Corey Robin's Blog

On Saturday, November 2, there will be a celebration/conference on the work of the political theorist Nick Xenos, who died this past March. It will feature a wide range of scholars, colleagues, and friends, from Wendy Brown to Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo to Robyn Marasco and many more. I’ll be speaking as well, on Nick’s public writings in the London Review of Books, Granta, and other publications. It will begin at 11 am, and will be held at the New School, in the Wolff Conference Room. Please come, if you’re in town, and please make sure to circulate this widely. You can see the program below or in the attached pdf.

Reading this New York Times report on Eric Adams’ dropping out of the race—where Adams is described, with no sense of irony, as “politically moderate” and is quoted as warning against Mamdani’s desire to “destroy the very system we built together over generations” while Cuomo is quoted as saying, “We are facing an existential threat in an extreme radicalism that threatens the existence of this city as we know it”—it dawns on me that we on the left are being presented with a golden opportunity. An opportunity that reminds me, seriously, of something only Lincoln was able to pull off. Zohran Mamdani is running now against Andrew Cuomo, a corrupt sexual harasser, who has been aided from the start by […]

I had a long conversation with Ezra Klein about the current moment, its parallels and divergences from the Second Red Scare of the McCarthy era, and three recommendations for books to read. I chose one book of poetry, which I hope you will all ready, one book of history, and one book of political theory. Klein had nice things to say about my book The Reactionary Mind: “in my opinion,” he said, it’s “one of the most insightful books you can read on the Trumpist right and what is behind it.” He read it twice, and I could see all the notes he had taken on it. The funnest part of the interview happened off-screen. I wore my “city workers […]

I found this a most unbelievable passage, in a New York Times article about why tech and other professionals who are worried about affordability are turning to Mamdani: They ruled out the other candidates for a range of reasons. Some cited concerns about the sexual harassment complaints against Mr. Cuomo and the corruption investigation into Mr. Adams and his administration. The charges against Mr. Adams were dropped, but some in his orbit have remained under investigation. We all know, and the Times itself reported on it intensively and extensively at the time, that the Trump administration dropped the corruption charges against Adams back in February because of a promised quid-pro-quo: if the government dropped the charges, Adams would cooperate with […]

I hate to be that guy on the left, but I’m going to be that guy on the left. One of the arguments Republicans are making tonight about the firing of Jimmy Kimmel is that while they’re unhappy and uncomfortable with the head of the FCC’s threatening to pull ABC’s license, they’d be absolutely fine if the network simply made its own decision, sans government pressure, to fire Kimmel. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said to NBC, “Well, my preference would always be to let the companies make economic market decisions.” Senator Mike Rounds, Republican from South Dakota, said, “I understand that right now it’s an employer-employee issue, and that’s the way I would approach it.” As if there were […]

I understand the impulse, at moments like these, for politicians and public spokespersons to say that we need to talk across the divide, to acknowledge our similarities amid our differences, that we need leaders who understand there is no red America, no blue America, just America. It’s not my way of writing or speaking, but it runs deep in our political tradition. So it’s not surprising that people would turn to it. Looking for precedents, people will often invoke Lincoln, particularly his First and Second Inaugurals (or least the conciliatory part of the Second). The leader who bound up our wounds, who bore malice toward none and charity for all. But Lincoln is an instructive case for a different reason. […]

It’s a strange and disorienting experience to read Mark Lilla’s review of Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley in the current issues of the New York Review of Books. Long-time readers of this blog will know that many years ago, when Lilla reviewed my book on conservatism in the same publication, he excoriated me as a cretin—I don’t think that’s too strong—for flattening the fine distinctions, built up over the decades by conservatives and liberals alike, between conservatives and reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries. Several times in his review, Lilla held up Buckley as Exhibit A of the former type, the true conservative, as against my portrait of the conservative as reactionary counterrevolutionary. Even though I had direct evidence to […]

Among the political emotions, vengeance may be the most terrible of them all. On the one hand, vengeance is different than justice. It authorizes those who act in its name to do all sorts of things that they would normally not feel themselves authorized or entitled to do. Vengeance has an extraordinarily permissive licensing structure, freeing the vengeful from any and all restraints. On the other hand, as any reading of The Oresteia will show, vengeance contains a strict and stern element of obligation, even injunction: Whatever else you may do, you are not authorized or allowed not to take vengeance. To not avenge—to forgive or acquit, to do anything that might break the link between the iniquitous past and […]

After the killing of Charlie Kirk—as everyone now knows—Ezra Klein made the following two claims: If the following media reports are correct, one of those two claims cannot be true. Reuters: After the fatal shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, U.S. Republicans have a warning for Americans: Mourn him respectfully or suffer the consequences. At least 15 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs after discussing the killing online…The total includes journalists, academic workers and teachers. On Friday, a junior Nasdaq employee was fired over her posts related to Kirk. Others have been subjected to torrents of online abuse or seen their offices flooded with calls demanding they be fired, part of a surge in right-wing rage that […]

Judith Butler is one of 160 faculty, students, and staff members at UC Berkeley whose name the University of California has turned over to the Trump administration to help with the federal government’s investigation into alleged antisemitism on the Berkeley campus. Let’s slow that statement down so we can understand its components more clearly. Since February, Trump’s Department of Education has been investigating universities, including Berkeley and other UC campuses, for their handling of alleged antisemitism on their campuses. In March, the Justice Department announced a separate but parallel investigation of the UC campuses. In July, a House congressional committee called three university leaders to testify about alleged antisemitism on their campuses. One of the summoned was the chancellor of […]