The Useful Idiot: A Natural History

Specimen: Western, educated, well-meaning. Habitat: universities, NGOs, quality newspapers, dinner parties where the wine is good and the opinions are better. Status: abundant.The useful idiot is not exactly stupid. This is the first and most important thing to understand. Stupidity would be a defense. The more precise diagnosis is what we in Poland call pół-inteligent – the half-wit. Not the bottom of the intelligence distribution, which is too obviously lost to be useful. Not the genuine top, which tends to develop the inconvenient habit of following arguments wherever they actually lead. The sweet spot: smart enough to absorb a complex...