The plague of 'whataboutism'

Please stop doing this

Whataboutism has long been a favorite tool of choice for Russian propagandists.

You’ve seen it 1,000 times online, or maybe it’s just me. Someone posts about rising housing costs, and the first reply is: “well, what about student debt?” Or you point out a politician’s scandal, and someone shoots back: “what about the other guy?” It happened to me again just the other day here on a post about public transit (we’ll talk about this specific example more in a bit).

This reflexive pivot has a name: whataboutism, and while the internet made it universal the tactic itself is quite old. Soviet propagandists were famous for it, brushing off criticism of their own repression by pointing to Western failures. The goal wasn’t to solve either problem, it was to engage in moral equivalence and of course deflect.

Some people feel like this move is a kind of equalizer. But really, every nation, every ideology, even every individual human has some flaw (large or small) in their history. No one is perfect. And anyway, whataboutism doesn’t care about finding a middle ground or seriously engaging with a topic. It’s pure evasion. Instead of grappling with a critique or topic at hand, it redirects attention elsewhere, diffusing responsibility and muddying the conversation.

Today, you’ll see whataboutism everywhere online. Post about corruption in one party, someone replies “but what about the other party?” Mention a foreign government’s abuses, someone fires back “what about America?” Raise concerns about crime rates, someone counters with “what about police misconduct?”

To return to my post about public transit linked at the start of this story, someone mentioned cars are less safe. But that’s a totally different conversation. Our public transit systems should be perceived safe by all and the state should take safety here far more seriously. While there are more car crash deaths and injuries, violence on public transit is a particularly glaring sign of a sick and low trust society. Whataboutism here also confuses intentional with accidental harm and downplays the symbolic and psychological damage done to a community. People do this with the public safety discourse all the time. It’s usually in such a way that ignores the plight of low income citizens, as Rob Henderson points out in many of his discussions about luxury beliefs.

There are moments where asking “what about X?” is legitimate. If you’re debating policy tradeoffs, or pointing out selective outrage when both issues are equally pressing, comparisons can clarify. The trouble comes when whataboutism is deployed purely to deflect, and this is honestly the vast majority of cases. It’s a rhetorical sleight of hand, like sealioning, the habit of feigned ignorance where someone demands endless clarifications just to exhaust you. Both are less about truth-seeking than about shutting the conversation down.

There’s a meme about this re: discourse from leftists, I’m sure people have one about right wing discussions as well. Because for whatever reason we can’t just debate things honestly. Note this meme is about “leftist” discourse which I honestly think is different than normal liberals who haven’t lost their minds.

The other part of whataboutism that bothers me is it often assumes you’ve never acknowledged the ‘other thing.’ You talk about climate change, and someone replies ‘what about poverty?’ — as if concern for one problem cancels out the other. You mention one historical injustice, and the reply is ‘but where were you when X happened?’ This creates a false ledger of moral accounting, where people think you can only discuss issue A if you’ve first satisfied some invisible quota of outrage about issue B.

That’s why whataboutism feels so strange to me. It’s not that the other thing is irrelevant, often it’s real and also worthy of discussion. But when you raise it only to derail, it signals you don’t actually want to wrestle with the topic at hand. Instead of grappling with hard truths, you drag yesterday’s failures into today’s debate as a shield.

The people who use this tactic are being slippery, intentionally or otherwise. And while not all do it with malice, it shows they just don’t really want to debate the topic at hand, or perhaps don’t know how, so it’s an easy way out. Anyway, if you see it it’s a simple way to understand if you’re engaging with someone who is ready to have a real discussion. I really just wrote today’s post so I would have a permalink for future conversations when someone does this, but now you can too.