fellow traveller

• fellow-traveller, fellow traveler, fellow-traveler

fellow traveller (plural fellow travellers)

1. One who travels together with another.
   • 1964 July, Mary Allen, “A Woman's View of the New Coaches”, in Modern Railways, page 9:

     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.

2. (US) One who sympathizes with the aims or beliefs of an organization without belonging to it; especially a Communist sympathizer. [mid-20th c.]

   Near-synonym: camp follower

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

     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.

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

     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".

• fellow-travel

• fellow passenger