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folk devil

noun

Definitions

  1. A person or type of person blamed by the public for various ills, as during a moral panic.

    • It may be true, as Fred Robinson, a senior researcher at Newcastle University said, "Many people view Mrs. Thatcher as a kind of folk devil.
    • "Every time things become problematic we start careering towards social causes and pick on a folk devil to attribute all evil."
    • There is always a tendency, in the mainstream as much as the fringes, to blame real or imagined social problems on a folk devil.

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sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA