3 ms·
>While you aren't wrong that the Saudi Arabian government tortures prisoners, you're phrasing implies that they are unique when in fact most authoritarian gover
by spats1990 7y ago
>While you aren't wrong that the Saudi Arabian government tortures prisoners, you're phrasing implies that they are unique when in fact most authoritarian governments around the world torture people in their prisons.
Could you expand a bit on the significance of this? This seems like the kind of response that would be met with scorn if Saudi Arabia were substituted for certain other authoritarian governments in this sentence.
I've been grappling with it a bit myself, lately. When we are thinking about the human rights violations of a particular government or organization, is it important to consider them in context (similar to your statement, if I'm reading it correctly--i.e. such violations are not unique)? But then such attempts to place things in context are often met with accusations of whataboutism (which is sometimes the case in that "provision of context" is actually "attempt to deflect the conversation"). In other cases I'm not so sure.
- iudqnolq 7y agoI didn't at all intend to justify or excuse anything the Saudi Arabian government has done. Not uniquely despicable isn't a good look. I did worry that people not familiar with the issues who read the comment I replied to would come away with the impression that for a totalitarian country to torture is unusual. It's completely valid to say "lots of countries torture, and let's focus on Saudi Arabia because they get a lot of US support so we as US citizens have more leverage over them than most countries". It's also completely valid to say "let's focus on Saudia Arabia because they're on the worse end and we need to start somewhere". I wouldn't have left my comment there was a large discussion about Saudi abuses; I thought the comment was useful because it was in reply to a single offhand looking comment.