13 ms·

Holly molly, the whatsaboutism in these comments.

propagandist 4y ago
If a had a penny every time ... There needs to be a better response to pointing out hypocrisy. If you care about China's abuses but not ours and our allies, you do not have the moral high ground, and morality is a political tool to you.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- puszczyk 4y ago
  Have you tired to raise specific US abuses here on HN? What was the response?
  - vachina 4y ago
    You get your account and IP address shadowbanned.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      Is that so? I'm pretty vocal about the atrocities my country perpetrated and continues to perpetrate, and I've yet to be shadowbanned.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zthrowaway 4y ago
- naoqj 4y ago
  I think it’s normal to ask questions: if nothing has ever happened to the US for similar abuses, why should something happen to any other countries?
  - dave_sullivan 4y ago
    Then raise the specific issues about similar abuses. China's actions are a specific issue and light should be shined on them so the truth can be known.
  - wickedsickeune 4y ago
    I wonder why you would think that it's normal. If something is unjust it should be prosecuted, regardless of the past. There will always be criminals who get away with crimes, this doesn't mean that we should give up.
    - naoqj 4y ago
      Might is right.
    - cute_boi 4y ago
      But, if one criminal always gets away, I think many criminals will use that as a justification to commit atrocities. That's why fair assessment is required. And, I personally think US & UK have no rights to teach other about humanity. They are currently pointing atrocities in China to forward their political agenda, not for humanitarian cause. Countries like Sweden & Switzerland are in better position to lecture other other countries regarding peace & harmony.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      It's perfectly reasonable. If only some people are allowed to commit crimes, you're not punishing crimes, you're just punishing an underclass. Justice must be blind, or it's just tribalism.
  - finiteseries 4y ago
    The US isn’t comparable to other countries given its position in the world, and every single other country’s relative weakness in it.
- VictorPath 4y ago
  The CIA shills come out of the woodwork for these ones.
ziml77 4y ago
[flagged]
ATsch 4y ago
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  > US' own actions show that their supposed concern about the Xinjiang prisoners is wholly disingenuous point scoring. How do you feel about Xinjiang?
  - lenkite 4y ago
    Terrible. But I felt terrible about Guantanamo Bay too. Still open by the way.
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
      Do you think the camps in Xinjiang are as bad, or worse than Guantanamo? I think they are worse because: 1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen. 2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down. I think Guantanamo is good example of why the US's interest in Xinjiang is not disingenuous. We felt the same about Guantanamo as we do about Xinjiang: it's bad.
      - lenkite 4y ago
        > 1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen. Ditto in Guantanamo. I suggest doing a bit more research. > 2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down. Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media. Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please.
        BobbyJo 4y ago
        > Ditto in Guantanamo. I suggest doing a bit more research. There are far more than 1000 Islamists in the US. Not sure where you're pulling that statement from. > Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media. And I can freely read all about it. It was picked up by every major news organization on American soil. >Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please. Is it hypocritical to point out bad comparisons? I think Gitmo was bad. I think Xinjiang is worse given it's larger scale. I'd like both to stop, along with a billion other things, but here we are, on a thread about Xinjiang.
lenkite 4y ago
When "Do As I Say and Not As I Do" is the primary principle of US foreign policy, then Whataboutism is the utterly correct response.
throwaway040922 4y ago
[flagged]
- earthbee 4y ago
  We should talk about the many abuses and injustices committed by the US, but why should every thread criticising Russia or China also be a thread criticising the US? If someone is genuinely concerned about the abuses of the US government then shouldn't they be making their own threads and posts without prompting, instead of just tacking them on to every thread about Russia or China?
  - md_ 4y ago
    Agreed, but perhaps, even more constructively: "Great, you agree we need more of an ability to shine a light on--and hold people to account for--human rights abuses worldwide." The US has been deeply hypocritical by opposing the ICC, for example. But the policy fixes that we need for what's happening in Xinjiang--public accountability, international institutions with teeth--are the same ones we needed for what happened (and is still happening), at a fraction of the scale of Xinjiang, in Guantanamo. "Whataboutism" only works because the whatabouters assume their opponents will reflexively defend the US (or whomever). The implication is, strangely, not "The US has done this too, so we need strong institutions to hold the powerful to account" but, rather, "The US has done this too, so whatareyougonnado?"
  - throwaway040922 4y ago
    This story is specifically about a man that members of the U.S. government were lobbying to come and testify at the ICC ("...after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers"). The ICC that the U.S. is not only not a member of, but specifically has a law against anyone assisting the ICC in cases against members of the American government[1]. I don't see why the motivations of the groups involved shouldn't be discussed. Likewise, if someone suspects someone of bias, I don't think it's unimportant to ask them if they hold consistent positions. If a Trump supporter is talking about how Biden should be impeached for something Trump did, I don't think it's "whatboutism" to ask if they would hold the same standard to Trump (or vice versa). There's a big difference between being concerned about something because of an underlying moral principal, and being concerned about something because of a specific bias against one of the groups involved. This used to be considered an important distinction, but now people act as if we shouldn't even talk about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
