Introduction

Ever since the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s presidency, populism studies have been increasingly dominated by debates about ‘post-truth’. The phenomena have been understood as ‘two-headed beast’ (Rifkind, 2017), while the current conditions of public communication are seen as favorable for the kind of post-truth politics that is represented by populism (Waisbord, 2018, p. 18). Authors point to the epochal rupture in the fabric of democracy, an era where Truth and Reason are overtaken by alternative facts and individual gut feelings (Farkas & Schou, 2020). In such ‘a paranoid habitus’ (Harambam & Aupers, 2015), we are witnessing the loss of the ‘symbolic authority of truth’ (Newman, 2019), further pointing to the high epistemic gap developing between the knowledge as it arises from common sense and personal experience, and what is known from and about expert models and projections (Brubaker, 2021, p. 75). Characteristic of these changes in the public sphere are the intensified marginalization of factually-based evidence, the growing dispersion of false claims, the phenomena of fake news and conspiracy theories, as well as the fragmentation and polarization of the public sphere (Numerato et al., 2019, p. 83). The concept of post-truth does not only concern the spread of correct or incorrect information but explains how its communication serves political actors as they accuse their opponents of spreading false or manipulative content or constructing their own version of reality (Kluknavská & Eisele, 2021, p. 1584). This means that the matter is not so much about whether or not one tells the truth but what kind of actions are performed by claims of ‘facts’ and ‘truth’ (ibid.).

Most scholars working on post-truth agree that this phenomenon highlights the changing mechanisms of social construction and legitimization of knowledge, marked by the decline of trust in institutions which have traditionally been seen as its symbolic guardians: mainstream media, science, universities (d’Ancona, 2017; Hameleers, 2022; Numerato et al., 2019; Saarinen et al., 2020; Waisbord, 2018). In this sense, as Fuller (2018) argues, the post-truth era is seen as ‘the inevitable outcome of greater epistemic democracy’, which is the result of more open access to instruments of knowledge production and subsequent dismantling of the old epistemic hierarchies. Together, these occurrences lead to what Saurette and Gunster (2011) have coined as ‘epistemological populism’, a kind of populism favoring common people’s knowledge over the knowledge produced by the experts.

We understand these arguments by taking into account what Galanopoulus and Stavrakakis (2019, p. 1) term the ‘epistemic superiority’ of mainstream politicians, which is used to illustrate their ‘supreme rationality’ and, thus, to condemn the irrationalism and lies of their opponents. However, Hameleers (2022, p. 217) has shown that not all (right-wing) populist truth claims are based on the same logic, and they are used differently to consolidate different political agendas and the reality they wish to communicate. In a study on populists who describe epistemic authorities as part of the ‘conspiring regime of truth’, Harambam and Aupers (2015) show that these actors do not challenge scientific epistemology as such, but rather see ‘establishment’ science as corrupt and therefore as needing to be challenged with alternative authorities and knowledge. Likewise, Ylä-Anttila (2018, p. 3) has argued that populist actors do not inherently oppose expertise on the basis of ‘folk’ or ‘common’ knowledge or wisdom, as much of the literature assumes, but rather advocate a particular kind of counter-expertise, or what he coins ‘counterknowledge’. Here we see the importance of going beyond overly simplistic accounts of contestations of epistemic authority and of showing how populist actors establish their own production of knowledge, beyond acting ‘merely as irrational political agents’ (Galanopoulos & Stavrakakis, 2019).

In order to probe into these questions, we turn to the unexplored nexus of populism and post-truth in Slovenia, particularly the case of Janez Janša and Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS). We build on Ylä-Anttila’s (2018) argument to suggest that Janša and SDS employ the strategy of ‘counterknowledge’ to assert their belief in alternative narratives of truth. The analysis includes articles published on countermedia news sites Demokracija and Nova24tv.si, as well as coverage of statements made by party representatives and by Janša in particular. We show that SDS’ counterknowledge discourse is based on four prevailing, interrelated frames: fake media, fake institutions, truth-washing, and dominant ideology, and structures. By exploring how SDS relates to knowledge production through these four frames, this chapter contributes to a more nuanced understanding of populism and its relation to post-truth, as well as bringing new empirical insights into Slovenian populist politics.

In what follows, we firstly set out the contours of the debate about the post-truth and its meaning, which we follow by inquiring into the status of truth per se. Then, we turn to deliberations about populism in its relation to the phenomenon of post-truth and establish our understanding of counterknowledge as employed by populist actors. After this we introduce the Slovenian case, by providing illustration of populist logic employed by SDS and Janša. This section is followed by our empirical analysis. We conclude with discussion of our key findings.

Post-truth Discourse/Discourse on Post-truth

Since it was declared the word of the year by Oxford Dictionary in 2016, ‘post-truth’ has been a prominent part of contemporary scholarly and media debates on politics, and around knowledge production and communication (BBC 2016). But such ‘elite anxiety’ about political ignorance and its consequences is not new. As Runciman (2016) elaborates, two prominent fears permeate this anxiety—that democracy will be ruled by the poor, who will steal the power from the rich; and that democracy will turn into a rule of the ignorant, who use their power for vacuous things. And while the Brexit referendum and Trump's presidency have reactivated these anxieties, can we assert with certainty that the emerging divide is one between knowledge and ignorance rather than between one worldview and another? (Galanopoulos & Stavrakakis, 2019, p. 408; Runciman, 2016). As Hannah Arendt (1967) has argued decades ago, ‘No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues’.

And yet, beyond pointing to the relation between the creation of truth claims and the normal functioning of political systems, many scholars warn about the societal and political dangers of post-truth (Bory et al., 2023; Brubaker, 2021; Hameleers & Van der Meer, 2021; Rietdijk, 2021; Saarinen et al., 2020). Levy (2017) investigates post-truth’s negative impact on knowledge, while Frankfurt (2005), Davis (2017) and Kristiansen and Kaussler (2018) explore the ‘bullshit’ connected to post-truth narratives. Authors have also assessed post-truth in relation to partisanship, explaining partisan commitments as correlated to a belief in post-truth narratives, where some forms of epistemic partisanship can be reasonable and realistically expected (Ahlstrom-Vij, 2021; Hameleers, 2022; Rini, 2017; Ylä-Anttila et al., 2019). It has also been claimed that post-truth generates specific emotional dynamics, with discourse separating those who are represented as knowing ‘the facts’ and those seen to be merely emotional (Boler & Davis, 2018; Duncombe, 2019; Durnová, 2019; Savolainen et al., 2020).

