World Mourns Michael Parenti, Marxist Voice Against Empire Dies at 92

The global left is mourning the death of Michael Parenti, the influential Marxist scholar, historian, and public intellectual whose work exposed the mechanics of capitalism, imperialism, and ideological power with unmatched clarity. Parenti passed away on January 24 at the age of 92, leaving behind a body of work that shaped generations of scholars, organizers, and anti-imperialist movements across the world.

For decades, Parenti stood apart from mainstream academia and political life, refusing to dilute his analysis or bend his language to liberal respectability. He wrote not to impress institutions, but to arm people with understanding.

Working-class roots, uncompromising politics

Born in 1933 in New York City to a working-class Italian American family, Parenti often said that his political commitments were grounded not in abstraction, but in lived experience. Class was not something he discovered in theory; it was something he grew up inside.

He earned a PhD and taught political science and history, but his outspoken Marxism and anti-imperialism meant he was steadily pushed to the margins of elite academia. Rather than retreat or conform, Parenti chose independence: lecturing widely, writing prolifically, and speaking directly to union halls, community centers, activist spaces, and international audiences.

He lived modestly, avoided think-tank careers and corporate funding, and kept his private life largely out of the public eye. He was a husband and a father, including to journalist and political analyst Christian Parenti, but he never cultivated a public persona rooted in biography. What mattered to him was the work.

Exposing the class nature of “democracy”

Parenti’s most enduring academic contribution was his systematic critique of liberal democracy under capitalism. In his landmark book Democracy for the Few, first published in 1974, he argued that capitalist democracies are not neutral systems open equally to all, but class-structured states in which economic power overwhelmingly determines political outcomes.

He showed how elections, courts, media, and state institutions consistently serve the interests of capital, while popular demands are managed, diluted, or suppressed. Democracy, he argued, is tolerated only so long as it does not threaten property relations.

“Power is not evenly distributed in society,” Parenti wrote. “Those who own and control the productive wealth tend to dominate the political life of the nation.”

The book became a formative text for students and activists worldwide, prized for its clarity and refusal of liberal illusion.

Imperialism without disguise

Parenti was equally influential for his work on imperialism and US foreign policy. In books such as Against Empire and To Kill a Nation, he dismantled the idea that Western wars are motivated by humanitarian concern or democratic ideals.

Instead, he traced intervention, sanctions, and regime change to material interests: control over resources, labor, strategic territory, and global markets. He showed how human rights discourse is selectively deployed, how compliant client states are shielded from scrutiny, and how resistance is pathologized as extremism.

One of Parenti’s most quoted observations remains painfully current: “The essential function of imperialism is not to civilize or democratize, but to maintain a global system of inequality.”

His analysis helped anti-war and anti-imperialist movements reject moral distraction and focus on structure rather than spectacle.

Anti-anticommunism and historical honesty

In Blackshirts and Reds, Parenti confronted Cold War anticommunism as an ideology rather than an analysis. He did not deny repression or failure in socialist states, but he exposed how capitalist violence is normalized while socialist experiments are judged by impossible moral standards.

He insisted on historical comparison: asking why fascism is treated as an aberration while capitalism’s own mass violence, including colonialism, slavery, sanctions, structural deprivation, is rendered invisible or inevitable.

The book reopened serious discussion of socialism’s achievements in literacy, healthcare, women’s participation, and social welfare, at a time when such discussions were considered politically taboo.

Media, ideology, and manufactured consent

Long before “media literacy” became fashionable, Parenti laid bare the structural bias of corporate media. In Inventing Reality, he explained how ownership, advertising, sourcing, and elite consensus shape what is reported, how it is framed, and which voices are excluded.

He stressed that propaganda does not require overt censorship. It works through repetition, omission, ridicule, and selective outrage, teaching audiences what to ignore as much as what to believe.

This work made Parenti a cornerstone of critical media studies, especially among activists seeking to challenge war narratives and economic myths.

A scholar of struggle, not accommodation

What distinguished Parenti was not only what he argued, but how he lived. He never treated radical politics as a career ladder. He accepted marginalization rather than compromise and continued to speak plainly when euphemism was rewarded.

His lectures, many of which circulated widely online, are remembered for their warmth, humor, and devastating precision. He trusted ordinary people to grasp complex ideas without academic gatekeeping.

In doing so, Parenti helped bridge the divide between scholarship and struggle, restoring confidence in class analysis at a time when it was being hollowed out or replaced by moral abstraction.

