“Sir, you were pulled over because you were speeding”
“But what about the other cars that were going even faster than me?”
Whataboutism, as the name suggests, is the practice of changing topics or redirecting criticisms with phrases like “what about [something else]”. Though in the example above it’s unlikely that the traffic ticket was avoided, whataboutism has been extremely effective in political and even journalism settings.
The rise of whataboutism traces all the way back to the Cold War. It was used as a propaganda method by the Russian media. For example, when asked about censorship and human rights, they would often use the catchphrase, “А у вас негров линчуют” (“And you are hanging blacks”) to criticize racial discrimination and many flaws in the US and European countries.
Other than fruitless arguments with the police, whataboutism has soon lost its fame after the Cold War; however, whataboutism has resurfaced once again. Only this time it is used by the US government, specifically Donald Trump.
Soon after the violence broke out in Charlesville, when asked if the statue should be taken down, he said “George Washington was a slave owner. Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?” And later on, “What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at the, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Do they have any semblance of guilt?”
It’s not difficult to see that it’s easy for Trump to pull off a “what about” and rapidly changing the topic while criticizing the other side at the same time. Recently, this strategy has also been adopted by some Congress members and even television programs. Soon after the allegation of Roy Moore’s misconducts surfaces, Fox and Friends did a lengthy eight-minute segment on a new story about Hillary Clinton, double the time they spent on Moore.
Regardless of whether previous US presidents were slave owners and whether Clinton broke the laws in the past, the fact that neo-nazis should be condemned and Moore could be a child molester should not be overlooked. The only thing throwing mud in the water only hides the facts temporarily. It’s important to learn how to identify whataboutism and steer the debate back to its original course.
