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The Wednesday Documentary: Useful Idiots

The Documentary: Useful Idiots: Episode 1

Episode 1

Useful Idiots

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Useful Idiots, Episode 1

Lenin's description of intellectuals who gave their blessing  to tyrannies and  tyrants.

John Sweeney looks at Useful Idiots, Lenin's description of Western intellectuals who gave their blessing  to tyrannies and  tyrants.

The phrase 'useful idiots', supposedly Lenin’s, refers to Westerners duped into saying good things about bad regimes.

In political jargon it was used to describe Soviet sympathisers in Western countries and the attitude of the Soviet government towards them.

Useful idiots, in a broader sense, refers to Western journalists, travellers and intellectuals who gave their blessing – often with evangelistic fervour – to tyrannies and tyrants, thereby convincing politicians and public that utopias rather than Belsens thrived.

In part one John Sweeney looks at Stalin's Western apologists.

In part two he explores how present day stories of human rights abuses across the world are still rewritten.

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