Every Country Gets the Fascism It Deserves documents the systematic construction of xenophobic violence as a political project in post-apartheid South Africa. Richard Pithouse traces how the state, media and organised political forces have cultivated hatred against migrants, transforming social pain into organised cruelty.

The book begins with the May 2008 pogroms that killed 62 people and displaced 100,000, showing how the mob followed the logic of a state that had already begun dehumanising migrants. It documents the rise of the All Truck Drivers Foundation, which murdered more than 200 drivers in organised attacks, and the subsequent emergence of Operation Dudula and March and March—well-funded astroturfed movements that normalised fascist language and violence.

Pithouse reveals the complicity of the police, media and major political parties—including the ANC, DA, MKP, ActionSA and Patriotic Alliance—in legitimating xenophobic violence. He shows how the mob and state have collaborated to drive more than 150,000 people across South Africa’s borders in a matter of weeks, with government infrastructure facilitating mass deportation.

Drawing on the work of Aijaz Ahmad, Alain Badiou and Richard Seymour, Pithouse argues that the erosion of democratic norms, the reactivation of ethnic mobilisation, and the normalisation of sadism constitute a fascist challenge to the constitutional order. The book insists that the answer to the far right is never to move rightward, but always to build a politics of universal solidarity rooted in the principle that a person is a person wherever they may find themselves.

With a foreword by Michael Neocosmos and an afterword by Abahlali baseMjondolo founder S’bu Zikode, this is an urgent account of a country’s descent into organised cruelty—and a powerful call for a politics of human dignity.

This essay was originally published on Richard Pithouse’s Substack: https://substack.com/profile/143275356-richard-pithouse