Powers do not always need soldiers with uniforms, rifles, and an overt chain of command to advance their plans. Sometimes an ordinary person, at home, at university, behind an office desk, in a bakery queue, in a shop, in the media, or behind a mobile phone screen, does exactly what ends up benefiting a power or a faction, without knowing which game they have been drawn into.
Such a person may consider themselves a defender of truth, cry out for justice, fight an imagined enemy, and even believe they think independently. Yet in the end, their words, anger, identity, and behavior serve a project whose dimensions they are unaware of. This is where the concept of the “useful idiot” gains importance. It is a derogatory political term describing a person who may unknowingly become a tool serving the goals of others. The issue is not only the individual. It is a structure that can turn ignorance, fear, prejudice, the need to belong, and social anger into political force.
Social psychology shows that people do not always decide on the basis of full information and logical reasoning. Prior beliefs, group belonging, the need for social approval, fear, and anger can influence political judgment. One of the important concepts in this area is “confirmation bias,” meaning the human tendency to seek and accept information consistent with prior beliefs while downplaying or rejecting contradictory information. This concept corresponds to the psychological literature on confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998).
Therefore, the problem is not always a lack of information. Sometimes the problem is a flood of information presented to a person who cannot evaluate it critically. A person may read hundreds of articles, have thousands of followers, and write about politics every day, but if they accept only narratives aligned with their own beliefs, they remain exposed to deception and manipulation.
From this perspective, the useful idiot is less a specific social class than a socio-political position, one that any person, regardless of education and social standing, may occupy under certain circumstances.
The main question is not only who the useful idiot is. The more important question is which mechanisms turn an independent person into a follower, a follower into a propagandist, and a propagandist into a tool of power.
How and When Is the Useful Idiot Cultivated?
“Useful idiot” is a derogatory term in political literature used to refer to a person who, without fully understanding the consequences of their actions, serves a faction, power, or political project. However, not every political opponent, supporter of a faction, or person with a different view should be called a useful idiot. Such usage turns the term from an analytical tool into a means of political insult. Still, to understand this phenomenon, we must move beyond blaming the individual. People are not merely the product of their personal weaknesses. The social and informational environment also plays a role in shaping their behavior.
If critical thinking education is weak in a society, independent media are limited, reliable information is scarce, political polarization rises, and provocative content is seen more than measured content, the ground becomes more favorable for exploiting people’s beliefs and emotions.
So the question is not only why one person was deceived. The larger question is which social and informational structures make people vulnerable to deception.
Here, an important distinction exists: is every supporter a useful idiot? The answer is no. Conscious support differs from unknowingly becoming a tool of a project. If a person consciously supports a political faction after examining information and weighing different views, support alone is not enough to label them a tool.
But if a person repeats narratives without verification, spreads false information, regards opponents as enemies merely because they oppose their favored narrative, and helps advance the projects of others without awareness of the goal or consequences of their behavior, then the term may be used to describe that situation, though not as a definitive verdict on the person’s character or intelligence.
More importantly, a useful idiot is not necessarily an idiot. A university professor, journalist, political activist, or literate social media user may also find themselves in such a position under certain circumstances. Holding a university degree or having wide access to information does not by itself provide immunity against political manipulation.
Media literacy and critical thinking can help people assess the origin of information, the credibility of sources, and the evidence supporting claims. However, these abilities are not a magic formula for immunity from deception, because human judgment is influenced not only by knowledge but also by emotions, social pressure, and group affiliations. Therefore, it is better to see the useful idiot not as a social class but as a socio-political position that any person may occupy under certain circumstances.
At this point, the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German thinker and theologian, becomes significant. In his prison writings, later published in collections such as Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer reflects on the concept of “stupidity.” In his view, it does not simply mean low mental capacity or a lack of intelligence. Stupidity is explained in connection with social conditions, power, and the loss of inner independence (Bonhoeffer, 2010, pp. 43-44). From this perspective, a person can be mentally capable and educated, but when they surrender their capacity for independent judgment to the pressure of the crowd, power, or ideology, they fall into a state of stupidity.
This understanding is especially important for grasping the useful idiot, because the problem is not necessarily mental incapacity but the loss of intellectual independence and the handing over of the responsibility of judgment to others. A person may put slogans in place of thought, let the group’s narrative replace truth and, instead of asking “Is this true?”, only ask “Is this consistent with my group?”
