Fellow travelers, useful idiots or something else?

by liberal japonicus

This started as thinking about pundits but has overflowed into a lot of other news. I had in mind the categories fellow travelers and useful idiots. These are pretty radioactive terms, and I welcome some alternatives, but absent any substitutes, I have to trudge on. As I understand it, fellow traveler was a term denoting people sympathetic to Communist thought in the 20s and 30s, but not officially part of the party. A useful idiot, on the other hand, is often posited to be from Lenin, but the OED traces it back the NYT in 1948. Wikipedia says "a pejorative description of a person, suggesting that the person thinks they are fighting for a cause without fully comprehending the consequences of their actions, and who does not realize they are being cynically manipulated by the cause's leaders or by other political players." Another thing that is interesting is that it seems like useful idiot is harsher than fellow traveler, at least to my ears.

As a first pass, NYT having a Gang of Four palaver about what's been happening, consisting of Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Lydia Polgreen provides some data. Taking them in order, with some quotes,

Douthat

It’s a mistake to go all in on Harris, obviously, because she’s still the exceptionally weak candidate whose weaknesses made President Biden so loath to quit the field for her. Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are throwing away an unusual opportunity because they imagine some future opening for themselves — in 2028 and beyond — that may never materialize. And the party clearly has an interest in having a better-situated nominee: A swing-state governor who isn’t tied directly to an unpopular administration would be a much, much better choice for a high-stakes but still winnable race than a liberal Californian machine politician with zero track record of winning over moderate to conservative voters.

Fellow traveler vibes. How about David French?

It’s a gamble either way. Do you gamble that Harris is a better candidate than she was before and that, on balance, it’s better to unify now and go with the person who’s poised to take over? Or do you gamble that you can initiate a divisive and potentially chaotic selection process, unify immediately afterward and then make the new candidate a household name in three short months?

Useful idiot? This exchange between Polgreen and Douthat is comedy gold.

Polgreen: It is puzzling to see Ross increasingly appeal to moderation, because Harris is a moderate. This was one of the reasons her primary campaign failed. I’d love to know what she has to do to prove to anti-Trump conservatives that she is a moderate and why someone like Whitmer or Shapiro is assumed to be more moderate. A great example of this is Harris’s incredibly convoluted student loan forgiveness program in the primary campaign — just classic moderate, technocratic, means-tested stuff. Much more moderate than where Biden ultimately landed. I am guessing that she sensed that this issue was a political loser.

Douthat: I will concede that Harris is relatively moderate by the standards of the 2020 Democratic primaries, in which the various candidates competed to take the most gonzo left-wing stances possible. By the standards of broader American political alignments, she is a doctrinaire liberal, several ticks to the left of her boss, boasting exactly zero experience in appealing to a non-Californian electorate. And also currently trailing Trump, I would add, in most available polling. I think the case for her staking out some heterodox positions in those circumstances is obvious.

And here is Douthat on the lack of an Obama endorsement and why he's really right, it's only because there are no people challenging Harris that you can't see his blinding insight.

Douthat: The absence of an immediate Obama endorsement suggests that there is at least some appetite for a contest among Democratic power brokers. But you would need an actual rival candidate to make one happen, and instead we’re already reduced to Joe Manchin floating a trial balloon and then puncturing it himself, going on TV and wringing his hands about how it would be nice if someone would go up against Harris but insisting that it won’t be him.

Wondering why Obama hasn't immediately jumped up and endorsed Harris, Glenn Thrush explains in a link that is now unfortunately behind a paywall, that Obama didn't want to be accused of being a puppeteer. Which seems logical to me, but I guess that's why Douthat gets paid so much.

I had set this aside, but John Oliver's Last Week tonight devoted a sizable portion of his program to RFK Jr. It came out before he revealed his fascination with the Bear Necessities and I'm wondering how Oliver would have put that in the mix. Oliver's point about He who runs with Bear Cubs, that he could throw the election to Trump, makes me wonder if he transcends our fellow traveler/useful idiot categories.

