scapegoat

Growing up in the nineties, I saw California governor Pete Wilson attack immigrants with rhetoric that depicted them as scapegoats for America’s social and economic problems and with public policies like the infamous Proposition 187.

A resurgence or continuation of the pandemic may also result in leaders seeking to distract their people the old fashioned way, by finding scapegoats and through nationalism.

After Valencia left, she worried that the city’s response to Congress over facial recognition two years prior would come back to haunt her — and she feared becoming the scapegoat.

They’ve been a frequent scapegoat during economic woes and disease outbreaks, and in wartime propaganda.

The combination of affective polarization, racism, inequality, isolation and mistrust has radicalized a meaningful minority of the nation, making it easy to find scapegoats and boogeymen.

They are vouching for Shadman, saying he is a scapegoat of a shoddy investigation.

Smith, the current police chief, called Lee a “scapegoat” who was “thrown to the wolves” to satisfy political critics.

And, as in countless other countries (Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria), LGBT people are a convenient scapegoat.

Contending that he was being used as a scapegoat, Palmer asked for a trade.

Instead, as the Democratic party proliferates a “war on women,” they choose Akin as the sole scapegoat.

He felt himself "accursed by all," the "scapegoat on whom all the faults of Israel will be heaped with a curse."

For a time Tommy Kerr, who had been twice run in, had served as a scapegoat, but that was little permanent help.

The squatter had been the scapegoat upon which had been heaped the sins of a girl no one had thought capable of doing wrong.

It came to nothing, but gave him as a scapegoat to the revilings of those with whom soldiers had become so unpopular.

He pulled the unresisting scapegoat out of his chair and hustled him to the rear of the office.