Such a good book and hard to put down! Parenti is so fucking good at describing massive geopolitical concepts and debunking anti communist myths in the matter of just a few paragraphs.
I do wish he had more citations- there’s a part in black shirts where he just lists some figures of death tolls from western atrocities without citing anything, and it’s like, I believe him and I know that the US is responsible for the death of millions, but people just coming into leftism could read that and assume he just pulled those numbers out of nowhere if they’re still in the process of unlearning western propaganda.
I mean that the average life span, so it would make sense that the generation who experienced the crises dying would lead to the memory of the crises fading
I just wanna point out a few things that I feel aren’t being communicated fully and I get a sense that you are very new to some of these concepts (which is okay! We all start somewhere)
The socially democratic countries you mention (I’m just adding this on top of all the other arguments mentioned against the system in these countries) still get their wealth from exploiting global south countries. Sure there are more social programs that give the people living in these countries better infrastructure and health care but the initial wealth that allowed this to happen comes from the exploitation of land and people. Building wealth from exploitation is bad. (And wealth is usually always built from exploitation)
People vote against communism/socialist leaning programs and people because the imperial core has put trillions of dollars towards making sure voters think “communism” and “socialism” are evil scary words. I mean the sheer levels of money and effort that have gone into weaving anti-communist propaganda into almost every aspect of western culture is staggering. This is why u have people in the US generally supporting the concept of m4a and being fed up with the for profit system, but as soon as it’s framed as being a “socialist” program, they are against it. (As one example)
You also have to think about what “freedom of speech” really means in a country like the US, where the all of the news outlets have an imperialist bias because they are all owned by corporations, and calling out any of America’s wrong doing is silenced. And in countries outside of the US, western media is STILL perpetuating the “land of milk and honey, greatest country ever, so many opportunities here wow!” facade, which if you live here, you know ISNT TRUE, and is harmful propaganda to countries that are trying to stand up to capitalism on very shaky, weak legs. (This is just one example of why the catch-all “freedom of speech” term needs to be constantly reevaluated in terms of its material conditions)
This is absolutely disgusting in every conceivable way. That cop was very clearly putting his full body weight into his knee while he pressed a human being onto hot pavement for 9 minutes. How you could watch the footage and instead of immediately feeling sick to your stomach, want to “disprove” the violence that occurred, is so deplorable... I have no words, throw this guy in a pit.
·3 years ago
·3 years ago
·3 years ago
Such a good book and hard to put down! Parenti is so fucking good at describing massive geopolitical concepts and debunking anti communist myths in the matter of just a few paragraphs. I do wish he had more citations- there’s a part in black shirts where he just lists some figures of death tolls from western atrocities without citing anything, and it’s like, I believe him and I know that the US is responsible for the death of millions, but people just coming into leftism could read that and assume he just pulled those numbers out of nowhere if they’re still in the process of unlearning western propaganda.
Still, everyone should read parenti!