10 Traits of a Useful Idiot
How to spot the people destroying civilisation while feeling virtuous about it.
Lenin is usually credited with coining the term “useful idiot”. There’s no evidence he did, but it seems entirely plausible because the term became a popular way to describe Western intellectuals who cheered on communism from the safety of their Paris salons while actual communists were liquidating millions.
If we’re being charitable, we might say these intellectuals meant well, that they genuinely believed they were supporting progress towards a better society. Perhaps they were simply naive, seeing what they wanted to see and disregarding evidence of blatant tyranny, show trials, the mass murder of kulaks, and so on.
Or maybe they were just idiots.
The term has become popular again because the useful idiots of our day are similarly blinded by their own sense of moral superiority, too invested in groupthink to notice that they keep providing cover for modern-day evils. How else to explain their solidarity with fanatics who would eliminate them given the chance?
Every political tribe breeds its own useful idiots. The left has its campus activists and NGO lifers; the right has its conspiracy junkies and Putin groupies. This piece focuses mainly on the progressive variety because they currently have the deepest roots in our institutions – but the patterns are often the same.
It’s crucial to understand that not all useful idiots are stupid – not in the ordinary sense. Often they’re educated and articulate. The most committed useful idiots tend to have PhDs and introduce themselves as doctors. Yet all that education can obscure truths and blur moral clarity while making terrible ideas look attractive. As Orwell remarked, “Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them”.
Nevertheless, some useful idiots really are just stupid, and we’ll cover those as well. What unites all of them is a lack of courage – the courage to trust their own eyes, ask uncomfortable questions, and pay social costs for being right rather than staying comfortable by being wrong.
As for what makes useful idiots useful and for whom, we’ll get to that. First, let’s identify some of the common traits.
1. They outsource thinking to slogans
Ideology is how useful idiots know what to think about things they don’t understand. Perhaps “From the river to the sea” sounds poetic to the “Free Palestine” activist, but ask them which river and which sea and you’ll likely get a blank stare or embarrassed laughter. It’s the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, of course, but the point is that chanting the slogan effectively calls for the elimination of Israel and its people. It’s a bit genocidal when you think about it, which they don’t.
“Trans women are women” works in the same way. It’s not a claim about biological reality but an unfalsifiable redefinition of the word woman. It also functions as a sort of loyalty oath. Ask for a definition of woman, and it quickly falls apart. That’s because slogans are engineered to short-circuit thought and leave reason at the door.
2. They mistake performance for principle
Pronouns in an email signature or LinkedIn bio are cringeworthy, of course, but also a handy marker of pre-packaged thinking. Cringe is not something that troubles useful idiots, though. It’s why they can unselfconsciously wear an Amazon-delivered keffiyeh to an anti-capitalist march. Pronouns and keffiyehs are tribal signifiers first and foremost: ideology as a fashion statement; borrowed convictions as accessories.
Hashtag activism is also comically easy, requiring no real sacrifice except the risk of faulty wifi at the local artisanal coffee bar. Actual principled activism is a very different thing. It’s Karoline Preisler standing alone at demonstrations in front of a baying mob. That’s what courage and moral clarity actually look like, not playing the bongos and screeching for intifada outside a Christmas market.
3. They champion causes that would destroy them
Queers for Palestine might be the purest distillation of useful idiocy ever achieved. Hamas would throw them off the nearest building. Many Gazans, if we’re being honest, would happily assist. They wave their flags anyway because the cause provides meaning and the consequences are someone else’s problem.
Then we have Western feminists defending the hijab as a symbol of “empowerment” while women in Iran are beaten to death for removing it. And let’s not forget the progressives who celebrate Islamist movements that would criminalise everything progressives claim to value.
The useful idiot never asks whether the people they champion would tolerate them. It’s a simple question with a simple answer, which is why they ignore it.
