Contextualizebeta

useful idiot

noun

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). Often misattributed to Vladimir Lenin.

  1. derived from paper L'Umanità – as cited in the New York Times article on Italian politics

Definitions

  1. A Communist sympathizer in Western countries, from the perspective of the political right.

    • 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.

  2. One who unwittingly supports a malignant cause through naive attempts to be a force for…

    One who unwittingly supports a malignant cause through naive attempts to be a force for good.

    • 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.
    • “President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,” he says.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for useful idiot. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA