By Otis Grotewohl
January 28, 2026
Michael Parenti
Marxist historian Michael Parenti passed away on Jan. 24 at the age of 92. Parenti was born in 1933 and grew up in East Harlem. He often spoke proudly of his working-class and Italian American roots. His contributions inspired revolutionaries and anti-capitalists throughout the globe.
A dedicated agitator
Parenti was born during the capitalist economic crisis of the 1930s and he witnessed the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s. At a young age, Parenti wanted to explore the world of academia. In doing so, he received a MA in history at Brown University in 1957 and a Ph.D. in political science at Yale University in 1962.
Parenti taught political science at various colleges and universities. He was arrested and beaten by the police during an anti-Vietnam war protest in May 1970, just two days after the Kent State shootings in Ohio, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UI), where he was an associate professor.
Following his time at UI, Parenti briefly taught at the University of Vermont. At UVM, he was redbaited by the school administration, and they forced his contract to expire. Parenti had the support of his students and fellow faculty members, but the UVM bosses prevailed in their anti-communist crusade. Thereafter he was essentially barred from employment by higher learning institutions. This did not prevent Parenti from being one of the most requested lecturers among college students.
Parenti authored several books over five decades. Additionally, he continued to give long lectures on college campuses throughout North America and the world. As a Marxist scholar, Parenti was a staunch defender of socialist countries and the former Soviet Union. The 1997 book “Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism” is a reflection of his principled positions toward socialism and the struggle against fascism.
Many of Parenti’s essays and articles challenged narratives of the corporate press. His books “Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media,” “Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment” and “Dirty Truths” are all critiques of how the bourgeois media uses pro-capitalist propaganda to influence public perception of events.
Parenti was known for correlating historical events with current conflicts. One of his distinctive books, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome,” is about the last years of the Roman Republic. The book alleges that Caesar proposed progressive policies that angered other Roman rulers, an argument often omitted in other books covering the same topic.
Parenti appeared on the show “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” in 2005. In that episode, he spoke about the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the Dalai Lama.
A defender of Yugoslavia until the end
Parenti was one of the only left voices to courageously defend the former Yugoslavia when the U.S. bombed and dismembered that multinational country in the late 1990s. While most people on the U.S. left condemned the U.S. and NATO bombing campaigns, very few individuals or organizations dared to speak out against the imperialist demonization of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević.
In 2000, Parenti released a book called “To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia,” which is a collection of observations he gathered during visits to war-torn Yugoslavia in 1999. The book dispelled many of the lies and myths the Western media made about Europe’s last socialist federation. In 2003, Parenti became chairman of the U.S. National Section of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM).
Workers World Party and the International Action Center joined with Parenti in his quest to tell the truth about what was happening in Yugoslavia. In 2004, Parenti contributed an article to “Hidden Agenda: U.S. / NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia,” a book published by the International Action Center based mainly on testimony in a People’s Tribunal on NATO leaders’ war crimes in Yugoslavia.
“Hidden Agenda” is a collection of essays that examines the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s destruction, as well as the imperialist show trials in the Hague, and it also features articles from former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky.
Parenti explained not only “how” but “why” the capitalist class waged war against Yugoslavia, following the destruction of the USSR and Eastern bloc socialist systems. In an essay titled, “The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia,” Parenti stressed: “The dismemberment and mutilation of Yugoslavia was part of a concerted policy initiated by the United States and the other Western powers in 1989. Yugoslavia was the one country in Eastern Europe that would not voluntarily overthrow what remained of its socialist system and install a free-market economic order.” (Imperialism, Crisis and Class Struggle, Chapter 11, pages 255 – 272)
Michael Parenti, ¡Presente!
