The CCP’s Useful Idiots

We see plenty of “useful idiots” today. They no longer carry the Bolsheviks’ water, but rather parrot the CCP line as they disparage the West and praise China.

Vladimir Lenin reportedly referred to non-communist sympathizers as “deaf, dumb, and blind” individuals who would aid their own demise by helping the Soviet cause. During the 1920s and 1930s, there were plenty of actual communists—often underground—in the United States, Europe, and Asia doing Stalin’s bidding. But Lenin was referring to those who did Soviet communism’s bidding without realizing it (hence “deaf, dumb, and blind”). And in many ways, they were far more useful to Soviet communism’s goal of spreading the revolution globally than were official party members.

The term eventually evolved into the now-familiar phrase “useful idiots.” Soviet apologist Walter Duranty, for example, was rightly called one for his uncritical regurgitation of Kremlin propaganda in the pages of The New York Times in the 1920s and 30s. But useful idiots extended beyond ideological or self-serving journalists; many were academics and writers, including famed author Doris Lessing and British philosopher Bertrand Russell.

It’s a good term, and we see plenty of “useful idiots” today. They’re not carrying the Bolsheviks’ water, but the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP). They are not spies or paid agents, but rather useful idiots, spouting the CCP line by disparaging the West and praising China.

There are so many today, it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s begin with an easy one: former World Economic Forum (WEF) director Klaus Schwab. During his reign, Schwab went out of his way to castigate Western capitalism, constantly calling for a new model because of its supposed sins, while at the same time praising the CCP. The self-flagellation included criticizing Western capitalism on the grounds that:

We have now a window of opportunity to create this Global Reset which we all need. This Global Reset is necessary because we have seen that our policies, which we pursued before the coronavirus struck us, that those policies do not create the necessary inclusion of society necessary for harmonious societal development.

Was he not aware that the phrase “harmonious societal development” is a CCP talking point used to attack the Western model of progress? Did he not know that China’s Gini coefficient—a measure of income inequality—is higher than that of most European nations, including his home country of Switzerland? Surely, with the WEF’s vast array of research assistants, one of them could have Googled this.

This, from a man who told a Chinese forum that “We are coming out, thanks also to the leadership of China in terms of fighting the pandemic.” Given that China caused the pandemic and its 7.1 million deaths, you can’t make that up. But Klaus served it up to the Chinese with a straight face.

In an interview with Chinese state media last year, he held up China as a “role model” for many countries. He then went on to add that the “Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries.”

If he means a model built on stealing foreign intellectual property, massively subsidizing domestic firms to seize market share from competitors, and closing off domestic markets, then yes, China has one of the most “attractive” models around.

This is all just standard fare for the WEF, which seems incapable of criticizing China or the CCP, but finds it open season on America and Western capitalism. One WEF article castigates America for being “closed”:

The recent U.S. Department of Defense designation of CATL as a ‘Chinese military company’ highlighted the challenges ahead for Chinese companies operating globally. While Chinese officials and business leaders consistently emphasized openness and collaboration, there was clear recognition of the need to navigate an increasingly complex international environment.

Sounding like China Daily, WEF touts that China is “driving global growth,” “reshaping food systems,” and powering a “remarkable green transition.” If they mean deindustrializing the rest of the world and building more coal-fired power plants than any other nation, then we agree.

In another article, the WEF goes on to say that China is even helping the world through its policies on rare earth minerals. Again, I can’t make this stuff up. Yes, that’s true, but only if “helping” means putting the rest of the world’s rare earth miners and processors out of business and using those minerals as a weapon to make countries and companies kowtow to Beijing.

The article concludes with a plea for “a more balanced narrative [which] is the first step towards a coherent, globally coordinated policy response.” That is CCP-speak for “stop criticizing us.”

But Europe is not the only home for the CCP’s useful idiots. The pacifist Quincy Institute blames Western capitalism for U.S.–China competition:

The United States and China are trapped in zero-sum economic competition today because neoliberal globalization consistently failed to create the broad growth that would allow prosperity in all countries.… The U.S. and China are thus locked in a zero-sum struggle that is distracting both sides from the root causes of the conflict and strengthening the forces of authoritarianism and nationalism in both countries.

Ah, if only the United States abandoned “neoliberalism,” the world would live in peace and harmony—just as Coca-Cola once promised us.

Screengrab from the Coca-Cola “Hilltop” advertisement (1971)

But America’s shining example of a useful idiot is Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs sees nothing wrong with publishing in the CCP-run newspaper China Daily about U.S. decline, the failures of U.S. global leadership, and how China should instead become the global leader. He even appears on Chinese TV news shows, urging China and other countries to cooperate in order to resist the United States. His message: Trump is a bad nationalist; Xi is a wonderful globalist.

He flatly argues that the United States should not lead the world and tells the CCP’s Global Times that he “really regrets American foreign policy toward China,” calling it “misguided and a serious mistake.” He also claims that China is the economic model for much of the rest of the world, especially developing nations. (Never mind that Chinese industrialization has actually stagnated industrial growth elsewhere—including in, you guessed it, other developing nations!)

Jeff, perhaps you should move your classroom to Beijing since it is, in your view, the new shining city on a hill.

As Michael Henningon wrote, “Useful idiots acknowledging that they were fools is rare, while flattery from tyrants can be a potent drug. Earning money and prestige from writing books about their experiences can also be part of their Faustian bargains.”

So, it’s likely too much to expect the Schwabs and Sachses of the world to wake the *#$! up. But it’s not too late for the rest of us to recognize their propagandizing for what it really is.