Xenophobia debases us all

Xenophobia is festering around the world. In South Africa it carries a dangerous legitimacy, embodied in the fascism of Operation Dudula

- Richard Pithouse

In the Book of Leviticus, the Day of Atonement is marked by the choosing of two goats. One is offered to God in sacrifice. The other, the scapegoat, is symbolically burdened with the sins of the community and driven into the wilderness.

Scapegoating is an ancient temptation. In situations where intense stress has complex causes, or causes that are difficult to face, it can provide some psychic relief through the illusion that the true source of evil has been identified. When the scapegoat is attacked, the sense of power that many people derive from socially sanctioned forms of sadism can offer a way to express anger and some compensation for feelings of fear, humiliation and powerlessness.

Participation in public scapegoating is always participation in collective cruelty. It is also always participation in the cultivation and legitimation of collective illusion. Every form of politics built around scapegoating is, without exception, a form of collective psychopathy. It is at the core of the illogic of fascism.

Sincere attraction to forms of politics constituted around the collective cruelty and delusion of scapegoating are always an expression of personal weakness, moral debasement and a refusal to try to understand reality. We always, in the words of Abahlali baseMjondolo president S’bu Zikode, disgrace our own humanity when we diminish or vandalise that of others.