Lenin is usually credited with coining the term "useful idiot". There's no evidence he did, but it seems entirely plausible because the term became a popular way to describe Western intellectuals who cheered on communism from the safety of their Paris salons while actual communists were liquidating millions.

If we're being charitable, we might say these intellectuals meant well, that they genuinely believed they were supporting progress towards a better society. Perhaps they were simply naive, seeing what they wanted to see and disregarding evidence of blatant tyranny, show trials, the mass murder of kulaks, and so on.

Or maybe they were just idiots.

The term has become popular again because the useful idiots of our day are similarly blinded by their own sense of moral superiority, too invested in groupthink to notice that they keep providing cover for modern-day evils. How else to explain their solidarity with fanatics who would eliminate them given the chance?

It's crucial to understand that not all useful idiots are stupid - not in the ordinary sense. Often they're educated and articulate. The most committed useful idiots tend to have PhDs and introduce themselves as doctors. Yet all that education can obscure truths and blur moral clarity while making terrible ideas look attractive. As Orwell remarked, "Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them".

Nevertheless, some useful idiots really are just stupid. What unites all of them is a lack of courage - the courage to trust their own eyes, ask uncomfortable questions, and pay social costs for being right rather than staying comfortable by being wrong.

Hashtag activism is comically easy, requiring no real sacrifice except the risk of faulty wifi at the local artisanal coffee bar. Actual principled activism is a very different thing...not playing the bongos and screeching for intifada outside a Christmas market.

Queers for Palestine might be the purest distillation of useful idiocy ever achieved. Hamas would throw them off the nearest building. Many Gazans, if we're being honest, would happily assist.

Then we have Western feminists defending the hijab as a symbol of "empowerment" while women in Iran are beaten to death for removing it. And let's not forget the progressives who celebrate Islamist movements that would criminalise everything progressives claim to value.

The useful idiot never asks whether the people they champion would tolerate them.

Useful idiots reserve their greatest fury for people who threaten the narrative. Dissidents from within the "oppressed" group are deemed particularly dangerous because they can't be dismissed as privileged outsiders. As such, they must be destroyed.

What matters for the useful idiot is the preservation of their moral framework.When people disrupt that carefully tended picture of reality, they shoot the messenger rather than grapple with the message.

In any case, the useful idiot isn't interested in solving problems - indeed, the problems are essential to their purpose. It would be like divorce lawyers campaigning for lifelong happy marriages. It would put them out of a job.

No, much better for the activist to keep the crisis alive and enjoy the moral superiority that comes with demanding the impossible.

None of it makes sense, but logical consistency isn't the point. What matters is taking the position that awards maximum moral status for the least amount of courage.