What do Bolsonaro, Trump, Orbán, and Duterte have in common?

Scapegoats need familiar faces – be it young gangsters in Brazil, illegal Mexican migrants in the US, the Jews and Gypsies in Hungary, or drug dealers in the Philippines.

The “law and order” politics effectively displaces attention away from the real sources of socio-economic grievances. Through an ingenious twist of political manipulation, the “elites” lay responsibility on exactly those who have been most marginalized by neoliberal capitalism.

Public insecurities and anxieties, generated by over-reliance on pro-market policies, are vented off onto the “enemies” and “threats” produced by market fundamentalism in the first place.