No return to tribal politics

Against the backdrop of rising unemployment the voices rejecting immigrants are gaining force in Spain. With an eye to the upcoming regional elections El País warns about populist politicians who try to win votes with xenophobic slogans: "Quite apart from the moral arguments there are also political and economic ones. Patriotic protectionism would be catastrophic in both areas. The answer to neo-liberalism lies not in re-erecting national bastions but in a reform cosmopolitanism based on strengthening political institutions at an international level and also the means for these institutions to control economic power. We will be ill prepared for this paradigmatic change if we return to the old attempts at inbreeding and the logic of exclusion. But the temptation for politicians is great and it grows as the elections draw closer."

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