Leader equivocation manufactures an epistemic divide over what counts as knowledge.

Evidence

Without official equivocation, conspiracism could not spread from the periphery to the mainstream. Mainstream media are more likely to report on these claims when they come from a member of Congress, a governor, or the chairperson of the Republican Party. Silence on the part of leaders contributes to the confusion of citizens, who can think that when elected officials do not rebut birtherism, there must be “something there.” Equivocation gives the birther claim an aura of respectability as, at a minimum, a subject that warrants discussion. And it maddens and confounds officials and citizens who accept official evidence of Obama’s birthplace, who recognize birtherism as an attempt to delegitimize the first African American president, and who understand that the polarized partisan divide is now epistemic as well as political. Conspiracism creates a schism over what it means to know something. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 240

Categorization

• XREF: The idea of an epistemic schism over what it means to know echoes post-truth literature and the sociological literature on recognition gaps between elites and publics. — connects to: Some knowledge forms are intrinsically resistant to being wielded as power
• DEEPTHINKING: The final move—that conspiracism creates a schism over the very meaning of knowing—is a dense, paradigm-level claim about how political polarization becomes epistemological, worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Some knowledge forms are intrinsically resistant to being wielded as power #complicates (0.72)