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This is endemic in eastern European politics. It is especially prevalent among parties oriented towards Russian speaking populace in the Baltics. I've never s
by sireat 5y ago
This is endemic in eastern European politics.
It is especially prevalent among parties oriented towards Russian speaking populace in the Baltics.
I've never seen it work, but maybe there is a bit of Ross Perot(not that Clinton/Bush looked like Perot) effect.
PS it is hilarious that when I made a comment I didn't realize this could be taken as a what-aboutism comment.
So on a meta level I should be more lenient when posters do similar things in other threads. Maybe not every poster is actively engaging in organized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism but there is an urge to draw parallels on some psychological level.
- smcl 5y agoI think you can usually ignore people who complain about "whataboutism" - on HN at least it usually boils down to someone trying to dismiss a legitimate comparison with "Hey you can't say that, I said it first!"
- oh_sigh 5y ago"you're ruining my point by showing my hypocrisy"
- smcl 5y agoPrecisely. Also I think I'm being downvoted by people misinterpreting my use of "usually" as "in every single case without exception". But anecdotally, nearly every time I've seen the whataboutism response it has been in that context I described - someone trying to dismiss a legitimate criticism by deploying what they think is a sort of cheat code.
- FpUser 5y agoExact reason I think ;) Or maybe they feel so righteous that they do not even notice their hypocrisy.
- jgilias 5y agoDo you have any sources? I'm from the Baltics and I've never ever heard of anything similar going on in any of the three countries.
- sireat 5y agoEvery election in Latvia if you check the Russian oriented ballots you will find some familiar last names in unexpected fringe parties. Unused ballots are good for bathroom reading :) When I say fringe these parties get less than 1% and are rarely in the news. So the tactic is not working. Here is just one example from 2010 elections. https://www.cvk.lv/cgi-bin/wdbcgiw/base/komisijas2010.CVKAND10.kandid2?nr1=2 https://www.cvk.lv/cgi-bin/wdbcgiw/base/komisijas2010.CVKAND... Obviously that guy is not the Russian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Galkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Galkin It would be an interesting analysis to see if notable names appear more often as candidates and do they draw more plus(FOR) signs than regular candidates.
- jgilias 5y agoIs there any indication that 'Maksims Galkins' has changed his name?
- sireat 5y agoUnlikely it is not as bad as St Peterburg but again it is still a misleading practice. These names are put in a middle of the list (meaning they have low priority for actual parliament seats). If you are an uneducated and undecided voter, you see someone popular and you see, wow this person is in this party, let's take a flyer on this party.
- ABoredBirb 5y agoThat's not the same thing at all. That is just someone with the same name as some celeb. The celeb is not running in the elections. What is discussed in the article are fake candidates with the same (changed) name (and appearance) as an actual candidate, in order to confuse voters and leech votes away from the actual candidate.