Bonhoeffer also emphasizes the relationship between stupidity and power. When political or social power becomes extremely strong, a person may distance themselves from independent judgment in order to preserve their belonging, security, or status. In such circumstances, repeating a slogan can replace examining reality, and belonging to a collective can replace individual responsibility (ibid., pp. 43-44).
From this perspective, the main danger is not only deliberate lying. Sometimes a person who does not create the truth themselves can, by losing intellectual independence, help reproduce it. They may spread a lie, justify violence, or repeat a false narrative, not because they know it is false, but because the narrative fits their identity and group belonging.
This is where Bonhoeffer’s discussion approaches the concept of the useful idiot: a person who is not necessarily lacking in intelligence but who, under certain circumstances, may surrender their capacity for independent judgment to the collective, ideology, or authority and, as a result, become a tool for advancing a goal of which they are not fully aware (ibid., pp. 43-44).
However, Bonhoeffer’s thought should not be taken to mean that every person who accompanies a political faction is an idiot or a useful idiot. His warning is more general: any person may, under certain circumstances, lose their intellectual independence and moral responsibility. Therefore, the concept of stupidity in Bonhoeffer is less an accusation against others than a warning about human vulnerability itself (ibid., pp. 43-44).
Powers Do Not Rule by Force Alone
To understand this phenomenon, one important theoretical concept is “hegemony” in the thought of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci shows that power is not maintained only through force, law, police, and the army. Rather, the relationship between the state and civil society and the formation of hegemony matter in reproducing political order. In this framework, civil society, cultural institutions, education, the media, and intellectuals can play a role in the formation and reproduction of consent (Gramsci, 1971, especially pp. 238-239 and 257-264).
This view is important for understanding the phenomenon of useful idiots. Power reaches a more sophisticated stage when it no longer needs to coerce people directly. Instead, it can create conditions in which part of the population, with an illusion of intellectual independence, defends its preferred narrative on its own. In such a situation, power does not only command from above. A section of society, knowingly or unknowingly, helps reproduce it.
Alongside Gramsci, the social identity theory of Henri Tajfel and John Turner is also important for understanding this phenomenon. According to this approach, part of a person’s conception of the “self” is formed through their membership in social groups. Their theory was published in the chapter “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict” in the book The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations in 1979 (Tajfel and Turner, 1979, pp. 33-47).
When group identity becomes salient, a person may regard the success of their group as personal success and the failure of the opposing group as a threat to themselves (ibid., pp. 33-47).
If a person is led to believe that membership in an ethnic group, party, religion, nation or political faction must take precedence over other dimensions of their identity, criticism of the leader or the group may be interpreted in their mind as betrayal. At this stage, truth is not the only criterion of judgment. Group loyalty can also overshadow a person’s judgment.
A person may accept a false report because it benefits their group and reject a clear truth because it came from a rival group. In such circumstances, group identity can become a tool for political mobilization and for steering people’s behavior.
On the other hand, the well-known experiments of Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority showed that situation and authority can influence human behavior. In his study published in 1963, the main issue was the obedience of individuals to the commands of an experimenter in circumstances where carrying out the command involved delivering apparent electric shocks to another person (Milgram, 1963, pp. 371-378).
The importance of this discussion for our topic is that a person sometimes transfers responsibility for their decision to an external authority and justifies their behavior with this logic: I was only following orders. In politics, such a situation can have serious moral consequences, because a person may hand responsibility for their behavior over to the leader, the group, or the ideology.
Of course, from the theories of Gramsci, Tajfel, Turner and Milgram, it cannot be concluded that every follower of a political faction or every obedient individual is a useful idiot. These theories alone do not define such a term. Rather, they help us understand mechanisms that may conceal the gap between a person’s belief and the social or political function of their behavior. From this perspective, the issue is not a lack of intelligence. The issue can be an inability to see the consequences of one’s own behavior or the surrender of independent judgment to an external authority.
Useful Idiots: Soldiers of Power in the Age of the Algorithm
In the past, spreading a political narrative often required a newspaper, radio, a speech, or a propaganda apparatus. Today, a mobile phone can deliver the same narrative to a large number of users within seconds. A user reshares a report, posts a video, makes a hashtag widespread, or spreads an angry narrative among others, without knowing its origin, who made it, or what purpose may lie behind it. Here, the useful idiot takes on a new form: users who may neither receive money nor take direct orders but who themselves become distributors of a narrative.
