Meaning of whataboutism | Babel Free

Definitions

A logical fallacy where criticisms are deflected by raising unrelated criticisms of the opposite side.

countable, rhetoric, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' - you know, people who said 'Yes, but what about what's been done to us? ... That had nothing to do with it, and if you got into it you were defending the indefensible.”

“Soviet propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed 'whataboutism'.”

“'Whataboutism' was a favourite tactic of Soviet propagandists during the old Cold War. Any criticism of the Soviet Union’s internal aggression or external repression was met with a 'what about?' some crime of the West, from slavery to the Monroe doctrine.”

“There's another attitude ... that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union 'whataboutism,' in other words, 'who are you to call the kettle black?'”

“what was known during Soviet times, as 'whataboutism'”

“This particular brand of changing the subject is called 'whataboutism' — a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia.”

CEFR level