The hegemonic world picture: Representation,post-truth,and artificial intelligence

Abstract

The present article contributes to recent scholarship on ‘post-truth’ politics. It employs a semiotic approach that traces the onslaught of ‘post-truth’ politics to the logic of AI-powered communication systems. AI-powered digital communications expedite information flows, leading to the complexification and ambiguation of representation, which is leveraged in the form of political rhetoric in the service of factional interests and hegemonic ambitions. From this perspective, post-truth politics involve the symbolic consolidation of disparate (digital) representations vis-à-vis ‘total representations’ where ‘a part’ comes to represent ‘the whole’. By lacking propositional specificity, total representations exceed on a de facto basis conventional truth verification standards and are implicated in the alignment of factional interests and political outlooks by contingently fixing the free-flow of information in digital communications. The article concludes by situating its findings within current debates on de-democratization, directing attention to how rhetorical representations can be leveraged in the service of democracy.

I Introduction

There have been scores of studies in recent years that have centered on what has broadly been labeled ‘post-truth politics’. Key findings indicate a general epistemic shift in the public sphere, where scientific and expert knowledge systems are increasingly displaced by ‘disinformation’, ‘fake news’, ‘conspiracy theories’ and, more recently, ‘deep fakes’. These trends are exacerbated by novel digital instruments, predominantly associated with social media and (generative) artificial intelligence. As an outcome, ‘conventional’ truth verification systems are increasingly delegitimized and ‘alternative’ truth claims circulate, raising profound questions about the trajectory of contemporary politics. By undermining social consensus, ‘post-truth’ politics have obstructed effective responses to social, political, and environmental problems that necessitate urgent collective intervention.

Conventional critiques of ‘post-truth’ politics employ a (quasi)objectivist outlook that takes the notion of ‘post-truth’ at face value. They are typically underpinned by commitment to rationalism and empiricism, where expertise, reason, science, etc. are counterposed to the presumed emotionalism of ‘post-truth’ politics. By extension, they often acquire a pronounced moralistic (if not polemic) tone, where ‘post-truth’ politics are admonished on the basis of their presumed irrationalism. These critiques, however, behold restricted political efficacy. The underlying commitment to rationalism essentially reduces the analytic parameters to questions of empirical verification—what is ‘right or wrong’. The solution to ‘post-truth’ is thus posed in terms of an urgent calling to realign ‘fact’ and ‘ideas’, in all their manifestations (statements, representations, institutional processes, outlooks, etc.).

The present article contributes to these discussions in a two-fold manner. First, it directs inquiry to whether absolute conceptions of truth amount to an attainable goal. It does so by scrutinizing the essentialist principle of rational and empirical correspondence (between ‘fact’ and ‘representation’). The guiding question is whether the dichotomy between ‘true’ and ‘false’ representation can be substantiated against an examination of the ontology of representation. By examining how contemporary social and political thought have destabilized the essentialist paradigm, the present article concludes that any process of representation is constitutively ambiguous. Thus, there can be, strictly speaking, no distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ representations. Building on these theoretical foundations, it is demonstrated that the constitution of power relations germinates within representational ambiguity. In short, hegemonic ambitions are actualized through the employment of ambiguous rhetorical modalities—what is termed ‘total representations’—that ‘speak to’ the interests of particular social and political identities.

These theoretical premises are then related to the socio-political coordinates of the digital public sphere. It is argued that (AI powered) digital communication systems exacerbate representational complexification and ambiguity. This ambiguity is politically leveraged in the form of rhetoric, whereby ‘sloganesque’ representations are employed in a heuristic fashion, in the service of factional political interests. In this sense, hegemonic ambitions in the digital public sphere are seen as ‘mirroring’ the logic of AI-powered mediatized communication. By implication, an effective counter-offensive to ‘post-truth’ politics would not merely involve a realignment of ‘fact’ and ‘representation’. It would involve epistemic and political strategies that work through the logic of representation, whereby representational ambiguity, in the form of rhetoric, is leveraged in the service of democracy.

The article concludes by situating its findings within current debates on de-democratization, the relationship between postmodernism and the Far Right and crises in democratic representation. Contrary to scholarly orthodoxy, which laments the loss of ‘truth’ and ‘science’, advocating for their restoration as key political compasses, the present article offers insight into the political utility of rhetoric, directing attention to how it can be used to advance democratic ambitions.

II Representation in social and political thought

For most of its trajectory, Western scholarship was fundamentally guided by the doctrine of essentialism, which posits that the ultimately reality of ideas and objects is governed by an ‘internal’ and unchanging essence that can be made intelligible (Laclau and Mouffe 1987). And while essentialism assumes a diversity of forms in the Western philosophical canon, the implication is that the innermost identity of an object or idea can find an unadulterated expression in meaning or contemplation (Laclau and Mouffe 1987). There can thus be, on some level, or under certain circumstances of empirical or rational verification, a one-to-one correspondence between ‘object/idea’ and ‘thought/language’, or logical coherence between ‘thought/language’ and systemic patterns (Laclau and Mouffe 1987, 2001).

Classical metaphysics, as well as modern social and political thought were either explicitly or implicitly guided by the tenets of correspondence and coherence theory of truth. This was expressed in various theoretical quests, which sought to decipher, among many others: ‘the essence of man’ (Aristotle, 2000; Descartes, 2008; Kant, 2002, 2007; Leibniz, 2007; Locke, 2003; Marx, 1978a; Plato, 2004; Rousseau, 1999), ‘the essence of God’ (Kant, 1992; Leibniz, 2007; Locke, 2003), ‘the essence of nature’ (Aristotle, 1992; Leibniz, 2007; Marx, 1978a), ‘the essence of things’ (Aristotle 1992, 1998; Leibniz, 2007), ‘laws of historical motion’ (Hegel, 1977; Marx, 1978a, 1978c), etc. Indeed, the Enlightenment’s promise, especially in its rationalist and empiricist variants, took essentialism as an epistemological starting point (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002). Once the innermost essence of Reality and thus Truth was discovered, human experience could be ordered according to essential predicates and be harmonious with itself (Comte, 2009; Hegel, 1977; Kant, 1996; Marx, 1978b).

