• Hyperreality@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    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 tactic was “an old Soviet trick”. … “Kremlinologists of recent years call this ‘whataboutism’ because the Kremlin’s various mouthpieces deployed the technique so exhaustively against the U.S.” … Russian whataboutism was “part of the national psyche”. … “Moscow’s geopolitical whataboutism skills are unmatched”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism