A useful idiot or useful fool is a pejorative description of a person, suggesting that the person thinks they are fighting for a cause without fully comprehending the consequences of their actions, and who does not realize they are being manipulated by the cause's leaders or by other political players.[1][2] The term was often used during the Cold War to describe non-communists regarded as susceptible to communist propaganda and psychological manipulation.[1] A number of authors attribute this phrase to Vladimir Lenin, but this attribution is not supported by any evidence. Similar terms exist in other languages.
Early usages
editThe term useful idiot, for a foolish person whose views can be taken advantage of for political purposes, was used in a British periodical as early as 1864.[3] In relation to the Cold War, the term appeared in a June 1948 New York Times article on contemporary Italian politics ("Communist shift is seen in Europe"),[1] citing the Italian Democratic Socialist Party's newspaper L'Umanità .[4] L'Umanità argued that the Italian Socialist Party, which had entered into a popular front with the Italian Communist Party (PCI) known as the Popular Democratic Front during the 1948 Italian general election, would be given the option to either merge with the PCI or leave the alliance.[4] The term was later used in a 1955 article in the American Federation of Labor News-Reporter to refer to Italians who supported Communist causes.[5] Time first used the phrase in January 1958, writing that some members of Christian Democracy considered social activist Danilo Dolci a useful idiot for Communist causes.[6] It has since recurred in that periodical's articles, from the 1970s,[7] to the 1980s,[8] to the 2000s,[9] and 2010s.[10][11]
In the Russian language, the term "useful fools" (Russian: полезные дураки, tr. polezniye duraki) was already in use in 1941. It was mockingly used against Russian "nihilists" of the 1860s who, for Polish agents, were said to be no more than "useful fools and silly enthusiasts".[12]
While the phrase useful idiots of the West has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin, he is not documented as ever having used the phrase.[13] In a 1987 article for The New York Times, American journalist William Safire reported about his search for the origin of the term. He wrote that a senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, Grant Harris, had been unable to find the phrase in Lenin's works. Safire was also out of luck contacting TASS and the New York headquarters of the Communist Party. He concluded that, lacking solid evidence, a cautious phrasing must be used, e.g., "a phrase attributed to Lenin...".[13]
Select usage
editIn 1959, Congressman Ed Derwinski of Illinois entered an editorial by the Chicago Daily Calumet into the Congressional record, referring to Americans who travelled to the Soviet Union to promote peace as "what Lenin calls useful idiots in the Communist game".[14] In a speech in 1965, American diplomat Spruille Braden said the term was used by Joseph Stalin to refer to what Braden called "countless innocent although well-intentioned sentimentalists or idealists" who aided the Soviet agenda.[15]
Writing in The New York Times in 1987, Safire discussed the increasing use of the term useful idiot against "anybody insufficiently anti-Communist in the view of the phrase's user", including Congressmen who supported the anti-Contras led by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Labour Party in the Netherlands.[13] After United States president Ronald Reagan concluded negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, conservative political leader Howard Phillips declared Reagan a "useful idiot for Soviet propaganda".[16][17]
In the end of 2016, the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright[18] and the Editorial Board of The New York Times applied the term to President-elect Donald Trump.[19] Michael Morell, former acting CIA director, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."[20] Michael Hayden, former director of both the US National Security Agency and the CIA, described Trump as a "useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited."[21]
The Economist published a 2023 article titled "Vladimir Putin's useful idiots"; it describes "Useful Idiot narratives" pushed by Putinversteher that support Putin's aims and denigrate his perceived enemies.[22]
Variations of the term
editThe Serbo-Croatian term korisne budale, which may be translated as useful idiots or useful innocents, attributed to unnamed Yugoslav communists, appears in a 1946 Reader's Digest article titled "Yugoslavia's Tragic Lesson to the World", written by Bogdan Raditsa. Raditsa had served the Yugoslav government-in-exile during World War II, supported Josip Broz Tito's partisans but was not a communist himself, and briefly served in Tito's led Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia before leaving for New York.[23] Raditsa said: "In the Serbo-Croat language, the communists have a phrase for true democrats who consent to collaborate with them for [the sake of] 'democracy'. It is Korisne Budale, or Useful Innocents."[24]
In his 1947 book Planned Chaos, Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises wrote that the term useful innocents was used by communists for those whom von Mises describes as "confused and misguided sympathizers [of the revolutionary idea]".[25]
The expression was discussed in connection with two other related quotations attributed to Lenin, which are also about Western "idiots" being manipulated by the Soviet communists. The quotations are known as "the rope" ("The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them") and the "deaf, dumb and blind". For example, William J. Bennett alleged that "'Useful idiot' was the term Lenin had used for credulous Western businessmen", giving as an example Armand Hammer "who helped build up the Soviet Communist state".[26] Bennett recounted a famous story wherein Lenin was asked, "How will we hang the Capitalists, we don't have enough rope!"[26] Lenin was reported to have "famously replied" with the rejoinder, "They will sell it to us — on credit."[26]
The wording from written works by Lenin about the "rope" was as follows[27]
They [capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.
and the "dumb and blind" version of the quotation (from handwritten notes by Lenin) was the following:[28]
To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim. The whole world's capitalists and their governments, as they pant to win the Soviet market, will close their eyes to the above-mentioned reality and will thus transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind. They will give us credits . . . they will toil to prepare their own suicide.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c "useful idiot". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2017.
