University of Kwazulu-Natal

The Epistemic Crisis And The Rise Of The Far Right Toward A

Bonisiwe Shabane
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the epistemic crisis and the rise of the far right toward a

Die epistemische Krise und der Aufstieg des Rechtsextremismus: Zur Konzeptualisierung von Gegenwissensordnungen in der digitalen Wissensgesellschaft You have full access to this open access article Years of global crises since the turn of the millennium and recently the coronavirus pandemic have made the opening fault lines of rationality in digital knowledge society more visible. This paper draws from work on the digital transformation of knowledge societies. It considers how the conditions of this transformation have not only profoundly influenced the established knowledge order but also facilitated the emergence of counter-knowledge orders. Counter-knowledge orders dissolve knowledge contexts, reorganize hierarchies and claim roles in digitalized knowledge societies to create and maintain subversive alternatives freed of the established order’s rules and impositions.

To exemplify the analytical power of counter-knowledge orders as a concept, this paper considers the far right as a counter-knowledge order. This approach is shown to help reconcile the apparent contradictions and inadequacies that are criticized in the dominant counterpublic framework for studying the far right from a knowledge centered perspective. For the far right, the allure of counter-knowledge orders lies in the simultaneous assumption of different social power positions that the established order grants and withholds. The paper concludes that the far-right struggle for hegemony can ultimately be understood as an attempt to (re-) gain control over the entire knowledge process. The anti-democratic, illiberal and exclusionary presuppositions of far-right ideology at the basis of all dimensions of the far-right counter-knowledge order are well-documented in the literature. From a social-epistemologist perspective, however, it is important to stress that counter-knowledge orders are not a‑priori assuming any illiberal ideology per se and may, in different contexts, even be seen as a necessity for...

The simultaneous danger and necessity of counter-knowledge orders in liberal democracy merit further exploration in the future. Moreover, it is important to scrutinize the societal conditions that uniquely enable the far-right counter-knowledge order to capitalize on these dynamics. Die globalen Krisen seit der Jahrtausendwende, zuletzt die Coronapandemie und Kriege in Nahost sowie der Ukraine, haben Bruchlinien digitaler Wissensgesellschaften deutlicher sichtbar gemacht, die nicht nur entlang von Überzeugungen zum jeweiligen Gegenstand verlaufen, sondern... Dieser Text befasst sich damit, wie die digitale Transformation der Wissensgesellschaft und deren Bedingungen die Entstehung von Gegenwissensordnungen begünstigen. Gegenwissensordnungen nutzen die Bedingungen einer digitalisierten Wissensgesellschaft zur Auflösung von Wissenskontexten, zur Reorganisation von Hierarchien und zur Beanspruchung von Rollen innerhalb dieser Kontexte. Gegenwissensordnungen konstruieren so eine subversive Alternative, die nicht an die Regeln und Zumutungen der etablierten Ordnung gebunden ist.

Zur Veranschaulichung des Konzepts der Gegenwissensordnungen, wird hier die extreme Rechte (far right) betrachtet und gezeigt, wie dieser Ansatz unter anderem hilft, scheinbare Widersprüche und Unzulänglichkeiten in der Analyse der Far Right in der... Die Anziehungskraft einer Gegenwissensordnung für die extreme Rechte liegt in der Gleichzeitigkeit der Inanspruchnahme verschiedener Positionen sozialer Macht, die von der herrschenden Ordnung zugestanden und vorenthalten werden, d. h. in der Verknüpfung von Widerstand und Defensivität. Abschließend wird betont, wie wichtig es ist, die extreme Rechte als eine Gegenwissensordnung zu untersuchen, um ihre potenziellen Auswirkungen auf die liberale Demokratie zu verstehen. Die antidemokratischen, illiberalen und ausgrenzenden Voraussetzungen der rechtsextremen Ideologie, die allen Dimensionen der rechtsextremen Gegenwissensordnung zugrunde liegen, sind in der Literatur gut dokumentiert.

Aus einer sozialepistemologischen Perspektive ist es jedoch wichtig zu betonen, dass Gegenwissensordnungen nicht von vornherein eine illiberale Ideologie voraussetzen und in verschiedenen Kontexten sogar als Notwendigkeit für eine gerechtere Wissensordnung angesehen werden können. Die gleichzeitige Gefahr und Notwendigkeit von Gegenwissensordnungen in der liberalen Demokratie verdienen es, in Zukunft weiter erforscht zu werden. Darüber hinaus ist es wichtig, die gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen zu untersuchen, die es der rechtsextremen Gegenwissensordnung ermöglichen, aus dieser Dynamik Kapital zu schlagen. Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.

2019, Political Ecologies of the Far Right, Lund, Sweden Since the Enlightenment, liberalism has promulgated the myths of "cognitive sovereignty" and the "marketplace of ideas" that obscure the institutionally-and technologically-mediated character of knowledge construction and critical debate. Far-right ideological certainties about the climate change "hoax," white-boy victimization, and various misrecognized social "threats" thrive in an epistemic environment of institutional distrust, and misplaced faith in self-constituted individuals with cognitive sovereignty. The IPCC and the climate change "denial machine" are both institutional/technological complexes that produce "knowledge," the reliability of which is an artefact of institutional design. We are in the midst of a neoliberal re-engineering of knowledge-producing institutions and technologies. That project involves a shift in the institutional contexts of knowledge production (universities and research institutes, publishing, physical and digital "public" space) from the sphere of public interest to the private sphere of misrecognized...