pfortuny 4y ago
I did not believe you when I first read your comment and then I scrolled down… Do people realize that the British Empire was the thing that most opposed Hitler? Seems like people know no history…
sva_ 4y ago
These sort of threads always turn into a shitflinging contest
cabirum 4y ago
"Whataboutism" is not a valid refutation in most contexts. It's more of a chant, a mantra, a trigger word you are conditioned to bring up when some kind of obvious hypocrisy or double standard is being pointed out that you cannot otherwise refute. [edit] Also, "whataboutism" the word, sounds like from 2ndgrader vocabulary
- danielheath 4y ago
  It's not a refutation. You aren't replying to an attempt to refute something. You're replying to an expression of shock at the behavior on display (specifically, people claiming - in a thread about Chinese torture camps - that we should not talk about them, because we weren't talking about American torture camps, so it would be hypocritical to talk about the Chinese ones). I'm generally in agreement that this isn't great behavior. Complaining that a word sounds childish while displaying your ignorance of its meaning is not the slam dunk you think it is.
  - adventured 4y ago
    The insanity of an emotionally out of control mob of people pretending it's not a radically greater moral crime to torture millions of innocent people, than it is to torture a thousand people. It's the scale difference between the US blowing up a wedding party by accident as a moral crime and Russia raping and murdering their way through Bucha or Mariupol. The emotionalist mob would proclaim they're the same thing.
    - cabirum 4y ago
      As if the wedding party incident was a single, isolated case. True, the scale of destruction in Iraq, Afganistan and dozen other countries is nothing like Ukraine military shelled and shot their own civilians then staged a photo-op.
      - adventured 4y ago
        > True, the scale of destruction in Iraq, Afganistan and dozen other countries is nothing like Ukraine military shelled and shot their own civilians then staged a photo-op. Now we know what you are. I reference the on-going vast war crimes of Russia in Ukraine, and you talk about it being a self-inflicted, pretend photo-op. The scale of destruction in Afghanistan? This is how I know you're flailing. The US spent an epic amount of money attempting to build in Afghanistan. The US paid for more schools and hospitals to be built in Afghanistan than the rest of the world combined fifty times over throughout all of Afghanistan's history. Now Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban, which was their situation before the US went in. The Taliban are promptly tearing down civilization, instead of trying to build it up.
sschueller 4y ago
- muh_gradle 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - blueflow 4y ago
    [flagged]
- wefarrell 4y ago
  "Let's dismiss allegations of systematic ethnic cleansing because a US helicopter killed a group of armed civilians in a warzone in 2007"
  - jollofricepeas 4y ago
    For the record… China also harvests organs of their prison population (including Xinjiang). - https://youtu.be/RH0F75tpD_A https://youtu.be/RH0F75tpD_A - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve... Either way instead of this US vs China debate, the real HN conversation should be how do we hack the humanity psyche to stop our societal need to oppress minorities?
- golergka 4y ago
  > Are we really going to trial Russian soldiers for war crimes when the US soldiers that committed "collateral murder" [1] are still free and will never face any charges? If you're not going to, nobody's going to. You're our (Russian and Ukrainian) only hope of justice at this point.
- plouffy 4y ago
  I'm British.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
xtian 4y ago
You can call it “whataboutism”, but the only practical outcome of this performative caring in my lifetime has been the justification of endless wars, increased arms dealing, and brutal economic sanctions, which help no one but the US elite. I am an American, not a “global citizen”. My responsibility is to America. Let the people of other countries take moral responsibility for their governments. To pretend that America has some unique moral insights that need to be imposed on the rest of the world is both deeply racist and contradicted by history.
- dundarious 4y ago
  Yes, anyone actually interested in maintaining Liberal Hegemony would be better positioned if they tried to make the US actually like the "shining city on the hill". Instead the US "projects its values" by committing the "crime against peace" that contains within it all the other war crimes and that's against the UN charter, aggression, on a regular basis. Another way the US "spreads democracy" is by providing full military and diplomatic support (usually by stifling all criticism rather than full-throated support) for highly repressive regimes and full-on wars, including with the use of landmines, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, etc. A particularly egregious example of this was the US condemnation of Russia at the UN for using cluster bombs in Ukraine, when the US has directly used some cluster bombs in Yemen in the last few years, and continues to supply massive quantities to Saudi Arabia. This claim is often "disputed" by saying that the US stopped manufacturing these weapons years ago, but with stockpiles as high as the US has, that is no refutation at all. Focusing primarily on these US failings is exactly what a US person should do.
throwaway4good 4y ago
The hypocrisy can be ignored. The problem is that these allegations and institutions are not trustworthy. Institutions that are controlled by the west and are applied only against the enemies of the west. Immigrants who speak out against their motherland under the promise of a better life in the west. Groups that once were terrorists, and killed by our military en masse, are now freedom fighters with a just cause. Just ten years ago, the US was bombing Uyghurs in Afghanistan based on Chinese intelligence. Now this issue is used to ban Chinese clothing and solar cells.
ourlordcaffeine 4y ago
For the accounts that are denying or excusing the xinjiang repression, see if there is a reddit account of the same/similar name, and if that account regularly makes posts in r/genzedong and r/sino. I have previously found quite a few

