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I was surprised this article made no mention of the phrase in connection to modern Russia and in particular Putin, because we often saw it used that way over the past decade or so, describing Trump and many in the GOP. Indeed, given the phrase's height of popularity during the Cold War describing USSR fellow travelers, it's a natural extension from the USSR to Russia. So I found a recent article in The Economist in particular it names Putin as the one who finds "idiots useful" to his aims. A lot more should be said about this then the current one sentence. -- Green C 18:07, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Here we go again. Trump was added and removed and added and removed here. (reminds me Wikihistory - a strongly recommended read. :-) I dont think it is a good idea to throw in political wrangles here. Yes, opponent call Trump a shill of Putin, but done so without solid evidence that Trump is indeed a useful idiot is IMO a violation of WP:BLP. I can bring lots of examples someone called some visible person fascist, dictator, nazi, and whats's not, but we are not going to litter wikipedia with such examples, do we?- Altenmann >talk 18:17, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
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Following the Trump case, can someone enlist Tucker Carlson here you should know why? - Altenmann >talk 22:02, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
What kind of prediction is in mind? Given that Lenin didt use the term "useful idiots" (and Mona Charen does know that), I'd like to see specifics. Extraordinary claim, you know. - Altenmann >talk 04:26, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
I removed another chunk about Lenin's words. Per WP:COATRACK: this article is abouta specific phrase. Lenin wrote and said plenty of disparaging things, but the subject of this article is not Lenin's swear words. - Altenmann >talk 16:33, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
I re-read the text related to Lenin's rope in this book, but I fail to find how the wikipedian concluded that Morton said that it is "not a misquotation". He did write that (a) the phrase even if does not belong to Lenin, it does belong to "Lenin" (i.e., image of Lenin) (b) he does have a full section about what is misquotation, but he seems to draw a disrtinction between concepts of "except" meaning exact quote, and quotation, which he allows a certain degree of paraphrasing. But the latter is a matter of semantic of the term "quotation". Please clarify which exactly statements of the book the Wikipedian summarized, because taken out of context, it is hard for me to imagine that the words someone didnt say in any reasonable "mutation" is not a misquotation. - Altenmann >talk 18:18, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
The Morson argument is applicable to just about any popular misquotation. It's popular because it fits the image of the person to whom it is falsely attributed. Similarly, any pithy statement can be described as a "Chinese proverb", as with Interesting times. Do we really want to give space to this kind of nonsense? JQ ( talk) 07:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC)