A political decoy is a person employed to impersonate a politician, to draw attention away from the real person or to take risks on their behalf. This can also apply to military figures, or civilians impersonated for political/espionage purposes.
The political decoy is an individual who has been selected because of their strong physical resemblance to the person they are impersonating. This resemblance can be strengthened by plastic surgery. Often, such decoys are trained to speak and behave like their 'target'.
Read more about Political Decoy: Decoying: Theory and Practice, Political Decoys in History, Voice-only Decoys, Political Decoys in Fiction
Famous quotes containing the word political:
“To say “I accept” in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration-camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murder.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)