Michael Parenti (1933-2026)

Our Red Flag Dips

Michael Parenti (1933-2026) died today. He has, as his son Christian said, 'gone to the Great Lecture Hall in the Sky'. A socialist from early into his life till the very end, Michael Parenti wrote in a feisty way and spoke bluntly the truths that were not always easy to digest in a wretched capitalist system. He was a fierce critic of imperialist wars and suffered the consequences of this because he could keep and then hold academic jobs even in liberal states such as Vermont.

The toughest test for all of us came when the USSR collapsed, and it was in this period that Michael Parenti played an important role in the Battle of Ideas, fighting the reactionary Western media and the intellectual cowardice of his peers. His books on Yugoslavia's destruction earned him terrible attacks, which he brushed off as the necessary price you pay in this struggle. In the midst of it all, Michael wrote 'Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism' (1997), a rebuttal to the anti-Marxist and anti-Communist blather that had begun to infect the world. The book remains an essential tool to fight against the ridiculous anti-communist historiography that demeans the great achievements of the workers' movements.

He spent the last period of his life within himself, which was a loss to the rest of us, and now his departure leaves us without that anchor which he provided.

Michael Parenti. Comrade. Our Red Flag dips in your honour.