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Moral superiority, a saviour complex, plus lashings of hypocrisy and hey presto, the useful idiot is born. They talk about ‘rights’ (apart from those belonging to those that disagree with them), advocate anti hate laws until they cast hate upon dissenters and wilfully ignore the catastrophic results of the policies they advocate for. Being a useful idiot means never having to say sorry or that you were wrong.
I'll do more than like it, I'll share it. Thanks for consolidating everything wrong with the useful idiots mostly on the left (in this article anyway). It's a nice addition to what I'm reading now, Musa al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke. If you're able, a nice counterpart on the UIs of the right would be helpful too. I dislike UIs of all stripes.
Very good. A phenomenon I have noticed on social media recently is the number of people - very long-term friends in my case - who never expressed an overtly political thought before, who've spent the last four decades building families and careers, who have, since lock-down, started to echo the worst of The Guardian in their comments, quite belligerently, and have taken to criticising myself for what they perceive as my right-ward drift- someone who has always been politically-minded and -active -, usually prior to unfriending and social ostracisation. Their newly-expressed political opinions sound pretty much like the ones I held 30-40 years ago when I was young and stupid. What can be behind this cohort of useful idiocy, I wonder? Perhaps, having paid off their mortgages, they consider that cheerleading for Corbyn/Polanski or fawning over illegal migrants is now a cost free luxury they can indulge. Except, it's certainly not cost-free for their children's and grandchildren's future, though. Covid was not the only air-born virus circulating, it seems.
I recognise much of this. COVID was an incredible eye-opener and drew fault lines I didn’t know existed between those who value safety over freedom and vice versa. Since then, much else has been crystallised, especially via social media. Jonathan Haidt writes very interestingly on some of this in his book, The Righteous Mind. I used to read The Guardian in my early 20s and then started trying to see the world as it is rather than as I wished it to be. It still surprises me how many otherwise intelligent people never seem to have had that moment.
The article is excellent but it takes for granted something which is not proven, which is that Israel’s actions in Gaza have all been in service of defeating Hamas rather than a second agenda of ethnically cleansing Gaza.
The Gazans are victims of the Hamas criminal gang that prevented elections and murdered opponents for the last 19’years and 11 months, and less than 10% of the current population of Gaza voted for Hamas in January 2006 anyway.
Many of the opponents of Israel’s behavior in Gaza are just as strongly against Hamas; but the factual situation is that Israel has two agendas in Gaza not one, and the second one of ethnic cleansing is apparent to most people who are not on the “useful idiot” spectrum, and is appalling in its brutality and cruelty.
I've had the same experiences and one of the ugliest aspects (at least for me) is how the pull of the hive mind and the digital panopticon has erased or at least crippled the ability to think clearly with simple reason (and charity).
When I've quibbled with any of the reigning narratives of the recent years—Trans, BLM, Gaza etc—my closest friends of many decades can't seem to resist their Pavlovian conditioning and begin immediately reflexively denouncing me: I'm repeating Fox News (which I don't read or watch) or I'm becoming MAGA or right wing etc...I've had to remind multiple people: our lives have been intertwined for 20/30 years and you know I'm not a bigot or a troglodyte or any kind of malevolent or deranged zealot. It's like I really have to snap them out of their trance until they can see and recognize ME the person and not some cartoon villain that's been installed in their brains.
Social media plus constant internet access can destroy everything it touches, brains and souls and friendships and family bonds. I feel like in the past decade I've had to become an amateur cult deprogrammer just to maintain my social life.
I've changed my mind since about 2021, when I started to be aware of a number of things I couldn't get my head around. I'm not afraid to ask questions, even if I sound stupid. I come across people I used to interact with on Twitter and have had to mute or block. We appear to live in different worlds now, and I can't understand why they can't see what I see. It's all very strange and quite frightening at the same time.
Brilliant breakdown. The Sowell line about tradeoffs vs solutions captures the exact mechansim here. What makes useful idiots so effective is they've mastered the rhetorical move of treating every policy debate as a referendum on caring itself rather than on competent implementation. The minute you introduce resource constraints or second-order effects, you're accused of lacking compassion when really you're just acknowledging reality has a buget.