Keeping up with the fellow travelers/useful idiots, I find myself wondering about the leadership candidates for the Tories. I've often heard about the diversity in the race, with Kemi Badenoch (immigrant from Nigeria), Priti Patel (daughter of Ugandan/India immigrants), Suella Braverman (withdrew, but was initially in the race, daughter of Indian immigrants), James Cleverly (son of Jamaican father and Sierra Leonean mother), in addition to the woefully underrepresented White male demographic (Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, and Robert 'Generic' Jenrick). It's diverse, but given my political leanings, I feel like it just shows how diverse the categories of fellow traveler/useful idiot are. I realize that I could be accused of only wanting diversity if the people agree with me, but I'd say it brings to mind the take on the nomination of Carswell to the USSC. "Even if he [Carswell] were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises and Frankfurters and Cardozos."

I think the Tory leadership race is an interesting contrast with the US, in that I'm hard-pressed to think of a Black republican other than Tim Scott. Though this Guardian article about the governor of NC withdrawing as a VP candidate brings up another candidate.

The Democratic governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, withdrew from consideration for Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick in part because he feared his extremist Republican lieutenant governor could try to seize power – or at least the spotlight – in his absence.

“Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, is the most extreme statewide candidate in the country right now,” Cooper told Politico in an article published on Saturday, as Harris prepared to name her choice to take on Donald Trump and JD Vance. Harris’s decision is expected before a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

“If I were to be out of state at a campaign event, if I had been the vice-presidential nominee, he could claim he was acting governor,” Cooper said.

Robinson is a polarising figure who has wielded pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ and antisemitic rhetoric, including quoting the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, a choice he has defended.

Here's an older article with more details. Fellow Traveler? Useful Idiot? Or something else altogether? Discuss in the comments.

 

 

 

Comments

[wj]

The absence of an immediate Obama endorsement suggests that there is at least some appetite for a contest among Democratic power brokers.

This is so stunningly stupid that it definitely qualifies Douthat for "idiot" -- whether he rates as "useful" (and to whom) is not particularly obvious.

I think that Thrush is exactly correct, that Obama did not want to appear to be pushing Harris on the Democratic party. As it was, beyond Biden's endorsement it certainly looked like more of a bottom up driven deal. Various party leaders endorsed Harris over the course of the first week. But not all at once, and not on the first day. If it was orchestrated, it was a damn deft job.

(Having got that off my chest, I can now go finish reading)

[wj]

I'm hard-pressed to think of a Black republican other than Tim Scott.

If it helps, the Republican Lt. Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, ("the most extreme statewide candidate in the country") is also black.

[wj]

Before we can address and identify Fellow Travelers, we need to decide "with whom". After all, you can be a fellow traveler with, for example, Iran simply by opposing Israel. Even just opposing current Israeli behavior.

Or you can be a fellow traveler with China because you opposite any kind of support, explicit or implicit, for Taiwan. I'm not sure it even matters whether you think that Taiwan properly belongs to China. Or just don't want to get involved. (And have no clue that, for the moment, pretty much all the advanced computer chips in the world are made in Taiwan.)

[Hartmut]

Drat! Despite having subscribed to John Oliver's YT channel, I can't access that video ("not available in your country"). [I am not using one of those constantly advertised VPNs that allow pretending being from elsewhere.]

[Donald]

Assuming the cause or group is evil, a fellow traveler is worse because they are knowingly collaborating with evil. A useful idiot means well and thinks he or she is standing up for puppies and rainbows. However,the term says they are morons.

Or that is how I interpreted the implied meaning of the terms.

[hairshirthedonist]

It seems I have misused "fellow traveler" on the rare occasions that I used it at all. I would have considered most of the commenters on this blog my fellow travelers - at least the few regulars who are still around. I took it to mean people who were generally like minded and that I had some amount of contact with.

