@youtube{,
topic = {ruling class, conspiration},
url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsua0m6GreY},
author = {Michael Parenti},
title = {Conspiracy AND class power},
institution = {Berkeley, CA},
year = {1993},
abstract = {This is an in-depth analysis of the modern state and the exercise of power behind the scenes. The speech is also an important historic document. Given in 1993 it issues a warning of the use of deception to justify going to war.

The speech also explains the expansion of the deregulated free market that would lead to a financial crisis as we see it today. The speech on Conspiracy and Class Power was lost for several years and only recently discovered in the collection of a listener in Seattle. Michael Parenti spoke before an overflow audience in Berkeley, CA.},
notes = {
[41’43”]
“The essence of political analysis is 2 things:
One is you analyze the impact of policies and situations: what happens […]
The other thing is you try to determine intent.”
[42’36”]
“And yet there are so many exposés that are written that never even deal with it.”
[42’40”]
“We read about environmental devastation, we read about the terrible effects of US intervention in Panama or Nicaragua or Cuba or here or there, but WHY? WHY is US policy doing this?”
[43’11”]
“What are the interests involved?”
[43’17”]
“We learn not to ask why because once you ask why then you cross the line from a liberal complaint into a radical analysis.”
[44’02”]
“Without understanding intent, indeed, US policy remains an unsettling mystery, a puzzling thing to liberal critics.”
[44’11”]
“But such a policy is really rational and quite successful. It consistently moves against any nation or social movement that tries to change the client-state relations of US dominance and imperialism, that tries to use a greater portion of its natural resources, markets and labour for self-development, moves that would infringe upon the interests of rich investors.”
[45’12”]
“This isn’t a conspiracy fantasy. It’s a conspiracy actuality to conclude that US leaders were not interested in reaching a peaceful accord, that they were lying about their real intentions to the American public and even to their own staffs.”
[45’37”]
“they see me and people like me as a real mortal enemy to their class interests; they’re absolutely correct […] They’re right about me, I’m right about them.”
[56’13”]
“Institutional arrangements may have unintended effects but if the arrangements are serving explicit interests, how really unintended are the effects?”
[56’50”]
“what I am arguing is that those larger institutional forces are directed by conscious human agency and those agencies use conspiratorial forces or non-conspiratorial forces and that the conspiratorial forces are important, they’re not rare exceptions and that they are systemic in their nature and in their output.”
[58’10”]
“The concern with conspiracy and assassination […] is the angry realization that state power is used in gangster ways by gentlemen gangsters who defend imperialism and the national security state.”
[58’41”]
“The expression of public concern about the nature of our government, the angry criticism, there’s a name for that, and that is called democracy, and let’s have more of it.”
}
}