How Michael Parenti helped clarify the class war

With the death of Marxist thinker and anti-imperialist advocate Michael Parenti, many on the left have been reflecting on his life. For anyone committed to the working class struggle, Michael Parenti represented a strong voice against fascism and U.S. imperialism in an academic landscape dominated by State Department mouthpieces. 

I read Parenti for the first time in the autumn of 2016 at the ripe age of 23. Trump had just been elected for the first time, and it shook the world of this particular second-year law student. That fall began a journey from liberalism and soft zionism to revolutionary working-class thought and action. 

Parenti was a crucial part of that journey. Where before I had seen possibilities for reform within capitalism and compromise, Parenti’s writings helped show me the complete class antagonism of the ruling class. “Blackshirts and Reds,” Parenti’s historical analysis of fascism not as a movement outside of capitalism, but as a tool of the broader capitalist class, opened all sorts of thought windows for the once moderate young law student. 

As the Trump crisis deepened, Parenti’s telling of Hitler and Mussolini’s respective rises to power rang more and more in my mind. Beginning in 2016 and continuing to this day, one can see Parenti’s analysis play out in real time. Parenti analyzes in great detail how the first move of fascism is always to crush the institutions of the working class: labor unions, social movements, and any regulatory system given as a concession to an oppressed group. And to enforce this attack on the working class, capitalism uses “black shirts” or “brown shirts.” Then, it was the Squadristi and Sturmabteilung. Today, it is ICE and the militarized police system. 

Watching Parenti’s historic analysis shape how I viewed the world was part of the readings and experiences that led me to the conclusion that the only solution is socialist revolution.

Parenti spent his life fighting against imperialism and fascism. Whether it was the zionist genocide on Palestine, the U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia, or the brutal imperialist blockade on Cuba, Parenti stood on the side of the working class and the oppressed people of the world. 

For that, he will be remembered by many, including me. Michael Parenti presenté!