The Greek publisher Dimitrios Dimitrakos (1875-1966), in his excellent 8,000-page work, awarded by the Greek National Academy, “Mega lexicon of the entire Greek language 1930-1950”. 2nd edition, 1964, Athens, “Domi” Publications, defines xenophilia as a translation loan from English (xenofilia < xeno- + -philia xeno- + -philia) meaning the exaggerated sympathy and friendly disposition towards foreigners, aliens and their cultural identity. It is developed to its extreme version, the erotic arousal, attraction or erotic stimulation by foreigners or aliens.
Xenophilia is more than curiosity or a dignified respect for the stranger. It is a psychological disease that afflicts cultures in their final stages. It functions as the inverted mirror of xenophobia and is essentially a deep hatred of the Self, a hatred masked by overflowing compassion. It manifests itself in the Western world through an obsession with the exotic, a frantic effort to dismantle traditions, symbols, and structures in the service of a fraudulent and subversive universalism.
The great French-Jewish radical philosopher of Lithuanian origin Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), known for his work in existentialism, ethics, ontology, the study of the Talmud, and Jewish philosophy and theology, wrote aptly in 1959: “Monotheism [Judaism, Christianity, Islam] is not an arithmetic of the divine… It is, rather, a school of xenophobia and anti-racism.”
Real, true, absolute hospitality as understood by Levinas’s student, the also French-Jewish Jacques Derrida, demands the unconditional reception of the “Other,” whoever that person may be, that is, it demands the provision of hospitality to the stranger without conditions or limitations. This “unconditional” hospitality constitutes the top political stake for the globalizing society and is certainly founded on the discourse of human rights, within the framework of which it constitutes the “right to hospitality” and the consequent corresponding “duty to hospitality”. Here is the “sequence of xenophilia”.
The great Kant, the leading humanist philosopher of the modern era, did not accept any special “right of the visitor” that would “make him a fellow resident”, but simply the “right to visit”, which all people have, in all parts of the world.
Consequently, there is no such thing as a “right to hospitality”, because “by its very nature” it comes into direct conflict with other fundamental rights that clearly precede it: such as the “right to life” of the country’s inhabitants, the “right to security” of the nation, the “right to prosperity” of the people and, ultimately, it leads to a fierce conflict with the “Principle of national sovereignty”, that is, with the foundation of the “modern democratic constitutional state”, not of some “fascist tyranny”!
Consequently, hospitality as a central demand for political action in the light of some supposedly “global humanitarian ideas”, not only is it not consistent with the historical and realistic political perspective as a political organization of a people, but on the contrary constitutes its absolute denial, especially when the mass arrival of foreign populations concerns immigrants – essentially invaders – who demonstrably and in no way accept our own moral and political values, therefore their adherence to them is not presumed in any way, neither now nor in the future. (We saw this phenomenon clearly in France and England with the terrifying problem of the “integration” of Afro-Asian immigrants, 2nd and 3rd generation.) In fact, now, when the militarized “xenophobia” directed by the International Sovereigns and their local mouthpieces, with the worship of the Other as a foreigner, comes to a nightmarish social landscape, where phenomena of social deconstruction operate, such as mass unemployment, absence of a minimum wage, opening of borders, complete deindustrialization, destruction of agriculture, and proletarianization of the middle class.
The ethics of hospitality as a duty to grant a permit to settle means the end of national sovereignty, the destruction of social institutions, the weakening of the state, par excellence in the issue of the security and survival protection of the people. However, it also means the annihilating shrinkage of individuality through the generalized destruction of the moral order, as the driving moral force of each individual’s character, a destruction through which peoples and nations degenerate.
The great Kant, the leading humanist philosopher of the modern era, did not accept any special “right of the visitor” that would “make him a fellow resident”, but simply the “right to visit”, which all people have, in all parts of the world.
Consequently, there is no such thing as a “right to hospitality”, because “by its very nature” it comes into direct conflict with other fundamental rights that clearly precede it: such as the “right to life” of the country’s inhabitants, the “right to security” of the nation, the “right to prosperity” of the people and, ultimately, it leads to a fierce conflict with the “Principle of national sovereignty”, that is, with the foundation of the “modern democratic constitutional state”, not of some “fascist tyranny”!
Consequently, hospitality as a central demand for political action in the light of some supposedly “global humanitarian ideas”, not only is it not consistent with the historical and realistic political perspective as a political organization of a people, but on the contrary constitutes its absolute denial, especially when the mass arrival of foreign populations concerns immigrants – essentially invaders – who demonstrably and in no way accept our own moral and political values, therefore their adherence to them is not presumed in any way, neither now nor in the future. (We saw this phenomenon clearly in France and England with the terrifying problem of the “integration” of Afro-Asian immigrants, 2nd and 3rd generation.) In fact, now, when the militarized “xenophobia” directed by the International Sovereigns and their local mouthpieces, with the worship of the Other as a foreigner, comes to a nightmarish social landscape, where phenomena of social deconstruction operate, such as mass unemployment, absence of a minimum wage, opening of borders, complete deindustrialization, destruction of agriculture, and proletarianization of the middle class.
The ethics of hospitality as a duty to grant a permit to settle means the end of national sovereignty, the destruction of social institutions, the weakening of the state, par excellence in the issue of the security and survival protection of the people. However, it also means the annihilating shrinkage of individuality through the generalized destruction of the moral order, as the driving moral force of each individual’s character, a destruction through which peoples and nations degenerate.
True intercultural dialogue and cooperation among nations—within a multipolar order—depend on strong, self-conscious identities. The preservation and revival of ethnocultural particularities provides a moral imperative and a strategic necessity in our struggle against the unipolar global Leviathan. When people understand who they are, they relate to others from a strong position of dignity. Xenophilia gives way to a new ethos: exophilia without “self-hatred”—with respect for the Other, but a respect based on faith in the Self. The world longs for deep-rooted nations standing tall like pillars in a planetary cathedral of civilizations.