Authors have also largely focused on the ‘folk theorizing of science’ which takes place in political debates, with Brandmayr (2021, p. 48) arguing that these increasingly involve complex and technical issues which reveal clashing public epistemologies that define how truth can be distinguished from falsehood. In this sense, Hawkins (2010, pp. 7, 38) argued that the virtues of folk wisdom and spontaneous expressions of popular will become highly idealized and used to challenge experts and professionals. Bullshit claims have also been connected to this issue, their traction explained by successful integration into folk wisdom (Hopkin & Rosamond, 2018, p. 651). In the scholarship reviewed, it is not just that empirical evaluations are issued, but they are situated in a socio-political context further informed by moral deliberations about what truth or knowledge are (Harambam & Aupers, 2015, p. 469).

Hence, what we see within the current debate is that the term post-truth has acquired, to use Ernesto Laclau’s (2005, pp. 129–133) terminology, a position of a floating signifier, which tries to conceptually apprehend the logic of the displacement of a stable political frontier. In this way, post-truth is used in drastically different and sometimes opposing political projects as a means of constructing political identities, conflicts and antagonisms (Farkas & Schou, 2018, p. 300). When given different meanings, the term then becomes part of a broader hegemonic struggle of defining the shape and contents of contemporary politics (Farkas & Schou, 2018; York, 2018). ‘History is not the terrain on which a unified and coherent story would unfold’, Laclau (2005, p. 146) has claimed, and assessing the post-truth phenomenon has to be positioned within this context, beyond offering it as a diagnosis of a deeply normative discourse on what the truth is and how politics should be defined. In other words, it is important to show how it is itself part of a hegemonic political struggle.

Understanding (Post)-truth

Echoing some of the concerns raised above, not that long ago, Habgood-Coote (2019) issued a call to academics to stop using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. He argued that the terms were ambiguous, used in a propagandistic way, and even unnecessary. However, countering this view, Rietdijk (2021, p. 1) argued that the sole existence of political discourse exhibiting a lack of concern for facts and expertise is undeniable and hence epistemically problematic. More authors than not share this sentiment. Already in 2004, Keyes (2004, p. 17) warned about the effects of the post-truth era, embracing a new category, beyond the dichotomy of truth and lies: ambiguous statements that fall somewhere in the middle.

Hyvönen (2018, p. 33) suggested that post-truth can be understood as a two-sided process; it emerges from different factors eroding the ‘common world’ and making the truth more and more irrelevant in the political discourse, while also coinciding with what he calls ‘careless speech’. Here, careless speech is an antinomy of Foucault’s (2001) ‘fearless speech’, and also related to Arendt’s view of the ‘care for the world’ being a precondition for democratic politics. This means that post-truth discourse shows an unwillingness to engage with other perspectives, while being unconcerned not just with truth as such, but also with the world as a common space where things become public (Hyvönen, 2018, p. 33). This carelessness is not necessarily seen in the full transgression of truth, as much as in the way it is ignored or bypassed, ‘drowned out in a cacophony of competing narratives’ (Newman, 2019, p. 1). Higgins (2016) shows this as well, by pointing to a difference between post-truth and political lying—in a post-truth world, honesty is not pre-empted as the default position. Overall, the post-truth condition breeds a state in which objective facts have less of an influence in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief (Oxford Dictionary in Conrad, 2021, p. 302).

This further connects to the issue of relativism. As Wagener (2020, p. 165) elaborates, the ideal of truth in its image of Western rationality is more and more blurred, and perspectives rather than factual knowledge itself prevail. Such relativity of truth endangers ‘the very strength of reasoning as a basic human feature which crosses the boundaries established by emotions, traditions, sociocultural contexts, beliefs and desires’ (ibid.). For Viale (2001, p. 15), the failure to adopt a priori standards of rationality then leads us into a socio-cultural relativism. We continue to deal with such relativism as differences between what is true and what is not, are not being guided by anything more authoritative than our individual points of view (Frankfurt, 2006). This might be called ‘epistemic relativism’, or the idea that the distinction between truth and falsehood is based not in an objective reality but in various social conventions, which is why there are many different and opposing, but still valid, ways of knowing the world (Malik, 2017).Footnote 1 Rodgers (2017) talks of this in terms of ‘competing claims on truth, each insisting of its veracity’: in other words, truths rather than the truth. The post-truth phenomenon hence highlights the low importance of truth in political sphere and the relativism increasingly prevalent in Western societies (Salgado, 2018, p. 318). These two are thus related phenomena, as both feed scepticism about people’s capacity and desire to acquire knowledge, produced by experts or dilettantes alike, which would be unsullied by local conditions, ideologies, world-views and power relations (Zackariasson, 2018, p. 2). When these influences are conceded, the notion of objective or disinterested knowledge and expertise becomes jeopardized (ibid.).

Populism and the Truth Game

These ideas contributed to the popularity of politically charged accounts of post-truth, fake news as well as conspiracy thinking. These are further supported by research connecting the post-truth condition to populist politics. For Waisbord (2018, p. 18), the surge of populism is symptomatic of the consolidation of post-truth communication as a distinctive feature of contemporary politics. Here, populism is standing in opposition to the prospect of truth telling as a collective effort to produce agreed-upon facts and reach consensus, thriving in the context of various challenges to the elite definition of truth and reality. The growing prevalence of conspiracy theories, the appeal to emotions, racist and xenophobic language, have all been marked as signs of the connection between populism and post-truth (Sengul, 2019, p. 97). Wodak (2015, p. 23) has argued that right-wing populists seemingly subscribe to what she calls the ‘arrogance of ignorance’, with appeals to common sense and anti-intellectualism marking a return to pre-modernist and pre-Enlightenment thinking.

As populists oppose not just political elites but, more broadly, all institutions they see to be representative of the ‘establishment’, they are, by and large, responsible for the creation of ‘alternative epistemologies’, which question how science produces knowledge, its methods and authority to make decisions, and arguments about what ‘true’ knowledge is (Mede & Schäfer, 2020, p. 478). By utilizing different media, populists are able to create and spread truth claims which are based on ordinary people's experiences and common sense, circumventing analyses and sources they do not trust (Hameleers, 2022, p. 213). This reflects what Saurette and Gunster (2011, p. 199) analyse as ‘epistemological populism’ that takes from rhetorical patterns of populist discourses to valorize the knowledge of the ‘common people’, that they have due to their closeness to everyday life. This knowledge is distinguished from the rarefied knowledge of elites which are alienated from everyday life and therefore from the common sense which is produced by it (ibid.). We can argue that such ‘epistemological populism’ creates what Nguyen (2020, pp. 2–10) analyses as echo chambers, which work by systematically isolating its members from outside epistemic sources. Such epistemic communities are created by establishing a serious disparity in trust between its members and non-members, who are epistemically discredited regardless of their actual epistemic worth. Hence, in this sense, scientific elites and experts, as a subset of the general elite, are represented by populists as unreliable, malicious or dishonest and thus epistemically delegitimized (ibid.).

