The right to security in illiberal times

Abstract

Right wing populists have weaponized the right to security in order to consolidate authoritarian power and legitimate repressive policies. This article first outlines this trend and then places this form of «human rights populism» in the longer history of the right to security within human rights theory, politics and law. It argues that the legitimating force of the right to security as a meta right has always had within it the potential to undermine the human rights system as a whole, and now that the right to security is in populist hands it must be resisted on philosophical, legal and political grounds.