Within the essentialist paradigm, the notion of representation was often cast with reference to the principle of verifiability, which was predicated on the long-standing epistemological distinction between ‘essences’ and ‘appearances’, as well as ‘essences’ and ‘representation’. A representation mirroring the essential coordinates of an observed fact, idea, or systemic pattern would be deemed to be a true or accurate representation. Conversely, an inaccurate representation would be considered to be a false representation. The Marxian notion of ‘false consciousness’ famously falls under the latter category. Ideology was, by extension, understood to be an ‘inverted’ (i.e., false) representation of reality: The ideas of the ruling class prevented the working class from acknowledging their ‘true’ conditions of existence. Emancipation would by extension entail a process of ‘alignment’ between a presumably essential reality and working class consciousness (‘as class for itself’). In contemporary politics, we are seeing novel manifestations of this logic, namely, people’s decision to abstain from voting because ‘politicians say one thing but do another’. In this sense, what politicians say are seen as false representations of what they do. But the question should be raised: Does this perspective, which focuses on the principle of rational and/or empirical verification, preclude us from other modes of epistemic inquiry?

Let us proceed by contrasting two divergent understandings of ‘truth’. The first is the correspondence theory of truth, as outlined above: Any fact, object, idea, or process is governed by an inherent essence that can find an accurate and unadulterated expression in intelligible thought or language. The pragmatic perspective (James, 1922), on the other hand, understands truth in terms of utility and effect: The relevance of the politician’s lie does not only concern its empirical verifiability, but the effects that it engenders. Pragmatism gave a much-needed impetus to epistemological outlooks that had already been brewing in early sociology, which ultimately found their utmost expression in social constructivism vis-à-vis the dual input of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1962; Schutz, 1967).

Rejecting the principles of Realism and Idealism, constructivists hold that ‘reality’ and thus ‘truth’ do not lie in an objective ‘external’ realm ‘waiting to be discovered’. Rather, ‘truth’ is culturally constructed through the mediation of symbolic exchanges between agents. A low salary can be seen by one person as ‘opportunity’ and by another as ‘exploitation’, depending on their respective social standpoints. Neither evaluation is ‘truer’, in the strict sense of the term, but socially constructed cultural precepts that are disseminated in the social fabric. The implication to be drawn as far as our understanding of representation goes is that, from a pragmatic standpoint, representations are not evaluated in terms of their ideational coherence, or their correspondence to an objective reality, but in terms of the social and political effects that they engender.

Pragmatic and constructivist readings of reality have increasingly penetrated contemporary social and political thought and, despite epistemological divergences, found an effective counterpart in the post-foundational tenets of poststructuralist and postmodern thought (see Critchley et al., 1996; Shalin, 1993). The poststructuralist turn in contemporary social and political thought is rooted in the sequential destabilization of essentialist reasoning in formal scholarship. While I cannot be exhaustive in the present article, I will identify what I consider to be some of the key theoretical ‘moments’ that introduced disruptive effects within the dominant essentialist paradigm that has long held the distinction between ‘essence’ and (false) ‘representation’.

Relevant theoretical breakthroughs were advanced in the phenomenological tradition with the work of Husserl (1980) who blurred the distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘appearance’, through his notion of ‘phenomena’. The implication here is that ‘essences’, to the extent that they do exist, can only be accessed through their phenomenal appearance, which is ‘adorned’ by ‘doxa’ (common sense knowledge). The implications that were already germinating in phenomenological thought would find their most developed expression in the work of Heidegger (1999) who, being guided Nietzsche’s anti-essentialist assault (see Heidegger, 1977) asserted that essences could only manifest through language. In this sense, language was understood as an ontological plane that enabled the presencing of Being—the ontological, as such. Language was thus understood, not merely as an adornment of essences, but as something that allows an essence to come into appearance. The appearance that essences assume, however, manifest according to the hermeneutic structure, which is invariably historically embedded and subject to flux. ‘Essences’, thus appear differentially in each historic epoch.

The Heideggerian assault on classical metaphysics would find its most effective counterpart in contemporary linguistics and poststructuralism (see Derrida, 1993). The linguistic take on reality asserts that reality, being, existence, etc. is not only channeled through, but constituted through language (Laclau Ernesto, 2007a). These efforts were pioneered by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1966) who demonstrated that there are no positive terms in language, in the sense that no linguistic term can be understood solely in reference to itself. Language is composed by a series of shifting signs that are only intelligible in terms of their oppositional and associational difference—for example, I am a man because I am not a woman, because I am a father, because I am a brother, because I dress and behave in ‘masculine’ ways, etc. In this sense, what something is cannot be reduced to any presumed ‘internal essential core’. Rather, its identity reflects the total sum of its linguistic and therefore meaningful associations, which are invariably unstable and subject to flux (see Laclau Ernesto, 2007a). By extension, ‘representation’ is not to be understood as an ‘attempt’ to either replicate or express any sort of underlying essence or coherent structure, but as that which constitutes the very identity of facts, ideas, objects, or processes. As Laclau and Mouffe succinctly articulate it

There are not two planes, one of essences and the other of appearances, since there is no possibility of fixing an ultimate literal sense for which the symbolic would be a second and derived plane of signification. Society and social agents lack any essence, and their regularities merely consist of the relative and precarious forms of fixation which accompany the establishment of a certain order (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, 98).

Reality, therefore, is representation, whether we understand representation in terms of language or communication media (see Hall, 1997). Assessed from this perspective, the totality of language, and therefore representations, is not seen as an epiphenomenal expression of underlying essences, but as an ontological ground through which social reality is constituted.

A caveat here is warranted. The poststructuralist ‘assault’ on essentialism (and classical metaphysics more broadly) is gravely misinterpreted and misconstrued, by proponents and critics alike (Critchley et al., 1996; Latour, 2004). Poststructuralism does not consist in a crude rejection of ‘truth’, nor recourse into a naïve constructionist logic, purporting that all standpoints are ‘equal’ because ‘everything is made up’ (see Laclau and Mouffe 1987, 85-86). Rather, poststructuralism directs attention to the inherent limitations of truth verification claims (and by extension science). The issue concerns, not the existence of truth, as such, but whether there can be seamless correspondence between ‘observation/thought’ and ‘language’, given the inherent properties of language (Laclau and Mouffe 1987).