The effects of such rhetoric are further amplified by the increased engagement of intellectuals and scientists in highly publicized controversies (Brandmayr, 2021, p. 48). As they are firmly anchored in specific political communities, and are used strategically in proceedings over particular policy decisions, this makes them an easy target for populist claims of being biased or suspicious and therefore untrustworthy. These narratives are further labelled by Mede and Schäfer (2020, pp. 480–483) as ‘science-related populism’, which is concerned with truth-speaking sovereignty or the right to formulate truth claims. As scientific elites are seen as illegitimate, they are discarded for the legitimate truth-speaking sovereigns, the ordinary people (ibid.). Both proposed forms of populism therefore challenge the assumption that political discourse should be in some way mediated and reflexive, that it should involve reasoning and communication which is distinct from the immediate one which governs life in the private sphere. Resolution is thus given in the form of a political expression which directly reflects the will of the people and works to systematically purge institutions aiming to mediate between the public and the private sphere (Saurette & Gunster, 2011, p. 212). While we concede the merit of these accounts, they can be further nuanced by, firstly, clearly delineating the meaning of populism as such, and secondly, by applying that understanding to the populist relation to truth and knowledge production. Equating populism with the post-truth condition runs the risk of marking the populist antagonism between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’ as inherently demagogic or dishonest, leading to delegitimization of the former as ‘hysterical’ and driven by emotions rather than by objective knowledge (De Cleen, 2017, p. 270). Rather, we contend that such approaches to contestations of epistemic authority are overly simple and, as Galanopoulos and Stavrakakis (2019, p. 409) argue, embraced with reified epistemic superiority, issuing a claim of exclusive access to truth.Footnote 2 Latour (1993) talked about the process of purification, which in our case works to erase hybrids which cancel out boundaries set between truth and lies, science and belief, emotion and reason. Analyses which dominate scholarship work to reinforce this opposition between scientific rationality and the political mainstream, on the one hand, and irrational, post-truth populism, on the other, without properly assessing the meaning of the latter. Much of this stems from an inadequate conceptualization of populism.

Conceptualizing populism as a form of politics, and analysing its strategic potential rather than its ideological content, can help us avoid dismissing it as inherently distrusting of science expertise (De Cleen, 2017). Thereby, in our analysis we subscribe to Laclau's (2005) concept of political logic, which we use to assess populism as a particular form of politics that constructs demands coming from ‘the people’ against illegitimate ‘elites’. This minimal discursive definition, based on elements of ‘people centrism’ and ‘anti-elitism’, does not necessarily entail anti-intellectualism or a denial of truth. Such an understanding of populism allows us to assess how populism creates demands and challenges existing regimes of power, shifting the focus from the contents of the populist project to the way demands are constructed. In our discussion on post-truth, then, we don't a priori assume the populist negation of expertise knowledge, but we seek to assess how populism is used to challenge knowledge elites.

To do so we further rely on Ylä-Anttila’s (2018, pp. 4–5) concept of ‘counterknowledge’, which works to explain alternative knowledge systems whose construction and dissemination have political aims. Counterknowledge is defined as ‘alternative knowledge which challenges establishment knowledge, replacing knowledge authorities with new ones, thus providing an opportunity for political mobilisation’ (ibid.). This concept is useful as it does not equate to misinformation, nor does it entail a rejection of knowledge that is falsifiable. Also, unlike ‘epistemological populism’ or ‘science-related populism’, it does not assume populists necessarily propagate knowledge connected to common people’s life experience, rejecting expertise and science altogether. Instead, counterknowledge acts as one of populist tools, working to achieve a kind of ‘objectivist’ system of alternative knowledge authorities (Ylä-Anttila, 2018, p. 21). As Galanopoulos and Stavrakakis (2019, p. 410) note, discerning that populists can establish their own relation to the production of knowledge and not treat them as just irrational actors, does much for a more rigorous and solid explanation of populism's relation to the post-truth condition.

In our analysis, we employ a discourse-theoretical perspective on populism as a political logic and its understanding of ‘post-truth’ as a floating signifier, while seeking to delineate elements of SDS's counterknowledge creation and dissemination utilized in its populist toolbox. Our aim here is not to discover the validity of information put forward by SDS, but to discover how their truth-claims are part of a hegemonic political struggle (Farkas & Schou, 2018, p. 309). In this way, we concur that probing into what is ‘fake’ and what is ‘true’ is itself a political practice, one that is taken up not just by political parties but also by scholars and media. Before turning to the empirical section of the chapter, we elaborate further on Janša and his political party's position in Slovenian politics, establishing it as a populist actor whose discourse is constructed through different elements of ‘othering’ and discrimination.

The Janša Paradox and Slovenian Democratic Party

Populism in the Slovenian case is assessed in the context of broader political and social changes which have occurred in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since 1989 onwards, and the region’s transition to liberal democracy and an open market economy (Bojinović Fenko et al., 2019; Lovec & Bojinović Fenko, 2019; Lovec et al., 2022). Proliferation of populist communication in Slovenia is further connected to the period of the dissolution of ex-Yugoslavia and the growth of ethnonationalism, which settled populism mostly in the caldera created by the rise of the extreme right in the region (Pajnik et al., 2016, pp. 137–138). While, during the socialist era, populism was seen to emulate exclusionary politics and propaganda, and was thought of as emblematic of Western capitalism, or even fascism and Nazism, since 1989 it has been more openly embraced and acknowledged in Slovenia and the rest of the region (Pajnik, 2019, p. 23). Once the familiar ‘enemies’ were gone, a kind of a vacuum emerged that had to be filled. The new enemies of the post-socialist era were found in the ‘Erased’ people,Footnote 3 migrants from ex-Yugoslavia, communists, liberal intellectual elites, Roma people, the Muslim minority or women and members of the LGBTQ community (Fink-Hafner, 2016, p. 1329).