The "marketplace of ideas" is thus "freed" for ideas that have market value and can pay their way. The project also involves a parallel shift in knowledge-producing actors: an atomization of citizens and an empowerment of semi-and fully-automated non-citizens (corporations, social-bot armies and their fleshy astroturf counterparts). I examine recent technological developments in automation designed to create epistemic confusion and institutional distrust: deep-fake images, malicious social-bot armies (simple, but effective in degrading civil debate), sophisticated AI debaters that pass the Turing... The implications of these developments for democracy, truth and our collective ability to address the earth-systems crises of the 21 st century are dire. My aim in this paper is to diagnose the epistemic crisis within a theoretical framework that I think is suited to understanding both its origin and potential solutions. I argue for a rebalancing of the public-private mix that takes inspiration from historic models: publicly-funded universities, independent public broadcasters, and publicly-owned physical public spaces in which citizen rights are protected from state control.

I argue, in addition, for new institutional means to restrict the action of automated non-citizens. Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age, 2023 🆕 I'm beyond happy to share my new open access article in the Publizistik special issue: "From emancipation to disinformation? Public dissent and its evaluation in change" 📰 In this paper, I introduce the concept of counter-knowledge orders (CKOs). The article explores how the digital transformation of knowledge societies has not only reshaped the established knowledge order but also enabled the rise of subversive alternative knowledge orders that challenge its dominance.

«CKOs dissolve knowledge contexts, reorganize hierarchies, and claim roles to create subversive alternatives freed from the dominant order’s rules.» While drawing on the far right as an illustrative case, I argue that: «CKOs are... Assuming they are always detrimental to liberal democratic society would perpetuate the ideological delusion that the established knowledge order is always right.» The piece thus reflects on how these dynamics pose both a ⚠️... And a tension that «will require what Curd Knüpfer et al. (2024) call 'democratic clarity', that is a clear stance for democratic principles and analytical awareness to the far right’s efforts to undo these principles» — but that also demands critical introspection to scrutinize the... 📖 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eJsuANSs Thanks to the editors, Niklas Venema, Christian Schwarzenegger and Erik Koenen, as well as Christof Barth for the excellent cooperation on this soecial issue! Abstract: This article argues that a contributing factor to the rise of the far right is a lack of knowledge and understanding of neoliberalism among the general population, specifically how neoliberalism is a leading...

Drawing on the work of Fricker (2007), Medina (2012; 2013) and Spiegel (2022), I suggest that the absence of a sustained public discourse addressing the root causes of social and economic inequality can be... In turn, they are more susceptible to far right rhetoric and disinformation that seems to offer them a narrative that explains their struggles. In the final section of the article, I look at one way that development education (DE) can help to address this aspect of the problem. I argue that DE needs to return to its radical roots, and refocus on its commitment to explore ‘the root causes of local and global injustices and inequalities in our interdependent world’ (IDEA, 2020:... Additionally, DE ought to go further still and empower people to see that neoliberalism is a choice, and not an unwavering natural condition. DE must foster pedagogy of hope in opposition to the lingering Thatcherite legacy that ‘there is no alternative’.

We must dare to imagine that another world is possible. Keywords: Epistemic Injustice; Neoliberalism; Development Education; The Far Right. One of the features through which neoliberalism has come to be the dominant ideology of our time, with devastating consequences for global communities and the very sustainability of our planet, is its hidden ubiquity. The hegemony of neoliberalism renders it almost nameless, certainly in the everyday discourse of ordinary working people who have fallen prey to the dominance of market forces and the encroachment of private market interests... As David Harvey wrote: “Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse.

It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” (Harvey, 2005: 3). This article argues that a contributing factor to the rise of the far right is a lack of knowledge and understanding of neoliberalism among the general population, specifically how neoliberalism is a leading cause... Drawing on the work of Fricker (2007), Medina (2012; 2013) and Spiegel (2022), I suggest that the absence of a sustained public discourse addressing the root causes of social and economic inequality can be... In turn, they are more susceptible to far right rhetoric and disinformation that seems to offer them a narrative that explains their struggles. In the final section of the article, I look at one way that development education (DE) can help to address this aspect of the problem. I argue that DE needs to return to its critical origins, and refocus on its commitment to explore ‘the root causes of local and global injustices and inequalities in our interdependent world’ (IDEA, 2020:...

Additionally, DE ought to go further still and empower people to see that neoliberalism is a choice, and not an unwavering natural condition. We must dare to imagine that there are socially just alternatives. Daniel sees the challenges outlined above as the key existential risk facing humanity, and has created The Consilience Project to begin to address them. The Consilience Project aims to create a vertical attractor for people seeking, and capable of engaging with, multi-perspectival dialectical synthesis with empirical grounding. The goal isn’t just to give people better information — core to its mission is also to teach people how to improve their own information processing. By doing so, it aims to help people gain sovereignty and defend against information warfare.

The ultimate objective is to meaningfully upgrade the quality of the information space around current events, upgrade the epistemic commons, heal ubiquitous nihilism, and upgrade collective intelligence writ large. Denizen is offered as a gift in order to model a non-extractive, relational economy.

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