8 ms·
The word “whaboutism” considered harmful
Alright, HN. I've seen it here, and in many other places. There is a major outcry about some actor (a country, an institution in a country) doing bad thing X to people. "This cannot stand, we must all do something about it, and that something must be what we say it is." If you are not with us, you are against us -- nay, all of humanity!
If someone points out that X is not unprecedented, and in fact, the very countries whose people are shocked and outraged did 5X or 10X regularly, this used to be considered exposing hypocrisy or double standards, and welcomed as intellectual integrity. But in the last 10-20 years, it has come to be derided as "whataboutism".
The most obvious example, but by no means the only one, is that the USA invaded and occupied tons of countries. Just in the last 20 years, I've personally seen news of US forces invade and occupy Iraq (leading to 500K - 1 million excess deaths), Afghanistan (for 20 years), destroy Libya (it is now a failed state).
Bush just had a gaffe where he said "one man's brutal invasion of Iraq, er excuse me, Ukraine". And everyone laughed. "I'm 75", he said.
Trump, when asked whether he will still send weapons to Saudis after the brutal reports out of Yemen, one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, said "well it's billions of dollars and creates a lot of jobs." Trump says the quiet part out loud due to some mild psychopathy, while Biden might do it out of some mild dementia. Bush might accidentally blurt it out. But the problem remains.
Similarly, anti-zionists for example look past the actions of Israel's neighbors (Assad bombing Yarmouk, for instance, or Lebanon keeping Lebanese-born people stateless for generations, unable to even hold property, if they had a grandfather from the Nakba, etc.) but navel-gaze at Israel only.
The thing is, that we should work as an international society, to PREVENT wars, to RESOLVE refugee crises, with everyone listening to the others' security concerns, and pitching in. Instead, we get a game of telephone about whether Russia ever applied to NATO, whether NATO ever promised not to expand. There are war hawks everywhere, who call for no-fly zones over Syria (Hillary) or a war of Ukraine vs Russia (Arestovich prediction in 2019) in order to achieve broader geopolitical aims (usually involving some empire or other). But regular people don't want war or killing each other. They want citizenship in a country with a good economy.
Whataboutism shuts down the real conversation about cooperation to prevent wars and de-escalate conflicts, and instead identifies populations with leaders, and an us-vs-them mentality. And worst of all, it is a one-word shutdown of anyone pointing out hypocrisy, while at the same time appealing for action, NOW, on the basis of that hypocrisy. It simply leads to bullying of people (by BDS supporters, for instance, or Israel supporters on the other hand). Whataboutism itself is valuable because we need to clean up our double standards and solve the core of systemic issues, together and everywhere.
- EGreg 4y agoI want to be clear ... we do need to solve problems, of course. "What about X" doesn't mean "we shouldn't do anything now". It means "where were you when we needed to do something before? Will you now turn your attention to, say Yemen, or Libya, and fix the problems there?" If the answer is no, if the person is fixated on a specific "bad actor", then you can suspect they don't really care about the specific problem they're describing (famine, oppression, etc.) but rather want to use it as an excuse to organize something powerful against the "bad actor". If people stopped identifying the populations of countries, which number in the tens or hundreds of millions, with their government, then they would see that they should be on the side of the people, and not play these games of choosing sides. Of course we do need to avoid wars, support diplomatic solutions, and stop playing games of empires promising and meddling in other countries' affairs in order to rip their populations away politically and economically from one or another "ally". There is room for multiculturalism, for democracy, some people prefer one thing, other people prefer something else. Most wars start because there is some binary choice imposed on an entire population, A or B, and some of them don't want to go along with it. Here in the USA, it could be abortion. But for example, in Ukraine, people could trade with Russia AND trade with EU, without having to choose sides. It's just that China, Russia and USA keep influencing or outright dominating politics within other countries, and have been doing it for decades. If we want to move past empires causing misery around the world with this competition, then we have to call for collaboration and expand the Geneva conventions with more human rights for populations within countries. We need to set up rule-based systems that can de-escalate conflicts, including nuclear conflicts, before they arise. Instead, we spend all our time blaming the other countries, and letting war hawks escalate. For cooler heads to prevail, they need to start systematically pushing back against escalation and imperialism, and towards de-escalation and collaboration.
- hunglee2 4y agogreat comment. The term is used these days just to shut down conversation, and somehow avoid dealing with often self evident hypocrisy.
- moistly 4y agoDeal with it how? The whatabout is almost always in reference to some sin in the past. Ain’t nuttin’ we can do about the past, whereas we might be able to do something about today’s issue.