Since then, many political parties occupied the Slovenian political space, with some slowly fading away, and some becoming a persistent factor of each election cycle. SDS is one such party, which keeps a steady voter base and represents a constant in Slovenian politics, not least through its polarizing effect on the public sphere (Hadalin, 2021, p. 241). The most prominent figure of the party and, in general, of the hard right in the country, is its leader, Janez Janša. Janša represents a kind of contradictory phenomenonFootnote 4 as Rizman (1998, p. 259) argued, transforming from a ‘former committed communist and orthodox Marxist’ into ‘an extreme anti-communist’. The complexity of ‘Janšism’ highlights the incongruities of the transition process in the wider region. Arrested and imprisoned by a military court in the former system, igniting mass protests that eventually led to his release, Janša became a defence minister of the first democratic government and since then has solidified his populist stance, which is marked by demagogy, anti-communism and othering (Pajnik et al., 2016, p. 140). Talking about Orban's ‘laboratory of illiberalism’, Krekó and Enyedi (2018, p. 43) see Janša as an inherent part of this, on par with other populist leaders from the CEE who comfortably operate within democratic electoral contests pushing for an ‘executive-dominated, delegative form of governance’, that does, to an extent, demand a ‘strongman’ emblematic of their personal ambitions. In general, Učeň (2007, p. 50) has found that CEE leaders, like Janša, utilize populism as a ‘power-seeking political strategy’ that is rooted in ‘pure anti-establishment appeal’.

Through his public claims, Janša assigns Slovenians ‘essentially virtuous qualities’ that are pitted against elites who are ‘either old communist nomenclature or Janša’s socialist-liberal opposition’ (Kocijan, 2015, p. 83). Talking about ‘Janšism’, Kuzmanić (2005, p. 10) argues that this phenomenon cannot be reduced to nationalism solely. He rather calls it a ‘Volkish populist movement’, that is not without a nationalist element, but in which the populist inclination remains the dominant feature (ibid.). Janša also exhibits what Rizman (1998, p. 260) and Pajnik (2019, p. 24) called ‘victim populism’, as he presents himself and SDS as victims of both the previous communist regime and a conspiracy conjured by the left and the establishment in the post-communist democratic era. The conspiring of the left elite is assumed to be ingrained in country’s sub-systems, which is why SDS also constructs as enemies some state and civil-society institutions as well as the media, which are seen as remnants of the previous communist regime and are sedimented in the political system of Slovenia (Frank & Šori, 2015, p. 92).

In addition to anti-communist sentiments, SDS’s strategy of othering is prominently visible in different ‘discriminatory episodes’ in Slovenian politics (Pajnik et al., 2013). Relevant are their actions in relation to the ‘Erased’, as SDS has continually minimized the role of the Erasure, calling the affected people ‘the so-called Erased’. The party called for a referendum against the law on regulating the status of citizens of the former Yugoslavia, calling the proposed law a deviation from established principles and values of Slovenia (SDS, 2010). Janša connected the Erased with the aggression of the Yugoslav army towards Slovenia and accused the left of supporting their rights only in a plot to secure election votes (Čuček, 2006). This narrative connects to the more general position of SDS towards ethnic and religious minorities. As Pajnik et al. (2016, p. 114) explain, the purpose of such ‘othering’ is in the separation of ‘true Slovenians’ from Southerners, Muslims and Roma, as a way of clearly delineating between the national ‘us’ and foreign ‘outsiders’. SDS here relies on nativist, nationalist and essentialist arguments and the proliferation and open normalization of xenophobic ideas for the articulation of societal issues (Frank & Šori, 2015, p. 89). Discriminatory narratives do not stop at ethnic and religious questions, but are also very prominent in regard to sexual minorities and gender.

SDS relies on what Butler (1999, p. 194) terms the ‘heterosexual matrix’, a way of designating the neutralization of bodies and gender in society in a kind of epistemic model of gender intelligibility, which assumes that bodies have to cohere to a stable identity further defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality. SDS was a staunch critic of the new Family Code which was introduced by left-wing government in 2009, particularly of two of its innovations: the definition of ‘family’ was expanded from the traditional patriarchal understanding to a more gender-neutral understanding, and the introduction of marriage equality (Kuhar & Pajnik, 2020, p. 171). SDS was also against the proposed amendments to the Law on Marriage and Family Relationships, again on the same grounds, and advocated a referendum against it (Podolak, 2019, pp. 51–52). SDS maintained its opposition, despite losing this battle, because in 2023 the law was finally successfully passed. Taken together, the discriminatory elements of SDS and Janša’s discourse establish two main features: namely the differentiation and purification of Slovenian identity and re-traditionalization of Slovenian society with more prominent references to conservative and religious values, unravelling what Pajnik et al. (2016, pp. 139–140) define as ethno-nationalist and ethno-religious populism.

SDS was in power over three periods, 2004–2008, 2012–2013 and 2020–2022. The last stint in power was arguably the most contested one, coinciding with the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and Slovenia’s European Union (EU) Council presidency. Through the entire mandate, the public expressed its disillusionment with the government through what came to be known as ‘Friday protests’, held continuously until the elections in 2022 (STA, 2022). Arguably too, by the end of this period, Janša’s counterknowledge dissemination reached its peak, which was most evident in his attitudes towards the establishment media and intellectuals, whose criticism of his regime was constantly dismissed. Only two weeks after the pandemic (and the new government mandate) began, Janša proclaimed the Slovenian Press Agency, the state’s key communication channel, to be ‘the ventilator of fake-news’ (Veselinovič, 2020, p. 116). In May 2020, Janša used the government website to publish a self-authored essay, ‘War with the media’, in which he accused the media of being a mirror to propaganda instead of the truth (Janša 2020). Despite the increasing relevance of these developments, only some analyses have touched on Janša’s attack on the public media, journalists and intellectuals (Pajnik & Hrženjak, 2024; Splichal, 2020; Vobič, 2022)— these are mostly in the field of journalism studies and media culture rather than political science—while most scholarship on populism in Slovenia focuses on previously elaborated elements of its populist ‘othering’ tactics. In what follows, we try to fill this empirical lacuna by investigating in detail Janša’s and SDS’s relation to production of truth and knowledge, and by showing how their attempts of establishing epistemic authority play a role in their populist struggle for power and influence.

Research Strategy

Method and Materials

To explore the counterknowledge production of Janša and SDS, we utilized a frame analysis, understood as a discursive approach to the assessment of frames and antagonisms embedded in texts (Pajnik & Fabijan, 2023, p. 748). Goffman (1974, p. 21) conceived a frame as ‘schemata of interpretation’ rendering that which would ‘otherwise be a meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful’. Through the frame analysis we can therefore ‘locate, perceive, identify and label’ data under analysis (ibid.). This approach is especially salient in the assessment of political communication, as frames ‘call attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring other elements’ (Entman, 1993, p. 55). In this sense, political actors are involved in the struggle with other political actors and journalists over frames and their dominance. Frames thus play a role in the show of political power, but also as a register of the identity of actors or their interests that eventually come to dominate the texts (ibid.).

