158
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
158 points (95.4% liked)
politics
19107 readers
2722 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I prefer the term "useful idiot"
What a wild journey the term "useful idiot" has taken. In 1959, Congressman Ed Derwinski of Illinois entered an editorial by the Chicago Daily Calumet into the Congressional record, referring to Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union to promote peace as "what Lenin calls useful idiots in the Communist game". In 1961, American journalist Frank Gibney wrote that Lenin had coined the phrase useful idiot. Gibney wrote that the phrase was a good description of "Communist follower[s]" from Jean-Paul Sartre to left-wing socialists in Japan to members of the Chilean Popular Front. In a speech in 1965, American diplomat Spruille Braden said the term was used by Joseph Stalin to refer to what Braden called "countless innocent although well-intentioned sentimentalists or idealists" who aided the Soviet agenda.
Writing in The New York Times in 1987, William Safire discussed the increasing use of the term useful idiot against "anybody insufficiently anti-Communist in the view of the phrase's user", including Congressmen who supported the anti-Contras Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Dutch socialists. After President Ronald Reagan concluded negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, conservative political leader Howard Phillips declared Reagan a "useful idiot for Soviet propaganda."
The Economist published a 2023 article titled "Vladimir Putin's useful idiots"; it describes "Useful Idiot narratives" that support Putin's aims and denigrate his perceived enemies.
It was entirely intentional, and funny piece of history you leave out that this phrase was in fact, NOT coined by Lenin and it was in fact, coined by US intelligence to describe how operation mockingbird could be used to create useful idiots to serve intelligence purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot#False_attribution_to_Lenin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird