INTERVIEW: Corey Robin

As part of a new feature for our blog, AWOT has begun a series of interviews with public intellectuals, professors, activists and journalists. This week, we caught up with Corey Robin, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Fear: History of a Political Idea, as well as of numerous articles in the London Review of Books, American Political Science Review, Social Research, Theory and Event, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, and Raritan. Robin is also the author of a recent essay comparing the neoconservatives to other counter-revolutionaries in American history, which he has generously shared with us. Below are a few tease quotes from the interview, the entirety of which you can read here: Corey Robin Interview.

Corey Robin on the politics of fear:
‘there’s a tendency on the part of political theorists and leaders to turn to fear as a foundation, a negative foundation, for politics. People begin to argue that we don’t know what the good is – or at least can’t agree upon the good – but we do know what the bad is and that fear is the worst bad or the worst evil. So if we can ground our politics in opposing the object that represents that fear – usually some kind of foreign enemy – we can move forward.’

Corey Robin on utopianism and violence
‘many people do think that violence is committed by utopians and ideologues and that security is the necessary antidote to that ideological, utopian violence. But that’s just plainly wrong. There’s an awful lot of violence that is committed or defended by people who think of themselves as the opposite of utopians or ideologues (think Robert McNamara or Herman Kahn), and security is often their calling card.’

Corey Robin on the neocons:
‘I think the neocons are counterrevolutionaries. People get confused by the neocons because they don’t seem like traditional conservatives – or at least what we think of as conservatives. And that’s because they’re not.’

Corey Robin on the dearth of progressive ideals:
‘I’m not sure if the problem is that the Left has no ideas or that it is too afraid to articulate clearly the ideas that it does have. At some level, it doesn’t matter: the Left is not a potent ideological force…The recent book by the guy who runs Daily Kos is a case in point – very little discussion of ideology at all.’

Corey Robin on risk-taking:
‘Risk-taking is not inherently conservative but celebrating risk-taking for its own sake – or for the cultural regeneration it brings – is a classically counterrevolutionary and fascist idea. The counterrevolutionary or fascist sees a prostrate, weak, vapid society and believes that heroism and risk are the only ways to jump start that society into something more vital, profound, and elevated. Having said that, there’s never been any progress – liberal or leftist – that did not depend upon some kind of risk-taking.’