The dataset is comprised of news articles published by outlets Nova24tv.si and Demokracija, and individual speeches or statements made by Janša. Data was compiled by searching through online archives of those outlets and by using web search engines. We used the keywords ‘post-truth’, ‘post-fact’ and ‘fake-news’. Articles, speeches, or statements that were tagged by at least one of those key words were listed. The terms other than ‘post-truth’ were used as only a few articles were found by using the keyword ‘post-truth’; most texts were tagged with the label ‘fake-news’. Once we collected the data, we first cleared the list by removing the double entries, including the double publication of the articles in the two outlets and retweets by Janša. Next, we coded the data, by assigning additional labels/codes to each of the articles based on the contents. After coding, we classified categories as discursive frames and sub-frames following Aslanidis (2016, p. 98), which enabled us to resonate with the ‘cognitive aspects of the populist message’ while also rooting the analysis in a more solid methodological framework (see Table 1). By utilizing frame analysis, we relied on what Bacchi (2009, p. 39) defines as ‘strategic framing’ which relates to ‘conscious and intentional selection of language and concepts to influence political debate and decision-making’.

Table 1 Main frames and sub-frames identified in dataset
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Initial Findings

Assessing the interplay of codes, we could identify two clusters: one in 2018 and the other in 2021 (see Fig. 1). The first peak occurs during the 2018 parliamentary elections. At the time SDS was an opposition party that was isolated by most of the other parties. The second occurs in the late stage of the pandemic and before the Slovenian EU Council presidency, when SDS was the main government party. It faced allegations of corruption, interference with independent institutions and of overstepping its authority while its public support was low. In between those two periods, and especially in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic when SDS took power and its public support was high, the frequency of post-truth codes declined to zero. Because of its popularity and the way it was seen as a symbol of stability during the crisis, the SDS did not need to utilize counterknowledge/post-truth strategies to attract support. In contrast, once its own authority started being contested, the SDS increased its reliance on counterknowledge claims as a way of countering their critics and adversaries.

Fig. 1
A stacked bar graph. Each bar represents the frequency of fake media, fake int media, exports of fake news, fake institutions, legitimacy washing, minority washing, nazi washing, antivaccine, communist legacy, and fake liberalism. It records the highest frequency with 7 categories in April 2021.

Frequency of post-truth codes in articles published by Nova24tv.si and Demokracija and in Janša’s speeches and statements

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Fake media is the most frequent code which demonstrates that media is at the centre of the SDS’s post-truth discourse. Exports of fake news and antivaccine codes have been present since late 2020. Exports of fake news codes are related to the context of the EU Council presidency, and antivaccine codes to the COVID-19 pandemic context. Fake international media, minority and Nazi washing codes are more frequent during the early period. The frequency of ‘communist legacy’ codes is higher during the later period. Such alignment of codes suggests a change in SDS’ position and strategy, from being an isolated opposition party to becoming a governing party and facing strong criticism for trying to remould the state and society. It shows how coming to power was related to stronger, but also more moderate and specific, rhetoric targeting especially domestic critics and attempts to gain more mainstream international legitimacy. The focus on fake media also demonstrates this hybrid strategy as opposed to a full scale delegitimating of various actors and institutions.

Analysing Post-truth Discourse

Fake Media Frame

Our analysis showed that the interplay of sub-frames ‘fake media’, ‘fake international media’ and ‘export of fake news’ produces counterknowledge claims used to delegitimate media institutions as fake or biased, necessarily associated with left-wing parties, a leftist agenda, activists, and foreign agents. In doing so, SDS aims to discredit the media, accusing it of propaganda and bias towards the opposition. They claim that information being shared is based on personal feelings and beliefs and not facts. By establishing such counterknowledge claims about the media, SDS aims to substitute the prevalent source of information—and thereby what is deemed to be truth—with the ones they claim to be trustworthy, objective and therefore legitimate.

Fake Media Sub-frame

The coverage by the ‘dominant’ and ‘mainstream’ Slovenian media of Janša, SDS and conservative political forces is portrayed as fake, biased, and instrumental; direct linkages are exposed between media and leftist political parties, government, and state structures; journalists are seen as activists furthering a leftist agenda, and at worst, as corrupt leftist agents. According to Matevž Tomšič (2022), a pro-SDS media expert, in an age of the post-truth:

what is true and what is not becomes more and more arbitrary /…/ facts, something of which existence can be proven and empirically verified, are becoming less and less important /…/ reference to people’s feelings and personal beliefs comes to the fore.

Within this sub-frame the ‘new media’ are said to ‘help spread misinformation and /…/ fake news’. These are considered as the main tool of politicians of the ‘problematic variety’, labelled as ‘populists’. The main claim that SDS constructs here is that traditional or mainstream media work in support of a particular kind of ‘political-ideological activism’ viewed to be ‘just a propaganda tool in the hands of the state or ruling parties’. For example, Tomšič further argues that this is done in a more and more open fashion and uses the recent election campaign in Slovenia as a typical example of ‘post-truth’:

Thirty years after the formal transition to democracy in Slovenia, most of the dominant media support only one political option; one that draws its power from the structures of the former communist regime. (ibid.)

The fake media sub-frame delegitimizes the media and represents their production as fake, which leads to blunt political expressions that deny media any credibility. To give an example, to a rhetorical question ‘what exactly is accurate in the information of our dominant media’, Vinko Gorenak, ex-SDS minister, and MP responds, ‘practically nothing’ (Nova24tv.si, 2020).

Fake International Media Sub-frame

The second sub-frame concerns the wider role of the media, beyond the domestic context. As one article suggests:

When Barack Obama was in power, the left-wing media acted as the government's PR’ /…/ Even big agencies such as Reuters could not resist being infected by leftist virus /…/ Being only a week in office, Trump was already compared to dictators – if it was Clinton whose other name is corruption and crime they would report how beautiful the world is and how America is doing better. (Rant, 2017)

Within this sub-frame, it is not Trump who produced fake news—‘it was CNN that invented the term to discredit its opponent /…/ Trump just used it against them’ (I.Š., 2019b). Trump had to face such discrimination until the end of his term despite his great achievements, as:

they preferred to portray him exclusively as a threat to world democracy and kept silent about all his successes, which were not few. It was Trump who pointed out all the pitfalls of modern globalization, where the American worker was the one who got the most out of it. (G.B., 2021)

Such outlandish claims are then symbolically applied to the Slovenian context as further ‘proof’ of how the media tarnishes political actors of the Janša’s ilk.

