USEFUL IDIOTS

Fri Jun 13 20:58:52 UTC 2014

Fred wote:
> 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."

Back in 2010 I checked that Time magazine match with Lenin and "useful
idiot". The Time database archive was openly accessible in those days.
I think.

The 1958 Time article did not connect Lenin with the phrase.

Side note: One unfortunate aspect of the Time archive concerns
advertisements. Sometimes there is a GB match in an advertisement that
was published in the magazine, but it is not in the Time archive
because the archive does not contain the advertisements.

Periodical: Time
Date: January 13, 1958
Article: ITALY: From the Slums

[Begin excerpt]
Reward from Moscow. Last week Dolci won another kind of victory.
Praising the "incisive vigor" with which Dolci had depicted the
"inhuman conditions" in Sicily, Radio Moscow gratuitously announced
that "Peace Partisan" Dolci had won the Lenin (formerly Stalin) Peace
Prize. Rome's La Giustizia, organ of the Social Democrats, promptly
appealed to non-Communist Dolci to reject an award which "comes from
the executioners of the workers in Hungary." Dolci did not even
hesitate. "I shall always accept, from anywhere, gifts that help my
mission of good works," he said. He announced that the $25,000 prize
money will be handed over to a committee to establish what he called
"a research institute for full employment."

His decision left Italy as baffled as ever about "Italy's Gandhi."
Many Christian Democrats flatly consider him a Communist or, at best,
a "useful idiot" for Communist causes. Leftist (but nonCommunist)
Novelist Alberto Moravia insists: "Dolci protests, yes. But he is not
a Communist." Dolci himself was more lofty. "Reality is very complex,"
he said. "To understand it, men have tried Christianity, liberalism,
Gandhiism, socialism. There is some truth in all solutions. We are all
mendicants of truth."
[End excerpt]

Garson

>
> ________________________________________
> 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
>>>>
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