Post-Truth Populism

This open access book analyses the convergence between 'post-truth' political culture and the politics of populism. The premise is that there is an intrinsic link between post-truth discourse (referring to mis/disinformation, 'alternative facts', 'fake news', conspiracy theories and the general distrust of expert knowledge and official sources of information) and the central narrative of populism, which opposes the 'common sense' wisdom of ordinary honest people to the 'expert knowledge' of duplicitous technocratic elites. The book investigates the current post-truth phenomenon as a distinct feature of contemporary political life, and the specific ways in which it intersects with the resurgence of populism. While there has been a considerable literature on both post-truth and populism, they are largely treated as separate phenomena, and very little research has been conducted on their actual connection. The original contribution of this book to an emerging field of study is to develop a strong, coherent and empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding the specific paradigm of post-truth populism. The authors propose this paradigm as a way of interpreting different contemporary political phenomena, such as conspiracy theories, political destabilisation, and debates around immigration, the role of journalists and the media, climate change, gender and sexuality, Islam, and minority rights, as well as a way of understanding the threats and challenges this poses to the liberal democratic model and way of life.

Develops a strong, coherent and empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding post-truth populism Interprets different contemporary political phenomena, such as conspiracy theories and political destabilisation Highlights the threats and challenges that post-truth populism poses to the liberal democratic model and way of life Is an open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Autorentext

Saul Newman is Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths. His research specialisms are in the politics of right-wing populism, post-truth, and political theology. He is the author of ten monographs, including most recently, Order, Crisis, Redemption: Political Theology after Schmitt (SUNY 2023). He is currently involved in an EU Horizon project on 'Reclaiming Liberal Democracy in the Postfactual Age'.

Maximilian Conrad is Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland. He is a specialist on the politics of post-truth, European integration, and the politics of the EU. He has published extensively on these and related topics, and is leading the Horizon Europe project on 'Reclaiming Liberal Democracy in the Postfactual Age'.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Post-truth populism: a new political paradigm?.- Part I: Debating PTP.- 2. Post-truth politics and populism studies: missing forms of trust and facts.- 3. Nostalgic post-truth: towards an anti-humanist theory of communication.- 4. (Anti-)populism and post-truth.- Part 2: Political communications and the media.- 5. The epistemic dimension of populist communication: can exposure to populist communication spark factual relativism.- 6. Refusing to be Silenced: Critical Journalism, Populism and the Post-Truth Condition.- Part III: Counterknowledge and conspiracy theories.- 7. 'The first in the service of truth': construction of counterknowledge claims and the case of Jana's SDS' media outlets.- 8. A three-step rhetorical model of conspiratorial populism.- Part 4: PTP and democracy.- 9. Populisms in democracies under post-truth pressure: giving new life to public debate or blurring it?.- 10. New turn populism: ideological or epistemic? An inquiry into explanatory models of populism and the meaning of 'post-truth.- 12. Populist democracy and the post-truth condition.- 13. Conclusion.