What about whataboutism?

Censorship is more sly than you think, and logic has itself become an authoritarian tool to stamp out dissenting thought

The mot de jour for something that is comically bad tends to be ‘dumpster fire’, which is fantastic because just as the rising tide lifts all boats, the wafting stench of burning trash offends all noses. You most often hear it on the internet where everybody is basking in their personal aroma, where everybody claims freedom of speech while simultaneously censoring it. Discussion on the internet is, by and large, a massive flaming dumpster fire.

My favourite example is whataboutism. Whataboutism was conceived in the USSR as a means to deflect criticism of atrocities by turning the attention to similar atrocities. What makes the technique so devious is that it makes no attempt to claim the atrocity itself is actually justifiable, it makes no effort to make excuses, it just exchanges one party’s guilt for another and directs the anger towards that instead. Imagine accusing Russia of interference in American elections and then being told “what about America’s interference in everybody else’s elections?” What it says is that interfering in foreign countries’ affairs is fine… the problem is that you got singled out.

John Oliver did a short piece on this in one of his many criticisms of Donald Trump.

John Oliver is not entirely correct. You absolutely must include all examples in the debate in order for the debate to be productive, otherwise it is a finger pointing exercise and you are not discussing the real problem, you’re just getting angry at the culprit.

And that’s what the problem is. This argument only holds water for as long as one assumption holds true: every incident exists in a vacuum and it can only be spoken of in isolation; you can only talk about one country or one person at a time, and not the behaviour they have in common. Every similar occasion is similar but not comparable, and there is no acknowledgment that they may have been influenced by past behaviours.

This is not whataboutism, this is the authoritarian moderation of a discussion to avoid difficult topics. In order to know the difference we need to see what whataboutism really is first.

Whataboutism is a deflection, literally ignoring the point made by using some variation of the words ‘what about’. It makes no effort to address what was spoken, it exists only to immediately refute those words by either revealing their hypocrisy or pointing to an even more egregious case elsewhere. It is very literally a way of passing the buck and absolving yourself of guilt.

Whatabout-whataboutism is the same kind of deflection used by those who are made the new example. When someone says, “what about US foreign policy?” and someone else yells “whataboutism!!!” it is not engaging in the discussion, it is actively supporting whataboutism in and of itself by deflecting the newly apportioned blame onto the propaganda. There is no admission of any culpability despite the obvious comparison.

You might think this is fine, since whataboutism itself was initially propaganda, but that’s not really true. The psychology of whataboutism is not propaganda but manipulation, something we are very happy to accept in our lives when it suits us. Learning is manipulation, education is manipulation, advertising is manipulation. Good and bad doesn’t work in that realm.

The purpose of decrying a logical fallacy isn’t to highlight the fallacy though, it’s to suppress the dissenting voice, or the voice of reason in many cases. It is the act of using pseudo-intelligence to shut down a discussion. It’s no different to yelling ‘AD HOMINEM’ when someone makes a point about vaccination and calls someone stupid for not ‘believing’ in the science, zoning in on the word ‘stupid’ and ignoring the two full minutes of thoughtful consideration on the real topic. It’s not a contribution, it’s another angry ignorant voice looking for an easy way out of the conversation.

I say this because of the previous assumption: every incident exists in a vacuum and it can only be spoken of in isolation. These arguments are successful because it’s believed that a separation of concerns can be applied to atrocious events, that one genocide exists independently of another, one electoral manipulation exists independently of another, and so on. It cements the argument that the globe is isolated and exceptional, and that everyone has a good personal reason to claim a monopoly on good-atrocity while everybody else is doing bad-atrocity.

I use the word atrocity deliberately because the way the powers in this world interact and what they do to justify those actions, those self-same actions they decry of other nations, is absolutely fucking atrocious. There is tremendous suffering involved in, say, the US or UK doing what they do in the name of ‘national security’ or protecting themselves from enemies of their own creation, when you look at the consequences of it across the world.

I just said that and whataboutism would dictate that you say “but what about Russia! what about China! what about France! what about the Saudi Princes!” and to that I would say, yeah, we’re all as bad as each other, there are no saints here. Why are we so quick to let ourselves off the hook while condemning others for doing the same thing in the same breath? What makes us more special than they are?

I imagine that question applies to any condition the human race currently suffers. Racism: what makes my skin colour more special? Sexism: what makes my gender more special? Ageism: what makes my youth more special? Religion: what makes my atheism more special? Religious intolerance: what makes my god more special? Substitute special for superior if you prefer.

The truth is that those relying on these logical devices got out-logic’d before they even knew it. None of the events of the world exist in such a separate state that you can only talk about them one at a time. It makes no sense to single out behaviour when it is a product of the influences in a larger system.

So instead of trying to blame an individual country or culture for all your woes while saying your own culpability in it is irrelevant, what if we talked about how fucking normal all of this is and why this kind of environment has to be sustained? And what if the countries so condemning of this behaviour got of their moral fucking high horses and started leading by a better example?

Superiority. We all think we’re better than others.