Maybe it was taken tongue-in-cheek, sort of like how one of my IRL friends and I would jokingly refer to each other as "comrade" because we weren't as rabidly right wing as many of our other friends. Or maybe no one noticed, being as ignorant as I was.

[Girl from the North Country]

I like Donald's definitions, although I have never necessarily thought that fellow travellers knew that what they were supporting was evil, exactly. For example, in apartheid South Africa, before WW2, there was an organisation called Friends of the Soviet Union, and many upright people who were definitely not communists were members because they thought the SU was the main opponent of fascism, and was therefore very much the lesser evil, even if (possibly but not definitely at that stage) evil.

"Useful idiot" is definitely more insulting, and therefore more fun to use.

hsh: I am enchanted by your innocent definition of fellow travellers - but if I ever saw you use it, which I don't remember, I'm sure I did think you had your tongue firmly in your cheek and were referring to the fact that we were all considered such lefties. You'd be amazed at the sort of people who call me and each other "comrade", for the same reasons you give.

[wj]

Nice summary, Donald.

I would add that, hsh's use of "fellow traveler" is compatible with non-evil allies. Rarely used that way, in my experience, but compatible.

On the other hand, "useful idiots" is the kind of contempt for those helping you that rarely occurs among the good guys. We're more likely to see them as something like "opponents of an evil regime" or "champions of freedom" or some such.

[wonkie]

WHat the hell are those people talking about?

Apparently Megan McArglebargle thinks the Dems made a mistake with Kamela because she's a poor public speaker. I've noticed some heart burn from the usuals about Waltz not being from a purple state and him being a progressive wet dream.

I don't think this is a year for conventional thinking. I think Waltz will have the same effect on R spokespeople that Kamela has on Trump: make their gibbering idiocy obvious.

[wonkie]

For example: https://www.rawstory.com/a-threat-to-society-trump-surrogate-melts-down-over-free-tampons-after-tim-walz-vp-pick/

[Girl from the North Country]

I think Hartmut's numbered summary of Walz's history on the other thread makes it clear he was an excellent pick. And as for being approved by Sanders, the squad AND Manchin, it's amazing (to me, at least).

[hairshirthedonist]

I put a Guardian link with an excerpt in the other active thread. Here's more:

If Democrats want to see what their party governing would look like, Minnesota is the example. But maybe the policies would be too liberal for the national stage, one TV interviewer posed to Walz.

“What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” Walz said jokingly.

(...)

Ryan called to mind a recent clip in which Walz mentioned that Minnesota ranked in the top three for happiest states in the nation. “Isn’t that really the goal here? For some joy? When he mentioned that I was like, dang man, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human being space.”

It’s part of a vibe shift Democrats are feeling since Joe Biden announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. There’s less focus on the dire consequences of electing Trump again – though those consequences are certainly still part of the motivation – and more on detailing what Democrats want to do if they win.

I like positivity because it's positive.

[nous]

Did I not say that the Democrats needed to shift towards a message that points to the future and to change, and deliver it with messengers who project a sense of hopeful optimism? That is the way to break the amygdala hijack.

And amygdala hijacks are exhausting. You can feel that side getting burned out, and growing impatient with Orangina's one-note act.

This is doable. Ignore all the meta, this will change the conditions on the ground.

[wj]

The contrast of obviously authentic Walz with blatantly inauthentic Vance will be fun. And hard to push back on.

[GftNC]

Talking of useful idiots (although not Musk, who is far, far worse than that), this by the wonderful Marina Hyde on the UK's current troubles, and the foul creatures that foment them, is up to her usual standard:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/06/britain-race-riots-tommy-robinson-elon-musk

[Pete]

I like positivity because it's positive.

Wrong thread. But I like the cut of your jib, fellow traveler.

[CharlesWT]

Meanwhile, three little girls 6-9 were stabbed to death two days ago at a Taylor Swift themed holiday dance class.