An enduring legacy

Michael Parenti did not found a school or cultivate disciples. His influence traveled differently: through dog-eared books, shared lectures, study circles, movement spaces, and quiet moments of recognition when the world suddenly made sense.

At a time of renewed imperial violence, deepening inequality, and ideological confusion, his work remains unsettlingly relevant.

He once wrote: “The first step in the struggle for social justice is to understand the nature of the system we are up against.”

For generations of working-class intellectuals, organizers, and scholars across the world, Michael Parenti helped make that understanding possible.

His voice is gone. His clarity remains.

source: Al Mayadeen

Fascist US ICE Agents Publicly Execute Man in Minneapolis for Filming Them

A man has been summarily executred by US federal immigration officers in Minneapolis during ongoing enforcement operations sparking protests and renewed calls from local leaders to end the federal deployment.

The incident occurred around 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue Saturday morning as federal agents, part of a broader immigration crackdown known as Operation Metro Surge, confronted a man on a snow-covered street. Video circulating on social media shows people wearing masks and tactical gear wrestling with the man before multiple gunshots are heard, and he falls to the ground.

The Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the man was shot by a federal agent and later died at a hospital.

Nothing illegal, suspicious

Other videos showing the beginning of the confrontation demonstrate that the man was standing by, recording the ICE agents in the middle of what is presumed to be an arrest, and he did not appear to be doing anything unusual.

An ICE agent came up to the man and started shoving him before the remaining agents joined in and started brutally assaulting the man, kicking him as he fell on the ground, before at least two agents pulled out their handguns and fired over six shots at the victim.

Armed victim?

There were claims that the victim was armed, though there is no evidence that he pulled out his gun or pointed it toward any of the officers. There was a brawl in which the man was repeatedly pepper-sprayed, and even then, the squad, upwards of six agents, did not successfully subdue him, pointing to inefficient training.

The footage shared widely online and aired on cable TV shows agents grappling with the man in the snow before gunfire begins. Shortly after shots are heard, the individual falls to the ground. Another angle in a video obtained by Drop Site News shows that the man was instigated and illegally approached by the ICE agents before he was shot and killed.

In the videos, one agent says, “he’s got a gun,” but the footage shows that the gun was on the victim’s waistband and was not drawn. Only one agent saw the gun as the man was being assaulted, then the man was shot several times by several agents, even after he died.

Fascist US ICE Agents Publicly Execute Man in Minneapolis for Filming Them

A man has been summarily executred by US federal immigration officers in Minneapolis during ongoing enforcement operations sparking protests and renewed calls from local leaders to end the federal deployment.

The incident occurred around 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue Saturday morning as federal agents, part of a broader immigration crackdown known as Operation Metro Surge, confronted a man on a snow-covered street. Video circulating on social media shows people wearing masks and tactical gear wrestling with the man before multiple gunshots are heard, and he falls to the ground.

The Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the man was shot by a federal agent and later died at a hospital.

Nothing illegal, suspicious

Other videos showing the beginning of the confrontation demonstrate that the man was standing by, recording the ICE agents in the middle of what is presumed to be an arrest, and he did not appear to be doing anything unusual.

An ICE agent came up to the man and started shoving him before the remaining agents joined in and started brutally assaulting the man, kicking him as he fell on the ground, before at least two agents pulled out their handguns and fired over six shots at the victim.

Armed victim?

There were claims that the victim was armed, though there is no evidence that he pulled out his gun or pointed it toward any of the officers. There was a brawl in which the man was repeatedly pepper-sprayed, and even then, the squad, upwards of six agents, did not successfully subdue him, pointing to inefficient training.

The footage shared widely online and aired on cable TV shows agents grappling with the man in the snow before gunfire begins. Shortly after shots are heard, the individual falls to the ground. Another angle in a video obtained by Drop Site News shows that the man was instigated and illegally approached by the ICE agents before he was shot and killed.

In the videos, one agent says, “he’s got a gun,” but the footage shows that the gun was on the victim’s waistband and was not drawn. Only one agent saw the gun as the man was being assaulted, then the man was shot several times by several agents, even after he died.

World Mourns Michael Parenti, Marxist Voice Against Empire Dies at 92

The global left is mourning the death of Michael Parenti, the influential Marxist scholar, historian, and public intellectual whose work exposed the mechanics of capitalism, imperialism, and ideological power with unmatched clarity. Parenti passed away on January 24 at the age of 92, leaving behind a body of work that shaped generations of scholars, organizers, and anti-imperialist movements across the world.

