Parenti, Michael

PARENTI, MICHAEL (1933–2026). Born in East Harlem, New York to an Italian-American working-class family, Parenti earned a PhD from Yale University, after which he published his first book, The Anti-Communist Impulse, in 1969. The ideas Parenti promoted were distinct from those of the New Left published at the time. While the New Left sharply distanced itself from the Communist movements of the twentieth century, Parenti embraced them and recontextualized communism within a framework that would be palatable to those who had yet to give up Marxist-Leninism.

In 1986, Parenti made his mark on the academic mainstream with the publication of Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media, a sharp critique of conservative bias in mass media. The book garnered the attention of Michael Pollan of the New York Times, who both praised and disparaged it in his review. Inventing Reality has often been compared to Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988). Critics charge the latter book with rehashing Inventing Reality, but from a more “New Left” lens.

With the New Left’s influence on socialism post-2010 greatly diminished, many young people and organizations returned to the ideas of the Old Left. These ideas found a home on YouTube and various social media platforms, and videos of Parenti’s speeches circulated within a growing Marxist movement following Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Parenti clearly and concisely argued that existing third-world countries are not poor because they are underdeveloped, but because they are overexploited. He linked anti-poverty efforts in the third world to the communist movement, pointing out that communist countries have a better track record of feeding their people, providing medical care, and creating literacy programs than capitalist countries do. For this reason, Parenti advanced the thesis that communism has benefited millions of people.

The work of Michael Parenti continues to find a home among current American Marxist-Leninist organizations. His writings are widely studied in the Workers World Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, CPUSA, and even some DSA chapters and caucuses. His most widely read book among the modern American left, Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism to Defeat Communism (1969), showcases Parenti’s lasting thesis, namely, that fascism is a rational movement of the capitalist class to preserve their wealth.

Parenti, Michael. The Anti-Communist Impulse. Random House, 1969.

Parenti, Michael. Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media. St. Martin’s Press, 1986.

Herman, E.S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media. Pantheon Books, 1988.

Parenti, Michael. Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism to Defeat Communism. City Lights Books, 1997.

“Yellow Parenti Lecture (1986).” YouTube, uploaded by James Thompson, 23 Oct. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8CzlFhc14.