Useful idiots: Why college activists are acting as unpaid interns for a dead Soviet empire

Read the original at Washington Examiner ↗
Cite

Manuchehri, H., & Block, W. E. (2026, August 31). Useful idiots: Why college activists are acting as unpaid interns for a dead Soviet empire. Washington Examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op-eds/4695633/soviet-kgb-disinformation-campus-anti-zionism/

Dated when The Aporia collected the article, usually within hours of publication. Check the original for its exact date and byline.

Washington Examiner · collected 2026-08-31 · by Hushang Manuchehri, Walter E. Block

Quick Summary

The article argues that modern college activism on issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is influenced by Cold War-era Soviet propaganda. The author claims that the Soviet Union's disinformation operations in the 1960s and 1970s repackaged a pan-Arab and Islamic war of annihilation against Israel into a global anti-colonial struggle, which has been adopted by Western universities today. According to declassified documents from the Mitrokhin archive, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was closely tied to Soviet intelligence and received vast amounts of funding and arms. The author asserts that this historical context is being ignored in modern discussions of the conflict.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-08-31, using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the same event (that is the story summary below).

AI analysis runs on qwen2.5:14b, locally

Story summary

College activists are unwittingly promoting a Soviet-era propaganda campaign by using terms like "settler colonialism" and "apartheid" to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These phrases were originally coined in Moscow during the Cold War, where they were used as part of a psychological warfare effort to delegitimize Israel. The students and professors who use these slogans are unknowingly echoing Soviet-era propaganda. The authors argue that this is an example of "useful idiots" - people who, without realizing it, are serving the interests of a foreign power (in this case, the former Soviet Union).

Written for “Soviet Influence on US Campus” on 2026-10-16, grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.

Story

📰 Soviet Influence on US Campus
Politics · 1 article(s) covering the same event.

Compared with similar articles

This article reads leans strongly right and hedges 3% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.
The Guardian
⚖️ Leans left further left than this 🔴 3% hedged 1 of 39 📰 publisher trust 68
“Article A discusses college activists and Soviet influence in general, while Article B reports on a specific incident of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank involving a Palestinian family”
How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
38
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
3%
1 of 38 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
Leans strongly right
of the writing, not the subject · beta estimate
Publisher signals
68/100
Washington Examiner's corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.
Outlets on this story
1
Politics
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Analyzed 2026-08-31 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

Washington Examiner · 2882 article(s) · 5 correction(s) detected
Running correction rate · 5 correction(s)

Who wrote this

Hushang Manuchehri
2 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 Zionism started from the simple premise that the Jewish people could no longer trust their survival to foreign rulers whose tolerance was always temporary.
🔮 If you walk into the quad of any elite Western university today, you will be deafened by a very specific vocabulary.
Also by Hushang Manuchehri
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
Walter E. Block
4 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 It was won by the former, and some people maintain “to the victor belong the spoils,” or “might makes right.”
🔮 Which political movement would most likely form its government?
🔮 Zionism started from the simple premise that the Jewish people could no longer trust their survival to foreign rulers whose tolerance was always temporary.
🔮 If you walk into the quad of any elite Western university today, you will be deafened by a very specific vocabulary.
Also by Walter E. Block
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.

Topics

Arab Moscow Soviet Western pan-Arab

Subjects

Soviet NORP · 5× Arab NORP · 3× Israeli NORP · 3× PLO ORG · 3× pan-Arab NORP · 3× Jewish NORP · 2× KGB ORG · 2× Marxist NORP · 2× Moscow GPE · 2× Western NORP · 2×

Narrative

In the 1970s, the Israeli military administration tolerated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Mujama al Islamiya precisely because it operated as a non-violent religious and social charity (Da’wa) — a stark, preferable contrast to the lethal, Soviet-backed PLO terror syndicate that was actively hijacking airliners, bombing buses, and slaughtering Israeli athletes at Munich.
framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-08-31
🔮 If you walk into the quad of any elite Western university today, you will be deafened by a very specific vocabulary.

Claims (38 extracted, 1 hedged)