If a had a penny every time ... There needs to be a better response to pointing out hypocrisy. If you care about China's abuses but not ours and our allies, you do not have the moral high ground, and morality is a political tool to you.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
puszczyk 4y ago
Have you tired to raise specific US abuses here on HN? What was the response?
- vachina 4y ago
  You get your account and IP address shadowbanned.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    Is that so? I'm pretty vocal about the atrocities my country perpetrated and continues to perpetrate, and I've yet to be shadowbanned.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

zthrowaway 4y ago

naoqj 4y ago
I think it’s normal to ask questions: if nothing has ever happened to the US for similar abuses, why should something happen to any other countries?
- dave_sullivan 4y ago
  Then raise the specific issues about similar abuses. China's actions are a specific issue and light should be shined on them so the truth can be known.
- wickedsickeune 4y ago
  I wonder why you would think that it's normal. If something is unjust it should be prosecuted, regardless of the past. There will always be criminals who get away with crimes, this doesn't mean that we should give up.
  - naoqj 4y ago
    Might is right.
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    But, if one criminal always gets away, I think many criminals will use that as a justification to commit atrocities. That's why fair assessment is required. And, I personally think US & UK have no rights to teach other about humanity. They are currently pointing atrocities in China to forward their political agenda, not for humanitarian cause. Countries like Sweden & Switzerland are in better position to lecture other other countries regarding peace & harmony.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    It's perfectly reasonable. If only some people are allowed to commit crimes, you're not punishing crimes, you're just punishing an underclass. Justice must be blind, or it's just tribalism.
- finiteseries 4y ago
  The US isn’t comparable to other countries given its position in the world, and every single other country’s relative weakness in it.
VictorPath 4y ago
The CIA shills come out of the woodwork for these ones.

ziml77 4y ago

[flagged]

