You’re saying Christian Parenti? He’s progressive for the most part (especially his fight against climate change) but an odd well meaning liberal, while he is anti-imperialist, he supports Trump because of his embrace of Russia and rejection of NATO.
I feel like he must’ve processed Michael’s ideas on imperialism but got his brain all scrambled up when he went to the London School of Economics (the flagship of liberalism) to get his PhD and rejected Marxism and believes that the evils in the world can be solved by the tired old line of liberalism.
His idea that Trump might be better than Biden is probably true, at least in American foreign policy but he lacks the vision and solutions that his father has.
Michael Parenti is sooo based. How can his son have ended a soc dem? It is just crazy!
I mean, my father is a hardline conservative that thinks Trump is the best president we’ve had.
Yet I’m a communist. We don’t necessarily follow in our parent’s footsteps.
Put someone through American society, and even with Parenti as your dad coming out as a soc-dem after the American stuctures have there way with you is still impressive honestly, mfe’ers get the most intense brainwashing imaginable.
When did you notice this anyway while reading? I mean, I kinda got weird vibes on him as well…
You’re saying Christian Parenti? He’s progressive for the most part (especially his fight against climate change) but an odd well meaning liberal, while he is anti-imperialist, he supports Trump because of his embrace of Russia and rejection of NATO.
How the de’il is he liberal? Seems more akin to a Larouchite, if not Patsoc, if I’m bein’ honest…
Larouchite… perhaps, but Patsoc is not fair given that he isn’t anti-LGBTQ+ (that I’m aware of, if I’m wrong comrade, I will apologize profusely) and culturally he is a progressive liberal…
While a huge step down from his dad, he’s way better than those Patsoc chucklefucks and almost everyone in the US. Unless you’re trying to claim that Biden is better than Trump on foreign policy, at best they’re equally shit.
Hopefully he sees the light.
There are non homophobic patsocs. He seems like a patsoc from what I’ve heard.
Material conditions. He grew up well off. Same with Kamala and mayo Pete
Maybe this is why the Soviet Union was betrayed
Being cool skips a generation
I’m going to tell my kids this. Either way, one of us will be cool.
“remember kids being cool skips a generation so just forget about it”
Could be a multitude of reasons. Maybe his family received a lot of hate bc of his work and mightve created resentment on his sons, maybe he didn’t spend much time with his family, it could be a hundred more reasons but it doesn’t matter.
I can’t name a single legendary Marxist who was a good parent.
Just passing the ideas on isn’t the whole thing.
From what I read, Che Guevara was an exception. One son even works in The Che Center, which preserves part of his father’s extraordinary legacy.
You’re welcome to your own understanding of it, but he definitely abandoned his first daughter.
He’s not the worst of them, though, since his kids mostly did support his work/communism.
Stalins god son described him as alright, strict but fair. And Stalins great-grandson is based.
Kim Il Sung also did a good job, Kim Jong Il was a good leader and marxist. Kim Jong Il also did a good job, because our boy Kim Jong Un came out great.
Fair enough!
mao too, sadly being a good parent led his son to death.
Mao Anying o7
Never meet your children folx
It might make more sense to ask what pressures people tend to be facing in the US and western imperial context that make it very easy to slip into confused, splintered thinking and makes it an uphill battle to get solid political education. Having a parent who understands doesn’t necessarily mean that parent has the time or skill to mentor on the subject, nor does it mean they have a monopoly on the kid’s education or experiences.
My personal observations are far from the whole world or even the US as a whole, but from what I’ve seen w/ regards to US thinking, there is something of a theme of people being all over the place in political education and having poor footing ideologically. It’s not enough to have the “correct takes” - they need to be grounded in more or less the same core, or else you get people drawing very different conclusions from the same information. If that makes sense.
I would give an example, but it’s a bit fuzzy to me on the specifics at the moment, from memory.
How reactionary is he?
wasn’t a good Parent(i)
I think I should withhold judgement for now. It is nigh-impossible for out-and-out-communists to get any work as journalists in media. Christian Parenti may just be biding his time with some 4D chess moves. Some Biden-Trump chaos right now is good to screw things up in the USA even more. Trump’s on-the-nose statements certainly helped shatter the US image abroad. If providing fake support to Trump accelerates the collapse of US hegemony, I think it’s a worthy trade.
I think you’ve got it about right.
Imagine growing up with Parenti as your dad — who should’ve been the GOAT of academia — forced out of the academy and cut off from research libraries for being a Marxist and against the Vietnam war.
Yes, without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. But you’ve got to ask yourself how much you could achieve as a revolutionary theorist in a country like the US. You can have all the theory in the world but get nowhere without the masses. And much of the US either has too many treats or is too interested in having treats to bring them along as ‘the masses’ even if you did give them theory. Michael Parenti had the masses.
What base or movement would Christian Parenti be able to build on? You could be a revolutionary and a theorist, building a movement, I guess. But to do what Parenti did? You already know that AOC will betray you like Bernie did to Parenti. And who’s going to pay you to do speeches? Who’s going to buy your books? Academic Marxists in the west are usually shit Marxists—you can get paid by a university/college but only if you toe the line, throwing Stalin and AES to the wolves or writing about and becoming irrelevantly obscure.
Idk, I’m very disillusioned with what you can achieve as a Western ‘public intellectual’, for want of a better phrase.
Christian Parenti may just be biding his time with some 4D chess moves
“He’s just hiding his power level!” only turns out right when they end up being more reactionary than they let on
I often wonder this too
