The word "whataboutism" is used to silence and insult opponents of U.S. imperialism. It should be embraced as a means of revealing what is too often kept hidden. Anyone who speaks out against imperialism, capitalism, or racism with concrete examples of the terrible harm they do, can expect to be charged with the dreaded term “whataboutism.” Like clockwork, the act of revealing American crimes will result in an accusation that is used to silence dissent.
  • Anarcho-BolshevikM
    111·
    3 years ago

    Citations Needed published a great episode about this a few years ago. There’s a sort of subconscious effort to characterize the phenomenon as somehow ‘Soviet’ or otherwise ‘un‐American’ when it’s really just a natural byproduct of noticing inconsistencies.

    Despite being mentioned so frequently today, I’ve been having an extremely difficult time actually finding particular examples of Soviets dismissing accusations of human rights abuses by simply changing the subject, either to lynchings in the U.S. or something else. Supposedly they pulled this maneuver almost all the time, and yet drudging through Google Books for examples (“are lynching” + Soviet) from 1917 to 1991 reveal no relevant results — no quotations from Soviets using this rhetorical maneuver or even somebody mentioning a Soviet doing it. The Soviets did indeed discuss the phenomenon, but so far I haven’t found an actual example of them mentioning it as a means of changing the subject, even though they supposedly did this very frequently.

  • loathsome dongeaterA
    7·
    3 years ago

    I feel liberals pin a tab with Wikipedia’s page for logical fallcies in their browsers and whenever a statement makes them uncomfortable, they just look for a fallacy that coupd vaguely fit the situation and use that to tautologically discard all arguments.

    Haven’t read this yet bit bookmarking for later.

    • Magos_Galactose
      1·
      3 years ago

      If that’s the case, they certainly didn’t notice the one called “fallacy fallacy”.

  • averagetankie
    2·
    3 years ago

    whataboutism is a kind of denial to actually hear. whatabouters are deaf and blind. In NYT articles’ comments’ section, where people mostly from Africa, India and other more free countries question openly, simply and reasonably the narrative, that is talk with facts and not theories, whatabouters almost always end up bullying in some way, most often racially. Constant propaganda, misinformation, nebulus sources and phanaticism, thats what is needed to create a nazi. If anyone ever wondered how was it possible for people to fall for - or at least not react to - such atrocities. It seems that there’s a certain point where the individual is just not able to handdle the truth. whataboutism comes at hand first. Though the real nazi - believers are not whatabouters. Real nazi - believers end up - guess where - against communism. Those guys seem like they were “created” to be in nature anti - communists, something like the orcs. It almost seems as if their racism is only an excuse, thats not the main point. it almost freaks me out to think that Nazis were actually “created” through certain propaganda, and for a cause. : //