ATsch 4y ago

BobbyJo 4y ago
> US' own actions show that their supposed concern about the Xinjiang prisoners is wholly disingenuous point scoring. How do you feel about Xinjiang?
- lenkite 4y ago
  Terrible. But I felt terrible about Guantanamo Bay too. Still open by the way.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    Do you think the camps in Xinjiang are as bad, or worse than Guantanamo? I think they are worse because: 1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen. 2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down. I think Guantanamo is good example of why the US's interest in Xinjiang is not disingenuous. We felt the same about Guantanamo as we do about Xinjiang: it's bad.
    - lenkite 4y ago
      > 1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen. Ditto in Guantanamo. I suggest doing a bit more research. > 2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down. Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media. Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please.
      - BobbyJo 4y ago
        > Ditto in Guantanamo. I suggest doing a bit more research. There are far more than 1000 Islamists in the US. Not sure where you're pulling that statement from. > Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media. And I can freely read all about it. It was picked up by every major news organization on American soil. >Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please. Is it hypocritical to point out bad comparisons? I think Gitmo was bad. I think Xinjiang is worse given it's larger scale. I'd like both to stop, along with a billion other things, but here we are, on a thread about Xinjiang.

lenkite 4y ago

When "Do As I Say and Not As I Do" is the primary principle of US foreign policy, then Whataboutism is the utterly correct response.

throwaway040922 4y ago

[flagged]

earthbee 4y ago
We should talk about the many abuses and injustices committed by the US, but why should every thread criticising Russia or China also be a thread criticising the US? If someone is genuinely concerned about the abuses of the US government then shouldn't they be making their own threads and posts without prompting, instead of just tacking them on to every thread about Russia or China?
- md_ 4y ago
  Agreed, but perhaps, even more constructively: "Great, you agree we need more of an ability to shine a light on--and hold people to account for--human rights abuses worldwide." The US has been deeply hypocritical by opposing the ICC, for example. But the policy fixes that we need for what's happening in Xinjiang--public accountability, international institutions with teeth--are the same ones we needed for what happened (and is still happening), at a fraction of the scale of Xinjiang, in Guantanamo. "Whataboutism" only works because the whatabouters assume their opponents will reflexively defend the US (or whomever). The implication is, strangely, not "The US has done this too, so we need strong institutions to hold the powerful to account" but, rather, "The US has done this too, so whatareyougonnado?"
- throwaway040922 4y ago
  This story is specifically about a man that members of the U.S. government were lobbying to come and testify at the ICC ("...after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers"). The ICC that the U.S. is not only not a member of, but specifically has a law against anyone assisting the ICC in cases against members of the American government[1]. I don't see why the motivations of the groups involved shouldn't be discussed. Likewise, if someone suspects someone of bias, I don't think it's unimportant to ask them if they hold consistent positions. If a Trump supporter is talking about how Biden should be impeached for something Trump did, I don't think it's "whatboutism" to ask if they would hold the same standard to Trump (or vice versa). There's a big difference between being concerned about something because of an underlying moral principal, and being concerned about something because of a specific bias against one of the groups involved. This used to be considered an important distinction, but now people act as if we shouldn't even talk about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

pfortuny 4y ago

I did not believe you when I first read your comment and then I scrolled down… Do people realize that the British Empire was the thing that most opposed Hitler? Seems like people know no history…

sva_ 4y ago

These sort of threads always turn into a shitflinging contest

cabirum 4y ago

"Whataboutism" is not a valid refutation in most contexts. It's more of a chant, a mantra, a trigger word you are conditioned to bring up when some kind of obvious hypocrisy or double standard is being pointed out that you cannot otherwise refute. [edit] Also, "whataboutism" the word, sounds like from 2ndgrader vocabulary