Commentary on the recent events and on how various levels of government have reacted to them.

Two-Tier Keir —Winston Marshall

[Girl from the North Country]

"Commentary", you call it? I was aghast as I watched it, and didn't even finish it. I had no idea who he was - but now I do. So he's the guy who had to leave Mumford and Sons:

In March 2021, Marshall faced criticism for lauding Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a book written by conservative American journalist and social media personality Andy Ngo.

Dear God, Charles, how do you find these people? And what made you think he was somebody that anybody should give more than 30 seconds of attention to? I know I've complained in the past about guilt by association, but do you consider Andrew Tate's "commentary" worth our time too? How about Elon "civil war is inevitable" Musk? Crikey O'Reilly etc etc.

[Cheez Whiz]

You post with the contrarian hot takes you have, not the contrarian hot takes you wish you had.

[Cheez Whiz]

On the great idiot/traveller distinction, idiot is punchier, condescending, and smug so it has much more appeal across the spectrum. I'd quibble with Wikipedia in that idiots are less unaware than unconcerned with consequences. Douthat has to strain to make a point not because he's an idiot, but because he has so little to work with. You could consider never-Trumpers fellow travellers, but that would be a category error, since the only sympathy in common is getting Trump out of the Republican party. They will all go back on the payroll to subvert democracy once the boss is someone who pays the bills and listens to them.

[CharlesWT]

Dear God, Charles, how do you find these people?

In many cases X marks the spot. :)

Another one.

"The Equalities Act introduced "protected characteristics" which effectively made members of certain racial, ethnic and religious groups entitled to special treatment. Partly as a result of this and partly due to the broader introduction of the idea of "diversity and inclusion", the police, social workers and all manner of government officials turned a blind eye to crimes committed by particular racial and ethnic groups. A good example would be so-called "grooming gangs" which are groups comprised of predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi men who targeted white and Sikh girls for gang rape. According to estimates there were several hundred thousand victims. These crimes have gone on for over 40 years and continue to happen today."
There is No Cope

[Girl from the North Country]

Charles, what I'm interested in is whether you actually believe any of the crazy stuff you post? Or are you just following the example of the little boy, who, as Lewis Carol says only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases?

I started off actually giving you the true facts of the Equalities Act, and the grooming gangs (which certainly were a terrible scandal, and some of which were to an extent ignored on grounds of race), but it's not worth the time and effort if you just post this stuff to get a reaction. And if you don't, and really want to understand the situations you post about, I strongly suggest you don't find your information on X, where Elon Musk censors people whose views he disagrees with, and himself posts and promotes absurd, ignorant rabble rousing rubbish.

But, because I suspect that the Lewis Carol quote is the right answer to my question, that's the end of my engagement with this idiocy.

[hairshirthedonist]

Charles did post the same comment with the same link on two different threads. Perhaps the first time didn't prompt the reaction he was hoping for.

[Girl from the North Country]

Presumably the second one did! Thanks, my dear fellow traveller.

[CharlesWT]

Perhaps the first time didn't prompt the reaction he was hoping for.

I posted on the other thread because I was referring to a comment on that thread. Then I reposted it on this thread because The Guardian link covered some of the same events as the link I posted.

[liberal japonicus]

Interesting stuff. Thinking about pundits, if you are assigning it to people on the other side, if it is a fellow traveler, you'd really like to have them shut up, but if it is a useful idiot, you probably don't want to do that. Though I'm not sure how one would go about doing it, but fellow travelers shouldn't really be given a platform, because they aren't being honest with their opinions, while you probably don't want to squash useful idiots, even though it might feel good. (shout out to Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance) Though with Charles' youtubers, you just want to put them all in a burlap sack and toss them off the bridge...

The google n-gram is interesting
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fellow+traveler%2C+useful+idiot&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3

I don't think I've used fellow traveler as an in-term, though I could see how it would work, and would be like all those perjorative terms that get flipped.

