communistquotes/quotes/Michael Parenti.csv

author,linktitle,link,quote
`Michael Parenti`,`The Anti-Communist Impulse (1970)`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/books.html`,`Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.`
`Michael Parenti`,`The 1% Pathology And The Myth of Capitalism`,`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyX7GNHYkQ&t=218`,`In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.`
`Michael Parenti`,`The Nobel Peace Prize for War (2014)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/10/18/nobel-peace-prize-war`,`For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious workers, peasants, students, and others in countries around the world. His eldest brother played an active role in a CIA-front group. Another brother established an intelligence operation with the CIA, which included a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet to foment insurgency. The Dalai Lama was no pacifist. He supported the U.S./NATO military intervention into Afghanistan, also the 78 days' bombing of Yugoslavia and the destruction of that country.`
`Michael Parenti`,`The Nobel Peace Prize for War (2014)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/10/18/nobel-peace-prize-war`,`In sum, the Nobel Peace Prize often has nothing to do with peace and too much to do with war. It frequently sees "peace" through the eyes of the western plutocracy. For that reason alone, we should not join in the applause.`
`Michael Parenti`,`North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/06/20/north-korea-sanity-brink`,`Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro, Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and others.`
`Michael Parenti`,`North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/06/20/north-korea-sanity-brink`,`After years of encirclement and repeated rebuffs from Washington, years of threat, isolation, and demonization, the Pyongyang leaders are convinced that the best way to resist superpower attack and domination is by developing a nuclear arsenal. It does not really sound so crazy. As already mentioned, the United States does not invade countries that are armed with long-range nuclear missiles (at least not thus far). Having been pushed to the brink for so long, the North Koreans are now taking a gamble, upping the ante, pursuing an arguably “sane” deterrence policy in the otherwise insane world configured by an overweening and voracious empire.`
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.`
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Some writers stress the "irrational" fearures of fascism. By doing so, they over look the rational politico-economic functions that fascism performed. Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols. Certainly, this is true of fascist ideology, whose emotive appeals have served a class-control function.`
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`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 serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.`
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`The overthrow of communism gave a green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer constrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West.`
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism and imperialism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it. `
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history. `
`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Putting an end to the population explosion will not of itself save the ecosphere, but not ending it will add greatly to the dangers the planet faces. The environment can sustain a quality of life for just so many people.`
Add some Parenti quotes 2020-02-07 16:14:31 +00:00			`author,linktitle,link,quote`
			`Michael Parenti`,`The Anti-Communist Impulse (1970)`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/books.html`,`Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`The 1% Pathology And The Myth of Capitalism`,`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyX7GNHYkQ&t=218`,`In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`The Nobel Peace Prize for War (2014)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/10/18/nobel-peace-prize-war`,`For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious workers, peasants, students, and others in countries around the world. His eldest brother played an active role in a CIA-front group. Another brother established an intelligence operation with the CIA, which included a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet to foment insurgency. The Dalai Lama was no pacifist. He supported the U.S./NATO military intervention into Afghanistan, also the 78 days' bombing of Yugoslavia and the destruction of that country.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`The Nobel Peace Prize for War (2014)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/10/18/nobel-peace-prize-war`,`In sum, the Nobel Peace Prize often has nothing to do with peace and too much to do with war. It frequently sees "peace" through the eyes of the western plutocracy. For that reason alone, we should not join in the applause.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/06/20/north-korea-sanity-brink`,`Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro, Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and others.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)`,`https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/06/20/north-korea-sanity-brink`,`After years of encirclement and repeated rebuffs from Washington, years of threat, isolation, and demonization, the Pyongyang leaders are convinced that the best way to resist superpower attack and domination is by developing a nuclear arsenal. It does not really sound so crazy. As already mentioned, the United States does not invade countries that are armed with long-range nuclear missiles (at least not thus far). Having been pushed to the brink for so long, the North Koreans are now taking a gamble, upping the ante, pursuing an arguably “sane” deterrence policy in the otherwise insane world configured by an overweening and voracious empire.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Some writers stress the "irrational" fearures of fascism. By doing so, they over look the rational politico-economic functions that fascism performed. Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols. Certainly, this is true of fascist ideology, whose emotive appeals have served a class-control function.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`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 serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`The overthrow of communism gave a green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer constrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West.`
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism and imperialism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it. `
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history. `
			`Michael Parenti`,`Blackshirts and Reds`,`http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html`,`Putting an end to the population explosion will not of itself save the ecosphere, but not ending it will add greatly to the dangers the planet faces. The environment can sustain a quality of life for just so many people.`