Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism is a book written by Michael Parenti in 1997 on the rationalization of fascist ideology and the downfall of Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era. This book covers Italian and German fascism, American finance capital's role as the financier of fascism, American and Western anti-Communism, and the Western plot to overthrow the Soviet Union and liberalize Eastern Europe. Parenti uses primary sources such as books, letters, interviews, and data, and secondary sources such as newspapers in order to show the differences between reality in the Soviet Union and Western propaganda/conceptualizations of the Soviet Union (both before and after its fall).
The book is influential and foundational among Marxist-Leninists, mainly due to its debunking of the lies perpetrated against Stalin and the Soviet Union, as well as Parenti's critique of anarchist American anti-Communists like Noam Chomsky.