What are your favorite works by Parenti?

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'Blackshirts and Reds' is good, besides the neo-Stalinist apologetics which I could do without, it is a great rebuttal to all the American left's relentless trashing of socialist revolutions, as well as the 'pure socialists' who Parenti says 'will support every revolution except the ones that succeed'.

I like 'Against Empire' also, especially his treatment of pro-imperialism and anti-Marxism in academia.

"Neo-Stalinist apologetics?"

"Neo-Stalinist apologetics?"

I'm confused by that as well. I guess anything providing actual analysis on Stalin is deemed "Stalinist".

It's not 'actual analysis' when Parenti does not even mention the massive enforced famine that accompanied collectivization, or tries to explain away the gulag and purges by trying to claim that the Soviet government 'only' executed 700,000 political prisoners during the Great Purge(from official NKVD documents, which are accepted as fact with no questioning whatsoever).
Just because the capitalists have lied a lot about the Soviet Union doesn't mean we should foster our own lies to make ourselves feel better.

It's not 'actual analysis' when Parenti does not even mention the massive enforced famine that accompanied collectivization, or tries to explain away the gulag and purges by trying to claim that the Soviet government 'only' executed 700,000 political prisoners during the Great Purge(from official NKVD documents, which are accepted as fact with no questioning whatsoever).
Just because the capitalists have lied a lot about the Soviet Union doesn't mean we should foster our own lies to make ourselves feel better.

So, you pin Holodomor on Stalin?

It's not 'actual analysis' when Parenti does not even mention the massive enforced famine that accompanied collectivization,

Fuck, not this again. It wasn't an intentional famine. I suppose anything that indicates otherwise is "neo-stalinist" propaganda.

or tries to explain away the gulag and purges by trying to claim that the Soviet government 'only' executed 700,000 political prisoners during the Great Purge(from official NKVD documents, which are accepted as fact with no questioning whatsoever).

Where, then, do you suggest we look for reliable figures? The NKVD were the only ones there. If we'd have it your way anything on Wikipedia is more reliable. No thanks.

Nobody has any certain figures, and the NKVD is as good as any.

Just because the capitalists have lied a lot about the Soviet Union doesn't mean we should foster our own lies to make ourselves feel better.

You have yet to demonstrate how Parenti does this. Parenti is the most unbiased researcher today and criticizes the Soviet system all the time.

I wouldn't call him a Stalinist or a Trotskyist. He is something in the middle.

I'm pretty sure he's just a Marxist-Leninist (although I haven't seen/heard him refer to himself as a Leninist) that looks at Stalin objectively instead of being like other "leftists" and buying into reactionary propaganda like many, many others have.

My favorite book is the one he wrote on Yugoslavia