Essential Reading & Viewing for Ignorant Conservatives

Respected intellectual & academic, Michael Parenti passed away at the end of January. He is an essential figure to read, watch, or listen to for anyone that considers themselves on the left.

Many online will fondly refer to the formation of their leftist politics from "yellow Parenti," referring to his 80's lectures that have a distorted yellow tint.

Below is a short using a clip of one of those yellow Parenti lectures and Parenti's longer speech on Race, Gender, and Class Struggle (from the Bush years) along with a few quotes. If looking at his books, start with Contrary Notions: The Parenti Reader or Blackshirts & Reds. Additional Parenti lectures can be found on Youtube.

Links:

• The Nature of Capitalism
  https://youtu.be/FiPUpcvbBak?
  
  
• Race, Gender, & Class Struggle
  https://youtu.be/t_xrGHDZVwI?t=157
  
  
• Quotes:
  "Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a 'new order' while preserving the old hierarchy of property and power."
  -Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism.
  Michael Parenti
  
  
• "The Free Market core mythology, to which both parties in this country and just about all mainstream political commentators are wedded, argues in effect that the most ruthless, selfish, opportunistic, greedy, calculating plunderers, applying the most heartless measures in cold-blooded pursuit of corporate interests and wealth accumulation will produce the best results for all of us, through something called the invisible hand."
  - Michael Parenti
  
  
• "The press does many things and serves many functions but its major role, its irreducible responsibility, is to continually recreate a view of reality supportive of existing social and economic class power."
  -Excerpt From: Inventing Reality.
  Michael Parenti
  
  
• "The real terrorists of this world do not live in caves or desert camps. They wear designer suits and sit in corporate boardrooms and government offices."
  -Michael Parenti
  
  
• Dr. Michael Parenti on Conspiracy Theories:
  https://youtu.be/Z7yh9fBS2QQ?
  
  
• The Life & Work of Michael Parenti: A Tribute With His Son, Christian Parenti (Grayzone Interview)
  https://youtu.be/ynp4_Y7JetU?