Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti
Parenti in 2004
Born	Michael John Parenti (1933-09-30) September 30, 1933 New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Education	City College of New York (BA) Brown University (MA) Yale University (PhD)
Occupation	Political scientist Author Historian Activist
Years active	1967–present
Notable work	Democracy for the Few To Kill a Nation Superpatriotism Blackshirts and Reds
Political party	Liberty Union Party
Children	Christian Parenti
Website	michaelparenti.org

Michael John Parenti (born September 30, 1933) is an American political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at American and international universities and has been a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences.

Education and personal life

Michael Parenti was raised by an Italian-American working class family in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City. After graduating from high school, Parenti worked for several years. Upon returning to school, he received a B.A. from the City College of New York, an M.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. Parenti is the father of Christian Parenti, an author and contributor to The Nation.

Career

For many years Parenti taught political and social science at various institutions of higher learning. Eventually he devoted himself full-time to writing, public speaking, and political activism. He is the author of 23 books and many more articles. His works have been translated into at least 18 languages. Parenti lectures frequently throughout the United States and abroad.

Parenti's writings cover a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life. His influential book Democracy for the Few, now in its ninth edition, is a critical analysis of U.S. society, economy, and political institutions and a college-level political science textbook published by Wadsworth Publishing. In recent years he has addressed such subjects as "Empires: Past and Present," "US Interventionism: the Case of Iraq," "Race, Gender, and Class Power," "Ideology and History," "The Overthrow of Communism," and "Terrorism and Globalization."

In 1974, Parenti ran in Vermont on the democratic socialist Liberty Union Party ticket for U.S. Congress and received 7% of the vote. Parenti was once a friend of Bernie Sanders, with whom he later split over Sanders's support for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

In the 1980s, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. In Washington, D.C., in 2003, the Caucus for a New Political Science gave him a Career Achievement Award. In 2007, he received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee and an award from New Jersey Peace Action.

He served for 12 years as a judge for Project Censored. He also is on the advisory boards of Independent Progressive Politics Network and Education Without Borders as well as the advisory editorial boards of New Political Science and Nature, Society and Thought.

Appearances in media

Apart from several recordings of some of his public speeches, Parenti has also appeared in the 1992 documentary Panama Deception, the 2004 Liberty Bound and 2013 Fall and Winter documentaries as an author and social commentator.

Parenti was interviewed in Boris Malagurski's documentary film The Weight of Chains 2 (2014). He was also interviewed for two episodes of the Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, speaking briefly about the Dalai Lama (Episode 305 – Holier Than Thou) and patriotism (Episode 508 – Mount Rushmore).

New York City-based punk rock band Choking Victim use a number of samples from Michael Parenti's lectures in their album No Gods, No Managers.

Bibliography

Articles

• Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification
  The American Political Science Review, Vol. 61, No. 3, 1967. (pp. 717–726)

• Review Symposium: Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding
  Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1970. (pp. 329–341)

• The Possibilities for Political Change
  Politics & Society, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1970. (pp. 79–90)

• Power and Pluralism: A View from the Bottom
  The Journal of Politics, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1970. (pp. 501–530)

• Repression in Academia: A Report from the Field
  Politics & Society, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1971. (pp. 527–537)

• Book Review: The New Socialist Revolution
  Critical Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1974. (pp. 87–91)

• Is Nicaragua More Democratic Than the United States?
  CovertAction Information Bulletin, No. 26, 1986. (p. 68)

• State Power and the JFK Assassination
  Prevailing Winds, No. 1, 1997. (pp. 31–39)

• Methods of Media Manipulation
  The Humanist, Vol. 57, No. 4, 1997. (pp. 5–7)

Books

• The Anti-Communist Impulse. Random House, 1970.
• Trends and Tragedies in American Foreign Policy. Little, Brown, 1971.
• Ethnic and Political Attitudes. Arno Press, 1975. ISBN 0-405-06413-6
• Democracy for the Few. c.1974.
  • 8th edition, 2007. ISBN 978-0-495-00744-9
• Power and the Powerless. St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-63372-6, ISBN 0-312-63373-4
• Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media. 1986. ISBN 0-312-02013-9
  • 2nd Edition, 1993. ISBN 0-312-08629-6
• The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race. St. Martin's Press, 1989. ISBN 0-312-02295-6
• Make-Believe Media: the Politics of Entertainment. St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-05603-6, ISBN 0-312-05894-2
• Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America. St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09497-3, ISBN 0-312-09841-3
• Against Empire. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995. ISBN 0-87286-298-4, ISBN 978-0-87286-298-2
  • Chapter 1 available online.
• Dirty Truths. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996. Includes some autobiographical essays. ISBN 0-87286-317-4, ISBN 0-87286-318-2
• Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997. ISBN 0-87286-329-8, ISBN 0-87286-330-1
• America Besieged. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998. ISBN 0-87286-338-7, ISBN 0-87286-338-7
• History as Mystery. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1999). ISBN 0-87286-357-3, ISBN 0-87286-364-6
• To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia. Verso, 2002. ISBN 1-85984-776-5
• The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002. ISBN 0-87286-405-7
• The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome. The New Press, 2003. ISBN 1-56584-797-0.
• Superpatriotism. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2004. ISBN 978-0-87286-433-7
• The Culture Struggle. Seven Stories Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58322-704-0, ISBN 978-1-58322-704-6
• Contrary Notions (City Lights Books, 2007). ISBN 0-87286-482-0, ISBN 978-0-87286-482-5
• God and His Demons. Prometheus Books, 2010.
• The Face of Imperialism Paradigm, 2011.
• Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life Bordighera Press, 2013.
• Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies Routledge, 2015.

Book chapters

• "American Foreign Policy: A Tragic 'Success'." In: Curtis, Alan (ed). Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield; Washington, D.C.: Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, 2004, pp. 159-168.

See also

• Slavoj Zizek
• Richard D. Wolff
• Noam Chomsky

External links

• Michael Parenti Political Archive maintained by Michael Parenti
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Booknotes interview with Parenti on The Assassination of Julius Caesar, September 7, 2003, C-SPAN

Michael Parenti's articles

• Dubious Design (Creationism & Intelligent Design)

Audio

• Talks by Michael Parenti – MP3 format.
• TUC Radio's Michael Parenti Archive – recordings available for purchase.
• Michael Parenti talks about “The Culture Struggle” May 2007 on Democracy Now radio.
• October 2006 interview on KPFA radio.