By Neil Coleman
The chaos that threatens to explode from this mobilisation will devastate not only migrants but all poor people and workers. Only reactionary political forces will benefit from promoting it.
The mobilisation of the populist right internationally draws on and misdirects people’s real grievances against the wrong targets (vulnerable groups instead of the systems perpetuating their insecurity). Similarly in South Africa today – as in Belfast, elsewhere in Europe and in the US – we see that this deflection of people’s anger will prevail every time against a purely human rights paradigm that simply appeals to people’s morality, but doesn’t address their material concerns. A purely moralistic approach can be easily written off as elitist and out of touch…