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History as Mystery
In a lively challenge to mainstream history, Michael Parenti does battle with a number of mass-marketed historical myths. He shows how history's victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege. And he demonstrates how historians are influenced by the professional and class environment in which they work. Pursuing themes ranging from antiquity to modern times, from the Inquisition and Joan of Arc to the anti-labor bias of present-day history books, History as Mystery demonstrates how past and present can inform each other and how history can be a truly exciting and engaging subject.
"Michael Parenti, always provocative and eloquent, gives us a lively as well as valuable critique of orthodoxy posing as ‘history.’"—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
"Deserves to become an instant classic." —Bertell Ollman, author of Dialectical Investigations
Those who keep secret the past, and lie about it, condemn us to repeat it. Michael Parenti unveils the history of falsified history, from the early Christian church to the present: a fascinating, darkly revelatory tale." —Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Pentagon Papers
"Solid if surely controversial stuff."—Kirkus
Michael Parenti, PhD Yale, is an internationally known author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leadiing progressive political analysts. He is the author of over 275 published articles and twenty books, including Against Empire, Dirty Truths, and Blackshirts and Reds. His writings are published in popular periodicals, scholarly journals, and his op-ed pieces have been in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. His informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.
"Michael Parenti, always provocative and eloquent, gives us a lively as well as valuable critique of orthodoxy posing as ‘history.’"—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
"Deserves to become an instant classic." —Bertell Ollman, author of Dialectical Investigations
Those who keep secret the past, and lie about it, condemn us to repeat it. Michael Parenti unveils the history of falsified history, from the early Christian church to the present: a fascinating, darkly revelatory tale." —Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Pentagon Papers
"Solid if surely controversial stuff."—Kirkus
Michael Parenti, PhD Yale, is an internationally known author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leadiing progressive political analysts. He is the author of over 275 published articles and twenty books, including Against Empire, Dirty Truths, and Blackshirts and Reds. His writings are published in popular periodicals, scholarly journals, and his op-ed pieces have been in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. His informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.
273 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 1999
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About the author
Michael Parenti
54 books1,528 followersMichael John Parenti, Ph.D. (Yale University) is an American political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at universities as well as run for political office. Parenti is well known for his Marxist writings and lectures. He is a notable intellectual of the American Left and he is most known for his criticism of capitalism and American foreign policy.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
May 7, 2023
I can't remember why I bought this book. I think maybe because I thought the author, Michael Parenti, would write about historical mysteries. I'm sure there must be many. Instead Parenti used this book more as a platform to vent his disgust at the American textbook industry, the Christian church, the wealthy, and mainstream academia, among others. Even though I agreed with him on many counts, the negativity was tiring. It reminded me of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen but was even harsher.
The only "fun fact" discussed was the possible murder of US President Zachary Taylor. History tells us he died from indigestion but Parenti suggests (very convincingly) that he died from poisoning. Taylor was against allowing slavery into US Territories and that caused him to have many enemies in the South. So there was a motive. Very interesting. I read a biography Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower in 2012. Since it's been awhile, I don't remember if Eisenhower wrote of this possible murder. Maybe he was the type of historian of whom Parenti was complaining.
The only "fun fact" discussed was the possible murder of US President Zachary Taylor. History tells us he died from indigestion but Parenti suggests (very convincingly) that he died from poisoning. Taylor was against allowing slavery into US Territories and that caused him to have many enemies in the South. So there was a motive. Very interesting. I read a biography Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower in 2012. Since it's been awhile, I don't remember if Eisenhower wrote of this possible murder. Maybe he was the type of historian of whom Parenti was complaining.
December 31, 2012
Howard Zinn's spiritual brother. This book was incisive, and leaves you bewildered and infuriated at the injustices it lays bare, in as positive a sense as possible (although in ways which are perhaps more subtle than A People's History).
October 3, 2018
I enjoyed this book so much I wanted to give it 5 stars - and it is definitely re-read worthy - but I agree so wholeheartedly with the author that I know I am biased and likely to overlook flaws I might otherwise notice. However, there cannot be too many - the book is entertaining from the first page to the last.
There were points at which I laughed out loud. For instance:
The chapter on the writing of the history of the death of President Zachary Taylor is very revealing of the sloppiness of much reporting and the establishing of "fact" by mere repetition rather than a body of evidence.
The footnotes for each chapter are placed at the end of each chapter, which I always like because it makes them easier to reference. Many of the footnotes are interesting in themselves. All in all, a very good read.
There were points at which I laughed out loud. For instance:
The Christian church of late antiquity and the Middle Ages also waged war against nature and the flesh, including concerted campaigns against bodily hygiene. The Roman Empire's great public baths were closed. Saints were saluted for having never washed. ... Personal ablutions were deemed a kind of defilement, not only in the cloister but also among laypersons. "Never a bath known for a thousand years!" hoots the irrepressible Michelet. No wonder so many of the faithful were afflicted with boils, skin ulcers, and other dermatological torments.Parenti not only makes a strong case for the overwhelming influence of the Christian church having fostered misogyny, anti-semitism, ignorance, slavery, and horrible oppression and extortion of the peasantry, he takes examples of historians claiming elsewise of various clergy and Saints, and gives exacting details of their behaving in the opposite manner for which they are generally praised. With footnotes.
The chapter on the writing of the history of the death of President Zachary Taylor is very revealing of the sloppiness of much reporting and the establishing of "fact" by mere repetition rather than a body of evidence.
The footnotes for each chapter are placed at the end of each chapter, which I always like because it makes them easier to reference. Many of the footnotes are interesting in themselves. All in all, a very good read.
