• ℝ𝔼𝔻 ℂ𝕆𝕃𝕆𝕊𝕊𝕌𝕊@lemmygrad.ml
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • General@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      7 months ago

      Michael Parenti is sooo based. How can his son have ended a soc dem? It is just crazy!

      • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

      • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
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      7 months ago

      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…

      • ℝ𝔼𝔻 ℂ𝕆𝕃𝕆𝕊𝕊𝕌𝕊@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 months ago

        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.

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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    7 months ago

    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.

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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    7 months ago

    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.

  • Comprehensive49@lemmygrad.ml
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    7 months ago

    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 statement 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.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      7 months ago

      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.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
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      7 months ago

      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