| ID | 266276 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Parenti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Parenti |
| SIGNATURE | PARENTI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
L'assassinat de JFK: La Phobie De La Conspiration À Gauche
Imperialism, Crisis and Class Struggle: The Enduring Verities and Contemporary Face of Capitalism. Essays in Honour of James Petras
[This book of essays, written in honour of James Petras, address some of the most critical issues of our time: those of imperialism, crisis and class struggle. These issues allow the authors to identify both the ‘the enduring verities and contemporary face of capitalism’ and Petras’ contributions., This book of essays, written in honour of James Petras, address some of the most critical issues of our time: those of imperialism, crisis and class s…
Patricians, Professionals, and Political Science
This essay sketches the strictures put on political scholarship from the early days of patrician amateurs to modern academic professionals, with special attention given to the emergence of political science and the methodological and ideological issues that developed within that discipline. It is argued herein that although some degree of ethno-class variety was eventually achieved in academia, there has been a lag in ideological diversity. Polit…
God's Fundamentalist Politics: A Critical Review
What Does It Mean to Love One's Country
As a guest on radio talk shows, I have criticized aspects of U.S. foreign policy. On one such occasion, an irate listener called to ask me, “Don't you love your country?” Here was someone who saw fit to question my patriotism because I questioned the policies of U.S. leaders. The caller was manifesting a common symptom of what might be called “superpatriotism,” the tendency to place nationalistic pride and supremacy above every other public and e…
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
Throughout the ages there has prevailed a distressing symbiosis between religion and violence. The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with internecine vendettas, inquisitions, and wars. Again and again, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to terrorize and massacre heretics, infidels, and other sinners. Some people have argued that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic…
Determining Intent: Why Do US Leaders Intervene in Other Countries
How do we determine what are the motives of US leaders when they intervene in other countries either directly with US armed forces or indirectly with surrogate forces? Rather than accepting the policymakers’ claims at face value, we can look for patterns of intervention: what kinds of governments and political movements do US leaders support? What kind do they oppose and seek to destroy? And what socioeconomic goals do they pursue upon successful…
To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia
Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, Michael Parenti challenges mainstream media coverage of the war and uncovers hidden agendas behind the Western talk of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and democracy
Reflections on the Politics of Culture
In the academic social sciences, students are taught to think of culture as representing the customs and mores of a society, including its language, art, laws, and religion. Such a definition has a nice neutral sound to it, but culture is anything but neutral. Much of what is thought to be our common culture is the selective transmission of class-dominated values. Antonio Gramsci understood this when he spoke of class hegemony, noting that the st…
The Increasing Relevance of Marxism
(1998). The Increasing Relevance of Marxism. Socialism and Democracy: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 115-121
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
The Strange Death of President Zachary Taylor: A Case Study in the Manufacture of Mainstream History
Was President Zachary Taylor poisoned? Sometimes an event in history wins our attention not solely because of its generalizable significance but because of its inviting singularity. In addition, the Taylor case is a perfect example of how “pack journalists” and “pack historians” can settle a controversy by fiat, manufacturing orthodox conclusions out of thin air, in this instance telling us to believe in the “cherries and milk” death of a preside…
Free market “reform” and communism's suppression
Those who overthrew communism and took power in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989—1991 immediately set about to impose private corporate domination over cultural and politico‐economic life, purging communists from government, the media, courts, professions and universities. While presenting themselves as champions of democracy, they soon grew impatient with the way representative democracy hampered their efforts at imposing a harsh free…
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Blackshirts & Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology - terms often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark. Parenti shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privi…
The myth of good interventions
U.S. foreign policy officials claim they have intervened in other countries for worthy causes, such as carrying out humanitarian missions, defending weaker peoples from aggression, and bolstering democratic governments. Let us scrutinize these assertions
The Blessings of Private Enterprise
Years ago, my father drove a delivery truck for the Italian bakery owned by his uncle Torino. When Zi Torino returned to Italy in 1956, my father took over the entire business. The bread he made was the same bread that had been made in Gravina, Italy, for generations. After a whole day standing, it was fresh as ever, the crust having grown hard and crisp while the inside remained soft, solid, and moist. People used to say that our bread was a mea…
Dirty truths: Reflections on Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnic Life and Class Power
Political essays and poems. In Young People Are Different, he writes: "Hostage in their homes, / kept alive by the telephone / fully animated only when taking flight / in rough formation. / They rebel / so better to submit / to their totalitarian peerage
Serving the few
