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Michael Parenti: Voting In The USA – Part Two

By MariaMay 19, 2026Michael Parenti Audio CDs, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

How the Vote was Won and Lost
If the right to vote is taken as a measure of a vibrant democracy, the United States came off to a bad start. Dr. Michael Parenti says that the most interesting list from the period of 1787 is the rather long one of people who were not allowed to vote and the many ways in which votes have been stolen during the Bush administration.
This archival recording is a primer on the history of voting and the day to day efforts to make democracy come alive that shows Parenti at his best as historian and engaged political thinker.
Parenti (1933-2026) was one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. After receiving his Ph.D. in political [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: Voting In The USA – Part One

By MariaMay 12, 2026Michael Parenti Audio CDs, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

How the Vote was Won and Lost
If the right to vote is taken as a measure of a vibrant democracy, the United States came off to a bad start. Dr. Michael Parenti says that the most interesting list from the period of 1787 is the rather long one of people who were not allowed to vote – and he names all of them. Also, in Part TWO, the many ways in which votes have been stolen during the Bush administration.
This archival recording is a primer on the history of voting and the day to day efforts to make democracy come alive that shows Parenti at his best as historian and engaged political thinker.
Parenti (1933-2026) was one of the nation’s [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: Ideology And Conspiracy Part Two

By MariaMay 5, 2026Michael Parenti Audio CDs, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

From: Understanding Deep Politics Conference, Santa Cruz, CA. – May 14/16 2010
In this entertaining talk, rich with historic references, Parenti describes the right-wing agenda of dismantling social democracy while calling anybody who describes this as a purposeful strategy a conspiracy theorist. He shows that this strategy began right after World War II but culminates now as powerful segment of right wing media and the GOP have moved so far to the right that they have overshot their popular base. Meanwhile democrats, including Obama, unable or unwilling to formulate the social democratic alternative, still talk of bipartisan approaches.

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Michael Parenti: Ideology and Conspiracy Part One

By MariaApril 28, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Michael Parenti: The Struggle for History (TWO of TWO)

By MariaApril 21, 20262011, All Time Favorites, Catalog, Newest Podcasts

The conclusion of this speech builds up to a timely and inspiring quote by William Faulkner: “The past is never dead and buried, in fact it is never even passed. If we are lied to with impunity we are robbed of the first condition of a democratic citizenry, how the present can help us understand the past and the past understand the present. How we can arm ourselves against the lies and calumny that are bombarding us all the time. And our history need not bore us, our history need not imprison us but it can liberate our understanding so that we might become not its victims but its active agents.”

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Michael Parenti: The Struggle for History (ONE of TWO)

By MariaApril 14, 2026All Time Favorites, Catalog, Michael Parenti, Newest Podcasts, Podcasts

Parenti quotes Winston Churchill who said to his fellow party members: “History will be kind to us because I plan to write it.” Far from being an objective account of events history bears the mark of its writer, the omissions of the censors, and the interests of those who benefit from making it. Parenti shows how to take the recording of history back from politicians, the media, professors, clergy, and business people.

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Michael Parenti: The Pathology of Wealth (TWO of TWO)

By MariaApril 7, 20262012, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Parenti describes the pathologies of capitalism by its inability to respond to climate change. Quoting a cartoon he reads: “While the end of the world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, ..the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.” Also arguments for the benefits of socialism in areas of our lives that should not be managed under the profit system. He lists health care, energy, and transportation.

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Michael Parenti: THE PATHOLOGY OF WEALTH (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMarch 31, 20262012, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

The first talk of 2012 by the social critic and noted author Michael Parenti fit perfectly into the debates of the time, that of the One versus the 99% and the finally no longer taboo question: What exactly is CAPITALISM? Parenti is debunking some of the myths of capitalism: That it creates jobs, peace, democracy and wealth – etc.

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Michael Parenti: The Face of Imperialism

By MariaMarch 24, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

“The Face of Imperialism will be hated by those who run the Empire, and it will be loved by people around the world – many of them indigenous peoples – who are defending themselves against the Empire.” That’s what the author Andre Vltchek wrote for the jacket of Dr. Michael Parenti’s most recent book.