February 29, 2024
Alaska, Pennsylvania and Michigan require no history instruction of any kind. A Gallup poll shows that only 25% of college seniors can date Columbus’s voyage within fifty years of the event. Another Gallup poll shows that 60% of American adults can’t name the president who ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan and 22% don’t know it even happened. A 1995 survey showed that more than half of Americans didn’t know that the Soviet Union was once an ally of the US. “Attempts at real history are dismissed by conservatives as ‘revisionism’.” History textbooks still commonly describe Reconstruction governments as “corrupt and incompetent” and “fail to note that they were less corrupt and more progressive and democratic than the all-white Southern governments that preceded and replaced them.” We were taught Socialist Eugene Debs got 900,000 votes for president in 1912; but not that the winner, Woodrow Wilson, got only 6,293,152 votes. We weren’t taught that “there were more than thirty thousand strikes between the Civil War and WWI.” We were taught that radical leaders were feared and hated by the public, although that wasn’t true. Teaching about the Vietnam War ignores “the anticolonial nature of the Vietnamese struggle, the ecological destruction, and massive casualties caused by US forces, the widespread torture and execution of prisoners, and other US war crimes.” Quelle surprise. The mission of US textbooks “is to turn out loyal subjects who do not challenge the existing dominant corporate order.”
The Old Days: Emperor Constantine sells out Christianity, but did you know that Constantine also murdered his son and his wife and caused the death of hundreds of thousands? Church leaders wanting to live then, knew to not complain about Constantine. Constantine’s successor helped Civilization towards the Dark Ages by silencing pagans with an edict of death for all convicted of worshipping idols, as Christianity destroyed pagan temples, their literature and tortured them. Soon it would be torture enough to have to sit through a mass. Augustine argued that coercion against pagans was a virtue. Thanks to these douchebags, all pagan literature is long gone and “modern researchers must forage for comments in letters and writings dealing with other topics. Other fragments survive, ironically, because they are quoted by Christian polemicists who are bent on refuting them.” Porphyry, for example, wondered why would God send his only son to a cultural backwater like Galilee? Today, that would be like God sending him to Trenton. Thus, two centuries of writings were consigned to the flames, because Christians couldn’t refute through reasoned argument. Instead, Rome became a military dictatorship, while Christian thought banished “an advocacy for individual freedom against secular or ecclesiastical power.” In its place was a delicate mélange of hunting “down heretics, free thinkers, reformers, and other purveyors of heterodoxy.”
Today’s evangelicals will be delighted to know that the apostle Paul “counseled total obedience to the state, the very state that had crucified his savior, by claiming in Romans 13.1 that ‘the powers that be are ordained by God’.” Doubling down on his own twaddle, Paul said, during Nero’s reign, “that the ruler is both virtuous and benign, working for the good of all”. Funny how the Christianized Roman Empire then increased the gap between the rich and poor, while 332 saw a law “binding all ‘coloni’ and their progeny to the estates upon which they labored”. Who knew Jesus was such a fan of slavery and eternal servitude? I must have missed that part. And so Constantinian Christianity (what Cornel West calls it) was fine with poverty, slavery, wars of conquest, patriarchy, domination, homophobia, and cruelty to animals. Left was concern about the shedding of blood, and so these early homophobes replaced crucifixion with burning people at the stake. Look ma, no blood! And trial was replaced by torture. So much more civilized! During the Inquisition, regular church attendance and devotion still might not save your ass if there was a vague, if unfounded, suspicion. In fairness though, you could choose to either confess and be burned alive, or not confess and still be burned. And those who confessed might be tortured again to gain more info on who to torture next. Something to look forward too. Think of it as “channeling popular restiveness away from the ruling classes and against witches and demons.” Today, you see it still – don’t examine our ruling classes, focus on darker people flooding our borders, troublemakers not applauding Israel’s genocide, or asking if Putin is so evil, then what was Kissinger?
Early Christians like Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome were famous apple polishers for power. Augustine was upper class and “supported a concubine”. Ambrose was a slavery fan. Did you know that in the late sixth century, “the church owned hundreds of thousands of slaves”? Who knew “Turn the other cheek” was soon replaced by “spread the other cheek”? Christian scholar Origen told us that most of the poor had “very bad characters”. Martin Luther and John Calvin sucked up to their rich patrons (p.61). In the final analysis, contrary to the widely received view, Christianity prospered and triumphed because it aligned itself with the prosperous and the triumphant. For the same reason, every US Senator today has shamelessly taken money from AIPAC.
Those who strictly follow the Bible must remember that that in Numbers 31.17-18, Moses says that after you murder every male child and mature woman, don’t forget the child virgins and women children which you should “keep alive for yourself”. Jeffrey Epstein would have asked, “But what about the boy virgins?” “Slaves who took refuge in a church were returned to their masters.” And “in time, the monasteries, being among the largest land holders, numbered among the biggest slaveholders.” Pagan slaves were preferred back then because they didn’t get the sabbath off. “It is easier to find pagan writers who were critical of slavery than Christian ones.”
Note that “in California and the Caribbean, the missions were centers for enslaving indigenous populations, forcing the natives to work under conditions that amounted to slave labor.” Healthy indigenous soon became sick and died. Before captivity like Robin Williams doing a comedy bit, and after captivity like Biden today pausing before a microphone. Before the Civil War, more clergy was pro-slavery than against it and you easily found pro-slavery clergy in the North. Whether in Roman times or back then in the US, “Christian teaching offered an ideological justification for the worldly interests of the ruthless slaveholding class, and Christians themselves were among the leading slaveholders.”
