“But today I changed my mind, completely,” Ai said. “The West (is) not even (in a) position to accuse China. (They must) just check on their record (of) what they did on international human rights, (their) freedom of speech record.”
“But today I changed my mind, completely,” Ai said. “The West (is) not even (in a) position to accuse China. (They must) just check on their record (of) what they did on international human rights, (their) freedom of speech record.”
“Whataboutism” or “whataboutery” (as in, “but what about X?”) refers to the propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation. It is an informal fallacy that the accused party uses to avoid accountability—whether attempting to distract by shifting the conversation’s focus away from their behaviour or attempting to justify themselves by pointing to the similar behaviour (which may be true or false, but irrelevant) of their opponent or another party who is not the current subject of discussion.[1]
You’re not even responding to anything I said. To repeat: you, me, and Weiwei are all on the same side. We’re all critics of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record. No one is engaging in whataboutery in this article.
You know what would be an absolute Chad move, here? I don’t think this is likely, but if anyone is reading this, take note:
You can just say, ‘That’s a good point: I didn’t read far enough to get important context and misunderstood. Thanks for the correction.’
That’s an option. I’ve absolutely misunderstood an article I didn’t fully read and had someone politely correct me. It’s okay and healthy to just own it.
Of course I’m not. When you acknowledge the comment is whataboutism, based on the definition of the word, then maybe we can have a conversation. 🤷♂️