People use the word because that's the word we have for it and generally a lot of people disengage from those kinds of discussions. On its face, whataboutism arguments are just logical fallacies and false equivalences that tend to characterize bad faith arguments.
Both sets of facts are true but they don't exactly answer each other in a meaningful context.
The reason it is often seen as a disingenuous argument is because it's often a tool of distraction from the original topic using reductive and uncomplicated logic.įor example, usually in the domain of violence against women you might hear that men are actually more likely to be victims of violence overall and that this fact disputes that women are disproportionately victims of sexual violence or domestic abuse. So I often hear whataboutism in response to discussions of societal inequity. Like any description of argument or logical fallacy, it is possible to use whataboutism incorrectly to attempt to discount a valid point, but in general whataboutism should be recognized as a dishonest tactic, treated as such, and pointed out for what it is. While neither of those things is strictly always wrong in a legitimate discussion, whataboutism is almost always part of an attempt to argue in bad faith by ignoring valid points and attempting to change the topic instead of addressing those points. Whataboutism is almost always an attempt to change the subject, either by changing the example being discussed, or by changing the scope of the conversation. Regardless of whether or not (for example) Hillary's emails are a legitimate demonstration that Hillary Clinton or the Democrats have problems with national security behaviors, that is not actually relevant to a discussion about Trump's problems with national security behaviors. Generally speaking, whataboutism is an attempt to change the subject of the discussion, not an attempt to make a legitimate counterargument. It's designed to win a fight through coercion and not prove a logical proposition and it serves to undermine the process of reasoning More formally, it is a type of tu quoque argument. It functions as a diversionary tactic to distract the opponent from their original criticism. The tactic is a type of logical fallacy that attempts to discredit the opponent's position by accusing hypocrisy. It represents a case of tu quoque – an appeal to hypocrisy. When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the response would be "What about." followed by the naming of an event in the West. It does exactly what your claiming the fault is. The thing about whataboutism is that it is a known Soviet propoganda technique that attempts to distract without directly refuting the attack made.
Like if shark attacked your daughter, you could reasonably argue that since your daughter also eats things its fine for a shark to eat her?
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