Talk:Useful idiot

Early use of the phrase

I have removed this:

The term was defined by Heinrich Zschokke in 1804. "Anyone who sacrifices themselves to a narcissist is called a useful idiot."

The term was used referring to politics in The Saturday Review, June 10, 1864. An unnamed voter, "one of those useful idiots", was ridiculed by a politician for his extreme anti-government stance.

This documents uses of the phrase, but not use of the term as described in this article. Moreover, we have no secondary source which connects these primary sources with the current use of the term.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't often edit wiki stuff, so I apologize for my markup informality or unintended pithiness - or well, length of comment. I understand your reasoning for removing those, I can get in that headspace, but would counter that the current use of term can't be understood with specificity without the context of these other earlier uses. My reasoning is that the modern use of the phrase is almost always just a "stand in" or placeholder for a larger cultural shorthand. As in, when people use the term today its used not so much for its literal meaning (which borders on the generic) but always so the leninist attribution or baggage can be coupled with it to make a more abbreviated point or catchall historical assertion. So to have the phrase show up in precisely such generic, literal terms pre-lenin allows the reader to reflect on its modern useage as it functions beyond just its unspectacular, and non-unique phraseology. I would recommend placing them both back in. 199.66.13.72 (talk) 21:07, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. This is not a record of phrases used.--Jack Upland (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Articles should have a neutral point of view!

Articles should have a neutral point of view. Cold war belligerents should be presented as equal. This article is strongly biased and presents the US as the good guys and USSR as the bad guys. Therefore it is in violation of Wikipedia's Neutral point of view policy.

If the article is not improved significantly, then it will be suggested for deletion.

Ginekolog (talk) 00:02, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Please make the changes that you think need to be made. Alternatively, if you are unsure, please explain specifically what you think is wrong with this article. Or you could start the deletion process.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:06, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Jesus Christ! Next you'll tell me nazi pages need to be rewritten because they present nazis as bad guys.46.33.152.203 (talk) 10:00, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

That's not the main bias of the article. The main bias is only referring to the term as used by the right wing to refer to anyone they disagree with, when in fact if one wanted to use this pejorative it could equally be used to refer to those on the right who support right wing extremists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.65.54.41 (talk) 09:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

"Vladimir Putin's useful idiots"

I was surprised this article made no mention of the phrase in connection to modern Russia and in particular Putin, because we often saw it used that way over the past decade or so, describing Trump and many in the GOP. Indeed, given the phrase's height of popularity during the Cold War describing USSR fellow travelers, it's a natural extension from the USSR to Russia. So I found a recent article in The Economist in particular it names Putin as the one who finds "idiots useful" to his aims. A lot more should be said about this then the current one sentence. -- GreenC 18:07, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

The article is behind the paywall, but the visible blurb speaks of what is known as Putinversteher in Germany. Is it possible to expand it with the info from economist article? - Altenmann >talk 18:13, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

This should work. But the concept of Putinversteher covers it well, so no need to expand too much in this article, other than somehow linking to Putinversteher. -- GreenC 20:15, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

"False attribution to Lenin"

Can someone check, which term was searched in Lenin's works: "полезный идиот" or "полезный дурак" (booth singular and plural), because both of them were attributed to Lenin (of course without references :-}). - Altenmann >talk 01:03, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

You are flogging a dead horse. We go with the secondary sources that we have.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:02, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Why is that? I am asking to check the secondary sources quoted (and not yet quoted). If Lenin used the phrase, say, "useful morons", and later that was misremembered as "useful idiots" then it is a completely different story. The meaning of the phrase will not change with the change of the derogatory word used it. Our article is already on shaky grounds of original research where it says "related terms". - Altenmann >talk 03:11, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Hah! The second footnoted ref says that Grant Harris of LOC failed to find the phrase "useful idiots of the West", not "useful idiots". The first footnote is behind the firewall but I did find a pdf of William Safire's NYT article, and indeed it says the same. What is more, Safire's title is "Useful idiots of the West" and not "Useful Idiots", which should have been a red flag. - Altenmann >talk 03:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Conclusion: Hold your dead horses: the falseness of the attribution to Lenin of the term "useful idiots" is not proven yet, and I am editing the section accordingly. - Altenmann >talk 03:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, we don't "prove" things. We merely report what reliable secondary sources say. Proof is for original research papers, not Wikipedia. And your suggestion that because the source says "Useful idiots of the west" it's not the same thing as "Useful idiots", fails common sense. -- GreenC 04:07, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Hold on you too, collegue. On wikipedia we do "prove" things in talk pages all the time. In particular I am often working to prove that some sloppy wikipedian misquoted or misattributed something. Heck, just today I "proved" that some wikipedians mistook a parody book for a "reliable source". I fixed this by writing the article "Nasology" (enjoy) and fixed several wikipedia articles accordingly (mostly removing references to it). - Altenmann >talk 04:17, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree completely. Not sure who keeps adding this bit back in with not a single reliable source to back it up. Ditchdigger456 (talk) 14:47, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

OK so we prove things, sometimes, when there is an obvious common sense problem per WP:COMMONSENSE, which trumps all policy, I get that. Do you have proof Lenin said it? The senior official at the Library of Congress, who is often queried on this question, and had the formidable resources of his professional research staff at a world-class library, said there is no proof Lenin said it. Do we trust the Library of Congress, or the opinions of anonymous editors on a Wikipedia talk page? I can guess where this would go, should it ever rise to the point of an RFC, with dozens of neutral editors brought in from the wider community. -- GreenC 15:32, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

No, the senior official at the LOC did not said that, as I clearly explained above. Yes, it is COMMONSENSE, but it has nothing to do with all policy, but with reading comprehension of sources cited. - Altenmann >talk 17:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, this is your assertion that "Useful idiots of the West" is not the same thing as "Useful Idiots", which is making something out of nothing. I'd still like to see what evidence Lenin said "Useful Idiot(s)" .. regardless of where the idiots are from: Russia, the West, Mars. -- GreenC 18:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I assert nothing, I just read the sources and don't speculate. On the contrary, I suspect your assertion is "Useful idiots of the West" is the same as "useful idiots". And I'd like to see the same, but I guess nobody cares to read whole 52 volumes of Lenin, not to say about memoirs about him. I remember the great excitement about Lenin's hanging order, as it it was the sole bloodthirsty Lenin's utterance. If anybody cared reading Lenin, they would have known better; see. eg a colleciton of quotes here. - Altenmann >talk 20:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Quotes from the source:

• Librarian Harris got back to me, however, with a lead to the possible source of both the rope remark and the useful idiot attribution.
• denouncing Congressmen who were pro-Sandinista and anti-contra, useful idiots.
• insists that the party is not playing the role of the useful idiots for the Russians, a phrase used by Lenin to describe left-liberals and Social Democrats
• a Times headline on another topic read: Lenin's 'Useful Idiots' in Salvador.
• fellow travelers who support this [ Soviet ] propaganda effort in Western Europe. We call them useful idiots
• the deaf, dumb and blind phrase may be one of the phrases that helped start the useful idiots

Of the 9 times "useful idiot" is used in the article, only 3 of them concern "of the west". None of the other majority 6 quotes contain "of the west". It's plainly obvious the article is concerned with more than just the phrase that includes "of the west". -- GreenC 03:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Again, you are addressing a wrong issue. The issue is what Grant Harris of LOC reported. Clearly, there are plenty of sources discuss "useful idiots". - Altenmann >talk 04:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok then why are we atomizing Grant Harris, only, out of all the other people and sources discussed in the NYT article? It's a fairly nuanced and complex article with a number of theories, but the main takeaway is that there is no clear evidence Lenin ever said Useful Idiots directly, and analogous versions like the rope remark are even less clear. -- GreenC 15:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Because Harris is the only person who has a qualified opinion on the subject and I did add into our article that other sources the author contacted had just dodged the question. We also mention OED that ways they dont know. Therefore IMO our article says enough on the subject. - Altenmann >talk 16:38, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Earliest usage

Google ngram shows two blips on its radar for 1820-1830 and for 1860-1870 ranges. The second blip is likely in our article. Anybody up for hunting down the first one? Turning "smoothing" off, the pinpoint is 1824. - Altenmann >talk 04:17, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

A better search is at archive.org because they search 100% of each book whereas Google has more limited search within each book. Go to archive.org -> click on the second search box (not the wayback machine) -> click the "Search text contents" radio button -> enter "useful idiots" (in quotes) -> sort results on date of publication -> resort based on earliest first (the up and down arrows on the left side). It brings up many 19th century results, like Congressional Records from 1873. -- GreenC 15:49, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I tried; It looks like this tool messes with publication dates mightily. - Altenmann >talk 20:54, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

The term has a lot of hits so it's going to bring up a lot of false positives on the early date edges due to metadata entry problems, this is to be expected (like OCR errors "1785" instead of "1985"). But this is a good sign it means it's getting a lot of hits because of in-depth complete searching, unlike Google Books which has few hits in the early period. It's not difficult to scroll past them visually to find real sources. -- GreenC 15:14, 23 February 2024 (UTC)