Useful idiot
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A useful idiot is someone who supports one side of an ideological debate, but who is manipulated and held in contempt by the leaders of their faction or is unaware of the ultimate agenda driving the ideology to which they subscribe. The term originated in early 1950s America in reference to members of the Socialist Party, allegedly promoted by the malevolent KGB to weaken America as a nation.[1] The closely related term fellow traveller refers to one who sympathizes with and is willing to support the publicly stated goals of the Party, while not being a dues-paying, card-carrying member.
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[edit] Misuse
As a subjective label, the term is often abused. There are reasonable differences on matters of rhetoric and tactics in any ideological movement, but these differences can be unjustly smeared as idiocy with this label. Nor are all poor representatives of a position necessarily useful idiots: a useful idiot is specifically a poor representative who is raised as a figurehead by a third party with malign intentions. VenomFangX might be a spectacular failure at Christian apologetics, but he's not a useful idiot because his popularity derives from other Christians, not atheists.
[edit] Alleged examples
- S.E. Cupp - The atheist who hates atheists. She is frequently considered a useful idiot of the Religious Right, as an atheist who talks in detail about how atheists are sexist or evil or silly or unreasonable.
- David Frum - An American conservative blogger, he is thought by many on the left to be "the reasonable one" and many on the right to be a useful idiot of liberals.
- Kent Hovind - A creationist and evangelist with a diploma mill doctorate and a 10-year jail sentence, his tactics were met with scorn by more respectable creationist agencies like Answers in Genesis, who considered him well-meaning but a useful idiot for the villainous Darwinists.
- The Tea Party - Many of the people who participate in "teabagging" protests have low incomes and might benefit from many policies supported by Democrats like Obamacare, and would mostly be hurt by Republican policies such as Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity," even though quite a few of them are opposed to cutting government programs such as Medicare and Social Security. (GOP strategists are aware of it.)
- Edward Snowden - After striking a blow against the abuse of civil liberties by the Bush and Obama administrations, Snowden allowed himself to get manipulated into a transparent public relations stunt by his ostensible protector, Vladimir Putin.[2]
- Henry A. Wallace - The former Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt, who ran on a third party platform in 1948 that was pro-Soviet. While it is widely agreed Wallace himself wasn't a communist, it's also largely accepted that the party itself (the Progressive Party of 1948) had been infiltrated by genuine fellow-travelers and communists. Partly as a result of this the Socialist Party ran their own candidate rather than endorse Wallace.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Useful idiot, Oxford English Dictionary
- ↑ Edward Snowden asks Vladimir Putin if Russia spies on its citizens, Washington Post