E. H. Carr wrote “The picture of the medieval man as devoutly religious, whether true or not, is indestructible, because nearly all the known facts about him were preselected for us by people who believed it, and wanted others to believe it.” Not explained is that peasants feared the Inquisition more than they feared God. Earthly survival trumped eternal salvation. The church hated home-centered forms of worship or the idea of publishing a vulgate Bible. Ancient Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Mesopotamia, and the Kardashians all believed in women having a big role in society.
Women Hating: We were taught the original Jezebel was the “prototypic vixen” whereas in fact, her real crime was in following the religion of Asherah, “a female godhead”. Christians “gruesomely” murdered her. If a man raped a Christian virgin back then, he had to pay her family, not the girl he raped. I can picture Trump saying, “I’m not going to pay her family.” Famed Christian St. John Chrysostom said, “Among all savage beasts none is so harmful as woman.” John Calvin said equality for women wouldn’t be “proper”. Augustine blamed “female allure for causing male homosexuality and even pederasty.” He said if a woman says no to a man, that might drive him to “sow his seed in a boy or man”. What? Constantine put the burden of proof on the female rape victim which “served as a standing invitation to rapists.” Patriarchal despotism. Five hundred women burned at the stake in just three months in Geneva in 1513. And at two “tiny bishoprics”, 800 women burned in Wurzburg and 1,500 burned at Bamburg. One judge in Lorraine, burned 800 women. Our patriarchal media told us about Burning Man, but not burning woman. Nor were we told that leading the fight against women’s suffrage, were Catholic and Protestant clergy, “arguing that female submission was ordained by God.”
Pagan Book Burning Part Two: In 391, in Alexandria, a Christian throng, led by the bishop Theophilus, destroyed the Serapeum, one of the world’s greatest libraries of history, natural science and literature. Then there was the destruction of the famed library of Alexandria. “In 435, Theodosius II and Valentinian II consigned all heretical Nestorian books to the bonfire.” The only reason there were few book burnings during the Middle Ages was because Christians couldn’t find more books to burn. This was not just the eradication of pagan books, but also its culture, philosophy, art, theater, science, medicine, anatomy, astronomy, mathematics, and commerce. Christianity was instrumental in wiping out so many books that libraries became tiny. “In pagan times, the Romans had libraires of up to 500,000 volumes.” In contrast, “the six largest monastic libraires in the sixth century contained collections numbering a paltry two hundred to six hundred volumes, mostly religious in content.” Instead of thinking of the church in the Middle Ages as “an oasis of learning”, think of it as a “major purveyor” of ignorance, suppressing “subjects entirely or confining them to theological servitude.” Literacy was seen as “a threat to religious and social order” until the late sixteenth century. “Secular learning was seen as a gateway to heresy.”
Why don’t we know more about the Mayans and Aztecs? Church authorities in early sixteenth century (backed up by conquistadores’ swords) “denounced all Aztec and Mayan hieroglyphic books as the work of the devil, and systematically torched them, so depriving us of the invaluable sources of historical data on Mexico’s early civilizations.” A famous book by Thomas Cahill pushed the myth of the clergy saving Western Civilization. Cahill wanted us to think it was the unwashed barbarians and not the church that destroyed all those pagan books but “while the barbarians certainly looted, Cahill offers not a scrap of evidence to support his repeated assertions.” The church fathers “despised all knowledge that was not useful to salvation.” This included music, art, and literature. “Secular learning was (deemed) worse than superfluous, it was pernicious.”
Compared to Rome before its fall, Gaul was considered only slightly less technologically advanced. Germans then were better than we were taught, “many of these German officers were men of brilliant talents, fascinating address and noble bearing.” As per the fall of Rome, “much of the civic impoverishment was effected before these (barbarian) invasions.” Christian orthodoxy was all about Monopoly control over all cultural and intellectual output.” Note that when Rome slumped, the other half, the Byzantine Empire was doing just fine. We aren’t taught about how at that time “there was an extraordinary intellectual burgeoning throughout much of the Arabic world.” In school, we were taught to blame the barbarians for the end of Rome, and not to notice how Christianity itself ushered in “a stagnation that lasted the better part of a millennium.” In the fourth century, “Christian mobs destroyed pagan temples and sanctuaries, along with places of worship used by Jews, Donatists, Manichaeans, and other infidels and heretics, many who paid with their lives.”
The Church and Anti-Semitism: Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther all wrote some very antisemitic things. Martin Luther urged that Jewish synagogues and homes be destroyed, and they be driven from the country. He would have made a great Zionist with that attitude; just tell him all Palestinians are Jews. Michael sees the church back then as the driving force of anti-Semitism instead of popular prejudice; for many, Jews were one’s neighbors. Anti-Semitism became a convenient way to “distract the populace from their real grievances about land, taxes, and tithes. Better the people storm the synagogue than wreak their fury upon the manor, at the monastery and the cathedral, inhabited as these latter were by their fellow Christians – who also happened to be their real oppressors.” Malcolm Hay wrote that “Hatred was the product of a clerical propaganda.” He said the clergy was the only social class that attacked the Jews because their intelligence and industry made them a threat to the church’s domination. We were taught about greedy Jewish usurers (Shylock, anyone?) but not that Christian usurers were even worse (higher interest). Behind the massacre of Jewish communities one can see the hand of popes, bishops, priests, and nobility. The Spanish Inquisition burned many Jewish conversos by imagining that they were still secretly practicing Judaism. Good luck finding church documents from back then showing “love your neighbor as yourself” being applied to the Jews. Michael only really sees this end in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council leaders “formally condemned anti-Semitism.”
