Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261918 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 165 pages

Customer Reviews

Parenti does it again-outstanding
More excellent stuff from Michale Parenti.Trendy-lefty he is not , and his erudition and clarity of thought bear witness to this.
For a counterblast to those who just stick their noses in the air and equate the USSR with Nazi Germany or some third world dictatorship,read this book.
We are given an excellent picture of the viciously anti-working class nature of fascism ,as parenti details the impoverishment that followed the populist euphoria -hysteria- of fascist electoral victory.
A must read.parenti has no time for the liberal-left hogwash, and this makes him the clearest and most perceptive commentator around.

strong heterodox analysis of 20th century ideologies
Parenti does it again! In this book he traces brilliantly the appeal and development of the fascist movement, explaining how fascist leaders use irrational symbols to manipulate people who have very rational concerns about their diminished living standards. Parenti is one of the very few analysts who actually assesses the real economic impact of fascist governance; he proves that fascism lead to ever-greater brutalization of the workers, and a gross redistribution of wealth upward to the system's corporate benefactors. Parenti explores closely the actual record of Communist leadership; he provides a nuanced analysis that both praises the Communists for their achievements in the matter of social equity , and criticizes these states for their oppression of their people. Nonetheless, Parenti proves that even tyrants like Stalin were not quite as bad as their fascist counterparts, for every Communist leader had to constantly resist the imperialist pressures of the capitalist west. Parenti also brilliantly derides those so-called liberals who ignore the issue of class today. He points out that true progressives should be more concerned with the living conditions of working people than with some sterile, lofty, and ulimately meaningless debate over cultural issues. All in all, a very solid book; I didn't agree with everything in it, but I did agree with most of it. Parenti writes well, persuasively, and coherently. His writing comes as a much needed rejoinder to the rightist and centrist blather which currently dominates TV punditry, newspaper editorials, the mainstream news magazines, et al.

Excellent counterblast to the "liberals"
Parenti does it again, illustrating the rather more complex reality between the cosy simplicities so beloved of those who call themselves 'left' and who seem to populate the pages of such outlets as the Guardian etc etc.Parenti's politics are considerably better than those of Chomsky -the latter fell for the propaganda which was cobbled together to justify the imperialist assault on socialist yugoslavia,joining in with the epithets thrown at Milosevic.parenti doesn't fall for all this baloney, and his performance here is as good if not better than the one in his excellent To Kill A Nation, which details the full depravity of the imperial annexation of the 'south slav dream'.

Parenti shows us the stark reality of what led to the demise of the USSR ,and the full state of the world as a result.It is sobering reading. He also debunks the equation of communism and fascism so beloved of a few generations of salon socialists and cold-warriors whose 'anti-Stalinism ' was really always the anti-Sovietism that dare not speak its name.

To mention Orwell as some kind of antidote to Parenti forgets the extremely embarrassing fact that Orwell was sufficiently treacherous -and profoundly intellectually dishonest - enough to provide Britain's security services with a list of his socialist friends (including JB Priestley) ,even describing some of them as 'security risks'.So much for the author of 1984-it seems that, for Orwell, some security services are more equal than others, just like on Jones' farm.

Parenti's description of the impoverishment of workers under fascism is useful in itself, and indeed offers a pointer to future popular resistence to fascist rule, especially in the third world.Excellent stuff.Consider this book compulsory.