The enemy within: Greece is fighting a war with no enemy
How exclusionary politics invents threats and weakens democratic institutions from within.
The argument,
before the detail.
Editorial statusPolitical analysis by Roma for Democracy
Central claim
Democratic systems weaken when political actors invent an internal enemy to explain failures they have not solved.
Why it matters
Roma become useful targets precisely because political suppression has kept their political voice and institutional protection weak.
What follows
The democratic response is not better messaging alone, but stronger participation, accountability and equal protection.
How an enemy is manufactured
An internal enemy is politically convenient because it turns governing failure into a story about threat. Complexity disappears, responsibility moves downward and citizens are asked to fear people with less institutional power than those making the accusation.
Roma have repeatedly been placed inside this logic. Their visibility is exaggerated when blame is needed and erased when representation, investment or public authority is distributed.
What political absence permits
Scapegoating works best where the targeted constituency lacks durable channels to answer it. Sporadic outrage cannot substitute for organised voters, trusted public voices and institutions capable of documenting how political suppression operates.
The information gap is not neutral. When public institutions do not communicate, rumours and political manipulation occupy the space they leave behind.
The democratic cost
A democracy that accepts collective suspicion against one constituency changes the standard for everyone. Exceptional treatment becomes precedent, and institutions learn that some citizens can be discussed without being represented.
The issue is therefore larger than prejudice. It is whether democratic institutions reward political strategies that gain attention by weakening equal citizenship.
What a serious response requires
The answer is not to replace one rhetorical campaign with another. It is to make Roma constituencies harder to ignore: organised between elections, protected during them and present in the institutions that determine what follows.
A democratic system becomes more resilient when inventing an enemy carries an institutional and electoral cost.