Michael writes that it was secular groups, not Christian ones, that historically fought for “class justice, emancipation, gender equality, religious tolerance, and other rights.” The cool Catholic liberation theology movement was soon turned against in the late 1970’s, when John Paul II packs the College of Cardinals with conservatives, and appointed conservative bishops to reverse the liberation theology tide in Latin America. Liberal priests were then sent packing to rural areas. The church couldn’t find proof of Joan of Arc’s religious heresy and so burned her for the “heresy” of dressing in men’s clothes – like a proto-Kate Hepburn or Patti Smith. Her real name was actually Jeanne d’Arc.
The CIA (Crap Including Assassinations): The US agencies that do dirty deeds (like political murder in Guatemala) are usually the ones keeping that info suppressed. Michael says the CIA destroyed many of their covert action files from the 50’s and 60’s, like the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. When the CIA says its classifying is to protect “sources and methods” what is true is that it doesn’t want its methods revealed. We already know the CIA has no problem with “false propaganda, economic warfare, bribery, rigged elections, sabotage, demolition, theft, collusion with organized crime, narcotics trafficking, terror bombings, torture, massacres, and wars of attrition.” I mean, kudos for the CIA so far for not dropping an atomic bomb on some leader like Lumumba or Allende, but what crime HASN’T the CIA done on behalf of the Fortune 500? The CIA simply doesn’t want you and me to “call into question the entire legitimacy of US global interventionism.”
The US didn’t pay Native Americans for their losses (a loss of up to $10 billion) because US government officials conveniently “lost” century old oil, gas, or timber leases. Michael calls them seldom lost and more probably removed and destroyed (p.149). That isn’t hard to imagine when you remember that Oliver North blandly discussed under oath how he personally “shredded hundreds of pages of pertinent materials.” Did you know that in 1975 Congress ordered the release of 3,700 hours of Nixon White house Tapes, yet only 63 hours have been released? The released tapes were so damning, what more damning things did Nixon say (that our government intentionally won’t release, even with the approval of Congress)? Daniel Ellsberg also said concealment is less about protecting people and more about avoiding public accountability, limiting political costs and avoiding criminal prosecution.
Yes, history is written by the victors; we have Caesar writing about beating Gaul, and history of the greatness of Charlemagne, but where is the proto-Zola writing about life working in one of Charlemagne’s mines? We have lots of biographies in our bookstores of “greats” largely famous for “forceful exploitation and suppression of toiling populations” like Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, and Frederick the Great.
Don’t Immediately Trust Centrist Historians: Know to take the words of establishment historians with a grain of salt: Henry Steele Commager worked with Samuel Eliot Morison on a famed history textbook that spoke kindly about slavery, including saying that slaves were “apparently happy.” That textbook ruled for 20 years. Daniel Boorstin, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Oscar Handlin all were cheerleaders for the Vietnam War and for repression of activist US students. Boorstin fingered friends as Communist subversives before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Michael says as of 1999, “no university is in the hands of leftists.” Michael believes new evidence shows that JFK was clearly shot at by more than two people and there was “a conspiracy to hide the crime.” If the truth came out it would discredit US institutions which we are supposed to theoretically believe in. Apparently if you ignore all the evidence, then you too can believe Oswald did all the shooting himself from a great distance very fast at a car moving 11 mph quickly reloading with a crappy bolt-action rifle. Michael says that with history: “Not surprisingly, the deck is stacked to favor those who are dealing the cards.”
This book suggests the President Zachary Taylor may have been poisoned to death; there is no evidence that he died a natural death. There was no attempt to examine the food and drink he consumed, or the plates, silverware, or even an autopsy. Bruno Bettelheim was an asshole to students protesting the Vietnam War, calling them parasites brought on by a permissive society. While progressives see rebels responding to moral wrongs, the right portrays them as “not well”, as they immediately did with Aaron Bushnell, or Julian Assange.
due to review length, this review continues in the comment section. cheers...
The Old Days: Emperor Constantine sells out Christianity, but did you know that Constantine also murdered his son and his wife and caused the death of hundreds of thousands? Church leaders wanting to live then, knew to not complain about Constantine. Constantine’s successor helped Civilization towards the Dark Ages by silencing pagans with an edict of death for all convicted of worshipping idols, as Christianity destroyed pagan temples, their literature and tortured them. Soon it would be torture enough to have to sit through a mass. Augustine argued that coercion against pagans was a virtue. Thanks to these douchebags, all pagan literature is long gone and “modern researchers must forage for comments in letters and writings dealing with other topics. Other fragments survive, ironically, because they are quoted by Christian polemicists who are bent on refuting them.” Porphyry, for example, wondered why would God send his only son to a cultural backwater like Galilee? Today, that would be like God sending him to Trenton. Thus, two centuries of writings were consigned to the flames, because Christians couldn’t refute through reasoned argument. Instead, Rome became a military dictatorship, while Christian thought banished “an advocacy for individual freedom against secular or ecclesiastical power.” In its place was a delicate mélange of hunting “down heretics, free thinkers, reformers, and other purveyors of heterodoxy.”
