The Great Epistemic Swindle
In my previous post I set the stage for The Great Epistemic Swindle. The key take-away from that post is that our current “post-modern” epistemic landscape is dominated by the (Critical Social Justice - CSJ) belief that the preceding “modern” knowledge system (debate, reason, logic, science, the machinery of academic and other publishing) needed to be challenged, delegitimized, discredited, overturned and replaced. The reason for this is that it was seen to be rigged to advantage its creators (European males) at the expense of everyone else, even though it wasn’t any more “true” than any other way of seeing the world. This view led to a politicized knowledge production landscape that privileges how things ought to be (and ought to be interpreted) instead of trying to understand what actually is. For anyone concerned with the politicization of the academy and the media, this is not new. The question is, how did it come to be?
There are two factors explaining this. The first is the importance of language and knowledge construction to the Critical Social Justice worldview. In particular, despite the fact that no “way of seeing the world” is better at representing reality than any other, knowledge construction is seen to be key to influencing society and societal outcomes. It is the belief in this that focused the minds of CSJ proponents. Antonio Gramsci is perhaps the first to have appreciated this and to have recognized what it meant for a successful Marxist revolution. While controlling the means of production was important, controlling the means of cultural reproduction was how to get there. The means of cultural reproduction include many different institutions, such as government, the law, the family and the church, but most importantly for the Swindle, the cultural means of knowledge construction: academia, and the media.
Now, it’s one thing to believe this, and another to successfully take control of the knowledge construction system. So how was it done? This is the second factor. It involved, ironically and cynically, hijacking the existing modern knowledge construction system. This was done because it was recognized that the modern knowledge construction system had something that the CSJ view didn’t - authority.
Despite an enmity towards, and a desire to overturn, the modern knowledge construction system, the Great Epistemic Swindle involved co-opting institutions that had epistemic authority. In general, people believed that the mission of universities and the media was to (attempt to) get to the bottom of what is, and not what ought to be. The Swindle involved using the epistemic authority of the modern knowledge system by maintaining the veneer of the system - journals with esoteric names, newspapers, editorial boards of experts, peer review, conferences, departments, etc. - while at the same time swapping in the CSJ knowledge landscape. This happened slowly and over time. However, the result is that now there are many articles, journals, newspapers, departments, academics and journalists adhering to the CSJ perspective, and this has changed the knowledge landscape. The output (articles) of the organs of the epistemic infrastructure can thereby be leveraged (cited) in the same way as developed and used in the modern knowledge system, but with the aim of supporting the new (post-modern) knowledge system. This system looks like the modern system, but it actually operates within the politicized post-modern epistemic landscape. It has been a classic bait and switch.
This phenomenon happened in the academy first. While the academy had always been skewed to the political left even after the Second World War, there has been an ever leftward tendency so that by the mid 2010s, the professoriate was overwhelmingly made up of people on the left, with humanities and social sciences departments being the most affected (Communications departments appear to be the most skewed to the left (108:1 Democrats to Republicans)). More relevant as an indicator of the CSJ perspective are statistics relating to professors considering themselves to be radicals, activists or Marxists (an incredible 43%). As more and more professors adopting this perspective were recruited, they became reviewers, editorial board members, started their own journals and came to dominate the knowledge construction system. Given the increase in influence of the post-modern epistemic system in the academy, it was only a matter of time until the people trained in this perspective brought it with them outside of the academy and into the media, especially if one considers the extreme political skew of Communications departments.
While I haven’t been in academia since the end of the Second World War, I have been for over a decade. Based on my experience there, and watching the advance of this new epistemic landscape, I believe this has been done deliberately. Moreover, I believe it has been done through the use of wokecraft, the collection of strategies and tactics used by the Woke to advance the CSJ perspective in academia, and in particular through the Grand Tactic: Woke Viral Infection. If you’re interested in wokecraft and what to do about it, I encourage you to get my recent book on the topic, Counter Wokecraft. In the next post, I’ll describe what can be done to counter the Great Epistemic Swindle.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.