, Columnist
Co-opting Xenophobia Doesn't Work
Governments across Europe are trying to appease the nationalist right. Bad idea.
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In 1994, I was robbed and beaten at knife point in Moscow. Russian friends were horrified -- and angry, because the assailants were migrant Chechens from the North Caucasus.
Over the weekend, that latent anger and resentment among native Muscovites boiled over. A protest at the stabbingof a young Russian taxi driver degenerated into an attack on a vegetable warehouse staffed by migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Police quickly released the rioters they had detained and arrested more than 1,600 migrant vegetable market workers -- the victims.