A New York Times article from 1948, on contemporary Italian politics, documented usage of the term in an article from the social-democratic Italian paper L’Umanita. The French equivalent, “idiots utiles”, was used in a newspaper article title in 1946. A similar term, useful innocents, appears in Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises‘s “Planned Chaos” (1947). A 2010 BBC radio documentary titled Useful Idiots listed among “useful idiots” of Joseph Stalin several prominent British writers including H. G. Wells and Doris Lessing, the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, the American journalist Walter Duranty, and the singer Paul Robeson.
One thing is for certain, these „useful idiots of the West” are once again at their “best” during the European immigration crisis. Their guilt trip and false reasoning are fast chipping away at western civilization. They are typically driven by pathological altruism, believing that they know best how to run the lives of all people throughout the world. » | Adam Topolansky | Wednesday, September 9, 2015