Rest in power Michael Parenti (1933-2026), a giant among Marxist historians and political scientists. His writings and speeches are an invaluable resource for the study of – and struggle against – imperialism, capitalism and social chauvinism. A true working class intellectual, Parenti remained true to the principles and positions of global class struggle, never watering down his analysis for the sake of respectability, popularity or a well-paid job. He supported the socialist countries, he supported anti-imperialist struggle, he supported the oppressed and exploited everywhere. He never fell for “neither Washington nor Beijing” or other variants of Western ultra-left posturing. His analysis of “siege socialism” and the extreme challenges of building socialism in a hostile imperialist world remain as relevant today as ever. Importantly, and in contrast to most leftist intellectuals, Parenti wrote and spoke in order to communicate ideas of liberation, not to make himself look clever. He had an unparalleled ability to condense important ideas into accessible, easily-understood language. This quote from ‘Blackshirts and Reds’ is a searing indictment of the US-led imperialist system, and powerful riposte to the ridiculous “victims of communism” narrative. “In pursuit of counterrevolution and in the name of freedom, US forces or US-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 million in Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua; over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared); over 700,000 in Iraq; over 60,000 in El Salvador; 30,000 in the ‘dirty war’ of Argentina; 35,000 in Taiwan, when the Kuomintang military arrived from China; 20,000 in Chile; and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust.”