This is one of the fundamental points of divergence between constructivists, which adhere to an interpretivist understanding of reality (and thus scientific empiricism), and poststructuralists, which emphasize the inherent limits of scientific observation on account of language’s inherent ambiguity. As thoroughly demonstrated by contemporary linguistics and poststructuralism, language is fundamentally undercut by rhetorical dimensions that undermine literality (Barthes, 1972; Jakobson, 2003; Lacan, 2006; Laclau, 2014). In short, the inherent polysemy of meaningful terms invokes symbolic representations that exceed what is denoted. As an example, if I say that ‘nuclear weapons safeguard the security of the nation’, I am not merely denoting a presumable ‘fact’, but symbolically invoking, among others, a whole array of normative assumptions about the social and political ordering of the nation-state: That a presumably undivided people defined according to national criteria occupies a delimited and historically identifiable territory, whose administrative workings are tasked to the state, which has the legitimate function of securing the survival of the national community through military technology. This is what poststructuralists mean when they say that there is an ‘excess’ in language that cannot be grounded in literal representation. Ergo, as a proponent of nuclear non-proliferation, I may contest the validity of the statement ‘nuclear weapons safeguard the security of the nation’ by invoking the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear holocaust. I have contested what is denoted. However, my argument is not exhaustive, precisely because it does not address the underlying and unsaid narratives that underpin the initial line of argumentation—its hidden structure will elude my counter-offensive, limiting its efficacy.

The same limitations are evident when assessing the validity of political discourses from a scientific standpoint. When Donald Trump says that migrants will walk into your kitchen and cut your throat, I can on a colloquial level call bullshit. I can even invoke the logic of statistical reasoning, which sees no causal relationship between immigration and violent crimes. But as forms of contestation, both approaches are bound to encounter limits. Trump’s statement, strictly speaking, is not amenable to scientific scrutiny, on account of its rhetorical modularity: Which migrants are we talking about? Are we referring to a specific racial, ethnic, religious, economic category? Does the ‘threat’ involve the case of one, several, a lot, all migrants? Does the statement invoke a general tendency, a specific event, an individual premonition? Trump’s statement, insidious as it is, is plagued with ‘vagueness’, perhaps intentionally so, thus eluding scientific scrutiny, which presupposes propositional specification. And therein lies its political utility.

This discussion reveals the full thrust of the poststructuralist critique: If reality is channeled through language and language is inherently ambiguous on account of polysemy and ‘rhetorical modularity’, observation cannot be subject to apodictic modes of verification (Laclau, 2014). The appeal here to the intricacies of language does not invalidate empiricism. It reinforces and renews it by broadening its operational scope, allowing analysts to peer deeper into the hidden structures that underpin representations (Anastasiou, 2022; Laclau Ernesto, 2007a; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). This enables inquiry into the latter’s condition of possibility, as well as the effects they exercise, without invalidating the question of empirical verifiability, which can of course be addressed from within particular discursive locations (e.g., scientific methods). An effective deconstruction of Trumpian rhetoric, for instance, allows us to (a) decode its political appeal, by revealing its underlying representational structure; (b) decipher how and why its hidden representational intricacies neutralize attempts of resistance; (c) consider how the socio-historical context enables and fortifies it as a political possibility; and (d) assess or even predict its political effects.

This renewed empirical orientation opens up epistemic possibilities that are directly related to the question of politics and power, allowing us to resituate the relevance of empiricism within the framework of contemporary socio-political developments and challenges. Given that my ultimate goal is to impart an effective critique of ‘post-truth’ politics, it is paramount to proceed by investigating the relationship between representation, politics, and power.

III Representation, politics, and power

The fundamental premise to be deduced from the preceding discussion is that the total sum of social experience is constituted through language, which is inherently representational. As perceptive schemas, representations operate as social and political compasses that direct human behavior, values, and attitudes. They are implicated, through and through, in our everyday decisions, conceptions of ‘the self’ and ‘the other’ and in the structuration of subjectivities (Hall, 1997). They formulate distinctions and boundaries, direct emotions, incubate desires, foster world-views, and animate corporeal subjectivities in social and political activity (Ahmed, 2014; Butler, 2011; Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008; Hall, 1997).

Politics, which involve the ordering of social relations, hinge on the articulation of representations, such that they result in the uneven distribution of power (Hall, 1997; Laclau and Mouffe 2001). Semiotics and discourse theory, more generally, have been particularly effective in revealing the (often hidden) political underpinnings of representations, carving out novel paths for epistemic and critical inquiry (Hall, 1997). Theoretical concepts associated with this tradition, such as ‘stereotyping’, ‘othering’, ‘naturalizing’, etc., have been remarkably fruitful in this regard and have since penetrated everyday political discourse and emancipatory politics.

But how do particular representations become dominant and how do they overcome oppositional cultural and political currents? This question has been at the center of poststructuralist inquiry, which has effectively decoded the subversive qualities of representation by peering into the relationship between ‘particularity’ and ‘universality’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001). In short, representations become culturally dominant when ‘a part’ is effectively constructed and socially disseminated as a representation of ‘a whole’. By obfuscating the constitutive plurality of the social world, these total representations direct or subsume oppositional cultural currents by effectuating a world in accordance with their image.

Let me proceed with some anecdotal considerations. Upon returning to my home country from North America, where I had lived for twelve years, nearly all of my acquaintances were shocked at my decision to return. I was, time and time again met with the following trite encounter: ‘Why did you come back? I would have never chosen to come back’! In their minds, the U.S. constituted an ideal, where one could potentially have unmitigated access to diverse professional prospects, high income, a rich social life, entertainment, etc. Granted, there was just some ‘truth’ to their estimations, but they were certainly and fundamentally incomplete. When compared to other developed countries, the U.S. tops the list on a wide array of social problems, not least poverty rates. Social life can often be deficient, particularly in urban centers due to a lack of stable communities and the dominance of individualism. Stable social relationships are often hard to come by due to the U.S.’s incredible social dynamism and geographical mobility, etc.

