The epistemic crisis and the rise of the far right: toward a conceptualization of counter-knowledge orders in digital knowledge society

Abstract 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 a more just knowledge order. 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.