USEFUL IDIOTS

[Shapiro, Fred]

Google Books has what appears to be a 1951 book by Giovanni Engely, titled Italy Today, with the following on page 20:  "These intellectuals apparently ignore the fact that idea and practice of justice are banned from all countries under Communist rule, but they very well serve the cause of Communism as 'useful idiots' as Lenin called them."

Fred Shapiro

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Fred R. Shapiro                                      Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and        YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                                     ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu                   http://quotationdictionary.com
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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2014 4:25 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: USEFUL IDIOTS

I don't have full access to the Time Magazine archives, but it looks like there is probably an article mentioning "useful idiots" and "Lenin" in Time, Jan. 13, 1958.  The article appears to be headlined "Italy: From the Slums."

Fred Shapiro



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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of ADSGarson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2014 1:50 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: USEFUL IDIOTS

Thanks Fred and LH. There is an earlier attribution of "useful idiots"
to Lenin that may interest you in the Congressional Record in 1959.
Lenin died in 1924. I posted this to the ADS list back on August 14,
2010 during a previous discussion of "useful idiots". Barry added it
to his entry on the topic.

[ref] 1959 June 30, Congressional Record - Appendix, Page A5653,
Column 2, "Useful Idiots: Extension of Remarks of Hon. Edward J.
Derwinski of Illinois in the House of Representatives, Tuesday, June
30, 1959" (LexisNexis Congressional Record Permanent Digital
Collection)[/ref]

[Begin excerpt]
This is the cold war. The leaders of the states and of the nations,
instead of going in droves to Moscow and becoming what Lenin calls
useful idiots in the Communist game, should go to Mackinac Island,
Mich., to the moral rearmament ideological war college where thousands
of our friends from the free world are coming to plan global strategy
to answer communism.
[End excerpt]

Garson


On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: USEFUL IDIOTS
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jun 12, 2014, at 5:23 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>
>> In quick searches of the newspaper databases, I see the earliest usage of "useful idiot" or "useful idiots" in a Communist context as N.Y. Times, June 21, 1948.
>
> Ah, predating Sen. McCarthy's reign by a couple of years...
>
>>  The earliest usage I see that attributes "useful idiot" or "useful idiots" to Lenin is Christian Science Monitor, July 14, 1961.
>>
>> Fred Shapiro
>
> Thanks.  An attribution without actual citation, I take it.
>
> LH
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 8:19 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Antedating of "Fellow Traveler"
>>
>> On the same topic, is there an early cite for "useful idiot", which was supposedly used by Lenin in this sense, but apparently hasn't been found in Lenin's work?  It's been revived in the right-wing blogosphere and/or Fox News to characterize Democrats who have been putatively "duped" by leftists, Islamists, or whoever.
>>
>> LH
>>
>> On Jun 11, 2014, at 7:51 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>>
>>> fellow traveler (OED, 2., 1936)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 1933 _N.Y. Times Book Review_ 23 Apr. 2 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)  ROMANOF is a "fellow traveler," as Trotsky phrased it, more generally and sympathetically read by the Western world than by Russia.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Fred Shapiro
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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