"Whataboutism" or "whataboutery" (as in, "but what about X?") refers to the propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation. It is an informal fallacy that the accused party uses to avoid accountability—whether attempting to distract by shifting the conversation's focus away from their behaviour or attempting to justify themselves by pointing to the similar behaviour (which may be true or false, but irrelevant) of their opponent or another party who is not the current subject of discussion.
From a logical and argumentative point of view, whataboutism is a variant of the "tu quoque" pattern, a subtype of the ad hominem style of argument.
The intent is often to distract from the topic's content (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the critic's legitimacy, integrity, and fairness, which can discredit the criticism whether or not it is justified. Common accusations include double standards and hypocrisy, but it can also be used to relativize criticism of one's own viewpoints or behaviors (A: "Long-term unemployment often means poverty in Germany." B: "And what about the starving in Africa and Asia?").Sophie Elmenthaler et al: A-Z: Whataboutism - Criticize me, I'll just criticize you back. In: der Freitag. March 11, 2018, retrieved October 7, 2021 (list of examples, section Africa). Related manipulation and propaganda techniques that involve rhetorical evasion of the topic include changing topic and false balance (also called "bothsidesism").
Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair, and behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be appropriate in a given geopolitical neighbourhood. Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism. Both whataboutism and the accusation of it are forms of strategic framing and have a framing effect., p. 83
Etymology The term whataboutism is a compound of what and about, is synonymous with whataboutery, and means to twist criticism back on the initial critic.
Origins According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer, the term originated in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Zimmer cites a 1974 letter by history teacher Sean O'Conaill which was published in The Irish Times where he complained about "the Whatabouts", people who defended the IRA by pointing out supposed wrongdoings of their enemy:
Three days later, an opinion column by John Healy in the same paper entitled "Enter the cultural British Army" picked up the theme by using the term whataboutery: "As a correspondent noted in a recent letter to this paper, we are very big on Whatabout Morality, matching one historic injustice with another justified injustice. We have a bellyfull [sic] of Whataboutery in these killing days and the one clear fact to emerge is that people, Orange and Green, are dying as a result of it." Zimmer says the term gained wide currency in commentary about the conflict between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland. Zimmer also notes that the variant whataboutism was used in the same context in a 1993 book by Tony Parker.
In 1978, Australian journalist Michael Barnard wrote a column in The Age applying the term whataboutism to the Soviet Union's tactics of deflecting any criticism of its human rights abuses. Merriam-Webster details that "the association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of [Joseph] Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty."
Zimmer credits British journalist Edward Lucas for beginning regular use of the word whataboutism in the modern era following its appearance in a blog post on 29 October 2007, reporting as part of a diary about Russia which was re-printed in the 2 November issue of The Economist. On 31 January 2008 The Economist printed another article by Lucas titled "Whataboutism". Ivan Tsvetkov, associate professor of International Relations in St Petersburg also credits Lucas for modern uses of the term.
Analysis
Psychological motivations The philosopher Merold Westphal said that only people who know themselves to be guilty of something "can find comfort in finding others to be just as bad or worse." Whataboutery, as practiced by both parties in The Troubles in Northern Ireland to highlight what the other side had done to them, was "one of the commonest forms of evasion of personal moral responsibility," according to Bishop (later Cardinal) Cahal Daly. After a political shooting at a baseball game in 2017, journalist Chuck Todd criticized the tenor of political debate, commenting, "What-about-ism is among the worst instincts of partisans on both sides."
Intentionally discrediting oneself Whataboutism usually points the finger at a rival's offenses to discredit them, but, in a reversal of this usual direction, it can also be used to discredit oneself while one refuses to critique an ally. During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, when The New York Times asked candidate Donald Trump about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's treatment of journalists, teachers, and dissidents, Trump replied with a criticism of U.S. history on civil liberties. Writing for The Diplomat, Catherine Putz pointed out: "The core problem is that this rhetorical device precludes discussion of issues (e.g. civil rights) by one country (e.g. the United States) if that state lacks a perfect record." Masha Gessen wrote for The New York Times that usage of the tactic by Trump was shocking to Americans, commenting, "No American politician in living memory has advanced the idea that the entire world, including the United States, was rotten to the core."