There are those who criticize U.S. foreign policy for its blunders and incoherence. To be sure, Washington policymakers are sometimes frustrated by unintended consequences, taken by surprise, or thwarted by forces beyond their control. They are neither infallible nor omnipotent. But neither are they the fools some people take them to be. Overall, U.S. foreign policy has been remarkably successful in undermining popular revolutions and buttressing…
Popular Sovereignty vs. the State
We might best think of the U.S. polity as a dual system. First, there are the elections, political personalities, public pronouncements, image engineering, and that handful of visible issues that bestir public officials and win passing attention in the media. This system is taught in the schools, dissected by academics, and gossiped about by news pundits.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are …
A devil in panama
In 1978, the United States and Panama signed a treaty to give the latter sovereignty over the Panama Canal by 1999. The canal had diminished in importance because of technical advances in transportation. But the United States remained concerned about its fourteen military bases in Panama and its Southern Command headquarters, which was the site for U.S. military and covert operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington was also uneasy …
Against Psychopolitics
Dividends Are Not Royalties: The SAT and Surplus Value
It has been frequently noted that I.Q. examinations, while professing to measure innate intelligence, are riddled with racial, gender, and class biases. Thus a low-income, inner-city youth, confronting a seemingly innocuous phrase like "behind the sofa" on an I.Q. test, may find it unfathomable, not realizing that it is just a middle-class way of saying "in back of the couch."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where mos…
Make-believe media: The Politics of Entertainment
Rejoinder to Dye and Zeigler
Professors Dye and Zeigler (D&Z) take the easy way out. They invite the reader to think of their present critic as one of those “academic Marxists” in the grip of a “secular religion” “insulated from world events, spinning out theoretical webs.” This approach enables them to rest secure in their ideological assumption that, while their critic is a hopeless ideologue, they themselves are value-free social scientists arguing closely from evidence. …
Socialism, Capitalism, and Militarism: A Reply to Dye and Zeigler
In the December 1989 issue of PS , Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler argue that socialist nations are inherently more militaristic than capitalist ones because they are “driven by the bureaucratic imperatives of a society organized on collective coercive principles.” In contrast, “capitalist states, whether authoritarian or democratic, rely principally upon markets to organize societal activity. Markets organize people for private enterprise and rely…
Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification
A question that has puzzled students of ethnic politics can be stated as follows: in the face of increasing assimilation why do ethnics continue to vote as ethnics with about the same frequency as in earlier decades? On the basis of his New Haven study, Robert Dahl observes that "... in spite of growing assimilation, ethnic factors continued to make themselves felt with astonishing tenacity." Nevertheless, he asserts, "the strength of ethnic ties…
Power and Pluralism: A View from the Bottom
Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants
Instances of political behavior which bear no rational relationship to maximizing a group's material and social self-interest may be explained as responses to subcultural factors. Religious groups in America, despite their generally high level of acculturation, still retain ethical and belief systems which influence basic conservativeliberal political orientations. The criteria used to distinguish sect from church seem to be of less importance in…
The Anti-Communist Impulse
Patricians, Professionals, and Political Science
This essay sketches the strictures put on political scholarship from the early days of patrician amateurs to modern academic professionals, with special attention given to the emergence of political science and the methodological and ideological issues that developed within that discipline. It is argued herein that although some degree of ethno-class variety was eventually achieved in academia, there has been a lag in ideological diversity. Polit…
Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media
The Strange Death of President Zachary Taylor: A Case Study in the Manufacture of Mainstream History
Was President Zachary Taylor poisoned? Sometimes an event in history wins our attention not solely because of its generalizable significance but because of its inviting singularity. In addition, the Taylor case is a perfect example of how “pack journalists” and “pack historians” can settle a controversy by fiat, manufacturing orthodox conclusions out of thin air, in this instance telling us to believe in the “cherries and milk” death of a preside…
The State of the Discipline: One Interpretation of Everyone's Favorite Controversy
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Possibilities for Political Change
What Does It Mean to Love One's Country
As a guest on radio talk shows, I have criticized aspects of U.S. foreign policy. On one such occasion, an irate listener called to ask me, “Don't you love your country?” Here was someone who saw fit to question my patriotism because I questioned the policies of U.S. leaders. The caller was manifesting a common symptom of what might be called “superpatriotism,” the tendency to place nationalistic pride and supremacy above every other public and e…
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
Throughout the ages there has prevailed a distressing symbiosis between religion and violence. The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with internecine vendettas, inquisitions, and wars. Again and again, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to terrorize and massacre heretics, infidels, and other sinners. Some people have argued that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic…
Determining Intent: Why Do US Leaders Intervene in Other Countries
