Highlighting conceptual problems in standard political scientific analyses of the ascendance of new turn populism (NTP) in mature liberal democratic politics over the past decade, this contribution interrogates the limits of our attempt to come to terms with a style of politics that challenges core knowledge-building assumptions. Distinguishing it from ideology-based political styles, new turn populism seems unconcerned with the role of truth, evidence-invoking deliberation and reason in political talk to an excessive degree, typically too radical for scholars to grasp its far-reaching ramifications. Having moved from the fringe to the mainstream, Western NTP-political leaders and movements display entirely new levels of contempt for assessable political talk. NTP’s post-epistemic style is, hence, shifting the terms of ideological discourse in ways difficult to explain using normal political scientific methods and conceptual frameworks. It is suggested that NTP does not predominantly constitute a novel ideological package, but is characterised by departure from what is normally considered ‘ideological’ politics in the first place. Traditional methods and analytical interpretations are therefore inherently incapable of strongly assessing the thrust and significance of post-epistemic NTP trends. On this note, this contribution develops conceptual distinctions that clarify and make legible the epistemically anomalous nature of the NTP strand of contemporary politics.