Religious ethno-populism in contemporary Greece: analysing the discourse of the Níki party

This article examines the ideological foundations and discursive strategies of Níki, Greece’s first distinctly faith-based party. Using the Essex School approach to discourse studies, it examines Níki’s social conservatism, foreign policy, migration stance and media reception. The party constructs a type of political identity rooted in Eastern Orthodoxy, cultural essentialism and the defence of a threatened spiritual heritage. Its discourse is ethno-populist but not biologically nationalist: the Greek people are framed culturally, as ‘Romioí’, heirs of a post-Byzantine, transnational religious community, against a state and political establishment cast as a ‘pseudo-Roméïko’. Presenting its project as a moral awakening invested with claims of authenticity, Níki positions itself as guardian of faith, tradition and collective identity.