Beware of the charismatic w*****s!
At the start of my career in publishing, as a campus sales rep touring universities in the north of England in the mid-1990s, I came across this insightful warning scrawled on a toilet door. As an eye-catching piece of real-world advice to undergraduates (and rookie sales reps), it was spot on. And expertly delivered to its intended audience in the pre-internet age.
The 1990s and early noughties seemed to be a time in which apparently charming chancers rose to positions of leadership and prominence around the world, in public life and in society in general. It was an age when PR men became prime ministers.
The mid 2010s started to change all that. The chancers gambled once too often, relying on their supposed charm and media training; on using referenda to try and quell disruptive forces; they increasingly took their constituents for granted; they opened up their economies to global commerce without proper due diligence; drew red lines which weren’t enforced; and they opened the door to the wave of populism now seemingly sweeping the globe.
January 20, 2025 seems a long time ago, never mind Brexit and Trump v1.0 a decade ago. Going much further back, the lessons of the 1930s are long forgotten, as the final members of the WWII generation pass away. Living memory of fascism and protectionism as powerful, destructive political and societal forces has all but disappeared. People remember globalisation as a much more recent force which they believe has taken their jobs and lowered their living standards. The lasting effects of the financial crash of 2008 caused by the implosion of the US sub-prime mortgage market (more chancers, this time charismatic bankers), or of the mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, are conveniently forgotten.
Not everyone has forgotten those lessons from history though. The playbooks have been dusted down and updated. And we now live in a world in which propaganda and disinformation can be pumped into the veins of the populus via smartphones and social media, rather than a steady trickle through newspapers, radio and word of mouth. News and information aren’t really broadcast anymore, despite rolling 24-hour news; they are selectively pulled into the viewer’s orbit, depending on the platforms, sources and perspectives to which they subscribe. In their eyes (and ears), the ‘mainstream media’ can’t be trusted anymore.
But technology isn’t enough for the populists, however powerful the tech oligarchs are becoming and however reliant we all become on our smart devices and apps. Every populist, every dictator, needs to cultivate and duplicate their most potent weapon. The Useful Idiot (or UI for short).
The UI isn’t new of course. History is full of them. But, arguably, they were relatively easy to spot. Lord Haw-Haw anyone? Neville Chamberlain and his piece of paper? But the modern UI is everywhere. The new US administration seems to be full of them.
So how do you build one? The new, apparently indestructible version of the UI is a potent mix of vanity, stupidity and ambition. Dumb people, usually relatively young, with a lack of meaningful life experience and an utter lack of self-awareness, who believe they are the smartest person in the room. And the best looking.
For instance, the new model UI is the best and most obvious candidate for a presidential press secretary in this new populist age. Purpose built for dismissing impertinent questions from the older, uglier members of the media with a verbal or visual “duh??” Why get an experienced public servant or decorated military veteran to serve the nation, when you can recruit shiny, right-wing media personalities to head government departments and read lines off the populist autocue?
But the new, improved UIs aren’t the real threat. They are marketing tools. Maybe it’s the Ultimate Useful Idiot wielding seemingly limitless power, apparently at the behest of other populist leaders. Handing the levers of everyday government to the tech bros. Labelling the democratically elected leader of an invaded country as a “dictator” with barely a murmur of dissent from the more moderate leaders of more moderate nations.
And the stupidity is infectious. Not that long ago, the UK government boasted about “mainlining AI into the veins of the entire nation”. AI as a democratising force, an easily accessible decision-support technology is one thing. AI as decision-maker in our everyday lives is quite another. Is this where the sweeping layoffs across the US federal government are heading? Will other nations, including the UK, follow suit?
In fact, the stupidity and complacency are both contagious and insidious. We can spot the new, improved Useful Idiots, because they are shiny and noisy and patently don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. And we know the Ultimate Useful Idiot is just that, but we feel powerless to do anything. Or we hope the UUI will soon implode and take his army of shiny UIs with him.
And so, we get to the most invasive, the most painful form of UI. The Useful Timid Idiot.
UTIs* are everywhere (and cranberry juice won’t deal with them). It’s you and me. It’s the centrists and centre-left who shrug their shoulders and express outrage to their nearest and dearest when they see the latest nonsense from the populists. It’s the right-wing voters who now have buyer’s remorse but who won’t say or do anything, because they would have to admit their mistake – and their prejudices. It’s the political classes who sit back waiting for the Ultimate Useful Idiot to self-destruct. That’s a dangerous strategy.
The lavatory philosopher of the 1990s carving his wisdom into the door is now out of date. You don’t need charisma to succeed anymore. You just need the tried-and-tested formula of naked ambition, natural stupidity, wilful ignorance and an utter lack of self-awareness. And, ideally, an inherited fortune from real estate or mining. Combine those ingredients, and you are virtually invincible. Unfortunately.
My final thought? I hope I can look back on this post in the next year or two and be proved totally, hilariously, idiotically wrong. I hope so.
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*Sorry, I know it’s a long build-up to a puerile joke, but I couldn’t resist!