Today’s evangelicals will be delighted to know that the apostle Paul “counseled total obedience to the state, the very state that had crucified his savior, by claiming in Romans 13.1 that ‘the powers that be are ordained by God’.” Doubling down on his own twaddle, Paul said, during Nero’s reign, “that the ruler is both virtuous and benign, working for the good of all”. Funny how the Christianized Roman Empire then increased the gap between the rich and poor, while 332 saw a law “binding all ‘coloni’ and their progeny to the estates upon which they labored”. Who knew Jesus was such a fan of slavery and eternal servitude? I must have missed that part. And so Constantinian Christianity (what Cornel West calls it) was fine with poverty, slavery, wars of conquest, patriarchy, domination, homophobia, and cruelty to animals. Left was concern about the shedding of blood, and so these early homophobes replaced crucifixion with burning people at the stake. Look ma, no blood! And trial was replaced by torture. So much more civilized! During the Inquisition, regular church attendance and devotion still might not save your ass if there was a vague, if unfounded, suspicion. In fairness though, you could choose to either confess and be burned alive, or not confess and still be burned. And those who confessed might be tortured again to gain more info on who to torture next. Something to look forward too. Think of it as “channeling popular restiveness away from the ruling classes and against witches and demons.” Today, you see it still – don’t examine our ruling classes, focus on darker people flooding our borders, troublemakers not applauding Israel’s genocide, or asking if Putin is so evil, then what was Kissinger?
Early Christians like Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome were famous apple polishers for power. Augustine was upper class and “supported a concubine”. Ambrose was a slavery fan. Did you know that in the late sixth century, “the church owned hundreds of thousands of slaves”? Who knew “Turn the other cheek” was soon replaced by “spread the other cheek”? Christian scholar Origen told us that most of the poor had “very bad characters”. Martin Luther and John Calvin sucked up to their rich patrons (p.61). In the final analysis, contrary to the widely received view, Christianity prospered and triumphed because it aligned itself with the prosperous and the triumphant. For the same reason, every US Senator today has shamelessly taken money from AIPAC.
Those who strictly follow the Bible must remember that that in Numbers 31.17-18, Moses says that after you murder every male child and mature woman, don’t forget the child virgins and women children which you should “keep alive for yourself”. Jeffrey Epstein would have asked, “But what about the boy virgins?” “Slaves who took refuge in a church were returned to their masters.” And “in time, the monasteries, being among the largest land holders, numbered among the biggest slaveholders.” Pagan slaves were preferred back then because they didn’t get the sabbath off. “It is easier to find pagan writers who were critical of slavery than Christian ones.”
Note that “in California and the Caribbean, the missions were centers for enslaving indigenous populations, forcing the natives to work under conditions that amounted to slave labor.” Healthy indigenous soon became sick and died. Before captivity like Robin Williams doing a comedy bit, and after captivity like Biden today pausing before a microphone. Before the Civil War, more clergy was pro-slavery than against it and you easily found pro-slavery clergy in the North. Whether in Roman times or back then in the US, “Christian teaching offered an ideological justification for the worldly interests of the ruthless slaveholding class, and Christians themselves were among the leading slaveholders.”
E. H. Carr wrote “The picture of the medieval man as devoutly religious, whether true or not, is indestructible, because nearly all the known facts about him were preselected for us by people who believed it, and wanted others to believe it.” Not explained is that peasants feared the Inquisition more than they feared God. Earthly survival trumped eternal salvation. The church hated home-centered forms of worship or the idea of publishing a vulgate Bible. Ancient Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Mesopotamia, and the Kardashians all believed in women having a big role in society.
Women Hating: We were taught the original Jezebel was the “prototypic vixen” whereas in fact, her real crime was in following the religion of Asherah, “a female godhead”. Christians “gruesomely” murdered her. If a man raped a Christian virgin back then, he had to pay her family, not the girl he raped. I can picture Trump saying, “I’m not going to pay her family.” Famed Christian St. John Chrysostom said, “Among all savage beasts none is so harmful as woman.” John Calvin said equality for women wouldn’t be “proper”. Augustine blamed “female allure for causing male homosexuality and even pederasty.” He said if a woman says no to a man, that might drive him to “sow his seed in a boy or man”. What? Constantine put the burden of proof on the female rape victim which “served as a standing invitation to rapists.” Patriarchal despotism. Five hundred women burned at the stake in just three months in Geneva in 1513. And at two “tiny bishoprics”, 800 women burned in Wurzburg and 1,500 burned at Bamburg. One judge in Lorraine, burned 800 women. Our patriarchal media told us about Burning Man, but not burning woman. Nor were we told that leading the fight against women’s suffrage, were Catholic and Protestant clergy, “arguing that female submission was ordained by God.”
Pagan Book Burning Part Two: In 391, in Alexandria, a Christian throng, led by the bishop Theophilus, destroyed the Serapeum, one of the world’s greatest libraries of history, natural science and literature. Then there was the destruction of the famed library of Alexandria. “In 435, Theodosius II and Valentinian II consigned all heretical Nestorian books to the bonfire.” The only reason there were few book burnings during the Middle Ages was because Christians couldn’t find more books to burn. This was not just the eradication of pagan books, but also its culture, philosophy, art, theater, science, medicine, anatomy, astronomy, mathematics, and commerce. Christianity was instrumental in wiping out so many books that libraries became tiny. “In pagan times, the Romans had libraires of up to 500,000 volumes.” In contrast, “the six largest monastic libraires in the sixth century contained collections numbering a paltry two hundred to six hundred volumes, mostly religious in content.” Instead of thinking of the church in the Middle Ages as “an oasis of learning”, think of it as a “major purveyor” of ignorance, suppressing “subjects entirely or confining them to theological servitude.” Literacy was seen as “a threat to religious and social order” until the late sixteenth century. “Secular learning was seen as a gateway to heresy.”
Why don’t we know more about the Mayans and Aztecs? Church authorities in early sixteenth century (backed up by conquistadores’ swords) “denounced all Aztec and Mayan hieroglyphic books as the work of the devil, and systematically torched them, so depriving us of the invaluable sources of historical data on Mexico’s early civilizations.” A famous book by Thomas Cahill pushed the myth of the clergy saving Western Civilization. Cahill wanted us to think it was the unwashed barbarians and not the church that destroyed all those pagan books but “while the barbarians certainly looted, Cahill offers not a scrap of evidence to support his repeated assertions.” The church fathers “despised all knowledge that was not useful to salvation.” This included music, art, and literature. “Secular learning was (deemed) worse than superfluous, it was pernicious.”
