Folk devil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A folk devil (German: Volksteufel) is a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems. (compare scapegoat)
The pursuit of folk devils frequently intensifies into a mass movement that is called a moral panic. When a moral panic is in full swing, the folk devils are the subject of loosely organized but pervasive campaigns of hostility through gossip and the spreading of urban legends. The mass media sometimes gets in on the act, or attempts to create new folk devils to create controversies. Sometimes the campaign against the folk devil influences a nation's politics and legislation.
The concept of the folk devil was introduced by sociologist Stanley Cohen in 1972, in his study Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which analysed media controversies concerning Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom of the 1950s. The basic pattern of agitations against folk devils can be seen in the history of witchhunts and similar manias of persecution; in the long history of anti-Semitism, which frequently targeted Jews with allegations of dark, murderous practices, such as blood libel; or the Roman persecution of Christians that blamed the military reverses suffered by the Roman Empire on the Christians' abandonment of paganism.
More recent folk devils have included the McCarthyite persecution of alleged Communists; Satanists and allegations of Satanic ritual abuse; blaming video games and violence, Goths, and other youth subcultures or musical genres for the Columbine massacre.
