In
political jargon
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
, a useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause—particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source—without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically being used by the cause's leaders.
The term was often used during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
to describe non-communists regarded as susceptible to communist
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
and
manipulation.
[
]
Origin
The phrase ''useful idiot'' has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
, but he is not documented as ever having used the phrase. In a 1987 article for ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', American journalist William Safire
William Lewis Safire (; Safir; December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009Safire, William (1986). ''Take My Word for It: More on Language.'' Times Books. . p. 185.) was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He w ...
investigated the origin of the term, commenting that a senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
had been unable to find the phrase in Lenin's works and concluding that in the absence of new evidence, the term could not be attributed to Lenin. Similarly, the ''Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' in defining ''useful idiot'' says: "The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
".[
The term "useful idiot", for a naive or unwitting person, was used in a British periodical as early as 1864, but to describe an opportunity to rebut them. 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"), citing the centrist social democratic Italian paper ''L'Umanità''.][ ''L'Umanità'' wrote that left-wing social democrats, who had entered into a ]popular front
A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault".
More generally, it is "a coalition ...
with the Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
during the 1948 elections, would be given the option to either merge with the Communists or leave the alliance. The term was later used in a 1955 article in the ''American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutu ...
News-Reporter'' to refer to Italians who supported Communist causes. ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine
first used the phrase in January 1958, writing that some Italian Christian Democrats considered social activist Danilo Dolci
Danilo Dolci (June 28, 1924 – December 30, 1997) was an Italian social activist, sociologist, popular educator and poet. He is best known for his opposition to poverty, social exclusion and the Mafia in Sicily, and is considered to be one of the ...
a "useful idiot" for Communist causes. It has since recurred in that periodical's articles.
A similar term, ''useful innocents'', appears in a 1946 ''Reader's Digest
''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...
'' article titled "Yugoslavia's Tragic Lesson to the World", written by Bogdan Raditsa Bogdan Raditsa (in Croatian: ''Bogdan Radica'') (26 August 1904 – 5 December 1993) was a Croatian-American historian, journalist, diplomat, writer, and translator.The New York TimesBogdan Raditsa, Writer and Diplomat, 89/ref>
Biography
Bogdan ...
. Raditsa had served the Yugoslav government-in-exile
The Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Exile ( sh, Vlada Kraljevine Jugoslavije u egzilu / Влада Краљевине Југославије у егзилу) was an official government of Yugoslavia, headed by King Peter II. It evacu ...
during World War II, supported Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
's partisans (though not a Communist himself) and briefly served in Tito's new Yugoslav government before leaving for New York. "In the Serbo-Croat language
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
", says Raditsa, "the communists have a phrase for true democrats who consent to collaborate with them for he sake of
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
'democracy'. It is ''Korisne Budale'', or Useful Innocents" (despite ''budale'' actually meaning ''fools'' in his language). In his 1947 book, ''Planned Chaos'', Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and Sociology, sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberali ...
writes that the term ''useful innocents'' was used by Communists for liberals, whom von Mises describes as "confused and misguided sympathizers".
Select usage
In 1959, Congressman Ed Derwinski
Edward Joseph Derwinski (September 15, 1926 – January 15, 2012) was an American politician who served as the first Cabinet-level United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs, serving under President George H. W. Bush from March 15, 1989 to Septe ...
of Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
entered an editorial by the '' Chicago Daily Calumet'' into the Congressional record, referring to Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union to promote peace as "what Lenin calls useful idiots in the Communist game". In 1961, American journalist Frank Gibney
Frank Bray Gibney (September 21, 1924 – April 9, 2006) was an American journalist, editor, writer and scholar. He learned Japanese while in the American Navy during World War II, then was stationed in Japan. As a journalist in Tokyo, he wrote ''F ...
wrote that Lenin had coined the phrase ''useful idiot''. Gibney wrote that the phrase was a good description of "Communist follower from Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...
to left-wing socialists in Japan to members of the Chilean Popular Front. In a speech in 1965, Spruille Braden
Spruille Braden ( ; March 13, 1894 – January 10, 1978) was an American diplomat, businessman, lobbyist, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the ambassador to various Latin American countries, and as Assistant Secretary ...
, an American diplomat who was stationed in a number of Latin American countries during the 1930s and 1940s and was later a lobbyist for the United Fruit Company
The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 fro ...
, said the term was used by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
to refer to what Braden called "countless innocent although well-intentioned sentimentalists or idealists" who aided the Soviet agenda.
Writing in ''The New York Times'' in 1987, William Safire
William Lewis Safire (; Safir; December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009Safire, William (1986). ''Take My Word for It: More on Language.'' Times Books. . p. 185.) was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He w ...
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
The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to 1990 in opposition to the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua, which came to power in 1979 fol ...
Sandinistas
The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...
in Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...
and the Dutch socialists
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
. After President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
concluded negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty, formally the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles; / ДРСМ ...
, conservative political leader Howard Phillips declared Reagan a "useful idiot for Soviet propaganda."
See also
References
External links
Useful Idiots: The Documentary
''BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
''. 2010.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Useful Idiot
Soviet phraseology
Political slurs for people