useful idiot
English
Etymology
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).
Noun
useful idiot (plural useful idiots)
- (historical, derogatory, political jargon) 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, ISSN 0362-4331, 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:
- 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.
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- (derogatory, political jargon) One who is seen to unwittingly support a malignant cause through their 'naive' attempts to be a force for good.
- 2009, Alex Knepper, "Obama's cabinet appointments contradict with message", The Mirror (Fairfield University), Volume 34, Issue 15, 22 January 2009, 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.
- 2009, Alex Knepper, "Obama's cabinet appointments contradict with message", The Mirror (Fairfield University), Volume 34, Issue 15, 22 January 2009, page 3:
Translations
political sense
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Further reading
useful idiot on Wikipedia.Wikipedia