A sustainable myth: A neo-Gramscian perspective on the populist and post-truth tendencies of the European green growth discourse

Abstract

In the search for environmentally sustainable economic paradigms, the green growth approach has been developed by the EU and economic networks, as part of a wider sustainability discourse. While the EU repeatedly promotes sustainable development in the context of its greened hegemonic economic discourse, its member states’ frustrations regarding the EU’s integrative policies have been a breeding ground for counter-hegemonic populism. Such anti-EU and typically right-wing populism promotes national and conventional modes of energy production that is emancipated from foreign providers, science, and EU legislation; and it reveals post-truth tendencies in the sense that it relativizes conventional knowledge as well causation and correlation. In this paper, we seek to uncover the populist and post-truth tendencies within the hegemonic green growth discourse itself. In our paper, we seek to unmask the myth of sustainable energy transformation of the green growth discourse, in terms of a hegemon’s engagement – EU and associated economic networks – with post-truth: we find that post-truth tendencies are not only manifested by counter-hegemonic anti-EU and right-wing populism but is also expressed within the environmental populist expressions of the hegemonic green growth discourse itself.

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