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Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism (TWO of TWO)

By MariaMarch 17, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Dr. Michael Parenti (1933-2026) gave this keynote speech for the 4th Annual People’s Movement Assembly at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington in October, 2012. He talked about economics, neo-liberalism, globalization and the history of capitalism. Parenti spoke and wrote about these topics long before most other academics dared mention – and much less critique –capitalism, the chosen economic form in the US, and really the world.
In this conclusion of Dr. Parenti’s one hour speech he explores how the post World War II prosperity emerged in the US and how at the same time the organized destruction of the human and environmental support systems accelerated.
Raised in a working class Italian family in East Harlem, New York City, Parenti went on to [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMarch 10, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Dr. Michael Parenti (1933-2026) gave this keynote speech for the 4th Annual People’s Movement Assembly at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington in October, 2012. He talked about economics, neo-liberalism, globalization and the history of capitalism.
Parenti spoke and wrote about these topics long before most other academics dared mention – and much less critique –capitalism, the chosen economic form in the US, and really the world.
Raised in a working class Italian family in East Harlem, New York City, Parenti went on to receive his Ph.D. in political science at Yale in 1962. His academic career was cut short by his dismissal after he was arrested for protesting the US war on Vietnam. Parenti became an independent scholar, lecturer and author of [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

In Memory of Robert Fisk — His Warning, in 2002, of the Pending War on Iraq

By MariaMarch 3, 2026All Time Favorites, Catalog, Newest Podcasts

Robert Fisk, the award winning war correspondent and dean of Middle East journalists died in Dublin on October 30. He was only 74.
Robert Fisk won more British journalism awards than any of his peers, including British Foreign Reporter of the Year seven times and the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2002. The New York Times described him as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain.” And that in spite of his principle of speaking truth to power.
Fisk reported for the London Independent on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, without sparing responsibility of the United States and his native Britain for so much of the carnage.
He became one of very few Western [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti Theocracy VS. Democracy – The Political Uses of Religion

By MariaFebruary 24, 2026Michael Parenti Audio CDs, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Politics

Michael Parenti (1933-2026) said that democracy couldn’t survive under religious rule – whatever that religion may be. Parenti’s warning in this archival recording is as timely and urgently expressed as it was when this speech was first given during the second term of the Reagan administration. This talk is also very funny. Parenti explains how God may be considered as a “founding father” and why Woody Allen calls him an underachiever. It is easy to extend this timeless analysis to the present circumstances.
With roots in a working class Italian district of New York and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale Michael Parenti became an internationally known writer and lecturer. He is the author of twenty books.

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Michael Parenti: How I Became an Activist – PARENTI SPECIAL

By MariaFebruary 17, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Rebroadcast to remember and honor Michael Parenti (1933-2026)
Parenti rarely talked about his life. How does a NYC street kid get accepted to Yale? How does he lose the privilege of his PhD. in an arrest at a demonstration against the war on Vietnam, and become an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer?
Michael Parenti grew up in a poor, working class Italian community in New York City. When he received his PhD in political science from Yale in 1962 he was the success and pride of his family. He risked and ended his academic career when he openly opposed the war on Vietnam. Ultimately the choice he made then was a good one. He was an independent political writer and thinker and [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: Superpatriotism and the Importance of Being Number One – 2018 Tribute to Parenti

By MariaFebruary 10, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

What does it mean to love one’s country? Why is it so important to be number one?
In this sharp and funny speech MP dissects the uses of patriotism.
That was the introduction to a Michael Parenti talk given in 1988, at the end of the Reagan administration. That talk became a TUC Radio program and 2004 book published by City Lights. Superpatriotism: How hype, fear, and mindless flag-waving are supplanting informed debate and commitment to democracy.
Now, in 2018, so many years later, slogans such as: America First, America the Greatest Country on Earth are having a powerful come back. Resistance to Superpatriotism – even if it is simply remaining seated or taking a knee during the national anthem at a [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)