Aesthetic Dissensus as Public Pedagogy: Exploring Contemporary Art that Counters Whiteness and Far‐Right Ideologies in Mainstream Digital Spaces

Far‐right politics has re‐emerged as a significant force in mainstream Western liberal democracies, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, where it has been linked to rising levels of racial discrimination and violence that threaten to erode the fragile ideals of democratic peace within these contexts. In a 'post‐truth' era, digital aesthetics that blur the line between extremist propaganda and innocuous entertainment are being used to mainstream far‐right ideologies, including Whiteness and White racial supremacy, through sites of public pedagogy, particularly social media platforms, where they are normalised as ‘commonsense’. In response, progressive scholars have called for the mainstreaming of peaceful civic dissent in Western liberal democracies to counter the far‐right. Yet this call unfolds in a context in which democratic governments frame peaceful civic dissent—such as protests against racialised inequalities—as threats to democratic peace, rather than acts that defend democracy. As physical dissent faces heightened surveillance, digital platforms offer alternative, albeit contested, spaces for political action. However, there is a dearth of research on how digital platforms are being used to mobilise dissent against pernicious racial ideologies of Whiteness that have become normalised as ‘commonsense’ in Western liberal democracies, including those that operate through far‐right digital aesthetics. This paper addresses this gap by analysing how innovative contemporary art practices employ digitally mediated forms of aesthetic dissensus to stage and mobilise dissent against such ‘commonsense’ racial ideologies of Whiteness within and through mainstream social media platforms. I argue that such dissent does not threaten democratic ideals, such as peace, but instead sustains them through emancipatory public pedagogies that challenge racially inequitable norms and progressively reconfigure what counts as ‘commonsense’ within democratic life.