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Solidarity beyond silos is our best bet for fighting exploitation [1]

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Date: 2025-11 

Hatred of migrants and outsiders is a defining feature of our current political moment. Far-right racists are gaining power by blaming outsiders for deeply rooted social and economic problems, while social media algorithms fuel our divisions to profit off our attention. Budgets for detention, deportation, and surveillance increase year on year, and well-connected companies and political cronies get fat on government contracts.

Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” allocated $170bn towards deportation. This includes $27.7bn – up from $8.7bn – for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an increasingly lawless agency currently terrorising communities across the US. This is more than many countries spend on their militaries. In 2025, the European Union tripled its migration management budget and allocated €12bn to Frontex, its own border guard dog.

Meanwhile, self-appointed vigilantes have been causing chaos from Iceland to India. In South Africa, Operation Dudula has been conducting illegal raids upon local businesses looking for foreign workers. They have repeatedly blocked non-South Africans from accessing public health facilities in direct violation of the South African constitution. "Dudula" means to "force out" or "knock down" in isiZulu, and the party’s next target is preventing non-South African children from attending school.

Having the ‘wrong’ race, citizenship, religion and/or ethnicity now regularly triggers a right-wing response. In the UK and beyond, social media lights up after acts of violence to speculate on the religion, ethnicity or heritage of the perpetrator. No matter the facts, commentators always find a way to make hate-filled hay.

Bullies are on the rise the world over. Both in the halls of power and on the street, they’re deploying violence and intimidation to hurt, silence and dispatch their enemies. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat observes, they’re using “ritual humiliation to ‘keep order’ in their worlds, fulfil their ego needs, and calm their insecurities”. The cruelty soothes them. The cruelty is the point.

Standing up to bullies

Attacks on rights rarely stop at one group alone. Alongside hostility towards migrants and ethnic minorities, rights and respect are eroding for many other groups, such as trans people, people with disabilities, people who use drugs, and indeed women more broadly. Anti-feminism is evident not only in well-funded attacks on abortion rights, but also the insidious creep of the tradwife movement: a pretty package through which ethnonationalist and white supremacist messaging are being normalised.

We must unite against the bullies before they cow us all. And since they are after so many, a good place to start is by taking seriously the idea that an injury to one is an injury to all and really work to break boundaries down. This involves focusing on things we hold in common, thinking and acting in ways that connect different struggles for justice, and forming communities out of isolated and vulnerable individuals so they may better advance their shared interests and goals.

In short, we need far more solidarity. It’s a term with an old and illustrious pedigree, and a practice that has been foundational to the most important social movements of the last two centuries: labour rights, gender equality, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, disarmament, disability rights, and environmental justice.

Solidarity is not the same as sympathy. It can sometimes be stirred by sympathy, but sympathy can also be a path to saviourism. True solidarity avoids the pitfalls of both ‘rescue’ and paternalism. It also avoids abstract appeals to equality and fraternity that stand entirely disconnected from the practical and political struggles required to bring about real change. Solidarity is demanding. It requires careful deliberation, enduring collaboration, and concrete action.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/solidarity-beyond-silos-is-our-best-bet-for-fighting-exploitation/

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