I suspect your reason for calling them idiots is mostly disagreeing with your impression of things, but maybe there's some specific, quantifiable idiocy involved.
Haha you've hit the nail on the head. This is actually a widespread form of argumentation and you can see it very easily within a few demographics. Now this is not to slander anyone in this thread or compare them to truthers as an argumentative tactic, but it is interesting to see this commonly on their side of the fence too.
In my innumerable debates with truthers after a long back and forth and explaining that, no, I really am NOT working for the NWO, they'll fall back - very commonly - to suggesting that even if I am not a
conscious agent of the NWO, the arguments I employed are signs that I am
in effect, supporting the NWO and aiding the cause of evil unwittingly. I am so duped by their mischievous arguments, by ideology, by my "Rothschild approved" education, that I am really just as bad as a conscious agent of the NWO because my arguments are so, ummm... useful to them..
Now see this is the basic definition of useful idiot: someone who is
unknowingly aiding and abetting the enemy. This goes back to the red scare days and has the most currency on the anti-communist right and their descendants though it has entered the vernacular such that it can be employed by most anybody.
I have never found cause to think the term or use it in actual discussion. Even if I did think that was true about someone, saying it to an
actual "useful idiot" would achieve nothing: the basic definition of a useful idiot is that they are so hopelessly duped by propaganda and ideology that they cannot truly appreciate reality (the reality that they are helping Evil People). So, how could one actually argue with a real "useful idiot"?
Therefore, you'll see it more regularly in a back-slapping fashion directed to people in the audience on the same team, who will understand the code words and see it as a bit of an inside joke for their side. Its nice cause its a good barbed weapon: it castigates the target as an idiot who doesn't even know he's helping Evil, and it helps bring the team together at the same time.
Furthermore, I think if we were to comb the board here we'd find it employed most frequently by the most strident and obviously emotional posters. Those that are most vehemently against something - and those who are eager to demonstrate just
how much they are against something will use it most often. It is for this reason that I believe the term is nearly the exclusive property of the Manicheans - those whose outlook is a binary view of Good and Evil. It is these individuals who get most upset arguing about politics and who live with closed-circle worldviews that operate as giant sorting machines, putting everything into two buckets: those who are on my side, and those who are against me.
Confronted with difficult arguments, or simply ones identified as belonging to the other team, the lazy people falling into some of the dispositions I've mentioned above will drop the "useful idiot" meme.
It's a great way to stop discussion. Now identified as a useful idiot, why would they listen to anything I have to say? My view is so hopelessly confused. For me its a signifier that someone is pretty emotionally committed to their view, and to tread carefully, probably better just to seek discussion with others who might have the patience to hear me out without satisfying a compulsive need to identify me as "enemy" or "friend".
What I find kind of interesting about Virus though, is he is very eager to accuse someone of
active support of his enemies (whether that be Gaddafi here, or Hizbullah, Saddam elsewhere). Don't forget Virus there's more tools in your toolbox! You can always accuse somebody of unknowingly supporting the cause of Evil! They don't HAVE to be active supporters!
After all you started the OP with "useful idiots" to begin with I'd like to see more diversity!