Compared to Rome before its fall, Gaul was considered only slightly less technologically advanced. Germans then were better than we were taught, “many of these German officers were men of brilliant talents, fascinating address and noble bearing.” As per the fall of Rome, “much of the civic impoverishment was effected before these (barbarian) invasions.” Christian orthodoxy was all about Monopoly control over all cultural and intellectual output.” Note that when Rome slumped, the other half, the Byzantine Empire was doing just fine. We aren’t taught about how at that time “there was an extraordinary intellectual burgeoning throughout much of the Arabic world.” In school, we were taught to blame the barbarians for the end of Rome, and not to notice how Christianity itself ushered in “a stagnation that lasted the better part of a millennium.” In the fourth century, “Christian mobs destroyed pagan temples and sanctuaries, along with places of worship used by Jews, Donatists, Manichaeans, and other infidels and heretics, many who paid with their lives.”
The Church and Anti-Semitism: Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther all wrote some very antisemitic things. Martin Luther urged that Jewish synagogues and homes be destroyed, and they be driven from the country. He would have made a great Zionist with that attitude; just tell him all Palestinians are Jews. Michael sees the church back then as the driving force of anti-Semitism instead of popular prejudice; for many, Jews were one’s neighbors. Anti-Semitism became a convenient way to “distract the populace from their real grievances about land, taxes, and tithes. Better the people storm the synagogue than wreak their fury upon the manor, at the monastery and the cathedral, inhabited as these latter were by their fellow Christians – who also happened to be their real oppressors.” Malcolm Hay wrote that “Hatred was the product of a clerical propaganda.” He said the clergy was the only social class that attacked the Jews because their intelligence and industry made them a threat to the church’s domination. We were taught about greedy Jewish usurers (Shylock, anyone?) but not that Christian usurers were even worse (higher interest). Behind the massacre of Jewish communities one can see the hand of popes, bishops, priests, and nobility. The Spanish Inquisition burned many Jewish conversos by imagining that they were still secretly practicing Judaism. Good luck finding church documents from back then showing “love your neighbor as yourself” being applied to the Jews. Michael only really sees this end in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council leaders “formally condemned anti-Semitism.”
Michael writes that it was secular groups, not Christian ones, that historically fought for “class justice, emancipation, gender equality, religious tolerance, and other rights.” The cool Catholic liberation theology movement was soon turned against in the late 1970’s, when John Paul II packs the College of Cardinals with conservatives, and appointed conservative bishops to reverse the liberation theology tide in Latin America. Liberal priests were then sent packing to rural areas. The church couldn’t find proof of Joan of Arc’s religious heresy and so burned her for the “heresy” of dressing in men’s clothes – like a proto-Kate Hepburn or Patti Smith. Her real name was actually Jeanne d’Arc.
The CIA (Crap Including Assassinations): The US agencies that do dirty deeds (like political murder in Guatemala) are usually the ones keeping that info suppressed. Michael says the CIA destroyed many of their covert action files from the 50’s and 60’s, like the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. When the CIA says its classifying is to protect “sources and methods” what is true is that it doesn’t want its methods revealed. We already know the CIA has no problem with “false propaganda, economic warfare, bribery, rigged elections, sabotage, demolition, theft, collusion with organized crime, narcotics trafficking, terror bombings, torture, massacres, and wars of attrition.” I mean, kudos for the CIA so far for not dropping an atomic bomb on some leader like Lumumba or Allende, but what crime HASN’T the CIA done on behalf of the Fortune 500? The CIA simply doesn’t want you and me to “call into question the entire legitimacy of US global interventionism.”
The US didn’t pay Native Americans for their losses (a loss of up to $10 billion) because US government officials conveniently “lost” century old oil, gas, or timber leases. Michael calls them seldom lost and more probably removed and destroyed (p.149). That isn’t hard to imagine when you remember that Oliver North blandly discussed under oath how he personally “shredded hundreds of pages of pertinent materials.” Did you know that in 1975 Congress ordered the release of 3,700 hours of Nixon White house Tapes, yet only 63 hours have been released? The released tapes were so damning, what more damning things did Nixon say (that our government intentionally won’t release, even with the approval of Congress)? Daniel Ellsberg also said concealment is less about protecting people and more about avoiding public accountability, limiting political costs and avoiding criminal prosecution.
Yes, history is written by the victors; we have Caesar writing about beating Gaul, and history of the greatness of Charlemagne, but where is the proto-Zola writing about life working in one of Charlemagne’s mines? We have lots of biographies in our bookstores of “greats” largely famous for “forceful exploitation and suppression of toiling populations” like Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, and Frederick the Great.
Don’t Immediately Trust Centrist Historians: Know to take the words of establishment historians with a grain of salt: Henry Steele Commager worked with Samuel Eliot Morison on a famed history textbook that spoke kindly about slavery, including saying that slaves were “apparently happy.” That textbook ruled for 20 years. Daniel Boorstin, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Oscar Handlin all were cheerleaders for the Vietnam War and for repression of activist US students. Boorstin fingered friends as Communist subversives before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Michael says as of 1999, “no university is in the hands of leftists.” Michael believes new evidence shows that JFK was clearly shot at by more than two people and there was “a conspiracy to hide the crime.” If the truth came out it would discredit US institutions which we are supposed to theoretically believe in. Apparently if you ignore all the evidence, then you too can believe Oswald did all the shooting himself from a great distance very fast at a car moving 11 mph quickly reloading with a crappy bolt-action rifle. Michael says that with history: “Not surprisingly, the deck is stacked to favor those who are dealing the cards.”
