By all means, let's talk about epistemic injustice
I'll start: mainstream gaslighting of people who are vaccine injured is the quintessential example of epistemic injustice.
The wokesters have a new term that they want everyone to learn: epistemic injustice.
“Epistemology” asks the question, “how do we know something to be true?” (a surprisingly difficult question to answer). “Epistemic injustice” is just the idea that in society, some people/institutions are believed and trusted more readily than others, regardless of the quality of the evidence. For example, a young black man on trial may give honest testimony in a courtroom and yet the police officer’s word is often accepted by the jury even though some of the evidence was tainted. That’s how we get wrongful convictions that are overturned decades later if at all.
Okay fair enough. Epistemic injustice is a thing, it’s everywhere, and it’s a problem as old as time. If you’ve ever felt devalued or not listened to because of your age, sex, gender, race, class, education, profession, nationality, ethnicity, disability, etc. you’ve experienced epistemic injustice.
But then academics compete to make contributions to a trendy concept and a whole new woke language develops around the idea. In 2017, Routledge published a Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. Now the field includes the study of epistemic oppression, epistemicide, epistemic exploitation, epistemic violence, and so much more. In 2019 Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni coined the term “cognitive empire” which is basically Gramsci’s concept of hegemony for a new woke postmodern era.
I happen to like many of these ideas. People are discounted and silenced all the time for no good reason and it helps to have terms to describe that reality.
But like everything the left does these days this concept is used to bludgeon any ideas or people that the left does not want to have to deal with. My sense is that the left likes these ideas because they see Republicans as inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. and so “epistemic injustice” gives left academics a fancy way of saying Republicans are biased and cannot be trusted (because in this view, Republicans are always committing epistemic injustice). Ironically, paradoxically, and hypocritically, such discounting of Republicans as group is itself a form of epistemic injustice that is NOT studied by the scholars in this emerging new field.
Which brings me to my main point:
The gaslighting, discounting, discrediting, outright bigotry, and hate that mainstream society directs toward people who are vaccine injured is the quintessential example of epistemic injustice. The vaccine injured have first-hand knowledge of exactly what happened to them. Yet this is not acknowledged by scholars who study epistemic injustice. Indeed every mainstream publication in the U.S. including the NY Times, the Atlantic, and Washington Post, and every public health agency including the FDA, CDC, and NIH, treat people who are vaccine injured like dirt. Nearly all of the academic, scientific, and medical establishment engages in epistemic injustice and epistemic violence against the vaccine injured every single day.
The blacklisting, firings, suspensions of medical licenses, and refusal to give grants to any scholar who questions the Pharma narrative is another glaring example of epistemic injustice. The fact is, today, no matter how well-credentialed the scholar or how well-researched the evidence, any scholar who challenges the “Safe & Effective(TM)” narrative is potentially risking economic ruin by telling the truth.
Some of the most egregious perpetrators of epistemic injustice in our society include Rochelle Walensky, Tony Fauci, Robert Califf, Francis Collins, Peter Marks, Sara Oliver, Ashish Jha, Tom Shimabukuro, John Su, Bill Gates, Anderson Cooper, Chelsea Clinton, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Epistemic injustice (silencing, discounting, ignoring) is the tool they use to cover up their crimes against humanity.
So BY ALL MEANS let’s talk about epistemic injustice. We live in a society awash in epistemic injustice against the vaccine injured, the unvaccinated, and critical thinkers. The rich and powerful always try to silence those who threaten their standing. If scholars of epistemic injustice want to be taken seriously they must highlight these harms wherever they occur — even when committed by their own tribe. Stopping epistemic injustice starts with listening to the stories of the vaccine injured, hearing their cries, and standing with the oppressed against the oppressors in the pharmaceutical industry.
Hat tip to El Gato Malo for sparking my thinking on this matter today.
Blessings to the warriors. 🙌
Prayers for everyone fighting against the epistemic injustice of a society that covers up widespread vaccine injury. 🙏
In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.
As always, I welcome any corrections.
People should read your thesis. I'm only a 1/3 of the way through it and jumped ahead the vaccine section but its as pointed as RFK Jr's book and by focusing on the blatant conflicts of interest, and giving a proper framing to the undebatable lay of the land, I don't see how the truth of it all can be denied. There is a lot wrong with our institutions, so wrong it has been normalized. Your thesis removes the lens of normalization. Now I just have to figure out what I can do about the dead Santa Clause that is the vaccine mythology I have in my head. Thanks .... I think.... https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/20198/Rogers_T_thesis.pdf
Referring it back to where it belongs: these are all symptoms of a disease deep down.
With "social media" came the disruption of social relations - that we know straight from the source ("we knew it, and we did it anyway").
With the major social media converting to "onespeak media" came the disruption in the flow of information and feedback from the best possible system of gathering valuable grassroots inputs (if anyone wanted to really build forward better).
With emoticons came the destruction of interpersonal intuition.
With "social distance" came the elevation of false fear to destroy natural social coexistence.
With masking came the demolition of non-verbal emphasis and interplay across the whole population. For those who cannot speak or hear, it was the destruction of the heart of their life.
This process, targeting legitimate communication based on true messaging, is gaining momentum. We are heading to the land where nothing is what it seems.
It is a massive war on human communication.
Destroying communication has always been the first stage of war, now it is an autonomous 24/7 operation.
Our children are learning these ways. You may be sure that they will happily sink into it, no liability, easy life, freedom of expressing teen rejections of anything that is the foundation of the human tribal life - do you really believe that they will be patient enough to let you live until the time when THEY have to pay you old age pension? Or care about your health?