I also found this conference, but haven't been able to find if any of the presentations were turned into papers
https://blogs.helsinki.fi/fellow-travellers/

It points out that fellow traveler is a translation of a russian word (poputchiki) and this, from the wikipedia entry, is interesting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_traveller

In the early history of the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet statesman Anatoly Lunacharsky coined the term poputchik ('one who travels the same path') and later it was popularized by Leon Trotsky to identify the vacillating intellectual supporters of the Bolshevik government.[2] It was the political characterisation of the Russian intelligentsiya (writers, academics, and artists) who were philosophically sympathetic to the political, social, and economic goals of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but who did not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The usage of the term poputchik disappeared from political discourse in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era, but the Western world adopted the English term fellow traveller to identify people who sympathised with the Soviets and with Communism

So I guess it is a bit resistant to being applied to people like Douthat, McArdle and others, though it seems appropriate.

[wj]

Thinking about pundits, if you are assigning it to people on the other side, if it is a fellow traveler, you'd really like to have them shut up, but if it is a useful idiot, you probably don't want to do that.

It occurs to me that it might depend on whether we're talking foreign or domestic. For useful idiots, we probable want to have them talking either way -- that's how they become useful. (Excluding from this category any agents in foreign countries that you may have recruited. I know you limited this to pundits, but just to be clear.)

With fellow travelers, we first need to distinguish between those who are with you on most, if not all, issues and those who are with you on just a couple. Domestically you might well want those who are with you across the board to be low profile. Saying enough to gradually move the needle on what the other side thinks. But not enough to get ignored. On the other hand, if they are well established true believers on most topics, they might be loud on the one or two where they are fellow travelers.

Foreign fellow travelers might as well be as outspoken as they like. It might be best if they not say they think you are great, depending on local conditions. They might even say disparaging things about you. As long as they support you on the issues, that's OK.

[GftNC]

Elon Musk tweeted that "Civil war is inevitable" in the UK. Bristol, and many other cities, beg to differ:

https://x.com/BBCBristol/status/1821278734013415880

[GftNC]

And Walthamstow tonight as well, with a direct address to Elon Musk about whether he will tweet this kind of thing now. Apparently happening in many towns and cities of the UK:

https://x.com/AaronBastani/status/1821273679587848226

[GftNC]

Brighton, and as the person tweeting says, This is England:

https://x.com/SecretDJBook/status/1821280286107447452

It reminds me of the old feminist protests Reclaim the Night.

[wj]

Elon's connection to reality is visibly fraying more and more. Sort of like Trump's coherence.

[liberal japonicus]

I guess this is the Anarchy in the U.K. thread, though I want to ask, it seems like this is pretty much English and it's not happening in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Is that the case or is my geography not so good? And if it is the case, what kind of conclusions does one draw?

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry, I missed wj's comment. I was thinking of the metric to discuss domestic people and opinions. The question of how foreign opinions should be weighed is interesting, but in the case of Trump and the Republicans, it's really only a sideshow, as my impression of foreign media is that they view the US as a dumpster fire, so Trump is just confirmation of that.

[wj]

My sense is that, for example, Putin sees Trump as a useful (perhaps even a critically useful) idiot. Whereas people who get up and declare the Ukraine is (not should be, but is) part of Russia count as fellow travelers. (Pretty much regardless of whether they believe that specifically, or are just motivated by isolationism to say it.)

[skeptonomist]

"Fellow traveler" is a term that has a long history of being a political pejorative, on both sides of the cold war. It can be applied to anyone who isn't 100% for the speaker's program, or is not loyal to some particular leader.

[Girl from the North Country]

lj: I don't know about Wales and Scotland, but it was definitely happening in Northern Ireland. However, further to my links about the anti-racist demos last night, they seem (possibly along with serious policing and fast-tracked court appearances leading to jail sentences) to have succeeded in keeping the bastards away. It may or may not be temporary - we shall have to see.