If you walk into the quad of any elite Western university today, you will be deafened by a very specific vocabulary. asserted
you → walk → vocabulary
You will hear endless lectures on “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” “apartheid,” “from the river to the sea,” “imperialist implants,” and “indigenous resistance.” asserted
You → hear → sea
The students and tenured professors chanting these slogans are convinced they have uncovered a profound moral truth, imagining themselves as the vanguard of global justice. asserted
they → chant → justice
In reality, they are reciting the half-century-old psychological warfare drafted in Moscow. asserted
they → recite → Moscow
Prior to the crushing defeat of Soviet-armed Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War, regional Arab capitals openly framed the conflict not as a human rights campaign, but as a pan-Arab and Islamic war of annihilation. asserted
capitals → crush → annihilation
How many Arab countries occupy that real estate? asserted
countries → occupy → estate
They are as follows: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, “Palestine,” Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. asserted
They → follow → ?
You might think that there would be room in the groves of academe for one tiny Jewish one in the neighborhood, but, according to what passes for modern intelligentsia, you would be wrong. uncertain
you → think → intelligentsia
That brutal honesty alienated Western liberal democracies. asserted
honesty → alienate → democracies
Following the 1967 defeat, Yuri Andropov and the Soviet intelligence apparatus executed a massive strategic pivot. asserted
Andropov → follow → pivot
Through sweeping disinformation operations, the KGB and Eastern Bloc intelligence systematically sanitized the conflict’s rhetoric. asserted
KGB → sanitize → rhetoric
They scrubbed the overt pan-Arab and religious eliminationism, cloaking it instead in fashionable Marxist liberation theory. asserted
They → scrub → theory
An ethno-religious war was repackaged as a noble, global anti-colonial struggle tailored for Western consumption. asserted
war → repackage → consumption
The operational architecture of the secular Palestinian movement was inextricably tied to Moscow. asserted
architecture → tie → Moscow
Declassified documents from the Mitrokhin archive reveal that Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat was cultivated by Soviet intelligence under the codename AREF, while figures like Mahmoud Abbas were registered intelligence operatives under the codename KROTOV. asserted
figures → reveal → codename
Meanwhile, the PLO received vast Soviet arms shipments, funding, and KGB operational training. asserted
PLO → receive → shipments
The cynical nature of this rhetoric was openly acknowledged at the time: in 1977, PLO Executive Committee member and pro-Syrian Ba’athist leader Zuheir Mohsen admitted in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw that a distinct Palestinian identity was promoted primarily for tactical reasons to serve pan-Arab aims and dismantle Zionism. asserted
identity → acknowledge → Zionism
Today, this historical amnesia has metastasized into grotesque political delusions. asserted
amnesia → metastasize → delusions
An unholy alliance — stretching from European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe — now confidently peddles the conspiratorial talking point that Israel “engineered and financed Hamas” as a counterweight to the PLO and Fatah, whom they often frame as “legitimate resistance. asserted
they → stretch → resistance
In the 1970s, the Israeli military administration tolerated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Mujama al Islamiya precisely because it operated as a non-violent religious and social charity (Da’wa) — a stark, preferable contrast to the lethal, Soviet-backed PLO terror syndicate that was actively hijacking airliners, bombing buses, and slaughtering Israeli athletes at Munich. asserted
that → tolerate → Munich
When Yassin’s movement abandoned social welfare and reconstituted itself as the genocidal terrorist group Hamas in 1987, Israel outlawed the organization, fought it, and ultimately eliminated its leadership. asserted
Israel → abandon → leadership
Decades later, when Israel permitted Qatari civilian funds to enter Gaza, it did so to prevent humanitarian collapse and stabilize the area. asserted
it → permit → area
But unsurprisingly, Hamas redirected those resources into a 500-kilometer subterranean fortress and rocket arsenals. asserted
Hamas → redirect → fortress
It perched these military assets in the neighborhoods of schools, hospitals, residential areas, the better to avail itself of Gazan shields. asserted
It → perch → shields
This is a technique of “warfare” that even the Nazis never sunk to employ. asserted
Nazis → sink → that
Yet modern Western activists remain blissfully oblivious to all of it. asserted
activists → remain → it
Draped in keffiyehs and chanting Soviet-era semantic tropes, they march through Western capitals convinced they are resisting Western imperialism. asserted
they → drape → imperialism
In doing so, they look at a liberal democracy fighting for survival against fundamentalist death cults and see only a cartoonish oppressor. asserted
they → do → oppressor
This is the ultimate triumph of Cold War disinformation: Western intellectuals, diplomats, and student radicals acting as the unpaid interns of a dead Soviet empire, mistaking cynical geopolitical information warfare for an authentic moral crusade. asserted
This → act → crusade
How is it that academia has been overtaken, overrun by leftist ideology? asserted
academia → overtake → ideology
One theory that makes sense in terms of explanatory power has been put forth by Milton Friedman. asserted
that → make → Friedman
He opined that this was due to the Vietnam War draft. asserted
this → opine → draft
Rightists and conservatives fought against communism. asserted
Rightists → fight → communism
For leftists, liberals, socialists, and the “progressives” of the day, that was just about the last thing they would wish to do. asserted
they → wish → day
One way was to emigrate to Canada. asserted
way → emigrate → Canada
Another, undertaken in droves, was to take advantage of the academic loophole. asserted
Another → undertake → loophole
Stay in school for as long as you can. asserted
you → stay → school
They have truly made a “march through the institution” of higher learning. asserted
They → make → learning
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