Concerns about effects Joe Austin was critical of the practice of whataboutism in Northern Ireland in a 1994 piece, The Obdurate and the Obstinate, writing: "And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' ... if you got into it you were defending the indefensible." In 2017, The New Yorker described the tactic as "a strategy of false moral equivalences", and Clarence Page called the technique "a form of logical jiu-jitsu". Writing for National Review, commentator Ben Shapiro criticized the practice, whether it was used by those espousing right-wing or left-wing politics; Shapiro concluded: "It's all dumb. And it's making us all dumber." Michael J. Koplow of Israel Policy Forum wrote that the usage of whataboutism had become a crisis; concluding that the tactic did not yield any benefits, Koplow charged that "whataboutism from either the right or the left only leads to a black hole of angry recriminations from which nothing will escape".
Defense
Contextualization Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair. In international relations, behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be quite good for a given geopolitical neighborhood and deserves to be recognized as such.
Distorted self-perception Christian Christensen, Professor of Journalism in Stockholm, argues that the accusation of whataboutism is itself a form of the tu quoque fallacy, as it dismisses criticisms of one's own behavior to focus instead on the actions of another, thus creating a double standard. Those who use whataboutism are not necessarily engaging in an empty or cynical deflection of responsibility: whataboutism can be a useful tool to expose contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy. For example, one's opponent's action appears as forbidden torture, one's own actions as "enhanced interrogation methods", the other's violence as aggression, one's own merely as a reaction. Christensen even sees utility in the use of the argument: "The so-called 'whataboutists' question what has not been questioned before and bring contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy to light. This is not naïve justification or rationalization [...], it is a challenge to think critically about the (sometimes painful) truth of our position in the world."
Lack of sincerity In his analysis of Whataboutism, logic professor Axel Barceló of the UNAM concludes that the counteraccusation often expresses a justified suspicion that the criticism does not correspond to the critic's real position and reasons.
Abe Greenwald pointed out that even the first accusation leading to the counteraccusation is an arbitrary setting, which can be just as one-sided and biased, or even more one-sided than the counter-question "what about?" Thus, whataboutism could also be enlightening and put the first accusation in perspective.
Idealization In her analysis of whataboutism in the 2016 United States presidential election, Catherine Putz notes in 2016 in The Diplomat Magazine that the core problem is that this rhetorical device precludes discussion of a country's contentious issues (e.g., civil rights on the part of the United States) if that country is not perfect in that area. It requires, by default, that a country be allowed to make a case to other countries only for those ideals in which it had achieved the highest level of perfection. The problem with ideals, she said, is that we rarely achieve them as human beings. But the ideals remain important, she said, and the United States should continue to advocate for them: "It is the message that is important, not the ambassador."
Protective mechanism Gina Schad sees the characterization of counterarguments as "whataboutism" as a lack of communicative competence, insofar as discussions are cut off by this accusation. The accusation of others of whataboutism is also used as an ideological protective mechanism that leads to "closures and echo chambers". The reference to "whataboutism" is also perceived as a "discussion stopper" "to secure a certain hegemony of discourse and interpretation."Marion Eckertz-Höfer, Margarete Schuler-Harms: Gleichberechtigung und Demokratie, Gleichberechtigung in der Demokratie: (Rechts-)Wissenschaftliche Annäherungen. Nomos, 2019,
Deflection A number of commentators, among them Forbes columnist Mark Adomanis, have criticized the usage of accusations of whataboutism by American news outlets, arguing that accusations of whataboutism have been used to simply deflect criticisms of human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States or its allies. Vincent Bevins and Alex Lo argue that the usage of the term almost exclusively by American outlets is a double standard, and that moral accusations made by powerful countries are merely a pretext to punish their geopolitical rivals in the face of their own wrongdoing.
Left-wing academics Kristen Ghodsee and Scott Sehon argue that mentioning the possible existence of victims of capitalism in popular discourse is often dismissed as "whataboutism", which they describe as "a term implying that only atrocities perpetrated by communists merit attention." They also argue that such accusations of "whataboutism" are invalid as the same arguments used against communism can also be used against capitalism.