Interestingly, it was not the case that my acquaintances were unaware of the deficient aspects of U.S. society. They did, nonetheless, espouse a perspective that was closely associated with the so-called ‘American dream’. We can thus very well state that certain ‘positive’ aspects of the U.S. had ‘trumped’ (pun intended!) its ‘negative’ aspects. So, in essence, one form of representation had superseded and subverted others. As an outcome, particular representations of the U.S. had come to represent it as a totality. These total representations were ‘generalized’ beyond their ‘origin’, thus ‘overriding’ other (oppositional) representations. In this sense, ‘a part’ had come to represent ‘the whole’, a process coinciding with Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) definition of hegemony.

As various works have shown, this representational modality—the rhetorical form of synecdoche—inheres in the very logic of language (Laclau, 2014; Stavrakakis, 2014, 506). What interests me, however, are the various power effects that are animated by such processes of representation. Let us reconsider the case of the U.S. The U.S. is a highly pluralistic society, being governed by ethnic, linguistic, racial, class, etc. diversity. Yet the nominal category ‘American’ represents all identities as if they were equivalent (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, 127–34). The invocation of the national identity (i.e., American) thus overshadows society’s constitutive plurality. But does the total representation of ‘American’ serve, to a greater extent, the interests of particular groups? When MAGA aficionados invoke the notion of the ‘real American’, as an example, they implicitly invoke a ‘nativist’ conception of identity symbolically associated with whiteness, thus subverting outlooks, identities and political demands tied to cultural plurality.

The effects that are enabled by this act of representation are multidimensional. As just one example, a voter might be less likely to vote for a black woman for Congress, precisely because the representation of the ‘black woman’ might be perceived, on some level, either consciously or unconsciously, as being incompatible with ‘American’. These are the discursive logics at play that underlie (implicit) forms of discrimination. But it is important to note that representations are interwoven in a very complex fashion with multilayered perceptive schemas. For many U.S. citizens, ‘American’ might be symbolically equivalent with ‘unfettered capitalism’, ‘individual liberty’, ‘American exceptionalism’, ‘strong military’, etc. In other words, the hegemonic representations that constitute people’s perceptions come to reference differential schemas and life modalities that are presumably equivalent with the category that symbolizes the totality, that is, ‘American’.

The total sum of these representations conjure up what might be called a hegemonic world picture, that is, a particular ordering of perceptions and therefore actions, according to dominant forms of representation that come to be saturated with affect (Stavrakakis, 2007; Žižek, 1993). I should be clear that I use the term hegemonic to emphasize that these dominant representations speak, to a larger extent, to the interests of particular identities. One can very easily see, as an example, how the association of ‘American interests’ with ‘military intervention’ serves the economic interests of the military industrial complex. Going back to my acquaintances’ reaction upon my return to my home country, one can say that they desired to live in the U.S. because of particular representations that, by virtue of various factors (e.g., global and social media) had come to dominate perceptions beyond the U.S.: The U.S. appeared as ‘the land of opportunity’. A hegemonic world picture had thus come to materialize and, by extension, animate people’s perceptions and actions. The effective dissemination and, therefore, hegemonization of this world picture is one of the principal engines that drives American economic interests, for example, the U.S. fashion, entertainment, technology industries, etc.

This discussion reveals that the incubation of political desires hinges on the generalization of total representations. By subverting oppositional ideas, total representations effectuate a steering of political imaginaries and desires that can be leveraged in the interests of particular political, economic, and social factions. The effective generalization of total representations—a process that is de facto underpinned by rhetorical logic—thus results in the constitution of power relations. As a theoretical leeway, this discussion allows us to situate the coordinates of ‘post-truth’ politics in a new light, directing attention to their underlying rhetorical and hegemonic underpinnings.

IV Post-truth, the digital public sphere, and artificial intelligence

The present section situates the above-noted deductions within the framework of current and anticipated socio-political developments connected to advancements in digital technologies and (generative) Artificial Intelligence (AI). ‘Post-truth’ has recently emerged as a prime issue of political contention, receiving scholarly (McIntyre, 2018), as well as journalistic scrutiny (Davis, 2017; D’Ancona, 2017).

Conventional readings suggest that, particularly over the past decade, there has been a seismic epistemic shift (Hoggan-Kloubert and Hoggan 2023). The legitimacy of expert knowledge, the scientific medium and factual verification, as bases for truth are increasingly being undermined. In their stead, what is making sway is the profuse circulation of ‘disinformation’, ‘fake news’, and ‘conspiracy theories’ (Conrad et al., 2023; Iyengar and Massey 2019).

This has resulted in an associated backlash, from scholars and political institutionalists, which advocate for the restoration of truth standards with recourse to rationality, science, education, effective governance, and citizen responsibility (Barton, 2019; Hoggan-Kloubert and Hoggan 2023; Lazer et al., 2018; McIntyre, 2018). Relatedly, defenders of scientific orthodoxy have made concentrated attempts in associating ‘post-truth’ with the rise of populism (e.g., Dahlgren, 2018, 24; Suiter, 2016). As Venizelos (2024, 92) suggests, ‘This alarmist trend was accelerated with the “double shock” of the BREXIT referendum in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US in 2016, and received a further boost with the COVID-19 healthcare crisis—during which “populism” was associated with anti-science positions, vaccine skepticism and so on’.

These discussions conventionally focus on the effects of digitally mediated exchanges between agents within a wide array of novel digital instruments, including social media, online forums, online blogs, and so on (Dahlgren, 2018; Salgado, 2018). The internet, in a sense, is identified as the ‘original culprit’, that is, as the prime-most form of technology facilitating post-truth. The argument holds that the transition from traditional mass, to social media, creates competing public spheres that are employing divergent standards of truth verification (Habermas, 2023). Contrary to traditional media, which rely on professional staff and experts for establishing truth standards, social media platforms in principle empower all users to be independent and ‘equal’ authors, in the absence of fact verification standards (Habermas, 2023). Correspondingly, the circulation of information and discourses with unpredictable, unverifiable and even harmful content proliferates (Habermas, 2023). Not surprisingly, these developments have added layers of complexity to discussions about epistemic democratization (Dahlgren, 2018; Fuller, 2016; Latour, 2004; Sismondo, 2017).

