Wiktionary

useful idiot

English

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Etymology

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The earliest known usage in Western media is in a 1948 article in the social-democratic Italian paper L'Umanità – as cited in the New York Times article on Italian politics (see quotations). Often misattributed to Vladimir Lenin.

Noun

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useful idiot (plural useful idiots)

  1. (historical, derogatory, politics) A Communist sympathizer in Western countries, from the perspective of the political right.
    • 1948 June 21, Arnold Cortesi, “Communist Shift Is Seen In Europe”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN, page 14:
      L'Umanita said the Communists would give the “useful idiots” of the left-wing Socialist party the choice of merging with the Communist party or getting out.
    • 2020 August 7, Kurt Andersen, “College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots”, in The Atlantic‎[2]:
      During the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s, the right had derided liberal writers and editors as Communists’ “useful idiots,” unwittingly doing the Communists’ propaganda work; it looks in retrospect as if, starting in the 1970s, a lot of them—of us—became capitalists’ useful idiots.
  2. (derogatory, politics) One who unwittingly supports a malignant cause through naive attempts to be a force for good.
    • 2009 January 22, Alex Knepper, “Obama's cabinet appointments contradict with message”, in The Mirror (Fairfield University)‎[3], volume 34, number 15, page 3:
      But what should the Obama Cult do now? The man has turned off the switch on the "Hopenosis" and has revealed the "Change Brigade" for the useful idiots they were.
    • 2020 September 14, Jeffrey Goldberg, quoting Alexander Vindman, “Alexander Vindman: Trump Is Putin’s ‘Useful Idiot’”, in The Atlantic‎[4]:
      “President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,” he says.

Translations

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Further reading

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