fellow traveller

plural fellow travellers · alternative fellow-traveller · alternative fellow traveler · alternative fellow-traveler

1. One who travels together with another.

   The arrangement of some seats facing and some one behind the other, bus fashion, seems a sensible compromise; I am one of those who do not enjoy staring at my fellow travellers for perhaps hours on end.

   1964 July, Mary Allen, “A Woman's View of the New Coaches”, in Modern Railways, page 9

2. One who sympathizes with the aims or beliefs of an organization without belonging to it; especially a Communist sympathizer.First known use mid-20th c.

   Near-synonym: camp follower

   2 more examples

   Earlier in the year, Ohio Senator Robert Taft charged that Democratic congressional proposals "bordered on communism," while Joe Martin called for Republican victories in order to oust the Communists and fellow travelers from the federal government.

   1978, Richard Nixon, RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset & Dunlap, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 42

   The summary case files used by the Internal Security Council, now declassified and available at the British National Archives, reveal how flimsy many of the cases against the detainees were: classifications could be as vague as "suspected communist", "communist sympathiser", "suspected communist sympathiser" and even "fellow traveller".

   2023 February 2, “Sixty years since Operation Coldstore”, in We the Citizens

   Synonyms: camp follower