The conversation has been further amplified by the onslaught of automated AI systems that have been stealthily embedded in a wide array of digital instruments, not least social media platforms, which, using a variety of techniques effectively frame users’ experience, if not nefariously directing users’ behavior (Zuboff, 2019; Pasquale, 2015; Elliott, 2022, 12-13). The notion of ‘algorithmic governmentality’ proves to be particularly effective in revealing the associated socio-political effects (Rouvroy and Berns 2013). By constructing user ‘digital doubles’ around a wide collection of data points, online platforms seek to maximize engagement with the broader aim of leveraging user engagement for ad revenue. These processes are not underpinned by any underlying commitment to ‘truth’ or ‘ethics’, but by capital accumulation imperatives: Anything is fair game so long as ad revenue increases.

It is true that there have been attempts by various social media platforms to introduce content moderation standards. However, content moderation has only been marginally effective in fending off ‘disinformation’ campaigns, not least hate speech, which often manifests in an implicit fashion, under the guise of ‘free speech’. To cite a relevant real life example, Facebook has been remarkably intransigent in removing posts that I have found to be blatantly erroneous and clear examples of hate speech. In other words, content moderation standards are themselves subject to interpretation, if not underpinned by ideological commitments. What is more, social media platforms are increasingly attenuating moderation standards, as evidenced by X, following Elon Musk’s takeover, and Facebook, following Donald Trump’s election. In other words, there emerges no consensus in the digital public sphere as to what constitutes ‘truth’, or even what the standards for establishing ‘truth’ should be. What is consequently effectuated is an uneven circulation of free-flowing information that is constantly proliferating and which yields divergent ‘truth’ standards.

The impetus of predictive AI systems is at the same time fostering what is often referred to as ‘echo chambers’ (see Terren and Borge 2021), where users are directed towards specific digital content on the basis of their digital data profile. This occurs in the form of content recommendation, ads, notifications, etc. which are predicated on the ‘rank and file’ logic of predictive AI systems. In essence, an automated hierarchy of recommendations is provided to users, based on their presumed ‘preferences’. This very often results in a ‘feedback loop’ that reinforces user proclivities, whereby users are directed to ‘digital chambers’ that mirror their beliefs, preferences, and biases. Conversely, user engagement with alternative or competing narratives is curtailed. These processual dynamics are very often thought to facilitate extremism and polarization (Hong and Kim 2016; McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018), fostering what is sometimes referred to as ‘fragmented’ digital public spheres (Habermas, 2023).

This situation is further exacerbated by the wide availability of generative AI systems, which make possible the seamless generation of (often remarkably realistic) digital content (image, audio, text, and video). This has led to a further proliferation of information flows in the digital public sphere, often in the form of highly contested material, including ‘deep fakes’. These ‘digital tokens’ are circulated as either affirmations of particular truth claims, or as counter-truths to otherwise established truth claims. But it is important to note that, given the increasing circulation of information in the digital public sphere, truth claims can only proliferate. This can mean nothing else than the broadening of the field of political contestation, something that has been registered in recent discussions on the ‘digital culture wars’ (Finlayson et al., 2022).

Discourse theory can offer illuminating insight to the above-noted social trends, by peering into the qualitative aspects of digital communication technologies, which involve the complexification of representation. A key contribution of poststructuralist discourse theory concerns the floating nature of signs, in the sense that meaning is not fully subsumed by its relational context (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, 111–14). It ‘resist’ being fully grounded within a particular discursive ‘location’ and is thus subject to re-articulations. Consider, as an example, how the term ‘Jesus’ might play out in the digital public sphere. As a representation, it is at once firmly embedded within the spiritual tradition of Christianity, but its discursive ‘excess’ allows it to be reframed in myriad novel directions: ‘Jesus’ can be recast as an enemy within atheist chatrooms, it can be recast as a noble reference in Christian heavy metal songs on Spotify, it can be recast as a popular meme likened to Chuck Norris, it can appear as a key signifier in AI-generated music videos of Barron Trump, etc. In other words, the level of empirical expedience (Anastasiou, 2024) enabled by digitalities allows for a productive proliferation and circulation of representations associated with ‘Jesus’.

This, at once, yields two possibilities: (a) the meaning of ‘Jesus’ becomes increasingly ambiguous and thrown into flux, as it becomes all-the-more polysemic; and (b) ‘Jesus’ can effectively ‘capture’ all the more meaningful complexes, as its symbolic chain of equivalence broadens in scope. This dual possibility potentiates various types of rhetorical constructions, including synecdochic representations, where ‘a part’ comes to represent ‘the whole’: ‘Jesus’, as a particular representation, can symbolically consolidate a larger symbolic gamut by symbolically circumscribing it (Laclau, 2007b, 2014). The political deployment of ‘Jesus’ will thus not only symbolically invoke a spiritual tradition, but, potentially, a broad range of free-floating meaningful-affective representations in the form of digital content (music, memes, AI-generated images and videos, tweets, etc.). ‘Jesus’ can thus emerge as a total representation for these digital disparities. This process is de facto ‘post-truth’ in the sense that the invocation of ‘Jesus’, as a total representation, by default encapsulates a broad range of representations that do not conform to conventional truth verification standards. They can include poetic representations, vague argumentative logics, unsubstantiated correlations, half-truths, conspiracy theories, deep fakes, scientific denialisms, etc. In other words, rhetoric, as a modality of representation implicated in the consolidation of symbolic (digital) disparities, exceeds, by its very nature, the propositional specificity that scientific standards presuppose (see ‘Representation in Social and Political Thought’ section). Total representations are symbolic mélanges that do not follow standards of rationality—they can consolidate representations of any sort, whether ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’. These potentialities, of course, do not merely involve the term ‘Jesus’, but a broad range of representations that are firmly embedded in contemporary political discourse, including, among many others: ‘democracy’, ‘nation’, ‘wokism’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’, ‘gender’, etc. Representations in the age of novel (AI powered) digital technologies are becoming increasingly overdetermined (Althusser, 1967; Freud, 1955; Laclau and Mouffe 2001).