- ^ Holder, R. W. (2008), "useful fool", Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms, Oxford University Press, p. 394, ISBN 978-0199235179,
useful fool—a dupe of the Communists. Lenin's phrase for the shallow thinkers in the West whom the Communists manipulated. Also as useful idiot.
- ^ "'useful idiot': Meaning and origin". 26 March 2021.
- ^ a b Cortesi, Arnold (21 June 1948). "Communist Shift is seen in Europe; Tour of Two Italian Leaders Behind Iron Curtain Held to Doom Popular Fronts". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
- ^ Stogel, Syd (1955). "'Useful Idiots' Keep Italy Reds Strong". American Federation of Labor News-Reporter.
- ^ "Italy: From the Slums". Time. 13 January 1958.
- ^ "WORLD: The City as a Battlefield: A Global Concern". Time. 2 November 1970.
- ^ Lamar, Jr., Jacob V. (14 December 1987). "An Offer They Can Refuse". Time.
- ^ Poniewozik, James (3 November 2009). "TV Marks Obama Anniversary with Documentaries, Aliens". Time.
- ^ Klein, Joe (26 November 2010). "Israel First, Yet Again". Time. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
- ^ Steinmetz, Katy (14 March 2012). "Wednesday Words: Useful Idiots, Don 'Draping' and More". Time. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
- ^ The expression was used, e.g., by Russian literary critic Vasily Bazanov, when commenting on Nikolai Leskov's anti-nihilistic novels: "Русские «нигилисты» в руках польских агентов, судя по роману Лескова, были не больше как «полезные дураки» и глупые энтузиасты, которых можно заставить итти в огонь и в воду" ("According to Leskov's novel, Russian 'nihilists' were for Polish agents no more than useful fools and silly enthusiasts, which could be goaded to go through fire and water."), citing from Bazanov's monograph "Из литературной полемики 60-х годов", Государственное издательство Карело-Финской ССР, Petrozavodsk, 1941 p. 80 The phrase refers to a contemporary opinion that Russian revolutionary movement (colloquially called "nihilists") was a result of anti-Russian agitation by the Polish insurgents.
- ^ a b c Safire, William (12 April 1987). "On Language: Useful Idiots Of the West". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
- ^ 1959 Congressional Record, Vol. 105, Page A5653 (30 June)
- ^ Braden, Spruille (1971). Diplomats and Demagogues: the Memoirs of Spruille Braden. Arlington House. p. 496. ISBN 9780870001253.
- ^ Boller, Paul F.; George, John H. (1989). They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes. Barnes & Nobles Books. ISBN 9781566191050.
- ^ Smith, Hendrick (17 January 1988). "The Right Against Reagan". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
- ^ Albright: Trump fits the mold of Russia's 'useful idiot' by Madeleine Albright
- ^ The Editorial Board (15 December 2016), "Donald Trump's Denial About Russia", The New York Times, retrieved 12 March 2018,
There could be no more 'useful idiot,' to use Lenin's term of art, than an American president who doesn't know he's being played by a wily foreign power.
- ^ Morell, Michael J. (12 August 2016). "Opinion - I Ran the C.I.A. Now I'm Endorsing Hillary Clinton". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
- ^ Hayden, Michael (3 November 2016). "Former CIA chief: Trump is Russia's useful fool". The Washington Post. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
- ^ "Vladimir Putin's useful idiots". The Economist. 3 July 2023. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
- ^ "Yugoslavia Run by Russia, says Ex-Aide of Tito". Chicago Daily Tribune. 24 September 1946. p. 6.
- ^ Raditsa, Bogdan (1946). "Yugoslavia's Tragic Lesson to the World". Reader's Digest Service. Vol. 49.
- ^ Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, Foundation for Economic Education, 1947, p. 29.
- ^ a b c Bennett, William J., America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II): From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom, Thomas Nelson, p. 618, ISBN 978-1595550576
- ^ The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture by Gary Saul Morson, Yale University Press, 2011, page 98.
- ^ Safire, William (12 April 1987). "On Language: Useful Idiots Of the West". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
External links
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