the Western world adopted the English term fellow traveller to identify people who sympathised with the Soviets and with Communism.[2] In U.S. politics, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the term fellow traveler was a pejorative term for a person who was philosophically sympathetic to Communism, yet was not a formal, "card-carrying member" of the American Communist Party. In political discourse, the term fellow traveler was applied to intellectuals, academics, and politicians who lent their names and prestige to Communist front organizations.