How do we determine what are the motives of US leaders when they intervene in other countries either directly with US armed forces or indirectly with surrogate forces? Rather than accepting the policymakers’ claims at face value, we can look for patterns of intervention: what kinds of governments and political movements do US leaders support? What kind do they oppose and seek to destroy? And what socioeconomic goals do they pursue upon successful…
A devil in panama
In 1978, the United States and Panama signed a treaty to give the latter sovereignty over the Panama Canal by 1999. The canal had diminished in importance because of technical advances in transportation. But the United States remained concerned about its fourteen military bases in Panama and its Southern Command headquarters, which was the site for U.S. military and covert operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington was also uneasy …
Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, by Benjamin Barber
The Untold Story of the Greensboro Massacre
On November 3, 1979, a group of Klansmen and Nazis killed five Communist Workers Party leaders at an anti-Klan rally in Greensboro, N.C., and a year later those charged with the murders were acquitted. Four elements were necessary to carry out the massacre: (1) gunmen, (2) weapons, (3) information about the rally, and (4) effective organization and ambush tactics. Government agents helped provide all four. Indeed, had it not been for their effort…
Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification
A question that has puzzled students of ethnic politics can be stated as follows: in the face of increasing assimilation why do ethnics continue to vote as ethnics with about the same frequency as in earlier decades? On the basis of his New Haven study, Robert Dahl observes that "... in spite of growing assimilation, ethnic factors continued to make themselves felt with astonishing tenacity." Nevertheless, he asserts, "the strength of ethnic ties…
Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants
Instances of political behavior which bear no rational relationship to maximizing a group's material and social self-interest may be explained as responses to subcultural factors. Religious groups in America, despite their generally high level of acculturation, still retain ethical and belief systems which influence basic conservativeliberal political orientations. The criteria used to distinguish sect from church seem to be of less importance in…
The Underlying Political Values
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Power and Pluralism: A View from the Bottom
The Anti-Communist Impulse
The Possibilities for Political Change
Repression in Academia: A Report from the Field
Feedback
Richard R. Warner
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American Democratic Theory: Pluralism and Its Critics, by William Alton Kelso
Journal Article American Democratic Theory: Pluralism and Its Critics, by William Alton Kelso Get access American Democratic Theory: Pluralism and Its Critics by William Alton Kelso. Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1978. 288 pp. $18.95. Michael Parenti Michael Parenti Amherst, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 93, Issue 3, Fall 1978, Pages 519–520, https://…
Power and the Powerless
The Media Are the Mafia: Italian-American Images and the Ethnic Struggle
Italian-Americans have been rediscovered by the mass media. With stars like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Sylvester Stallone, and John Travolta punching, shooting, and dancing their way across the silver screen, the Italians have become, in the words of one critic, "Hollywood's favorite ethnic group." But at what price? And what meaning does it have for the Italian-American experience and, more generally, for the ethnic struggle in America?This artic…
Power and the Powerless
Electoral Politics and the Left: An Overview
(1981). Electoral politics and the left: An overview. New Political Science: Vol. 2, No. 1-2, pp. 35-41
The Untold Story of the Greensboro Massacre
On November 3, 1979, a group of Klansmen and Nazis killed five Communist Workers Party leaders at an anti-Klan rally in Greensboro, N.C., and a year later those charged with the murders were acquitted. Four elements were necessary to carry out the massacre: (1) gunmen, (2) weapons, (3) information about the rally, and (4) effective organization and ambush tactics. Government agents helped provide all four. Indeed, had it not been for their effort…
The State of the Discipline: One Interpretation of Everyone's Favorite Controversy
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, by Benjamin Barber
Philip Meranto
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Inventing reality: The Politics of the Mass Media
New Media Politics: Comparative Perspectives in Western Europe
Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media
The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism Revolution and the Arms Race
Rejoinder to Dye and Zeigler
Professors Dye and Zeigler (D&Z) take the easy way out. They invite the reader to think of their present critic as one of those “academic Marxists” in the grip of a “secular religion” “insulated from world events, spinning out theoretical webs.” This approach enables them to rest secure in their ideological assumption that, while their critic is a hopeless ideologue, they themselves are value-free social scientists arguing closely from evidence. …
Socialism, Capitalism, and Militarism: A Reply to Dye and Zeigler
In the December 1989 issue of PS , Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler argue that socialist nations are inherently more militaristic than capitalist ones because they are “driven by the bureaucratic imperatives of a society organized on collective coercive principles.” In contrast, “capitalist states, whether authoritarian or democratic, rely principally upon markets to organize societal activity. Markets organize people for private enterprise and rely…
Make-believe media: The Politics of Entertainment
Political science (35 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Law (29 works) · Politics (27 works) · Law (20 works) · History (15 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Communism (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works)