Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Michael Parenti

Quote by Michael Parenti

“Anticommunist propaganda saturated our airwaves, schools, and political discourse. Despite repeated and often factitious references to the tyranny of the Red Menace, the anticommunist opinion makers never spelled out what communists actually did in the way of socioeconomic policy. This might explain why, despite decades of Red-bashing propaganda, most Americans, including many who number themselves among the political cognoscenti, still cannot offer an informed statement about the social policies of communist societies.”

Quote by Michael Parenti

Book:Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Create image

Work

Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti is an American political scientist known for his critical analysis of global political and economic issues. His research covers a wide range of topics, including capitalism, imperialism, racism, and class struggle, and has had a profound impact on understanding contemporary political economic systems. more

You May Also Like

“I am in a state about all of this. I comb the newspapers. I listen to the commentators. And I get into fights all over the place. If a Republican knows his place and hates McCarthy and wishes to God Eisenhower would get more aggressive about these bastards, well and good and I will admit him to the brotherhood. If he says nasty things about Truman (who is rapidly becoming the Man I Love although I have been sore enough at him in my time) or still thinks taxes are coming down and we can get out of Korea‡ and we ought to fire all the Democrats in Washington and don’t worry, McCarthy-ism will blow over or alternately Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire—well, dear, I am no lady and I argue loudly and lose my temper and it’s disgraceful.”

PoliticsMccarthyism
Book:As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto: Food, Friendship, and the Making of a Masterpiece
Create image

“Writing of a chance early meeting with Dylan Thomas in a London bar, Kay Boyle writes (1955, in the era of McCarthyism, 1947-1956): Perhaps because he [Dylan Thomas was so often out of place among men, we take him now as symbol. Perhaps because we who write in America are in great difficulties now, we cherish Dylan Thomas as if he were our own ego, our own wild soul freed of the flesh. An American critic, writing of the American literary scene, points out that thinking Americans, in this period of our nation's development, are deeply troubled because "the demands for national security and for individual freedom" are in conflict.”

FreedomWritersNational SecurityMccarthyismDylan Thomas
Book:Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays, 1927-1984
Create image

“American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic policies were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto: no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as detesting the Russians, and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn't like it.”

Cold WarInquisitionMccarthyismRed ScareHuacBlacklist
Author:Archibald MacLeish
Create image