Comment by Chaebixi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chaebixi | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I am deeply disgusted by false equivalency used in many posts this thread. Whatever you think the West is doing is not even close to this.

It's terrible, it's even happening directly in the replies do you. This whole post has been almost totally derailed by whataboutism, and a lot of it is literally textbook:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

> The Guardian deemed whataboutism, as used in Russia, "practically a national ideology". Journalist Julia Ioffe wrote that "Anyone who has ever studied the Soviet Union" was aware of the technique, citing the Soviet rejoinder to criticism, ["]And you are lynching Negroes,["] as a "classic" example of the tactic. Writing for Bloomberg News, Leonid Bershidsky called whataboutism a "Russian tradition", while The New Yorker described the technique as "a strategy of false moral equivalences". Jill Dougherty called whataboutism a "sacred Russian tactic", and compared it to the pot calling the kettle black.

False equivalency is a tool that's deployed often on HN these days to steer (or derail) threads. I assume it's due in part to PR/propaganda teams working to manage/manipulate sentiment.

It certainly feels like that, but I doubt this is the direct result of modern propaganda teams. What I think is more likely is the propagandists were so successful decades ago that their whataboutist memes got so integrated into the American/English discourse that many people repeat them unthinkingly.

Take a look at Grassroots for Hire, https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-...

Whether they are "hired guns" or not, there are usual suspects that invariably whataboutism on these stories. Anybody can figure out who they are on their own.

I agree that it's done by people without realizing they are doing it, or without appreciating the significance of the problem. I would cite the internet impulse for "Actually..."-style comments, and the desire for contrarianism as significant cultural factors as well.

I think that, in any given interaction, the odds you are interacting with a paid government agent are exceptionally low. I personally have been accused of being an agent of so many governments in online discussion that I think the hit rate is extremely low.

Exactly. I agree with others who have suggested that the false equivalency problem probably isn't due to government agents. It's just something that has become baked into internet culture without people appreciating that they are doing it or grasping the type of problem it poses.

I don't make that assumption now that I personally know Westerners (work colleagues and such) who are apparently quite happy to make these arguments in in-person discussions.

Perhaps double-replying is bad form but this is still bothering me. Soviets may have deployed the issue cynically, but black people really were being lynched, it really did compromise America's moral leadership on human rights, and embarrassment over the issue was a significant part of what spurred the federal government to begin to intervene. To the extent that you, as I do, view the creation of a relatively pluralistic and multicultural society as one of America's crowning achievements, perhaps we owe the Soviet "what-aboutists" a debt of gratitude.

The idea that the Russians invented rejecting someone's argument on the grounds that the person making the argument is a hypocrite strikes me as rather unlikely. I also see problems with the idea that we can simply dismiss complaints about racism as textbook Russian propaganda.

> The idea that the Russians invented rejecting someone's argument on the grounds that the person making the argument is a hypocrite strikes me as rather unlikely.

That is definitely exactly what happened. We would say something about them invading Afghanistan or forcibly making satellite states in the Warsaw pact, and they would instantly come back with "Well, we're not the ones lynching black people." It's remarkably persuasive if you don't think it through.

I do not claim that that did not happen; rather, what I claim is that there is nothing uniquely Russian about saying "what right do you have to criticize us by a standard which you yourself do not uphold?"

It’s not uniquely Russian, it’s just that it was systematically used by Russia far back into Soviet days making them a very strong example of using it to change the subject and avoid dealing with an issue.

Well, there sort of is.

The term you're speaking of "whataboutism" is not refuting the argument on logical priciples, it's an ad hominem attack.

Just because the person accusing you of doing something wrong is doing the same thing does not make it right for you to do it. What is the argument here to justify your behaviours or the judgment of others for your sins, even if they're guilty of the same? If I kill somebody, am I wrong for calling out somebody else out for killing somebody?

The Russians raised this into an art form. They justified Afghanistan by using Vietnam.

Can someone explain to me why it seems like in the past month or so everybody and their mother has re-discovered "whataboutism" and insists on explaining the concept to me?

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...

OK, but I first read the Wikipedia article linked a long time ago. Probably like ten years ago.

>whataboutism a "sacred Russian tactic"

It's not a tactic, it's rooted in traditional Russian law and stems from belief that you can't judge others while breaking exact same principle, or generally being immoral yourself. So pointing out that other party is lynching negroes is legit defense from some accusations from that party.

Today I learned that the Russians invented criticizing someone for hypocrisy.

Except of course there wasn’t actually any direct equivalency. The Russian, or Chinese state explicitly and systematically oppressing people as official state policy is not equivalent to illegal oppression by a minority of a minority in another country that it’s government is slowly but successfully fighting.

Were the people trying to hold Russia to account for its knowing, deliberate policies themselves personally oppressing black people? Accusations of double standards were completely unwarranted, which is the whole point of whataboutism. Now we’re talking about America’s largely successful, if incomplete struggle against racism instead of the systematic oppression of people in other countries as official state policy. Thanks for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com