Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm

This review assesses Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm (2024), edited by Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad, a timely and theoretically ambitious contribution to the study of contemporary populism. The volume advances the argument that post-truth populism is not merely about political lying, but about a deeper transformation in the status of facts, expertise, and epistemic authority in democratic life. Combining political theory, media studies, and comparative analysis, the book conceptualizes post-truth populism as an epistemic struggle in which claims to “truth” are grounded in identity and moral antagonism rather than verification. While the collection’s conceptual breadth sometimes comes at the expense of analytical coherence, it offers valuable insights into how populism reshapes knowledge, trust, and democratic governance in an era of information disorder. populism studies; democratic legitimacy; anti-elitism; public truth; polarization