Export of Fake News Sub-frame

The negative reporting by certain foreign media about Janša became a topic when he took over the government. Under the export of ‘fake news’ sub-frame, this is explained by the failings of domestic and international media, which leads to the promulgation of fake news exports, which are then imported as objective news. This is compared to activities of various criminal groups that try to ‘clean’ the dirty money by investing it in some legal activity (Tomšič, 2021). The ‘News Washing’ operation in Slovenia is elaborated further by pro-SDS social media personality Libertarec (the Libertarian):

1. News is published through fake profiles and export it to a foreign journalist through activists. 2. RTV and 24ur (popular media in Slovenia) inflate the story. 3. Two days later, Mladina (pro-left weekly) publishes the same news, now citing a foreign journalist as a source. (Perš, 2021a)

Within this sub-frame, explanations for negative reporting are found in the media’s pre-determined views, with the credibility of international media being flagged as an issue. On this issue, one commentator writes:

They look down on Slovenia, they don't know Slovenian conditions, or they don't like to delve into what they are writing about /…/ they report in accordance with a pre-prepared agenda /…/, they are not ready to hear a different opinion /…/ ready to shamelessly trample on the basic principles of journalistic and reporting ethics. (Pirkovič in Mezeg, 2021)

Moreover, a certain sense of disillusionment is pointed to. According to one commentator, some journalists act as preachers; they are the only ones who claim to know the truth and must convince others. Others are prosecutors; they build their case by picking the arguments that support it and discarding the rest. The commentator further argues that journalists should instead act as scientists, trying to test their arguments (Čirič in Mezeg, 2021). People are, according to this narrative, expressing ‘disillusionment with foreign media’, ‘same as with liberalism’. It is argued that just as with liberalism, ‘journalism is an ideology’ (Tomšič in Mezeg, 2021). For the new journalists, to have an agenda is a sufficient criterion; they are activists for whom even facts are disturbing (ibid.). Just as with the coverage of Slovenia by foreign media, ‘attacks on Poland and Hungary’ were seen as ‘equally politically motivated because they do not follow [the] progressive ideological agenda’ (ibid). Building on this, Janša (STA, 2021) said that the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, who warned about the deterioration of media freedom and freedom of expression in Slovenia, was ‘part of a fake news network’.

Fake Institutions Frame

Through the ‘fake institutions’ frame, SDS issues counterknowledge claims about institutions, portrayed to be using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘hate speech’ as a pretext for their abuse of power. SDS argues here that arbitrarily regulating truth suppresses freedom of speech and freedom of expression. SDS thus suggests that institutions are not independent actors but are engulfed in wider plot to interfere with questions of truth and knowledge and who has the authority on truth.

Quasi-independent Institutions and Experts Sub-frame

Under this sub-frame, attempts to regulate public speech are presented as aiming to regulate the truths that are instrumental to power abuse and corruption, with fake news and hate speech largely seen as a pretext for this. Social media are often described as a challenge to the ‘dominance of the traditional mainstream media’ by ‘exposing their untrustworthiness’ and furthering their ‘credibility crisis’ (P.T., 2018). The reasoning for this is found in the bias of the institutions that make space only for particular kinds of voices:

It is typically left-liberals, journalists and scientists, who talk about fake news to claim authority /…/ They are wolfs in sheep's clothing /…/ they milk state budget to produce fog. (I.Š., 2019a, b)

Commentators make claims about the attack on freedom of speech, on the grounds that it is ‘hate speech’. One commentator writes:

The media, so-called social activists and even, at least on the face of it, eminent lawyers attack all those who think differently. (J.Ž., 2018)

According to this frame, concern about ‘hate speech’ essentially gives the government a pretext to interfere with freedom of expression (Petek, 2019).

Truth Washing Frame

The third frame brings together different counterknowledge claims about ‘truth washing’. According to the first claim, voices critical of SDS are seen as being overrepresented in the media—and thus as illegitimately speaking on behalf of ‘the people’. Moreover, their authority over truth is falsely established, and instead should be given to actual ‘people’—workers, elderly people, patriotic people. Here, in particular, we see how SDS’s counterknowledge narrative works as a tool of its populist strategy: it exposes the ‘others’ by further discrediting their epistemic worth. Hence, any group which is seen as the ‘other’ is put in a chain of equivalence with the left wing and hence represented as untrustworthy, relying on fake news and being overly emotional.

Legitimacy Washing Sub-frame

Through this sub-frame, voices of critics of conservative forces in general and of SDS in particular, are cast as being overrepresented. Contrary to this, claims are issued about supporting voices and positive evidence being ignored and suppressed. In one article, it is claimed that:

a minor number of violent protesters are declared to be more important than the majority. In democracies, it is the majority who counts, and not a few minor tenths of a percent of the dissatisfied. (Gorenak, 2022)

In this way, it is suggested that critics are falsely represented as objective and independent when in fact their privileged media access covers their ‘corrupt and violent nature’—as opposed to the real, hard-working, patriotic ‘little’ people, who support conservative values. This is illustrated by claims that ‘a distraught pensioner, who earned her low pension with her own blisters’, is brought into opposition with the national press, whose head ‘earns more in a month than pensioner gets in a year /…/ lives out of other’s work /…/enjoys from media that favour him the loyalty of a dog’ (Nova24tv.si, 2020). By advocating for the voices of the ‘small’ people such as the ‘distraught pensioner’, SDS frames ‘the elite’ as illegitimate not only in a political but also in epistemic sense, as their privileges rely on their own version of truth and reality.

Minority Washing Sub-frame

The ‘minority washing’ sub-frame casts vulnerable groups, such as refugees, ethnic minorities and women, as abused and falsely victimized to further leftist societal meddling based on emotional appeal. It is suggested that coverage of migrants is being ‘debunked’ and exposed as propaganda. One article states that ‘Migrant families drowning in the sea’ are ‘another fake news /…/ for the needs of the left-wing multiculturalization of society’ (C.Š., 2018). Further on, the author writes that:

Dying children in the ruins, the suffering of migrants on their way to Europe [has] so far repeatedly proven to be the backdrop with which they want to influence the emotions of media viewers [in order to] more easily accept the entry of hundreds of thousands of people of foreign, especially Muslim, culture. (ibid.)

