AI Says...
Democracy is often wrapped in a moral halo, as if its mere existence guarantees justice, equality, and dignity. But democracy is not morality. It is a political mechanism — nothing more, nothing less. It is a system based on representation and representativity, and like any mechanism, its outcomes depend entirely on who gets represented, how, and at whose expense.
Representation as Inclusion, Exclusion, and Violence
At its core, democracy decides who counts as part of "the people." But history shows that those who fall outside representation — or who are poorly represented — become fair game. They are excluded, silenced, and even eliminated, often under the justification that their exclusion is itself legitimate.
In the United States, the world’s self-proclaimed beacon of democracy, the mechanism of representation produced slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow. Enslaved Africans and their descendants were explicitly excluded from political representation, while white supremacy was rationalized within democratic institutions.
In Hitler’s Germany, democracy was weaponized by majoritarian representation, producing genocides, death camps, and the mechanized elimination of those deemed “non-representative” of the national community.
In Israel today, a democracy for some and not for others, Palestinians — especially in Gaza — remain outside the bounds of equal representation. Their dispossession and deaths are often justified as “defensive” or “moral” precisely because they are cast as unworthy of representation in the state’s political framework.
In all these cases, if you are not representative, you are expendable.
When the "Unrepresented" Become the Undeserving
Representation is not only about inclusion in political institutions but also about recognition in the global order. Countries or groups that are poorly represented in global democracies are quickly categorized, in the words of Donald Trump, as “shithole countries.” This label is not just an insult; it is a worldview. It implies that their people do not deserve their own land, resources, or sovereignty. Taking their oil, bombing their cities, or dismantling their societies becomes not only possible but "moral."
The Arab world provides a textbook example.
The Arab World: Manufactured Derepresentation
The Arab world, rich in culture, history, and resources, has long been stripped of effective political representation. Instead, it has been saddled with poster-child dictatorships — leaders tolerated, encouraged, or even installed by Western democracies:
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya: eccentric, often caricatured in his extravagant costumes, with an image of a bizarre and menacing ruler, he projected a grotesque aesthetic rather than credible leadership.
Yasser Arafat as a “representative” who never truly represented: his iconic keffiyeh and weary appearance became his uniform; a theatrical figure, yet always portrayed as ambiguous, oscillating between “terrorist” and failed statesman.
Hosni Mubarak in Egypt: stiff posture, dull communication, always depicted as the archetype of the aging and corrupt despot, incapable of embodying a modern vision.
Hafez al-Assad, then Bashar al-Assad in Syria: the father, austere and icy, with a hard gaze that inspired fear but not admiration; the son, with an awkward appearance and clumsy communication, reinforced the image of a continuity without charisma, perceived as illegitimate.
Saddam Hussein in Iraq: thick mustache, deliberately brutal military bearing, bombastic communication; consistently portrayed as a caricature of a military autocrat, both an aesthetic and political repellent.
These figures were never about genuine representation of their people; they were about stabilizing a convenient image of the Arab world that served external interests. Their corruption, brutality, and lack of legitimacy only deepened the global narrative that Arabs were “unfit” for democracy and thus undeserving of their lands and resources.
Meanwhile, Israel — itself a democracy, but one deeply exclusionary — was elevated as the legitimate representative of “Western values” in the Middle East. By ensuring that no appealing Arab leader could emerge with broad legitimacy and representativity, the continual derepresentation of Arabs was maintained. And in that vacuum, the dispossession of Palestinians became easier to frame as both political necessity and moral imperative.
Democracy Without Morality
The danger, then, lies in confusing democracy with morality. Democracy is a tool, not an ethic. It can be used to include or exclude, to liberate or enslave, to protect or destroy. Without a moral foundation — one that recognizes the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings regardless of their political “representativity” — democracy is simply the tyranny of the represented over the unrepresented.
When representation itself becomes the only measure of legitimacy, entire peoples — whether African Americans in slavery, Jews in Nazi Germany, Palestinians under occupation, or citizens of Arab states under bombs — are rendered undeserving of life and land. That is the dark truth of democracy when mistaken for morality.
Why Democracy Still Matters
Yet despite its flaws, democracy remains the best political system humanity has devised so far. Unlike dictatorships, which concentrate power in the hands of one ruler or clique, democracy at least provides mechanisms for accountability, contestation, and renewal. Dictatorships silence dissent permanently; democracies can, however imperfectly, allow space for dissent to grow and eventually reshape representation. This makes democracy not inherently moral, but potentially self-correcting in ways dictatorships never are. The task, therefore, is not to discard democracy, but to insist on embedding it in genuine moral commitments — so that representation does not become exclusion, and so that “the people” does not mean some lives matter while others do not.