xonophobia is a democratic virtue  xeno-philia (preference for foreigners) has always been the mark of a tyrant, at least since aristotle: > it is a mark of a tyrant to have men of foreign extraction rather than citizens as guests at table and companions, feeling that citizens are hostile but strangers make no claim against him.2 these and similar habits are characteristic of tyrants and preservative of their office, but they lack no element of baseness. and broadly speaking, they are all included under three heads; for tyranny aims at three things, one to keep its subjects humble (for a humble-spirited man would not plot against anybody) > second to have the people continually distrust one another (for a tyranny is not destroyed until some men come to trust each other, owing to which tyrants also make war on the respectable, as detrimental [20] to their rule not only because of their refusal to submit to despotic rule, but also because they are faithful to one another and to the other citizens, and do not inform against one another nor against the others); and the third is lack of power for political action (since nobody attempts impossibilities, so that nobody tries to put down a tyranny if he has not power behind him) > these then in fact are the three aims to which the wishes of tyrants are directed; for all the measures taken by tyrants one might class under these principlessome are designed to prevent mutual confidence among the subjects, others to curtail their power, and others to make them humble-spirited. such is the nature of one method by which security is obtained for tyrants. > aristotle, politics, book 5, section 1314a why do those who preach democracy "love the foreigner" as aristotle said of tyrants?
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