Useful Idiots

Published: Aug. 4, 2010, 8:05 a.m.

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\\u201cThat\\u2019s what my role was. I was taken around and shown things as a useful idiot.\\u201d \\n\\u2013 Doris Lessing\\nIn this two part series, the BBC takes a look at the intellectuals - or Lenin's \\u2018useful idiots\\u2019 - who have praised tyrants, and rewritten history. How was it that so many supposedly intelligent people were manipulated by dictators over the 20th Century into saying good things about bad regimes?

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