Michael Parenti is one of America’s greatest living thinkers and historians. He does so even against sanctioning popular narratives; not as a contrarian, but as an incorruptible mind.
I’ve always hated the depiction of the mob knowing that I was the mob. The language is deprecating and elitist. Earlier depictions of the mob for me were experienced when talking about the French Revolution and American History. Take the French Revolution; it’s commonly taught as if French Society was doing fine until the mob went crazy and started cutting everyone’s heads off. There’s obviously something missing. There’s obviously something willfully left unspoken. Kings are not the way Disney would have you view them. They’re an evil sort of thing. The horrors of Monarchy are left unexpressed. This is done so willfully that most people having graduated high school and studied it, couldn’t tell you what Feudalism is. We don’t understand the fundamental differences between Social Orders. An infantilized narrative is reproduced so that people think all of History is capitalist.
This book seeks to break that. Rome was a Slave Society. The Senators were Slavers. Rome wasn’t a free Republic with a few slaves here and there. It was a Slave Society, yet nobody understands that part of history. It isn’t told, and it’s willfully untold. Why did Rome welcome Caesar as a Liberator? It’s because he was a Liberator. Why did Rome scorn his assassins? It’s because they were Slavers.