These premises allow us to situate the significance of ‘post-truth’ politics within novel epistemic inquiries, which center, not on the question of factual validity, but on the question of political efficacy. There is growing discussion lately concerning the conceptual austerity of political communication. Political leaders, as well as ordinary folk in their capacity as online ‘content creators’ are increasingly employing slogan-like (total) representations that bypass conventional standards of ‘rationality’ and ‘science’, by conceptually exceeding propositional and argumentative specificity. Political slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’, ‘immigrants go home’, ‘#metoo’, ‘Black Lives Matter’, and ‘All Lives Matter’, all reflect this logic. As do conceptually austere discussions, memes, AI-generated content, etc. that follow obscure argumentative paths that hark back to presumable ‘enemies’ vis-à-vis the neo-platitudes of ‘wokism’, ‘cultural Marxism’, and ‘gender ideology’. I have attempted to invoke examples from multiple sides of the political divide, but it is the case that the impetus towards the ‘sloganization’ of politics is driven in larger part by the political Far Right.

The sloganization of politics is conventionally critiqued by appeals to ‘objectivity’, ‘rationality’, and ‘science’, a practice replete in Left-wing and particularly Liberal discourse. The prime political strategy consists in casting the Far Right as a politically irrational actor that is steeped in emotion, lies, and extremism (Venizelos, 2024, 103). We all saw how this line of contention played out in the recent U.S. elections. Indeed, Donald Trump managed to materialize a moderately decisive win, despite repeatedly being cast as a liar. We can debate the (non)truth basis of Trump’s claims all day long, but that is to miss the broader picture with regard to the political logic underpinning the Far Right’s political ascent. In an increasingly technologically inter-connected world (Castells, 2009; Rosa, 2013), where the free-flow of information proliferates vis-à-vis automated AI systems (Kalpokas, 2019), truth claims are increasingly rhetorically modulated on account of representational complexity and ambiguity. What becomes politically effective in this context is not ‘rational’ contestation, but the employment of highly formalized representations that operate not against representational complexity, but through it. As Chantal Mouffe so aptly articulates

It is particularly important in the present conjuncture, characterized as it is by an increasing disaffection towards democracy, to understand how a strong adhesion to democratic values and institutions can be established and that rationalism constitutes an obstacle to such understanding. It is necessary to realize that it is not by offering sophisticated rational arguments nor by making context-transcendent truth claims about the superiority of liberal democracy that democratic values can be fostered. The creation of democratic forms of individuality is a question of identification with democratic values and this is a complex process that takes place through a diversity of practices, discourses and language games. (Mouffe, 1996, 5)

The name of the game is rhetoric, which, from the standpoint of semiotics, involves the consolidation of meaningful complexes through processes of representational ‘simplification’ (Laclau, 2014). Consider, as an example, how excluded populations often appeal to the notion of ‘the people’ as a total representation to advance particularistic democratic claims. In so doing, the excluded population is not cast as an ‘outsider’ wanting ‘inclusion’, but as a representative of ‘the people’ as a whole (Stavrakakis, 2014, 506). This mode of contestation does not appeal to the complexity of experience, to the minute details of public policy, nor does it appeal explicitly to the factual realities of historical oppression. It pierces through these meaningful nuances by appropriating larger-than-life and affect-ridden representations that are embodied in the referent of ‘the people’. Most importantly, it is the conceptual ambiguity of ‘the people’, as a representation of the ‘plebeian part’ and the ‘communal whole’ that enables contingent political alignments between excluded and included populations.

As a very important caveat, I should here emphasize that total representations do not efface representational complexity, which is, on some level, embodied in ‘the message’. Rather, representational complexity is partially subverted as it facilitates what Roland Barthes (1972, 113) calls a ‘2nd order semiological system’. A 2nd order semiological system emerges by ‘piggy-backing’ on existing representations. Much like the order of ‘supplementation’, as detailed by Derrida (2001), it subverts its meaningful predicates by conjuring up novel representations that emerge front and center. This can only mean that representational complexity and, thus, ambiguity, are the condition of possibility of total representations. As Barthes (1972, 120) notes, with reference to the rhetorical order of myth, ‘paradoxical it may seem, myth hides nothing: its function is to distort, not to make disappear’.

The exacerbation of representational ambiguity in the digital public sphere occasions modalities of competition that center on ‘the control of political language’ in a ‘quest for finality and decisiveness’ (Freeden, 2013, 22, 72). In this quest, rhetoric—and total representations in particular—can be an incredibly effective political compass, by contingently fixing the meaning of representations. They can reinforce a ‘fantasy of mastery and coherence’ and endow ‘the world with seemingly undeniable sense and purpose’ (Kalpokas, 2019, 4). Seen in this light, the utility of rhetoric proves to be a particularly potent political tool, being, in a sense, the ‘antidote’ to the complexification of representation in the digital public sphere.

Rhetorical formalism has the added potential of symbolically consolidating diverse political demands, which may be associated, divergent and even ‘contradictory’. In his various discussions of politics, Laclau (2005, 2014, 2007b) has highlighted how rhetoric, particularly in the form of total representations can operate as a symbolic ‘replacement’ for heterogeneous demands, thus fostering a ‘chain of equivalence’ between otherwise disparate identities. The political success of ‘Black Lives Matter’ reflects this underlying logic. The rhetorical formalism of ‘Black Lives Matter’, as a total representation, consolidated a broad range of heterogeneous identities that were not necessarily from a ‘factual’ standpoint victims of racialized police violence. It became a ‘rhetorical platform’ that came to express a variety of grievances involving not only racialized police violence, but broader issues of justice. The symbolic ‘chain of equivalence’ of ‘Black Lives Matter’ cut through the digital public sphere, incorporating identities and discourses of justice from all around the globe. It emerged as a decisive, incisive, not least divisive ‘world picture’ that facilitated in the most radical way the consolidation of convergent and divergent democratic imaginaries.

It becomes clear that in the age of digital communication and (generative) AI, which is characterized by immediacy in communication, appeals to conventions of rationalism and empiricism have marginal utility in consolidating political capital. This is the key premise established in this article, both on epistemological grounds, as detailed in previous sections, as well as on sociological grounds, as detailed in the present section. In short, ‘truth’, as a political construction that exercises social effects, is established within varied power games that unfold through the employment of rhetoric, involving very often total representations that disproportionately benefit some identities to the expense of others (hegemony).

