Protocols of Machismo

Corey Robin

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The 20th century, it’s said, taught us a simple lesson about politics: of all the motivations for political action, none is as lethal as ideology. The lust for money may be distasteful, the desire for power ignoble, but neither will drive its devotees to the criminal excess of an idea on the march. Whether the idea is the triumph of the working class or of a master race, ideology leads to the graveyard.

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From the LRB letters page: [ 2 June 2005 ] Daniel Caola.

Corey Robin teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Fear: The History of a Political Idea.