diff --git a/volatility/cli/__init__.py b/volatility/cli/__init__.py
index 983566074..2cb00a484 100644
--- a/volatility/cli/__init__.py
+++ b/volatility/cli/__init__.py
@@ -98,6 +98,14 @@ class CommandLine(interfaces.plugins.FileConsumerInterface):
         parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog = 'volatility', description = "An open-source memory forensics framework")
         parser.add_argument(
             "-c", "--config", help = "Load the configuration from a json file", default = None, type = str)
+        parser.add_argument(
+            "--parallelism",
+            help = "Enables parallelism (defaults to processes if no argument given)",
+            nargs = '?',
+            choices = ['processes', 'threads', 'off'],
+            const = 'processes',
+            default = None,
+            type = str)
         parser.add_argument(
             "-e",
             "--extend",
@@ -171,6 +179,14 @@ class CommandLine(interfaces.plugins.FileConsumerInterface):
         else:
             console.setLevel(10 - (partial_args.verbosity - 2))
 
+        # Set the PARALLELISM
+        if partial_args.parallelism == 'processes':
+            constants.PARALLELISM = constants.PARALLELISM_MULTIPROCESSING
+        elif partial_args.parallelism == 'threading':
+            constants.PARALLELISM = constants.PARALLELISM_THREADING
+        else:
+            constants.PARALLELISM = constants.PARALLELISM_OFF
+
         # Do the initialization
         ctx = contexts.Context()  # Construct a blank context
         failures = framework.import_files(volatility.plugins,