In light of these observations, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that we were always ‘post-truth’, but that the dimension of ‘post-truth’, as a political practice inscribed in rhetorical possibilities acquires all the more political power in the contemporary digital milieu. This realization does not consist in an endorsement of ‘post-truth’, but in a theoretical and empirical deduction that outpours from the very logic of contemporary socio-political developments. Thus, an effective democratic counter-offensive to Far Right ‘post-truth’ politics would entail the articulation of novel hegemonic coordinates, whereby ‘total representations’ are articulated in accordance with democratic principles, desires, and imaginaries. What is necessitated is the articulation of a democratic world picture.

V Conclusion: Democracy in a post-truth era

In his 2018 monograph, Post-Truth, Lee McIntyre advances a brazen polemic against postmodernism, which he identifies as the root of Far Right post-truth politics. In his own words: ‘What would an application of postmodernism to post-truth politics look like? It looks a lot like the world we now inhabit’ (McIntyre, 2018, 144). McIntyre’s key argument is that postmodernist critiques of objectivity and science opened the floodgates for an anti-scientific (Far Right) advance. While the text does not provide a systematic examination of postmodernism, it does present some convincing arguments that are predicated on three empirical highlights.

The first zeroes in on Phillip Johnson’s postmodernist sensibilities, which, admittedly, facilitated his role as one of the founders of ‘Intelligent Design’ (McIntyre, 2018, 136–41). The second and most striking is Bruno Latour’s (2004) famous lament of science, which, in a twist of irony, advances a critique of constructivism (McIntyre, 2018, 141–43). The third invokes the example of conspiracy theorist and Trump aficionado Mike Cernovich, who openly admits to having read and tactically employed postmodern thought in his political endeavors (McIntyre, 2018, 148–50). Admonishing ‘the Left’ for delving into obscure postmodern logics and ignoring their logical conclusion, McIntyre (2018, 144) directs the following provocative inquiry to the reader: ‘[H]ow does the left fight back against rightwing ideology without using facts? This is the cost of playing with ideas as if they had no consequences’.

I could contest McIntyre on a variety of points, not least his superficial survey of postmodernism and his employment of sweeping generalizations under the guise of unitary categories (‘the Left’, ‘postmodernists’, etc.). But engaging in a deconstructive practice is not my priority here. I would like to situate the discussion within the framework of the present article. Let us be explicit here by asking whether post-truth politics need postmodernism as an epistemic compass, or whether relativism, as any other discursive ‘tool’ can be employed as a political weapon. Consider how appeals to ‘rationality’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘science’ are equally employed by de-democratizing forces. In a recent interview, libertarian-turned-far-right technology mogul Peter Thiel (2025) described Trump’s reelection as ‘miraculous’, because it countered the ‘demographic determinism of identity politics, where you do not vote based on reason or argument, but you vote on subrational factors like your gender, or your race, or your sexual orientation, or, other things like that’. We can additionally consider how AI systems are incorporated in a wide array of state and corporate instruments that are in direct violation of democratic principles and fundamental rights: Predictive policing, profiling, surveillance, autonomous lethal weapons, etc. These are the things the Far Right is in love with and all are legitimized in the name of science, progress, and objectivity.

Even more relevant is the Far Right’s unwavering (if not obsessive) commitment to essentialized conceptions of truth and identity, whether national, religious, civilizational, gender, etc. The nationalist and ‘anti-woke’ offensive amounts to an explicit rejection of relativism, which the Far Right associates with social liberalism and postmodernism. Seen from this perspective, postmodernism would correlate to the Far Right’s ‘internal enemy’—a connection that neo-Far Right gurus, such as Jordan Peterson, are never shy to make. The Far Right’s occasional appeal to relativism is nothing more than a contingent political strategy that is discarded as soon as it ceases to be useful and which invariably harks back to essentialized conceptions of culture and identity. As an example, the infamous Far Right philosopher Aleksandr Dugin has repeatedly disavowed postmodernism… in his defense of cultural relativism! In other words, all ‘epistemic weapons’ can be employed in today’s socio-digital milieu, so long as they are effectively skewed in the service of particular ideological orientations and particular political interests.

The ‘ease’ by which anything can be distorted towards any ideological direction (consider Far Right appeals to human rights and free speech!) reflects nothing more than the overdetermined character of the contemporary digital-and-AI milieu, which has dislodged all representations from their ‘origin’ and reshuffled them. The overdetermined character of the digital public sphere allows all representations to be decoupled, reformulated, rhetorically modulated, flipped on their head, and so on. By the same token, the Far Right is barred from any critique that would appeal to the presumed ‘inconsistency of argumentation’ when its discourse tip-toes between absolutist and relativist principles. Appeals to the ‘internal inconsistency’, ‘contradiction’, and ‘hypocrisy’ of political positions bear limited political efficacy when the whole meaningful order is likewise subject to flux. In fact, it is the joker-like character of the Far Right that underpins its political success. By effectively ‘arresting’ the flow of representations, including discourses of the Left, and recasting them in accordance with its own principles, the Far Right has effectively managed to construct a diverse alliance, ranging from working class actors to ‘technofeudalists’ (Varoufakis, 2023), in the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

An effective counter-offensive to Far Right politics would, by extension, be predicated on the socio-political coordinates of the system at play. The creative employment of counter-rhetoric, in the service of democratic ideals represents a first step of incision. There have been various calls for a democratic populism (Mouffe, 2018; Stavrakakis, 2014) that would employ populist rhetoric (‘the people’ vs ‘the establishment’) in the service of advancing democratic ideals. Political parties Podemos (Spain) and SYRIZA (Greece) consciously employed this political strategy, which facilitated to a considerable extent their rise to power (Custodi, 2021; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014). The case of Podemos is particularly intriguing on account of the fact that it creatively employed anti-elitist and patriotic rhetoric fashioned according to democratic values. But alas, democratic populism reached its impasse with the concurrent downfall of Podemos and SYRIZA, raising important questions about its political limits (see Stavrakakis, 2021).

