Part I of a talk by Dr. Michael Parenti on “Lies, War, and Empire” given May 12, 2007 at Antioch University in Seattle. 

     Much of Parenti’s work draws upon history. In his History as Mystery he takes the old adage that history is written by the victors and fleshes it out with examples drawn from ancient and modern times. In regard to early Christianity, for instance, he maintains that, contrary to popular notions, the “Jesus worshipers” did not gather most of their followers from the poor and downtrodden but from the more affluent strata. Some Christian leaders discouraged slaves from converting to Christianity. Slaves were prohibited from becoming church deacons or priests, he maintains. Contrary to conventional US notions, he argues that the Christians were not the keepers of learning and scholarship during the Dark Ages but played a relentless role in destroying all the advanced learning and all the libraries of antiquity that were in their reach.

 

He does address some of the intrinsic problems when people like us come maybe from a place that seems like left field with new ideas and the mainstream labels and forms the conformity of bias. Conspiracy and lies rule the day apparently and the views outside  the conformity are harder tested in the court of public opinion. This is a heavy topic  but a great academic dissertation on truth and reality.