Epistemic Relief: Far-Right Environmental Aesthetics and the Politics of Post-Truth

This paper examines far-right environmental visual communication through a political-philosophical lens, arguing that its affective power derives not from the transmission of false claims but from participation in a broader epistemic reorganisation characteristic of post-truth politics. Drawing on Nietzsche's concept of perspectivism, we contend that far-right environmental aesthetics enact a hollowed-out version of perspectival reasoning—one severed from genealogical accountability. Where Nietzschean perspectivism demands critical interrogation of the conditions under which claims to truth emerge, far-right visual culture offers perspectivism without reflexivity: the assertion that "we" possess a valid standpoint, unmarked by historical or political implication. This epistemic style aligns with neoliberal instrumentalism, in which truth is legitimated through performance rather than justification, and with actuarial modes of reasoning that privilege binary certainty over contested interpretation. Far-right environmental imagery, such as pastoral landscapes, threatened homelands, or racialised ecological boundaries, operates within this configuration by offering what we understand as a form of epistemic relief, where visual closure substitutes affective coherence for the difficult labour of collective judgement. The article situates this dynamic within broader transformations in democratic epistemology, arguing that the political danger of far-right environmental aesthetics lies less in its capacity to deceive than in its capacity to train audiences out of interpretive struggle. The analysis contributes to scholarship on post-truth, visual politics, and the far right by foregrounding the role of emotion and aesthetic experience in the erosion of contestatory democratic practices.