We identified references to so-called ‘pedophrasty’, which is used to describe the abuse of children to advance a political agenda based on emotion and parental instinct:

All it takes is a picture of a small, possibly suffering, or dead child to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction in the target audience to immediately demand that something be done about it /…/ The mainstream media absolutely love Greta (Thunberg). Doubting the words of a child, and an autistic one …? How heartless! Aren't you ashamed? (Šokić, 2019)

Furthering this suggestion are claims of the inconsistency of the ‘new left’ (that no longer represents the ‘real working people’ but rather the ‘quasi-intellectualist’, the ‘degenerate class’ and the ‘transnational lumpenproletariat’), who are seen to be responsible for the effects of social engineering:

Namely, people feel all the progressiveness of the migrant crisis, which was staged with the aim of replacing them. The Social Democrats, who, /…/ should be the greatest defenders of workers, are thus their greatest enemy. That is, the more migrants there are in the country, the lower wages remain for all workers. (I.Š., 2019a, b)

Nazi Washing Sub-frame

Through the ‘Nazi washing’ sub-frame SDS suggests that media, politicians, NGOs, and experts advancing the progressive agenda falsely represent conservatives as extremists—as proponents of Nazism and fascism—while at the same time trying to conceal the inconvenient facts that go against their agenda. The latter is then typically associated with ethnic backgrounds of perpetrators of individual crimes. In light of the statement from a correspondent from Washington on Odmevi (an evening show on public TV) that a ‘white-skinned suspect’ was responsible for the crimes on the Capitol, one article explained the reporting, by the fact of him being:

The ardent supporter of American Democrats, Antifa and BLM. (Perš, 2021a, b)

Similar claims are issued that suggest that people are forced to believe certain progressive official truths and that even questioning the merits of certain facts is constrained in favour of a particular agenda:

Holocaust is taboo /…/ In some European countries it is forbidden to question official numbers /…/ We are forced to believe, not because of truth but because of political dictate /…/ So much for the freedom of thought we are supposed to have in an enlightened Europe. (I.Š., 2019a, b)

With this sub-frame, especially, we see a strong case of political cognitive relativism—each truth claim issued by Janša or SDS is relative to their social groups. In other words, they reject any truth given by non-members of their epistemic community, purely on the basis of their political opposition. This produces absurd claims, such as the one above, where their antagonism towards left-wing, anti-fascist options trumps historical accuracy and clashes with well-established facts.

Antivaccine Sub-frame

Faced with criticism for arbitrary, ineffective, and poorly communicated policy on COVID-19, Janša’s government has put the blame on media, activists, and the opposition. Speaking about the fight against COVID-19 at the EU Summit (M.L., 2020) Janša said that in Slovenia fake news is ‘often spread through mainstream media’. He argued that ‘this is forcing individual governments to take more drastic measures than would be needed if such information would not be spread’. The criticism of the government was equated with anti-vaccination movement and conspiracy theorists:

It seems the left parties have reached a point where they can only stay relevant with lies and fake news. (Murn, 2020)

As in the previous sub-frame, here we can assess the cognitive relativism, which is part and parcel of SDS counterknowledge, as illustrated by the claims that in criticizing Janša’s ineffective COVID-19 policy, mainstream media is guilty of conspiracy and is equated with the antivaccination movement. The merit of such criticisms is completely overlooked, and irrelevant to the promulgation of SDS’s counterknowledge.

Dominant Ideology and Structures Frame

In the ‘dominant ideology and structures’ frame, left-wing parties are portrayed as proponents of communism, and their truth-claims as necessarily unreliable and tainted by communist ideology. Any popular action or expressions of mass protest are marked as an attempt to restore a totalitarian system. In this way, the antagonistic ‘other’ in SDS counterknowledge is positioned as an interference and a distortion of facts. They see information as shared through mainstream channels regardless of its validity, while ideas which SDS stands for are suppressed and fought against.

Communist Legacy Sub-frame

In his commentary addressed to participants of the Bled Strategic Forum in 2021, Janša (2021, p. 6) argued that:

Since 2004 the EU has been a union of states with very different historical memories and experiences [due to] totalitarian rule for three generations.

Because of this legacy—and because structural transition that covers all social systems has not yet been completed—there are a lot of ‘misunderstandings’, such as those around the rule of law. He further argued against ‘radical centralism’ that would hinder an effective national policy response, and called for a ‘New Europe of sovereign equality and freedom of choice’ (ibid.). Similarly, in his speech on totalitarianism, Janša argued that society in Slovenia is still deeply embedded in communist groupthink:

We are witnessing mass denial in Slovenia, especially of the consequences and the very nature of the communist regime /…/ three parliamentary parties do not see communist regime as a bad thing and that one even uses it as a benchmark. (gov.si, 2021)

He once again criticizes European authorities for an ‘appeasing attitude’ towards communism. In similar terms, a commentator for Demokracija argued that:

The anti-democratic reflex manifested itself years ago most clearly in the framework of the so-called popular uprisings marked by violence. They uncompromisingly attacked policemen, public institutions, journalists, even rescuers, hung puppets of politicians, threatened them at home, spread threats such as ‘death to Janša’, ‘death to Janšism’ /…/ Red stars and inscriptions on banners such as ‘elections bring only the same faces’ and that ‘even Hitler was elected’ clearly show that democratic elections are not a goal or a value for them at all. (Granda in Bertoncelj, 2021)

Echoing the overall goal of SDS counterknowledge system, the commentator goes on to state that:

We will do everything to prevent the establishment of an eco-socialist system, which essentially means the restoration of a totalitarian system /…/ socialism and communism have caused enormous damage in Slovenia. We see and feel the consequences even today /…/ caused by the ancestors of those who are now offering an alternative. (ibid.)

Much of what constitutes SDS counterknowledge has to do with connecting left-wing options to the Slovenian legacy of Communism. A priori framing their opposition as proponents of communist and totalitarian ideas suggests that any criticism or disagreement which comes out is only due to their commitment to the previous (and largely unwanted) regime. This way, SDS can strategically frame itself as the only real moral authority on truth and knowledge, casting every other option as tainted by the past, indoctrination, and groupthink.

