fellow travelers
Companions on journeys
Fellow travelers are people journeying together or, more often, those who share a cause or ideology without formal membership.
The term gained political weight during the Cold War for communist sympathizers who weren't party members: McCarthy accused several diplomats of being fellow travelers.
Now it describes anyone aligned with a movement while maintaining some distance from it.
- sympathizersThose favoring a cause
- associatesConnected persons or links
- accomplicesPartners in crime
- useful idiotsUnwitting agents for others' agendas
- cohortsGroups of accomplices
partners · wayfarers · colleagues · companions · comrades · allies · compatriots · collaborators · affiliates · dupes · wanderers · adventurers · adherents · pilgrims · kindred spirits · pinkos · explorers · voyagers
- supportersfan, patron, supporters, backers, backer
- Red ScareHUAC, McCarthyism, blacklist, loyalty oaths, Joe McCarthy
- partnerspartners, partner, business partners, business partner, associates
- Soviet Propagandaagitprop, Pravda, disinformation, state media, propaganda films
fellow travelerstrue believers
Unwavering adherents to doctrine
party members · ideologues · hardliners · cadres · apparatchiks
fellow travelersanti-communists
Opponents of Marxist ideology
red-baiters · reactionaries · McCarthyites · counter-revolutionaries · right-wingers
fellow travelersopponents
Those who compete against
adversaries · enemies · antagonists · detractors · defectors
traveler, fellow, traveling, traveled, fellowship, fellows, travelling, travelled, traveller