🧠 Reconceptualize cognitive dissonance as an epistemic event, exploring its impact on freedom, anxiety, and conformity through a philosophical lens.

This paper reconceptualises Nazi camp guards as epistemic subjects shaped by systemic betrayal, integrating classical psychology with Kahl’s Epistemic Clientelism Theory and fiduciary–epistemic duties. It redefines atrocity as epistemic failure and authority as fiduciary trusteeship, proposing safeguards for pluralism and atrocity prevention.

Analysis of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests through Epistemic Clientelism Theory, showing how scaffold collapse produced epistemic capture and democratic lessons.

This paper reinterprets cognitive dissonance as structural to epistemic life. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and fiduciary law, it shows how collapse yields illusory freedom, while fiduciary scaffolds enable bounded freedom, epistemic resilience, and institutional pluralism.