Meaning of useful idiot | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A Communist sympathizer in Western countries, from the perspective of the political right.
   derogatory, historical
2. One who unwittingly supports a malignant cause through naive attempts to be a force for good.
   derogatory

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level