This is the point where the classic concept of the useful idiot meets the age of the algorithm. Power today does not necessarily say, “Spread this message.” Sometimes it is enough to produce content that provokes anger, fear, hatred, or excitement, and then users replicate it themselves.
One user reshares something, a second user endorses it, a third adds anger to it, and a fourth turns it into a political narrative. In the end, thousands of people may repeat a message whose origin and credibility many of them have not examined.
Research by Brady and colleagues on social media has shown that positive social feedback can increase the likelihood of expressing moral outrage again, and that users also adapt, to some extent, to the norms of outrage expression in their social network (Brady et al., 2021).
In this research, the authors examined the relationship between social feedback and the expression of moral outrage in two observational studies and two behavioral experiments, and showed that positive feedback for expressing outrage can increase the likelihood of repeating such expressions (Brady et al., 2021, vol. 7, no. 33).
In such an environment, the user is no longer only an audience member. They can simultaneously be a producer and distributor of content. This feature increases the capacity for social influence and, at the same time, makes individual responsibility heavier.
Social media algorithms also play a role in determining which content is seen more. However, not all networks and algorithms should be regarded as the same, nor should it be claimed that every algorithm necessarily pushes users toward extremism. The extent and type of influence depend on platform design, user behavior, published content, and social conditions.
Research by Huszár and colleagues on Twitter, based on a randomized experiment at a very large scale, showed that personalization algorithms play a role in ranking and displaying political content. Therefore, “Algorithmic Amplification” can be discussed as a mechanism open to study, without attributing all political behaviors of users to the algorithm (Huszár et al., 2022).
From here, we can also arrive at the thought of Hannah Arendt. In her study of totalitarianism, Arendt pays attention to the role of ideology, propaganda, and mass mobilization in transforming the relationship between humans and political reality. She examines these mechanisms in the chapter “The Totalitarian Movement” and the section “Totalitarian Propaganda” (Arendt, 1951, Part Three, Chapter 11, pp. 341-363).
Of course, today’s social networks are not identical to the mass society Arendt studied, and the two should not be treated as synonymous. Nevertheless, there is one point of connection worth examining: power can increase the social mobilization capacity of scattered individuals by gathering them around a narrative, a fear, an enemy, or a shared feeling.
In the digital space, a narrative can be reproduced many times through countless users without any overt command. If in the past a propaganda apparatus needed extensive human resources to spread a message, today a network of users can spread the same message in a chain, even if not all of them are aware of its source or purpose.
In the face of this situation, strengthening media literacy, checking the origin of news, comparing sources, and pausing before resharing can be part of the answer. None of these solutions alone is sufficient, but they can create a gap between receiving a message and becoming a tool for spreading it.
This is where “useful idiots” may turn into unwitting soldiers of power. In the digital age, a useful idiot is not necessarily a figure behind a podium. They may be the very user who, with a single click, delivers a narrative to thousands of people.
The unwitting soldier holds no weapon, does not know the commander, and may even imagine they are acting entirely independently. Yet on the information battlefield, their behavior can help advance a goal of which they are unaware.
References
- Nickerson, Raymond S. “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1998, pp. 175-220. DOI: 10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175.
- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “On Stupidity,” in Letters and Papers from Prison, vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Edited by Christian Gremmels et al.; translated by Isabel Best et al. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.
- Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
- Tajfel, Henri, and Turner, John C. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict,” in William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel, eds., The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Monterey, California: Brooks/Cole, 1979.
- Milgram, Stanley. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 67, no. 4, 1963, pp. 371-378. DOI: 10.1037/h0040525.
- Brady, William J.; McLoughlin, Killian; Doan, Tuan N.; and Crockett, Molly J. “How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks.” Science Advances, vol. 7, no. 33, 2021, eabe5641. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe5641.
- Huszár, Ferenc; Ktena, Sofia Ira; O’Brien, Conor; Belli, Luca; Schlaikjer, Andrew; and Hardt, Moritz. “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), vol. 119, no. 1, 2022, e2025334119. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2025334119.
- Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951; Part Three, Chapter 11, “Totalitarian Propaganda.”
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