Whataboutism, and possibly propaganda. They are both horrible and should not exist. Moral superiority doesn’t matter if people are being systematically murdered.
When dealing with hypocrites, whataboutism is the correct and logically consistent response.
People who complain about whataboutism are 99% hypocrites whose hypocrisy has been pointed out. And they have no rational arguments to defend their view other than deflecting the topic.
Citations Needed podcast:
Whataboutism - The Media’s Favorite Rhetorical Shield Against Criticism of US PolicySince the beginning of what’s generally called ‘RussiaGate’ three years ago, pundits, media outlets, even comedians have all become insta-experts on supposed Russian propaganda techniques. The most cunning of these tricks, we are told, is that of “whataboutism” – a devious Soviet tactic of deflecting criticism by pointing out the accusers’ hypocrisy and inconsistencies. The tu quoque - or, “you, also” - fallacy, but with a unique Slavic flavor of nihilism, used by Trump and leftists alike in an effort to change the subject and focus on the faults of the United States rather than the crimes of Official State Enemies.
But what if “whataboutism” isn’t describing a propaganda technique, but in fact is one itself: a zombie phrase that’s seeped into everyday liberal discourse that – while perhaps useful in the abstract - has manifestly turned any appeal to moral consistency into a cunning Russian psyop. From its origins in the Cold War as a means of deflecting and apologizing for Jim Crow to its braindead contemporary usage as a way of not engaging any criticism of the United States as the supposed arbiter of human rights, the term “whataboutism” has become a term that - 100 percent of the time - is simply used to defend and legitimizing American empire’s moral narratives.
(Mass dislikes time!)
Yes, the US does evil shit in the Middle East. Killing brown-skinned practitioners of the other Abrahamic religion overseas is an American tradition.
That still doesn’t change the fact that China is persecuting Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province.
You can’t shit-talk one authoritarian state and cheer on another.
You can’t shit-talk one authoritarian state and cheer on another.
“Authoritarian state” is a bullshit category. Authoritarian states are just states insufficiently subservient to Washington. It’s no more or less coherent than “terrorist state,” which the US uses in the same way.
“Authoritarianism” is the contemporary word for “totalitarianism,” which is just an erudite-seming term for horseshoe theory, which is horseshit. Previously:
- ‘Horseshoe theory’ is nonsense – the far right and far left have little in common
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#Academic_studies_and_criticism
- Funny thing about Hannah Arendt’s construction of “totalitarianism”: She came from a bourgeois family and so was unsurprisingly anti-communist, and she was funded & promoted by the CIA.
Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism
One of the centerpieces of the cultural cold war was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was revealed in 1966 to be a CIA front. Hugh Wilford, who has researched the topic extensively, described the CCF as nothing short of one of the largest patrons of art and culture in the history of the world. Established in 1950, it promoted on the international scene the work of collaborationist academics such as Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt over and against their Marxian rivals, including the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
