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In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause—particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source—without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically being used by the cause's leaders. The term was used during the Cold War to describe non-communists regarded as susceptible to communist propaganda and manipulation. Conversely, it was then, and is used now to describe someone unwittingly doing the bidding of the CIA or US government.

False Attribution to Lenin: The phrase useful idiot has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but he is not documented as ever having used the phrase. In a 1987 article for The New York Times, American journalist William Safire investigated the origin of the term, commenting that a senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress had been unable to find the phrase in Lenin's works and concluding that in the absence of new evidence, the term could not be attributed to Lenin. Similarly, the Oxford English Dictionary in defining useful idiot says: "The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union".

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