this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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From the definition of whataboutism linked above, my italics:
You are doing exactly that.
Just to add onto that, whatabautism is not only used to make any bad thing seem better by comparing it to something worse, but it's also used to distract from the main point.
People are probably not downvoting you because you don't have a point, but there's no reason to bring this up here. Make another post criticising Rammstein (the military base) and we can express our disgust with US agencies in foreign countries as well. Easy as that.
Just to add on to that. I wasn't implying that either was better by comparison. I said it's bad regardless of who does it. Which was the point of the article. Other countries like China policing foreign countries is not a good thing. Condemning China for it while not also pointing out other nations. Especially more prolific ones and condemning them consistently with it is just hypocritical.
But I know how the circle jerk can be. And I know you all won't be stopped. With your disingenuous assertions and false claims. I'm apologize for trying to be thorough and accurate lol.
Accusing the critical statement about country A of hypocrisy because what about critical statement about country B is textbook whataboutism. Your "yea, but country B is as bad as country A because .." is exactly that.
You don't need to imply that country A is better than country B or vice versa, because the point of whataboutism is to relativise the criticism by pointing to another. This article is about China and their actions, your contribution to the discussion was to immediately steer it to "the Americans" - why's that?
If I defended China it would have been. But I didn't. What aboutism is a rhetorical tactic to belittle the offenses of one group by pointing out similar enough offenses of another. Fuck China fuck the United States. The United States having done it doesn't make China doing it any better. Or vice versa. I literally said that in the first couple of sentences.
Simple comparison isn't whataboutism. Just like your disingenuous attacks are not good faith effort to debate.