Parenti absolutely was an academic. And he's a good one. A great one even. That said, it wouldn't have shaken my personal political convictions of he had suddenly denounced the entirety of his work and endorsed the democrats, or suddenly decided the USSR was bad actually, and that anarchist Catalonia was the one true leftist movement. He's just an observer, not a participant, in revolution.

This is opposed to someone like Trotsky, who I take far more seriously, who for me has taken many years of exposure and reading to understand what elements of his criticism of the USSR are valid, and what parts are cuckoo-bananas ideological hallucinations given the period of time he lived in. And for Trotsky, his criticisms got more outlandish the less involved and responsible he was with the actual process of government. Another example, someone like Gorbachev should be taken seriously, but given his cowardice to publicly oppose Stalin's popularity with the people of the USSR after his death, it is difficult to treat him as acting in good faith.

I take revolutionaries and their histories and ideas very seriously. Half the reason I take Marx seriously is because Mao, Lenin, and Ho Chi Mihn take him seriously, and understanding revolutionary theory in the 20th century is impossible without understanding him.