Useful idiot

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For other uses, see Useful idiot (disambiguation).

In political jargon, the term "useful idiot" was used to describe Soviet sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States) and the alleged attitude of the Soviet government towards them. The implication was that the person in question was naïve, foolish, or in willful denial, and was being cynically used by the Soviet Union, or another Communist state.

The term is now used more broadly to describe someone who is perceived to be manipulated by political movement, terrorist group, or hostile government, whether or not the group is Communist in nature.

1 Origins unknown
2 Related quotes
3 Modern usage
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Origins unknown

The term is purported to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin, sometimes in the form "useful idiots of the West", to describe those Western reporters and travellers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West. However, no reference to a communist sympathizer or political leftist as a "useful idiot" was made in the United States until 1948, and not until decades later would the phrase be attributed to Lenin. In 1948, the phrase was used in a New York Times article in relation to Italian politics, and was not mentioned again in print until 1961. Critics of the term allege that the expression "useful idiot" has never been discovered in any published document of Lenin's, nor that anyone has claimed to have heard him say it. In the spring of 1987, Grant Harris, senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, said "We have not been able to identify this phrase [useful idiots of the West] among [Lenin's] published works."^[1]

The origin of the phrase "useful idiot" is unknown, and it is not clear why it was attributed to Lenin, although he is well-known for his polemic, often insulting language.

There is a confirmed instance of Lenin speaking about a sympathetic western leftist in a pejorative tone. In a February 10, 1922 letter to the Soviet Foreign Affairs Commissar Georgy Chicherin in relation to the Genoa Conference, Lenin wrote:^[2]

“

Henderson is as stupid as Kerensky, and for this reason he is helping us. [...]

Furthermore. This is ultrasecret. It suits us that Genoa be wrecked... but not by us, of course. Think this over with Litvinov and Ioffe and drop me a line. Of course, this must not be mentioned even in secret documents. return this to me, and I will burn it. We will get a loan better without Genoa, if we are not the ones that wreck Genoa. We must work out cleverer maneuvers so that we are not the ones that wreck Genoa. For example, the fool Henderson and Co. will help us a lot if we cleverly prod them. [...]

Everything is flying apart for "them". It is total bankruptcy (India and so on). We have to push a falling one unexpectedly, not with our hands.

”

There is no information as to whether Lenin's disparaging comments about Arthur Henderson have some relation to the coining of the phrase "useful idiot".

[edit] Related quotes

Edvard Radzinsky offers a similar quotation on p. 209 of his Stalin. He attributes it to the artist Yuri Annenkov, who claims to have seen some of Lenin's papers, along with his brain, while working at the Lenin Institute, before his emigration to the West in 1924.^[3] Annenkov's reproduction from memory was published in "Vospominaniya o Lenine" Novyi Zhurnal n.65 (New York,1961). Radzinsky conjectures that this is part of a full text of Lenin's Testament, which Lenin deliberately concealed, sending only a partial text to the Party Secretariat.

This English language version was originally published in an edition of The Lufkin News, King Featurers Syndicate, Inc., 31 July 1962, page 4, and later reproduced in the Freeman Report, 30 Sept. 1973, page 8.^[4]

“

The so-called cultural element of Western Europe and America are incapable of comprehending the present state of affairs and the actual balance of forces; these elements must be regarded as deaf-mutes and treated accordingly....

A revolution never develops along a direct line, by continuous expansion, but forms a chain of outbursts and withdrawals, attacks and lulls, during which the revolutionary forces gain strength in preparation for their final victory...

We must: (a) In order to placate the deaf-mutes, proclaim the fictional separation of our government ... from the Comintern, declaring this agency to be an independent political group. The deaf-mutes will believe it. (b) Express a desire for the immediate resumption of diplomatic relations with capitalist countries on the basis of complete non-interference in their internal affairs. Again, the deaf- mutes will believe it. They will even be delighted and fling wide-open their doors through which the emissaries of the Comintern and Party Intelligence agencies will quickly infiltrate into these countries disguised as our diplomatic, cultural, and trade representatives.

Capitalists the world over and their governments will, in their desire to win Soviet market, shut their eyes to the above-mentioned activities and thus be turned into blind deaf-mutes. They will furnish credits, which will serve as a means of supporting the Communist parties in their countries, and, by supplying us, will rebuild our war industry, which is essential for our future attacks on our suppliers. In other words, they will be laboring to prepare their own suicide.

”

From antiquity (as noted in the Code of Hammurabi) until recent times,^[5] the terms "deaf-mute" and "deaf and dumb" were analogous to "idiot." Various versions of what could be inferred in English as "useful idiots" have been used in verbal references about some Americans and others in capitalist societies.

"Useful idiots" would be literally translated from Russian "poleznye idioty". Taking into account possible imprecise translation from Lenin's native Russian into English, other similar quotations exist, such as his assessment of US President Woodrow Wilson in a speech delivered at a meeting of activists of the Moscow Organization of Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (RCPB) on December 6, 1920, first published in 1923 according to the verbatim report in V.I. Lenin Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, page 449 (translated from Russian):^[6]

“

Thus we have before us the greatest state in the world, which by 1923 will have a navy stronger than the British, and this state is meeting with growing enmity from the other capitalist countries. We must take this trend of things into account. America cannot come to terms with the rest of Europe -- that is a fact proved by history. Nowhere has the Versailles Treaty been analyzed so well as in the book by Keynes, a British representative at Versailles. In his book Keynes ridicules Wilson and the part he played in the Treaty of Versailles. Here, Wilson proved to be an utter simpleton, whom Clemenceau and Lloyd George twisted round their little fingers. Thus everything goes to show that America cannot come to terms with the other countries because of the profound economic antagonism between them, since America is richer than the rest.

”

John Maynard Keynes's book on the Peace of Versailles, which does deprecate Wilson, is The Economic Consequences of the Peace.. The quotation deals with discord among enemy powers (as Lenin held them to be); rather than the sympathies of western leftists.

[edit] Modern usage

In the United States, the term is sometimes used as a pejorative against political liberals, radicals, and others among left-wing politics. The tone of usage implies that the "useful idiot" is ignorant of the facts to the extent that they end up unwittingly advancing an adverse cause that they might not otherwise support. The term gained increased use after the publication of conservative columnist and Reagan administration Mona Charen's 2004 book Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First.

The term is also occasionally used by anarchists and some other radicals to describe groups and individuals whose ideology is alleged to be excessively deferential to a government or authoritarian political movement.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the term "useful idiot" has also been used by some commentators to describe individuals said to take a softer line against Islamism and terrorism. For example, Anthony Browne wrote in the United Kingdom newspaper, The Times:^[7]

“

Elements within the British establishment were notoriously sympathetic to Hitler. Today the Islamists enjoy similar support. In the 1930s it was Edward VIII, aristocrats and the Daily Mail; this time it is left-wing activists, The Guardian and sections of the BBC. They may not want a global theocracy, but they are like the West’s apologists for the Soviet Union — useful idiots.

”

Similarly, Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno wrote:^[8]

“

Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam.

”