This book suggests the President Zachary Taylor may have been poisoned to death; there is no evidence that he died a natural death. There was no attempt to examine the food and drink he consumed, or the plates, silverware, or even an autopsy. Bruno Bettelheim was an asshole to students protesting the Vietnam War, calling them parasites brought on by a permissive society. While progressives see rebels responding to moral wrongs, the right portrays them as “not well”, as they immediately did with Aaron Bushnell, or Julian Assange.
due to review length, this review continues in the comment section. cheers...
December 28, 2022
Twelfth book from Parenti.
I thought this was going to be another synthesis of his previous work (and some parts are) but there is enough stuff to consider this a great work by its own.
The critique to textbooks, ideology, christianity, CIA and the exposition of historical characters (such as Victor Debs) is refreshing.
Also his study about the arsenic present in the presidents Taylor’s body is, in my wicked humor, a little bit funny and exaggerated but nonetheless it is true that empirical data must be reconfirmed time and time again.
Reading Parenti is like engulfing a new friend, specially when the other person is telling you funny, tragic and passionate things.
I thought this was going to be another synthesis of his previous work (and some parts are) but there is enough stuff to consider this a great work by its own.
The critique to textbooks, ideology, christianity, CIA and the exposition of historical characters (such as Victor Debs) is refreshing.
Also his study about the arsenic present in the presidents Taylor’s body is, in my wicked humor, a little bit funny and exaggerated but nonetheless it is true that empirical data must be reconfirmed time and time again.
Reading Parenti is like engulfing a new friend, specially when the other person is telling you funny, tragic and passionate things.
Read
August 20, 2022This was so random
March 22, 2023
One take away from this book and I'm quoting directly from the book is that, "Our minds should not be swayed by such buzzwords as "conspiracy," which causes us to reject out-of-hand the idea that the ruling elites operate with self-interested intent, and sometimes with unprincipled and lethal effect" (198). Basically, Parenti warns us to not take everything as face-value and to always questions the stories, histories, news, anything that the conglomerate media are feeding us. Especially if said the media is quick to erase, distort anything that has the potential to threaten the "national security" or national interest of the US.
1. This book was clearly well researched. At the end of each chapter, Parenti cited all the works he used to make his point
2. After reading this book, I feel like I have been made aware of the way History is given to us, the masses. I was always aware that History is fabricated, distorted to fit the narrative of the oppressors, but reading facts and connecting those facts to occurring events just make me stop and think about the things I think I know and how much of it is even the real account of events.
3. Although published in 1999, the parallel one can draw from this book and current world events is actually mind blowing but also not really. Like when you think the way the US wants to ban tiktok. .
1. This book was clearly well researched. At the end of each chapter, Parenti cited all the works he used to make his point
2. After reading this book, I feel like I have been made aware of the way History is given to us, the masses. I was always aware that History is fabricated, distorted to fit the narrative of the oppressors, but reading facts and connecting those facts to occurring events just make me stop and think about the things I think I know and how much of it is even the real account of events.
3. Although published in 1999, the parallel one can draw from this book and current world events is actually mind blowing but also not really. Like when you think the way the US wants to ban tiktok. .
December 28, 2022
Esencial para contrarrestar las visiones ortodoxas fabricadas por las clases dominantes convertidas en hechos objetivos e incontrovertibles a base de repetición y de una cuidadosa selección de lo que se apoya como convencional de arriba para abajo. Cuestiona la veracidad de varias versiones a todas luces apócrifas de periodos claves y disecciona por qué estas son como mínimo susceptibles de caer en las pasiones de la época, prestando una merecida atención a los hombres y mujeres comunes y a su agencia a la hora de afectar el mundo. El estilo de Parenti como escritor es el del maestro más carismático de la universidad, ese al que sus clases se les termina el cupo en medio minuto, pero que es igualmente capaz de formular cátedras más formales, solo que no le sale de los huevos, y lo encuentro encantador.
February 20, 2025
zajebiste
July 16, 2011
Excellent history book that ties in the important lessons of the past with today.
October 15, 2020
Damn, turns out this Christianity business has some PROBLEMS.
April 6, 2022
EXTREMELY well-researched
January 20, 2024
Very good, some eye openers
March 7, 2024
I was recommended this book as a good starting place to start reading Parenti, along with Blackshirts and Reds which I plan on reading next. I didn't plan it this way, but it actually works really well as a companion to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States which I had finished reading right before picking this up. While that book is Zinn covering history of the United States from the perspective of the common person, discussing and disproving several historical myths and distortions in the process, this book is Parenti discussing how historical myths and distortions happen and how they benefit the owning classes and the current status quo.
Parenti covers mostly Western history in this book, as it's what's familiar to him, and does a thorough job of covering the systems that have risen to maintain a certain view of history and how it 'should' be taught and understood. He discusses several of the tactics used by those in power to control and shape the popular understanding of history, and how several of the tactics are basically as old as recorded history itself. He touches on the destruction of libraries and documents, control of what works get published and promoted, the purposeful editing of primary source documents, and the white washing of some historical figures (usually those who are part of the establishment or support it) and the demonizing of others (usually political radicals or other dissidents). He also discusses how History began to be taught as a subject, with it's origins in academia being tied to propaganda purposes, and how the early shapers of it were often wealthy with a vested interest in the current status quo.
