It is assumed that discriminatory policies are the exclusive result of openly and overtly racist ideologies and practices. It is expected that these policies and the ideologies that support them necessarily need some "Manifesto of the race" and some intellectuals and scientists willing to demonstrate that "races exist" and therefore these xenophobic phenomena are easily identifiable and cope with: for a long time, it has been possible to confine such racist behaviour in the marginal spheres of politics.
But too often we ignore, or forget, that all racism is nourished by xenophobia, and that xenophobia is not a synonym of racism or ethnic intolerance: it is, rather, the fear of the foreigner or of the different. On the other hand, xenophobia is as old as mankind and has its roots in ancestral feelings and mechanisms that refer to the deepest and most resistant dimensions of the psyche.
Today, in modern globalized societies, the boundary between racism and non-racism is, on closer inspection, very clear to decipher. Racism is everything that leads xenophobia to become hostility, aggression, discrimination; non-racism is everything that contributes, with rational arguments, to defuse the phobia (distrust, suspicion, fear) towards the foreigner and the different.
For xenophobia to translate into racism, in a society such as the Western one where cultures of welcome (of secular or religious origin) resist, it is necessary that the "political entrepreneurs of intolerance" operate.
For decades in politics, anyone who had vaguely "totalitarian" ideas or who could lead to racist or xenophobic sympathies was an outcast, a not very credible person, uncouth, aggressive and, above all, a laughingstock.
The world of politics has always imposed on the figure of the politician his ethics and morals that require him to perform his duties well and to be at the service of the citizen by applying the laws and safeguarding the free institutions.
But unfortunately, this political morality is lacking when periods of socioeconomic change such as disasters, wars, illegal immigration, financial crises or pandemics occur.
In times of crisis, ethics and political morality have no hold on the masses who are looking for the man of "providence", the winning leader and resolver who arouses passion and gives immediate answers, always pointing to the responsible or the guilty of turn, in sharp contrast to the mild and competent politician who seeks in thoughtful dialogue the resolution of the crisis.
Today, unfortunately, in the name of freedom of expression, this policy has been rehabilitated, and the politicians who praise it have become the champions of courage, the enemies of conformism and political respectability, new fashionable intellectuals who speak to the "belly" of their voters, so they feel free to declare in front of the cameras, for example, that all "Romani people" are thieves to be put in jail, all Muslims are terrorists to be fought, all gays are sick to be cured, etc...
So what must concern us today is the insidious rehabilitation of "institutional racism" and its veiled benevolence towards such politicians free to use any verbal violence.