For decades, Parenti stood apart from mainstream academia and political life, refusing to dilute his analysis or bend his language to liberal respectability. He wrote not to impress institutions, but to arm people with understanding.

Working-class roots, uncompromising politics

Born in 1933 in New York City to a working-class Italian American family, Parenti often said that his political commitments were grounded not in abstraction, but in lived experience. Class was not something he discovered in theory; it was something he grew up inside.

He earned a PhD and taught political science and history, but his outspoken Marxism and anti-imperialism meant he was steadily pushed to the margins of elite academia. Rather than retreat or conform, Parenti chose independence: lecturing widely, writing prolifically, and speaking directly to union halls, community centers, activist spaces, and international audiences.

He lived modestly, avoided think-tank careers and corporate funding, and kept his private life largely out of the public eye. He was a husband and a father, including to journalist and political analyst Christian Parenti, but he never cultivated a public persona rooted in biography. What mattered to him was the work.

Exposing the class nature of “democracy”

Parenti’s most enduring academic contribution was his systematic critique of liberal democracy under capitalism. In his landmark book Democracy for the Few, first published in 1974, he argued that capitalist democracies are not neutral systems open equally to all, but class-structured states in which economic power overwhelmingly determines political outcomes.

He showed how elections, courts, media, and state institutions consistently serve the interests of capital, while popular demands are managed, diluted, or suppressed. Democracy, he argued, is tolerated only so long as it does not threaten property relations.

“Power is not evenly distributed in society,” Parenti wrote. “Those who own and control the productive wealth tend to dominate the political life of the nation.”

The book became a formative text for students and activists worldwide, prized for its clarity and refusal of liberal illusion.

Imperialism without disguise

Parenti was equally influential for his work on imperialism and US foreign policy. In books such as Against Empire and To Kill a Nation, he dismantled the idea that Western wars are motivated by humanitarian concern or democratic ideals.

Instead, he traced intervention, sanctions, and regime change to material interests: control over resources, labor, strategic territory, and global markets. He showed how human rights discourse is selectively deployed, how compliant client states are shielded from scrutiny, and how resistance is pathologized as extremism.

One of Parenti’s most quoted observations remains painfully current: “The essential function of imperialism is not to civilize or democratize, but to maintain a global system of inequality.”

His analysis helped anti-war and anti-imperialist movements reject moral distraction and focus on structure rather than spectacle.

Anti-anticommunism and historical honesty

In Blackshirts and Reds, Parenti confronted Cold War anticommunism as an ideology rather than an analysis. He did not deny repression or failure in socialist states, but he exposed how capitalist violence is normalized while socialist experiments are judged by impossible moral standards.

He insisted on historical comparison: asking why fascism is treated as an aberration while capitalism’s own mass violence, including colonialism, slavery, sanctions, structural deprivation, is rendered invisible or inevitable.

The book reopened serious discussion of socialism’s achievements in literacy, healthcare, women’s participation, and social welfare, at a time when such discussions were considered politically taboo.

Media, ideology, and manufactured consent

Long before “media literacy” became fashionable, Parenti laid bare the structural bias of corporate media. In Inventing Reality, he explained how ownership, advertising, sourcing, and elite consensus shape what is reported, how it is framed, and which voices are excluded.

He stressed that propaganda does not require overt censorship. It works through repetition, omission, ridicule, and selective outrage, teaching audiences what to ignore as much as what to believe.

This work made Parenti a cornerstone of critical media studies, especially among activists seeking to challenge war narratives and economic myths.

A scholar of struggle, not accommodation

What distinguished Parenti was not only what he argued, but how he lived. He never treated radical politics as a career ladder. He accepted marginalization rather than compromise and continued to speak plainly when euphemism was rewarded.

His lectures, many of which circulated widely online, are remembered for their warmth, humor, and devastating precision. He trusted ordinary people to grasp complex ideas without academic gatekeeping.

In doing so, Parenti helped bridge the divide between scholarship and struggle, restoring confidence in class analysis at a time when it was being hollowed out or replaced by moral abstraction.

An enduring legacy

Michael Parenti did not found a school or cultivate disciples. His influence traveled differently: through dog-eared books, shared lectures, study circles, movement spaces, and quiet moments of recognition when the world suddenly made sense.

