I've seen whataboutism used whenever the IDF is criticized. [View all]

The exact term was first used in print by a reader named Lionel Bloch in 1978 in a letter to the Guardian. “Sir,” writes Bloch, “your leader [article], East, West and the plight of the warring rest (May 18), is the finest piece of ‘whataboutism’ I have read in many years.” He goes on to decry the use of this tactic as a “Soviet import” used by “progressive minds” to defend communism.

But Bloch’s usage derives from earlier uses of similar terms. In a letter to the Irish Times published on January 30 1974, reader Sean O’Conaill complains about the use of the tactic by IRA defenders, to whom he refers to as “the Whatabouts”. Three days later, the Irish journalist John Healy published a column in the same paper, on the same topic, dubbing the tactic “Whataboutery”.

Formally speaking, whataboutism is a fallacy most closely related to the ad hominem fallacy, wherein a person responds to an accusation by attacking the person making it.

It is a fallacy because even if the counter-accusation is true, it doesn’t defend whoever is being accused (the lying partner, the messy child, Donald Trump) in the first place. At best, it shows that both parties behaved shamefully. And, of course, two wrongs do not make a right.


https://theconversation.com/whataboutism-what-it-is-and-why-its-such-a-popular-tactic-in-arguments-182911