Killer Chic: Hollywood’s Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara
09 Sep 2018 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, movies Tags: regressive left, useful idiots
Speaking of useful idiots
19 Jul 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, war and peace Tags: Hamas, regressive left, useful idiots, war against terror
Would @AmnestyNZ praise Mussolini for making the trains run on time?
15 Apr 2018 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, International law, Marxist economics, Public Choice Tags: Cuba, regressive left, useful idiots
.@JeremyCorbyn celebrated 35th anniversary of a fascist regime
05 Jan 2018 2 Comments
in liberalism Tags: British politics, Iran, useful idiots
.@JeremyCorbyn was on Iranian state TV’s payroll
02 Jan 2018 1 Comment
in Public Choice Tags: useful idiots
@NZGreens very sane compared to @DrJillStein @GreenPartyUS
08 Aug 2016 1 Comment
in defence economics, laws of war, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: 2016 presidential elections, Left-wing hypocrisy, Middle-East politics, peace movements, Syrian Civil War, useful idiots
Jill Stein managed to denounce American imperialism without mentioning the invasion of the Crimea and Russian intervention in the Syrian Civil War to prop up the old regime.
Stein is what Orwell called a renegade liberal. Progressives hunt the world for dictators to worship. As George Orwell said in 1941
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.
Useful idiots for Palestine–Pat Condell
09 Dec 2014 2 Comments
in politics, war and peace Tags: Israel, Palestine, Pat Condell, useful idiots, Zionism
Ideas: When Mao died, The Economist wrote
06 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, growth disasters, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: China, communism, How China Became Capitalist, mao, useful idiots
In the final reckoning, Mao must be accepted as one of history’s great achievers: for devising a peasant-centered revolutionary strategy which enabled China’s Communist Party to seize power, against Marx’s prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society, wracked by war and bled by corruption, into a unified, egalitarian state where nobody starves; and for reviving national pride and confidence so that China could, in Mao’s words, ‘stand up’ among the great powers.
via Ideas and http://www.scottmanning.com/content/visualizing-the-great-leap-forward/
What is a useful idiot?
06 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, liberalism, political change, politics, war and peace Tags: bootleggers and baptists, environmentalists, Leftover Left, New Left, Old Left, political manipulation, propaganda, useful idiots
Useful idiot is a term for people perceived as propagandists, initially Lenin, for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of, and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause.
Many confused and misguided sympathisers will unwittingly support a malignant cause which they naïvely believe to be a force for good.
BBC World Service – Documentaries – Useful Idiots
12 Apr 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics Tags: useful idiots
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 at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/docarchive_20100804-0905a.mp3
In part two he explores how present day stories of human rights abuses across the world are still rewritten at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/docarchive_20100811-1059a.mp3
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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