At a time of renewed imperial violence, deepening inequality, and ideological confusion, his work remains unsettlingly relevant.

He once wrote: “The first step in the struggle for social justice is to understand the nature of the system we are up against.”

For generations of working-class intellectuals, organizers, and scholars across the world, Michael Parenti helped make that understanding possible.

His voice is gone. His clarity remains.

source: Al Mayadeen

Anarchist Prisoner Casey Brezik Released

After 15 years in prison, anarchist political prisoner Casey Brezik has come home!

He is adjusting well, and psyched about life, but needs help to get started.

Living expenses and basic needs can be difficult to meet without a job, connections and experience moving through this technology-driven, end-stage-capitalist reality.

Anything you give will help ease the labor and anxiety that anyone would be dealing with after nearly two decades in a highly-controlled, hyperviolent carceral system.

Donate at $caseybrezik on cashapp.

Casey is an anarchist from the Kansas City area who was charged with slashing the throat of the Dean of Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley. This occurred when the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, was scheduled to give a talk at the college. In February 2011, the state declared him to be incapable of standing trial, which means he was forced to stay locked up in a mental institution pre-trial until June of 2013. He was sentenced to 12 years on each of three counts – assault, and two armed criminal action charges – and seven years on a second count of assault.

Casey’s account of what happened: https://kansascityabc.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/the-short-story-of-how-i-got-here-casey-brezik/.

Anarchist Prisoner Casey Brezik Released

After 15 years in prison, anarchist political prisoner Casey Brezik has come home!

He is adjusting well, and psyched about life, but needs help to get started.

Living expenses and basic needs can be difficult to meet without a job, connections and experience moving through this technology-driven, end-stage-capitalist reality.

Anything you give will help ease the labor and anxiety that anyone would be dealing with after nearly two decades in a highly-controlled, hyperviolent carceral system.

Donate at $caseybrezik on cashapp.

Casey is an anarchist from the Kansas City area who was charged with slashing the throat of the Dean of Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley. This occurred when the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, was scheduled to give a talk at the college. In February 2011, the state declared him to be incapable of standing trial, which means he was forced to stay locked up in a mental institution pre-trial until June of 2013. He was sentenced to 12 years on each of three counts – assault, and two armed criminal action charges – and seven years on a second count of assault.

Casey’s account of what happened: https://kansascityabc.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/the-short-story-of-how-i-got-here-casey-brezik/.

US Regime Intends to Execute Pro Palestinian Revolutionary Elias Rodriguez

The Attorney General for the US criminal regime, Pam Bondi, opened a Friday address to the Zionist-American Council (IAC) National Summit by recalling the May 2025 revolutionary action assassinating two Zionist, genocidal employees in Washington DC.

The action was notable for its militancy and it represented a rare instance where the genocidal countries — the settler-colonial US regime and its client the Zionist colony — received a small dose of the violence it unleashed on Palestine and the rest of the colonized world.

Bondi told the audience that federal prosecutors are pursuing capital punishment in the case, framing the action as “anti-semetic.”

The US regime and its puppet Zionist state use this framing to hide their genocidal behavior and to attempt to distort the reality of the situation from their own publics perception.

Genocidal states and those complicit in their crimes are judged harshly by history, and often judged worse when they perpetrate the actions.

Rodriguez has not be convicted and may likely be innocent of the accusation, but the two states making the accusation have no place to judge anyone.

US Regime Intends to Execute Pro Palestinian Revolutionary Elias Rodriguez

The Attorney General for the US criminal regime, Pam Bondi, opened a Friday address to the Zionist-American Council (IAC) National Summit by recalling the May 2025 revolutionary action assassinating two Zionist, genocidal employees in Washington DC.

The action was notable for its militancy and it represented a rare instance where the genocidal countries — the settler-colonial US regime and its client the Zionist colony — received a small dose of the violence it unleashed on Palestine and the rest of the colonized world.

Bondi told the audience that federal prosecutors are pursuing capital punishment in the case, framing the action as “anti-semetic.”

The US regime and its puppet Zionist state use this framing to hide their genocidal behavior and to attempt to distort the reality of the situation from their own publics perception.

Genocidal states and those complicit in their crimes are judged harshly by history, and often judged worse when they perpetrate the actions.

Rodriguez has not be convicted and may likely be innocent of the accusation, but the two states making the accusation have no place to judge anyone.