Yes, exactly. I had such a discussion just recently with my brother. The subject was illegal immigration. I challenged him to put a cap on the maximum number of „asylum-seekers“ that could reasonably be absorbed per year. He refused. The „caring“ has to continue even if it sinks the lifeboat and everybody in it.
Ugh, I'd reserve a circle of hell for such moral cowardice. You can see that all over the place with NHS fundamentalists (nb: I support the NHS) - 'one life lost is too much', 'it matters not whether a person dying from covid was 82 or 2, a life is a life'; 'you can't put a price on a life saving medicine' etc.' They need to think it through just another couple of steps further, and they'll realise that they might as well be saying - 'I don't care about the reality of death and disease - so long as my fantasy of myself as pure and righteous is unchallenged'.
I fear I have been a useful idiot for most of my adult life. It wasn’t until the advent of “cancel culture” in relation to “trans rights” v “women’s rights” that I “peaked”. Slowly at first, but then very fast, my whole woke worldview disintegrated. My inner conservative has been freed at last. But I now have a sense of shame for the way I outsourced my critical thinking to The Guardian, while dismissing views it deemed unacceptable.
I wouldn't feel shame about it. Our culture doesn't do a very good job of explaining the reasons for conservatism. Unless it's explained to naturally inclined liberals, most won't get the fact that although personal responsibility might sound like a chore, it's actually good for the recipient as well as being a recipe for increased prosperity, security and longevity.
‘taking the position that awards maximum moral status for minimum courage’ is spot on. And I agree, what better example is there than Queers for Palestine. You can’t really get more usefully idiotic than that.
I often wonder whether Blair knew how brilliantly effective he was being with his core objective of 50% of the population going on to further education (university).
Result - elite overproduction and a highly incentivised bunch of 'intellectuals' eager to find things to do to justify their comfortable positions. The charity industrial complex, NGO's, bureaucrats, the proliferation of HR and DEI policies everywhere. All symptoms.
The George Orwell quote you mention - “Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them”.
I think the combination of graduates with useless degrees plus our socialist state creates a lot of useful idiots.
The Cantillon effect exacerbates it. The state controls the money supply and those who are closest to it benefit first, before its value erodes. It becomes relatively easier and more lucrative to grift and stay near to government, than it is to satisfy customers in the private sector.
Great article. In your hierarchy of Useful Idiocy you state journalists are used to launder policy and legislation into 'respectable' news stories. Wouldn't this make the journalist a propagandist?
Thanks. Yes, I think you’re probably right. Legacy news media behave like propaganda outlets all the time, often spinning narratives while congratulating itself on its “objectivity”. The BBC is the textbook example, sadly.
"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”."
The word 'education' is another one of those misused works along the lines of 'woman' and 'Nazi'.
Going to school is no guarantee of an education. Not going to school is no reason to presume that an individual is uneducated.
I have a master's in education. But I've done my real learning in the real world. Schools tend to be nowhere near as diversified as they would have us believe, as they themselves believe. They are often little more than indoctrination centers. Which is why I often refer to 'academic inbreeding' and 'intellectual incest.'
p.s. If you really want to learn how to think, go to engineering school.
"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."
And also the UK Labour Party, many of whom still supported Stalin after it was clear this was a man created from evil.
If you found this piece useful or thought-provoking, tapping the ❤️ button helps more people discover it. And if you’d like future pieces sent straight to your inbox, you can subscribe above. Thanks for reading.
Excellent article.
Moral superiority, a saviour complex, plus lashings of hypocrisy and hey presto, the useful idiot is born. They talk about ‘rights’ (apart from those belonging to those that disagree with them), advocate anti hate laws until they cast hate upon dissenters and wilfully ignore the catastrophic results of the policies they advocate for. Being a useful idiot means never having to say sorry or that you were wrong.
I'll do more than like it, I'll share it. Thanks for consolidating everything wrong with the useful idiots mostly on the left (in this article anyway). It's a nice addition to what I'm reading now, Musa al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke. If you're able, a nice counterpart on the UIs of the right would be helpful too. I dislike UIs of all stripes.
I'm not sure how to "tap the article button".
