Folk devil

Well what is a folk devil? It seems people just turn on some person or people, seen as outsiders and deviant. This is called a Moral panic The public decides to turn on this group or these groups. Low ranking groups are more often turned into folk devils. White-collar crime is quite likely more common than low class crime. Yet it is the crime by, "yobs", "hooligans". "drug crazed gangsters", "criminals from sink council estates" and the like that get attention. Part of this is typical prejudice against outsiders. When we reject outsiders we can convince ourselves we are better than the deviants seen as folk devils.

We may be thoroughly irrational in this. For example, Hitler and the Nazi Party convinced Germans that Jews were the cause of all the troubles suffered by Germany during the Great Depression between the two World Wars. There was no valid reason to believe this. The result was the Holocaust, the defeat of Germany a second time during the Second World War and the destruction of the German economy in the Second World War.

We may overestimate the importance of skirmishes like those between Mods and Rockers. We may decide that some group are folk devils due to valid concerns about a real problem. Terrorism is a real and ongoing matter and merits attention. The War on Terrorism is dealing with a real threat though the threat has been exaggerated.

The basic feature of a Moral panic seems to be that those caught up in it decide, "We are good. They, (the folk devils) are bad. We are scared of folk devils. We will try and deal with the folk devils.

Barbara Shack

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http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/online/sociol318/week4.html

This external link is one of many with information about folk devils.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hrb9701.html

Here is another external link with good information on folk devils.