Fake Liberalism Sub-frame

The sub-frame ‘fake liberalism’ aims to depict the media and mainstream institutions as using appeals for ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy’ as a mask for attacking SDS. Along these lines, appeals are made for public debate to become freer and more equal, rather than being further distorted by the media:

One of the main mantras constantly repeated by domestic and foreign critics of the Janša governments is that it ‘interferes in the media landscape’ to ‘subjugate’ supposedly independent media. This is actually a distortion of the facts and a camouflage of the actual situation /…/ When someone calls them liars such journalists portray themselves as victims! (Tomšič, 2021)

Furthermore, claims are made that all political actors want to influence media coverage, but not all have the privilege of doing so. As a result, people don’t have appropriate access to what is true or not, as one commentator argued:

People do not have the right to true information but to disseminate and receive it regardless of whether it is true or not /…/ today it is no longer permissible to defend a point of view e.g., that Europe belongs to Europeans, or that national borders are meant to be impossible for anyone to cross, or that it is necessary to transport shipwrecked people back to Africa, where they came from. (J.Ž., 2018)

On a more general basis, these are part of a wider problem:

Something is occurring in the old Europe that is worse than the old left /…/ ‘progressive-totalitarian ideology’ a mixture of irresponsibility and reordering. (F.K., 2021)

Because the opposition is preoccupied with criticism of SDS ‘they cannot even define fake news’. As a result:

If there is no universal truth, everything is fake news (I.Š., 2019b)

In this sub-frame we see a culmination of SDS counterknowledge claims, as they make the final provocation against its opponents—criticism towards SDS is framed as a more sinister attempt to transform the very meaning of truth, to suggest that there is no such thing as universal truth. Janša and SDS illuminate in the ‘other’ the very thing they are aiming to achieve; they construct and disseminate information according to their party ideology and ethos. In this way, their truth claims are inherently bound up with political aims while they simultaneously accuse the ‘other’ of the very same thing.

Discussion and Conclusion

It so happens that dedication to truth, often at the crux of the political and unalloyed reality, is not always a powerful unifying force. With this chapter we set out to investigate the interplay between populism and post-truth through the Slovenian case of Janez Janša and the SDS. In doing so, we investigated (post)-truth as a floating signifier which is used in various ways as a means of constructing political identities and conflicts which are part of a broader hegemonic struggle. Assessing Janša’s and SDS’s post-truth discourse was done with the intention of uncovering elements of its counterknowledge, acting as one of the populist tools working to achieve a system of alternative sources of knowledge. Approaching the issue of post-truth in such a way, presumes a move away from analysis of the validity of information put forward by these actors towards an assessment of the way the truth-claims are part of a hegemonic struggle.

In our analysis we discovered four prevailing frames of Janša and SDS’s counterknowledge. The first frame—‘fake media’—comprises references to media, both local and international and the exporting of fake news. SDS accuses the media of being untrustworthy and as having a vendetta against Janša and the whole party. References to international media further strengthen these claims, as they seek to ‘prove’ that media, here and everywhere, works to discredit opponents of mainstream ideas. To achieve this, media exports fake news, their output being selected as part of an agenda that is politically motivated and numb to opposing opinions. Establishing such a relation to media enables SDS to further their populist claims; the media is necessarily seen as part of ‘the elite’, which is illegitimately claiming authority over truth and knowledge. Similarly, the second frame—‘fake institutions’—is focused on references to quasi-independent institutions and experts. Closely connected to the previous frame, by strategically framing institutions as adhering to already established ‘fake media’, SDS pushes further claims of the total capture of truth by nefarious institutions and bodies.

The third frame—‘truth washing’—shows attempts at the creation of ‘echo chambers’ that Nguyen (2020) talks about, as SDS works to construct a particular epistemic community which is to be wary about the outsiders, who are not to be trusted. In drawing sharp boundaries of legitimate epistemic sources, SDS then further illustrates who the outsiders are. With such ‘minority washing’ arguments, SDS suggests that representations of groups such as refugees, ethnic minorities and women are a deliberate attempt to turn them into victims as part of a leftist agenda based on emotional appeal. The final frame deals with claims related to ‘dominant ideology and structures’, primarily the communist legacy, and so-called fake liberalism. Janša regards the previous regime as inherently totalitarian and argues that communist groupthink still permeates Slovenian society, while criticism of SDS is a Trojan horse for the distortion of public debate. The opposition is cast as fake liberal, its principal goal being to discredit Janša and SDS.

Going through these four frames we can confirm the cogency of Ylä-Anttila’s (2018) counterknowledge argument. Janša and SDS do not necessarily oppose science or expert knowledge, nor do they solely privilege folk knowledge. Rather, they advocate a particular kind of counter-expertise, which arises from their own epistemic community. Here their populist logic comes through the most. SDS uses populist logic to simplify the Slovenian political arena: positioning SDS and likeminded conservative actors against left-wing parties, communist sympathizers, and activists. The latter is seen as unjustly occupying the political and media mainstream and therefore hegemonizing epistemological authority as well. This is why SDS employs counterknowledge to challenge these authorities whilst simultaneously using truth claims for political mobilization. They try to mobilize people—all those who are being lied to, who are manipulated by fake-news and the emotional appeals of the left. Furthermore, we see that, contrary to presumptions of epistemological populism and science-related populism, SDS is not rejecting expert science, nor is it arguing that people ‘know better’ due to their proximity to everyday life. Rather, they are rejecting the expertise of ‘the elite’, which, according to them, is working to suppress objective systems of knowledge which SDS is supposedly advocating for.

This conclusion somewhat complicates the vision of populists as irrational, irresponsible actors who are ignoring the truth. Instead, we see that SDS is actively trying to portray itself as a trustworthy option, the defender of not only the nation, Slovenians, and conservative values, but also of truth and objectivity, of free speech and expression. SDS’s truth-claims are thus part of their hegemonic struggle used to intensify political antagonisms. In this sense, populism and the post-truth condition expose certain structural issues inherent in our political systems. What is revealed is not that there is no truth, but that it can be flawed and susceptible to attacks. Post-truth populists strategically exploit and consolidate this in order to strengthen their own power and legitimacy. By playing around with a hybrid strategy of political cognitive relativism, rather than a full-scale delegitimation of science and knowledge, SDS works to portray itself as the only reliable authority on truth, thereby constructing epistemic authority as another antagonistic frontier of their populist strategy. Taken together, insights from the Slovenian case help point to the importance of assessing how truth-claims are utilized by populist actors, beyond branding them as necessarily irrational or ignorant. Rather, we see that populists very carefully construct truth claims, inscribed in the dichotomous schema of antagonistic frontiers in which their struggle plays out. Post-truth populists should thus not be treated as truth-deniers, but rather as symptoms of a crisis and as actors who actively work to further fuel and exploit this crisis. When assessing their performance, we must offer a nuanced view of the structural conditions which enable such phenomena. Populist parties and governments operating in the context of weakened democracies and institutions, such as SDS, are an excellent example of this.