Oh, I just meant the 'like' button for the article – but yes, that's a bit confusing. I updated the text. Thanks!
Very good. A phenomenon I have noticed on social media recently is the number of people - very long-term friends in my case - who never expressed an overtly political thought before, who've spent the last four decades building families and careers, who have, since lock-down, started to echo the worst of The Guardian in their comments, quite belligerently, and have taken to criticising myself for what they perceive as my right-ward drift- someone who has always been politically-minded and -active -, usually prior to unfriending and social ostracisation. Their newly-expressed political opinions sound pretty much like the ones I held 30-40 years ago when I was young and stupid. What can be behind this cohort of useful idiocy, I wonder? Perhaps, having paid off their mortgages, they consider that cheerleading for Corbyn/Polanski or fawning over illegal migrants is now a cost free luxury they can indulge. Except, it's certainly not cost-free for their children's and grandchildren's future, though. Covid was not the only air-born virus circulating, it seems.
I recognise much of this. COVID was an incredible eye-opener and drew fault lines I didn’t know existed between those who value safety over freedom and vice versa. Since then, much else has been crystallised, especially via social media. Jonathan Haidt writes very interestingly on some of this in his book, The Righteous Mind. I used to read The Guardian in my early 20s and then started trying to see the world as it is rather than as I wished it to be. It still surprises me how many otherwise intelligent people never seem to have had that moment.
I think you need to go a bit further though.
The article is excellent but it takes for granted something which is not proven, which is that Israel’s actions in Gaza have all been in service of defeating Hamas rather than a second agenda of ethnically cleansing Gaza.
The Gazans are victims of the Hamas criminal gang that prevented elections and murdered opponents for the last 19’years and 11 months, and less than 10% of the current population of Gaza voted for Hamas in January 2006 anyway.
Many of the opponents of Israel’s behavior in Gaza are just as strongly against Hamas; but the factual situation is that Israel has two agendas in Gaza not one, and the second one of ethnic cleansing is apparent to most people who are not on the “useful idiot” spectrum, and is appalling in its brutality and cruelty.
I've had the same experiences and one of the ugliest aspects (at least for me) is how the pull of the hive mind and the digital panopticon has erased or at least crippled the ability to think clearly with simple reason (and charity).
When I've quibbled with any of the reigning narratives of the recent years—Trans, BLM, Gaza etc—my closest friends of many decades can't seem to resist their Pavlovian conditioning and begin immediately reflexively denouncing me: I'm repeating Fox News (which I don't read or watch) or I'm becoming MAGA or right wing etc...I've had to remind multiple people: our lives have been intertwined for 20/30 years and you know I'm not a bigot or a troglodyte or any kind of malevolent or deranged zealot. It's like I really have to snap them out of their trance until they can see and recognize ME the person and not some cartoon villain that's been installed in their brains.
Social media plus constant internet access can destroy everything it touches, brains and souls and friendships and family bonds. I feel like in the past decade I've had to become an amateur cult deprogrammer just to maintain my social life.
Very well put – and sadly a familiar story these days. Thanks for your comment.
I think there’s a lot of us going through the same experiences.
I have experienced this as well.
I've changed my mind since about 2021, when I started to be aware of a number of things I couldn't get my head around. I'm not afraid to ask questions, even if I sound stupid. I come across people I used to interact with on Twitter and have had to mute or block. We appear to live in different worlds now, and I can't understand why they can't see what I see. It's all very strange and quite frightening at the same time.
I think “useful idiot” is to polite of a term for those people
It seems clear now that Hamas launched the Gaza war to fast track the entryism of Neo-Jihadism deeper into western institutions. "Free
Palestine" has functioned as a Trojan horse, being wheeled in by the useful idiots who have no clue what's behind the trap door.
🎯
Brilliant breakdown. The Sowell line about tradeoffs vs solutions captures the exact mechansim here. What makes useful idiots so effective is they've mastered the rhetorical move of treating every policy debate as a referendum on caring itself rather than on competent implementation. The minute you introduce resource constraints or second-order effects, you're accused of lacking compassion when really you're just acknowledging reality has a buget.
Excellent point – agree entirely. And thanks for reading.