danielheath 4y ago
It's not a refutation. You aren't replying to an attempt to refute something. You're replying to an expression of shock at the behavior on display (specifically, people claiming - in a thread about Chinese torture camps - that we should not talk about them, because we weren't talking about American torture camps, so it would be hypocritical to talk about the Chinese ones). I'm generally in agreement that this isn't great behavior. Complaining that a word sounds childish while displaying your ignorance of its meaning is not the slam dunk you think it is.
- adventured 4y ago
  The insanity of an emotionally out of control mob of people pretending it's not a radically greater moral crime to torture millions of innocent people, than it is to torture a thousand people. It's the scale difference between the US blowing up a wedding party by accident as a moral crime and Russia raping and murdering their way through Bucha or Mariupol. The emotionalist mob would proclaim they're the same thing.
  - cabirum 4y ago
    As if the wedding party incident was a single, isolated case. True, the scale of destruction in Iraq, Afganistan and dozen other countries is nothing like Ukraine military shelled and shot their own civilians then staged a photo-op.
    - adventured 4y ago
      > True, the scale of destruction in Iraq, Afganistan and dozen other countries is nothing like Ukraine military shelled and shot their own civilians then staged a photo-op. Now we know what you are. I reference the on-going vast war crimes of Russia in Ukraine, and you talk about it being a self-inflicted, pretend photo-op. The scale of destruction in Afghanistan? This is how I know you're flailing. The US spent an epic amount of money attempting to build in Afghanistan. The US paid for more schools and hospitals to be built in Afghanistan than the rest of the world combined fifty times over throughout all of Afghanistan's history. Now Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban, which was their situation before the US went in. The Taliban are promptly tearing down civilization, instead of trying to build it up.

sschueller 4y ago

muh_gradle 4y ago
[flagged]
- blueflow 4y ago
  [flagged]
wefarrell 4y ago
"Let's dismiss allegations of systematic ethnic cleansing because a US helicopter killed a group of armed civilians in a warzone in 2007"
- jollofricepeas 4y ago
  For the record… China also harvests organs of their prison population (including Xinjiang). - https://youtu.be/RH0F75tpD_A https://youtu.be/RH0F75tpD_A - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve... Either way instead of this US vs China debate, the real HN conversation should be how do we hack the humanity psyche to stop our societal need to oppress minorities?
golergka 4y ago
> Are we really going to trial Russian soldiers for war crimes when the US soldiers that committed "collateral murder" [1] are still free and will never face any charges? If you're not going to, nobody's going to. You're our (Russian and Ukrainian) only hope of justice at this point.
plouffy 4y ago
I'm British.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

xtian 4y ago

You can call it “whataboutism”, but the only practical outcome of this performative caring in my lifetime has been the justification of endless wars, increased arms dealing, and brutal economic sanctions, which help no one but the US elite. I am an American, not a “global citizen”. My responsibility is to America. Let the people of other countries take moral responsibility for their governments. To pretend that America has some unique moral insights that need to be imposed on the rest of the world is both deeply racist and contradicted by history.

dundarious 4y ago
Yes, anyone actually interested in maintaining Liberal Hegemony would be better positioned if they tried to make the US actually like the "shining city on the hill". Instead the US "projects its values" by committing the "crime against peace" that contains within it all the other war crimes and that's against the UN charter, aggression, on a regular basis. Another way the US "spreads democracy" is by providing full military and diplomatic support (usually by stifling all criticism rather than full-throated support) for highly repressive regimes and full-on wars, including with the use of landmines, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, etc. A particularly egregious example of this was the US condemnation of Russia at the UN for using cluster bombs in Ukraine, when the US has directly used some cluster bombs in Yemen in the last few years, and continues to supply massive quantities to Saudi Arabia. This claim is often "disputed" by saying that the US stopped manufacturing these weapons years ago, but with stockpiles as high as the US has, that is no refutation at all. Focusing primarily on these US failings is exactly what a US person should do.

throwaway4good 4y ago

The hypocrisy can be ignored. The problem is that these allegations and institutions are not trustworthy. Institutions that are controlled by the west and are applied only against the enemies of the west. Immigrants who speak out against their motherland under the promise of a better life in the west. Groups that once were terrorists, and killed by our military en masse, are now freedom fighters with a just cause. Just ten years ago, the US was bombing Uyghurs in Afghanistan based on Chinese intelligence. Now this issue is used to ban Chinese clothing and solar cells.

ourlordcaffeine 4y ago

For the accounts that are denying or excusing the xinjiang repression, see if there is a reddit account of the same/similar name, and if that account regularly makes posts in r/genzedong and r/sino. I have previously found quite a few