This article argues that the long-standing political term ‘useful idiot’ needs updating to ‘useful infidel’ to reflect cultural changes in the UK and the Western world. Traditionally, it has been used polemically to describe people, mainly in liberal, progressive democracies, who are unwitting pawns manipulated by totalitarians, tyrants, or other oppressive ideologies with values foreign to their own. Through their support, they give moral legitimacy to ideological systems wh