Yes, exactly. I had such a discussion just recently with my brother. The subject was illegal immigration. I challenged him to put a cap on the maximum number of „asylum-seekers“ that could reasonably be absorbed per year. He refused. The „caring“ has to continue even if it sinks the lifeboat and everybody in it.
Ugh, I'd reserve a circle of hell for such moral cowardice. You can see that all over the place with NHS fundamentalists (nb: I support the NHS) - 'one life lost is too much', 'it matters not whether a person dying from covid was 82 or 2, a life is a life'; 'you can't put a price on a life saving medicine' etc.' They need to think it through just another couple of steps further, and they'll realise that they might as well be saying - 'I don't care about the reality of death and disease - so long as my fantasy of myself as pure and righteous is unchallenged'.
I fear I have been a useful idiot for most of my adult life. It wasn’t until the advent of “cancel culture” in relation to “trans rights” v “women’s rights” that I “peaked”. Slowly at first, but then very fast, my whole woke worldview disintegrated. My inner conservative has been freed at last. But I now have a sense of shame for the way I outsourced my critical thinking to The Guardian, while dismissing views it deemed unacceptable.
I’ve been there too, Isobel. Many of us have. Once the spell breaks, there’s no going back.
I wouldn't feel shame about it. Our culture doesn't do a very good job of explaining the reasons for conservatism. Unless it's explained to naturally inclined liberals, most won't get the fact that although personal responsibility might sound like a chore, it's actually good for the recipient as well as being a recipe for increased prosperity, security and longevity.
I too am a former Liberal Mugged by Reality.
‘taking the position that awards maximum moral status for minimum courage’ is spot on. And I agree, what better example is there than Queers for Palestine. You can’t really get more usefully idiotic than that.
Great writing as ever, thanks Frederick.
Thanks, TT.
Fantastic work Frederick.
I often wonder whether Blair knew how brilliantly effective he was being with his core objective of 50% of the population going on to further education (university).
Result - elite overproduction and a highly incentivised bunch of 'intellectuals' eager to find things to do to justify their comfortable positions. The charity industrial complex, NGO's, bureaucrats, the proliferation of HR and DEI policies everywhere. All symptoms.
The George Orwell quote you mention - “Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them”.
I think the combination of graduates with useless degrees plus our socialist state creates a lot of useful idiots.
The Cantillon effect exacerbates it. The state controls the money supply and those who are closest to it benefit first, before its value erodes. It becomes relatively easier and more lucrative to grift and stay near to government, than it is to satisfy customers in the private sector.
Thanks, David. Blair really was the master magician behind so many of our problems. And yes, elite overproduction explains a great deal.
I’m looking into the Cantillon effect now. Most interesting – thanks for raising it.
Great writing.Have forwarded it on. Really helpful for clarifying my thoughts and loved the Greta T reference.
Thanks, Liz.
I recently discovered your writing. Really excellent! Keep it up. 👍
Much appreciated, thanks for reading.
Great article. In your hierarchy of Useful Idiocy you state journalists are used to launder policy and legislation into 'respectable' news stories. Wouldn't this make the journalist a propagandist?
Thanks. Yes, I think you’re probably right. Legacy news media behave like propaganda outlets all the time, often spinning narratives while congratulating itself on its “objectivity”. The BBC is the textbook example, sadly.
"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”."
The word 'education' is another one of those misused works along the lines of 'woman' and 'Nazi'.
Going to school is no guarantee of an education. Not going to school is no reason to presume that an individual is uneducated.
I have a master's in education. But I've done my real learning in the real world. Schools tend to be nowhere near as diversified as they would have us believe, as they themselves believe. They are often little more than indoctrination centers. Which is why I often refer to 'academic inbreeding' and 'intellectual incest.'
p.s. If you really want to learn how to think, go to engineering school.
"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."
And also the UK Labour Party, many of whom still supported Stalin after it was clear this was a man created from evil.
If the sign were totally truthful, it would say “Queers for Palestine . . . as long as we don’t have to actually go there.”
Queers for Palestine never gets old. Very funny
Great article, thank you
"This requires remarkable cognitive flexibility". This is a line I will shamelessly purloin.