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Comment by number6 | Hacker News Reader

Whataboutism

Not really, a comparison was implied. They didn't say "shady agency", they said "shadiest", which makes a claim and invites dispute about the others' relative shadiness.

I felt like “shadiest” was hyperbole meant to mean “very shady”. Also while the others mentioned might be bad, the NSA is probably the “best” at being covert and probably the most active of all of them. So they might truly be the “shadiest” by sheer volume of covert things they do.

When did the NSA last assassinate someone in public?

This is not a response in this "argument", but, please watch "Citizenfour" and/or Hollywood version "Snowden".

This is definitely not a case of Whataboutism as it is literally about comparing one with others.

Please substantiate your claims.

It's not whataboutism if the claim is making a comparison against all other possibilities. "shadiest government agency on the planet" may be an objectively false statement as applied to the NSA. You can compare the NSA to other contenders for "most shady" using any number of metrics and create an ordered list. None of that is whataboutism.

No, it's not whataboutism. His statement is that "the NSA is the shadiest agency". I am arguing that it is not the most shady.

If I tried to justify the NSA's behavior _because_ of what the GRU/IRA/CIA does, that is whataboutism. Hope this was a bit helpful.

I thought this was a really good example. I see the word, whataboutism, thrown around a lot and have a hard time understanding what is/isn't. So, thank you.

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