The United States charged four members of the Russian military with war crimes on Wednesday for the abduction and torture of an American citizen in Ukraine.
It’s so prevalent in Russian propaganda, an almost Pavlovian response any time Russia’s criticised, that anyone still using it when Russia comes up, is either an idiot or pro-Russian.
It’s not whataboutism. It’s pointing out that since the US doesn’t respect international criminal courts, then they don’t really have a moral standing to try and hold Russians accountable in them.
It’s not whataboutism … There’s a reason we have the word hypocrisy.
It literally is. Wikipedia:
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in “what about…?”) denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin ‘you too’, term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument. … The communication intent is often to distract from the content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified. Common accusations include double standards, and hypocrisy
Yes, people can claim they are calling out hypocrisy to justify actually whattaboutism, but that doesn’t automatically mean any claim of hypocrisy = whataboutism.
The key line from your own quote is.
which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified
Fair point but that just raises the obvious point that Americans would never recognise the authority of a foreign court, even of their allies (like the UK for example) so do they really expect Russia to respect their ruling?
More specifically whataboutism.
It’s so prevalent in Russian propaganda, an almost Pavlovian response any time Russia’s criticised, that anyone still using it when Russia comes up, is either an idiot or pro-Russian.
It’s not whataboutism. It’s pointing out that since the US doesn’t respect international criminal courts, then they don’t really have a moral standing to try and hold Russians accountable in them.
There’s a reason we have the word hypocrisy.
It literally is. Wikipedia:
Yes, people can claim they are calling out hypocrisy to justify actually whattaboutism, but that doesn’t automatically mean any claim of hypocrisy = whataboutism.
The key line from your own quote is.
Cool, so it’s okay to just condone torture then.
The worst bit wasn’t the Russian war crimes. It was the American hypocrisy! /s
I mean I literally never said that, but go ahead and jerk each other off over it.
I literally never said that, but sure, put words in my mouth if that makes you feel better.
They aren’t trying to hold those 4 Russians accountable in international courts, they’re charging them in American courts
Fair point but that just raises the obvious point that Americans would never recognise the authority of a foreign court, even of their allies (like the UK for example) so do they really expect Russia to respect their ruling?