Democratic populism is not a panacea. It is, rather, just one mode of contestation that presupposes particular conditions of possibility (Laclau, 2005). In light of this, it is necessary to consider the political utility of rhetoric beyond the populist logic—as a mode of contestation that can be deployed at any time and for whatever purpose. What are progressive’s rhetorical responses to Far Right anti-immigrant rhetoric (‘they took our jobs’, ‘they rape and steal’, ‘Islamization of Europe’)? What are progressive’s rhetorical responses to dangerous logics employed in the so-called—and rhetorically framed—‘race to AI’? Do we have an answer to the rhetorical heuristics of the establishment and the Far Right, which claim that ‘if we don’t get there first, China will’? Do we have rhetorical responses to (often blatantly erroneous) anti-trans logics that assume centrality in the impressively effective ‘anti-woke’ offensive? Forget about the intricacies. Give me a sling-shot answer that I can remember. The rhetorical stock of democratic forces is remarkably austere. Democratic forces are still ensnared in drawn-out analyses and discussions that appeal to the principles of ‘internal rationality’ and the intricacies of scientific observation. In this regard, ‘seizing the memes of production’ (Bown and Bristow 2019) amounts to a necessary political strategy.

Most importantly, democratic rhetorical schemas need to assume a generative function that extends beyond the logic of existing representations, in what would essentially amount to an effective framing of the parameters of contestation. To put it simply, reactive politics are not enough. Democratic forces need to ensnare themselves in multimodal acts of (digital) cultural production vis-à-vis rhetoric on all fronts, be it user-generated content, memes, AI-generated content, without of course excluding traditional/conventional political repertoires. The task here consists in steering cultural coordinates by continuously producing and institutionalizing, where possible, ‘total representations’ that are fashioned according to democratic values.

At this point, I would like to cite a relevant example, which displays in the most direct way the sway and efficacy of political rhetoric. In the run-up to the 2008 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney advanced an assault on Barack Obama’s healthcare coverage program, which the former derisively labeled ‘Obamacare’. Eighteen days before the election, Obama advanced a decisive rhetorical counter-offensive that effectively reframed the whole parameters of the discussion. Invoking the presumable medical condition of ‘Romnesia’, Obama cited, in the most simplistic and nonchalant way, all of Romney’s policy flip-flops: ‘Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said the last year […] We’ve gotta name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called Romnesia […] I’m not a medical doctor, but I do wanna go over some of the symptoms with ya, because I wanna make sure nobody else catches it’ (Obama, 2008). He proceeds:

If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia […] If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose but you standup in a primary debate and said that you’d be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia […] If you say earlier in the year I’m gonna give a tax cut to the top 1 percent and then in a debate you say I don’t know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks, you need to get a thermometer, take your temperature, ‘cause you probably got Romnesia. (Obama, 2008)

Extending the rhetorical logic to a series of other examples, Obama reached his rhetorical apex by reclaiming the term ‘Obamacare’ in the most effective way possible, while completely shattering Romney’s offensive without making any factual references to his healthcare coverage program: ‘And if you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for president, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions!’ (Obama, 2008). Irrespective of whether one is in agreement or not with Obama’s policies, one cannot deny his mastery of political rhetoric, which to a considerable extent facilitated his (out of nowhere) rise to power.

This bring us to a key ethical issue that warrants address. Should democratic forces follow the steps of the Far Right by indulging in disinformation, fake news, and deep fakes? My estimation is that this would amount to a self-defeating strategy. The challenge consists in employing effective political rhetoric without undermining requisite standards of ‘truth’ and ‘fact’, even in the way they are conventionally understood. A forward-looking democratic offensive should pride itself on its ‘truthiness’, thus differentiating itself from the complete arbitrariness of non-democratic political forces. Lies and conspiracies should be exposed through creative processes of subversion, whereby ‘their’ rhetoric succumbs to the logic of ‘ours’. The general outlook should not consist in a fatalism subject to the logic of existing sociological coordinates (Baudrillard, 1994), but, rather, a creative leveraging of the possibilities it provides. This brings me to my next point.

Should ‘rational deliberation’, ‘analytic rigor’, and ‘science’ be done away with? After all, my whole article is centered on the political utility of rhetoric, in what might appear as an uncritical extolment of the politics of rhetoric. Let me be clear here, rhetoric is just one political tool among many. There exist many spaces in the (digital) public sphere, where ‘rational deliberation’ and ‘scientific discourse’ can exercise political effects. A democratic offensive can only benefit by including in its arsenal as many tools as possible. To this end, the function of rhetoric will be crucial in weaving together ‘sloganesque’ and ‘rationalist’ modes of contestation, as their frontiers will require common discursive referents. This presupposes blurring the distinction between ‘expert’, ‘political’, and ‘poetic’ discourse, where the politician becomes the expert, the expert becomes the politician and both become poets. The challenge consists in articulating novel hegemonic structures through total representations, which would effectively ‘arrest’ the flow of information in the (digital) public sphere and mold it to the logic of democracy. As these thoughts are drafted only a day after the tragic passing of the great Michael Burawoy, I cannot help but renew the call for a ‘public sociology’ (and beyond) that would be fashioned according to the challenges and coordinates of our time.

These potentialities can add a much-needed impetus to social critique, which is all the more displaced by the relativist and absolutist whims of post-truth politics. Much has been written over the last two decades about the democratic deficit (Habermas, 2003; Norris, 2011). However, little has been written about its relation to systemic complexity and political rhetoric. It is my estimation that the architectural complexity of contemporary political institutions occasions a diversity of political demands. These demands, which may be associated, divergent, or even contradictory, cannot be referentially exhausted either during, or after electoral processes. Nor can there be a coherent institutional response to these demands given their inherent diversity. Rather, political actors ‘respond’ to these demands in the form of affectively charged rhetoric that occasions a sense of partial fulfillment that is de facto deferred ad infinitum (see Stavrakakis, 2007:196–98). An effective social critique can offer redemptive potentials. By peering into and deconstructing political rhetoric, we are enabled in ‘reactivating’ hidden (i.e., subverted) political demands. What seems like a blind appeal to ‘national security’ might in fact be masking myriad political demands, including calls for economic equality, a better healthcare system, a robust welfare state, better schools, etc. In deconstructing the whims of rhetoric, we are enabled in bringing these demands ‘out of the shadows’ and accord them the legitimacy they rightly deserve. The challenge here consists in re-inscribing these demands within rhetorical modalities that appeal to democratic imaginaries—a process presupposing the construction of a democratic world picture that can facilitate our march towards an open democratic horizon.