Useful idiot

From Free net encyclopedia

In political jargon, the term "useful idiot" was used during the Cold War by certain anti-communists to describe communists and apparent communist sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States). The implication of the insult was that the person in question was naïve, foolish, or in willful denial, and that he or she was being cynically used by the Soviet Union or another Communist state, thus unwittingly being a traitor to his or her home country.

1 History and usage
2 Related quotes
3 See also
4 Other uses

[edit]

History and usage

The term is purported to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin 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 attempts to attribute the phrase to Lenin be made (after 1948, when the phrase was used in a New York Times article in relation to Italian politics, it was not mentioned again in print until 1961 [1]). Lenin never wrote it in any published document, no one has claimed to have heard him say it first hand, and it contradicts the opinions expressed in Lenin's published documents in reference to the Comintern.

In the contemporary United States, the term is used as a pejorative by political conservatives against political liberals. The tone of usage implies that the target of this sobriquet 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 Mona Charen's 2004 book Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the term "useful idiot" has also been used by some conservatives both inside and outside the United States to describe those who, in their opinion, take a softer line against Islamism. For example, Anthony Browne wrote in Britain's The Times newspaper:

"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 in FrontpageMag.com:

"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."

[edit]

Related quotes

The origin of the phrase "useful idiot" is unknown, and it is not clear why it was attributed to Lenin. There is only one confirmed instance of Lenin speaking about a sympathetic western leftist in a somewhat similar pejorative tone: In a February 10, 1922 letter to the Soviet Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin in relation to the Genoa Conference, Lenin wrote:

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.

(Handwritten note at the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, fond 2, opis 2, delo 1,1119. Published as Document 88 in The Unknown Lenin, ed. Richard Pipes, Yale University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-300-06919-7 )

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

Edward Radzinsky, author of Alexander II, the Last Good Tsar, offers a similar quotation on p. 209 of his Stalin. He attributes it to Yuri Annenkov, the artist, who claims to have seen some papers of Lenin (together with Lenin's brain) while working at the Lenin Institute, before his emigration to the West in 1924.[2] Annekov'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 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. [3]

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.

* Please note that from antiquity (as noted in the Code of Hammurabi) until recent times [4], the terms "deaf-mute" and "deaf and dumb" were analogous to "idiot." However, the above quote is unverified, and Lenin appears to be insulting western cultural elites and capitalists who would "desire to win [the] Soviet market."

[edit]