Hack Job: The “Useful Idiots” of Capitalism
In ideal circumstances, I’d be happy to see Lenin’s name, quotes, and thoughts in Canadian media. Genuine leftist views have been largely barred from the mainstream, with the arbiters of respectable debate setting the left goalpost at social democratic ideology. This is unfortunate, as 100 years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Marxist thought is just as relevant and insightful.
These aren’t ideal circumstances for Canadian media, however, and so it’s not a surprise Lenin is typically revived under negative circumstances. Still, one dull trope has come up over and over again, each time with complete earnestness, as if the writer is the first to put it on the page.
The latest example of this trope is seen in a Maclean’s article by “author/columnist/policy wonk” Mark Milke, entitled “Venezuela’s collapse and the ‘useful idiots’ of the Canadian left.”
Milke starts the article by stating, “One political curse from the twentieth century that continues in this one is the praise from self-described progressives for demagogues whose policies can, in advance, be predicted to hurt the poor and destroy their freedoms. Such ‘useful idiots,’ as Lenin described them, were thick on the ground in the last century.”
The idea is that Lenin saw people in the West who supported the Soviet Union as naive pawns to be manipulated for the goals of communism. The reference has been used by countless columnists over the years, including such intellectual giants as Tarek Fatah, Rex Murphy, and Margaret Wente.
This reference is awful, and writers should stop using it immediately.
To start, none of the mentions of this incident ever describe the context in which Lenin uttered it, because there’s no poof it happened. In a New York Times article on the subject, Grant Harris, senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, said, “We get queries on useful idiots of the West all the time. We have not been able to identify this phrase among his published works.” That article came out 30 years ago.
The fact that this fake quote exists and has been spread for so long is a sign that it probably originated as anti-communist propaganda. The columnists who use it do so for that purpose. As such, it deserves the same treatment as fabricated quotes supposedly from Muslim officials or thinkers describing how they plan to use naive Western liberals to further their plot of world domination.
Here’s a breakdown on why the trope is so harmful. The “useful idiots” phrase is typically used by columnists in one of three ways.
The first potential use is in a supposed situation where socialist leaders are deceiving their own people and Westerners, so Westerners become complicit in oppressing the citizens of the socialist state. This use is demeaning, because it implies that the people who support socialism in their own country are too dumb or uneducated to see the truth; that they are so susceptible to propaganda that they can’t make their own educated appraisals of their leaders and system of government. The columnists who use the trope in this sense can’t fathom that there are people out there who disagree with their view of the world without having been externally influenced to do so. As such, they limit the field of reasonable discourse to people who agree with them, and cast anyone outside that as brainwashed.
Mao’s China is typically the state referred to in this usage of the “useful idiot” phrase. In fact, Milke does so in his piece, bringing up Pierre Trudeau’s positive mentions of the state. The idea lurking under this use of the phrase is that the millions of Chinese people who supported Mao were just brainwashed. Somehow this is easier for pundits to believe than that those who supported Mao had their own legitimate reasons for doing so, and some Westerners were capable of recognizing why.
The second potential use is in a supposed situation where socialist leaders are deceiving Westerners for the benefit of themselves and their citizens, so the “useful idiots” are being duped by an entire state. This contention rests on the idea that people must be absolutely loyal to their own country, and interpret the world through the liberal conception of nation states. This ignores the fact that one of the main draws of socialist ideology is the internationalism it offers.
What benefits the oppressed and the working class around the world is supported by socialists regardless of where they are. Sure, former imperial subjects breaking free of their chains and asserting their independence may mean less capital for Westerners, but this is really only of interest to the ruling class. For socialists, the emancipation of the oppressed is what matters, even if it means the death of “their own” soldiers, and the defeat of “their own” armies. It’s bizarre to think that you should only worry about the people within your own state.
The “useful idiot” phrase in this case is often applied to the Soviet Union, because Soviet citizens were painted as eager beneficiaries in the Cold War, all in on a ruse to deceive the American public. This demonizes an entire populace, and antagonizes them for desiring what any citizen in any state is interested in: a better life for their families and themselves.
The third potential use is in a supposed situation where socialist leaders have tricked some Westerners, but their own citizens know the truth and are enlightened in a way that naive Westerners cannot be. In this case, Westerners are portrayed as genuinely harming the people of that country by refusing to condemn their leaders. This erases the fact that these socialist leaders do have mass support among their own citizens, and often from people throughout the Global South who don’t align themselves with Western capitalists. Fidel Castro is the most targeted leader in this case. Take the way his funeral was covered by politicians and media alike: if people went to his funeral, they were brainwashed or forced to be there; if they didn’t go, it meant he had no support from Cubans.
It may seem like the columnists who employ the trope in this sense are portraying socialist subjects as smarter than Westerners. In reality, it is patronizing, and a white saviour idea. First, because it implies people in that country want to overthrow their government but aren’t capable of doing so without the help of benevolent Westerners who can save the day. Second, because it typically relies on the testimonies of a select few exiles from the state who express pro-Western views, ignoring the many who do support the state back home. The US media, for example, has flocked to Cubans in Miami over the years.
It’s also crucial to note this line of argument is always conveniently used against states that have broken free of Western imperialist control, never those who still under it. Think of the difference between how Fidel’s Cuba was treated, compared to Pinochet’s Chile. The mainstream media never argued that pro-capitalist Westerners were dupes who couldn’t see what most Chileans knew was actually going on throughout the state.
Milke’s article on Venezuela largely falls into this third use. He states, “Canada’s ideological left loved Chavez and his policies, the ones that destroyed a decent, second-world country.” The disturbing implication here is that Venezuelans should have been grateful for what they had, when the West occasionally allowed things to trickle down to them. People like Milke blame supporters of the Venezuelans who wanted to fight to free their state of Western interference entirely, portraying them as ruining something perfectly good.
I’d call people like Milke useful idiots of capitalism, but they aren’t dupes. They benefit from capitalism, and so they fight to keep it in place around the world. One avenue of their battle is demonizing Westerners who show solidarity to socialist and national liberation movements. They have no moral standing to make this argument. Their attempts at shaming people for thinking beyond their own self-interest must be rejected at all costs.
At the very least, will journalists please stop using the “useful idiots” phrase, and start making their anti-communism a little more original?
This is the second article in the “Hack Job” series.