Parenti's point in the work is that history is taught not to illuminate, but in fact to reinforce the establishment and the systems in place. Books that reinforce these ideas will be promoted and widely disseminated, those that don't will be ignored or denounced. History is treated as piecemeal, with a focus on dates and names rather than holistically. This is intended to create a feeling that any problems that arise are aberrations or have no real origin. This obscures the role that the powerful or their antecedents often have in these problems, and stops us from questioning whether the system itself is the problem.
It's a fascinating book, and a very quick and easy read. I felt at first that the ordering of chapters was scattershot, starting around the 20th century before jumping backwards to Rome, but as I read on the shape of it started to make a bit more sense. In some ways it felt like Parenti was starting us in the origin of History the subject before taking us back to the origin of the history of what we could call Western culture.
He does a lot to point out how often we forget the secular and economic position that our institutions and leaders are grounded in, how those facts influence their ideology and understanding of the world, and how important it is to look critically at what they write or do. He also talks about how important it is to understand that you can't divide these things, that economics, culture, politics etc. have never been separate but have always been intertwined and had influence on the other.
8 out of 10.
Parenti covers mostly Western history in this book, as it's what's familiar to him, and does a thorough job of covering the systems that have risen to maintain a certain view of history and how it 'should' be taught and understood. He discusses several of the tactics used by those in power to control and shape the popular understanding of history, and how several of the tactics are basically as old as recorded history itself. He touches on the destruction of libraries and documents, control of what works get published and promoted, the purposeful editing of primary source documents, and the white washing of some historical figures (usually those who are part of the establishment or support it) and the demonizing of others (usually political radicals or other dissidents). He also discusses how History began to be taught as a subject, with it's origins in academia being tied to propaganda purposes, and how the early shapers of it were often wealthy with a vested interest in the current status quo.
Parenti's point in the work is that history is taught not to illuminate, but in fact to reinforce the establishment and the systems in place. Books that reinforce these ideas will be promoted and widely disseminated, those that don't will be ignored or denounced. History is treated as piecemeal, with a focus on dates and names rather than holistically. This is intended to create a feeling that any problems that arise are aberrations or have no real origin. This obscures the role that the powerful or their antecedents often have in these problems, and stops us from questioning whether the system itself is the problem.
It's a fascinating book, and a very quick and easy read. I felt at first that the ordering of chapters was scattershot, starting around the 20th century before jumping backwards to Rome, but as I read on the shape of it started to make a bit more sense. In some ways it felt like Parenti was starting us in the origin of History the subject before taking us back to the origin of the history of what we could call Western culture.
He does a lot to point out how often we forget the secular and economic position that our institutions and leaders are grounded in, how those facts influence their ideology and understanding of the world, and how important it is to look critically at what they write or do. He also talks about how important it is to understand that you can't divide these things, that economics, culture, politics etc. have never been separate but have always been intertwined and had influence on the other.
8 out of 10.
April 2, 2025
Does Parenti ever miss?
The man is a master of Occam’s razor. He cleverly and simply exposes why the mainstream narratives are the way they are. Everything Parenti says can pretty much be boiled down to “those who have power, wield their power”. And at every turn, he exposes how the arguments that the ruling class makes to defend itself always boil down to a deranged, nearly conspiratorial assertion that those who have power *do not* wield their power.
The last two chapters were particularly good. Parenti has a way of making you slap yourself in the head asking why you’ve “never thought of it that way before.”
The man is a master of Occam’s razor. He cleverly and simply exposes why the mainstream narratives are the way they are. Everything Parenti says can pretty much be boiled down to “those who have power, wield their power”. And at every turn, he exposes how the arguments that the ruling class makes to defend itself always boil down to a deranged, nearly conspiratorial assertion that those who have power *do not* wield their power.
The last two chapters were particularly good. Parenti has a way of making you slap yourself in the head asking why you’ve “never thought of it that way before.”
February 4, 2022
While he raises some valid criticisms and points, Parenti steps beyond quality history himself with his almost hyper-emotional rants. He takes potshots at scholars that don't fit into his own box of more radical historical presentation; thus, guilty of the very thing he condemns. Calling Eugene Genovese a " conservative?", really goes over the edge. Worth reading for gaining insight into how historical profession evolved, but be cautious in taking stock of his criticisms of individual historians.
February 9, 2021
A good, quick overview of how history has been and continues to be manipulated as it is formed to fit the interests of the powerful. Parenti covers many subjects as example, from the ancient Romans and early Christians, to the death of US president Zachary Taylor. This book is proof that history is always political in its formation and "objectivity" is only a reflection of the status quo.
March 15, 2020
Outdated at this point.
September 24, 2020
THE GOAT
December 8, 2020
A look at history that tries to find the real events not the story that we know.
January 14, 2022
jesus christ had a son
January 3, 2023
Be nice to the Jews, y'all.
January 20, 2025
P in Parenti steht für Perfektion
March 12, 2025
My favorite far left conspiracy theorist 🥰🥰
October 24, 2025
Many history readers view the subject as objective events happening in a neat procession, and are happy to accept whatever interpretation they've last read as the way to decipher it. For any true reader of history, historiography must be at least as important. And this isn't just for ancient stuff like Plutarch- all writers are ideological, from Tacitus to Parenti himself. Like anything he writes, this is funny, reveals interesting historical anecdotes that you'd otherwise have to do some deep digging to find, and serves as a great analysis of the subject of history itself that any reader can follow. Obviously something like Lucien's 'True History' is anything but, and most people accept how often ancient sources exaggerate or flat out lie, but just because we've entered a more 'rational' age doesn't mean that lies of the previous centuries can't be repeated, and new ones made whole cloth. Overall a worthwhile read for any interested in the history of history.
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