whataboutism
noun/ˌwə.təˈbaʊ.tɪ.zəm/
Etymology
From what about + -ism. First use appears c. 1978 in The Guardian.
Definitions
A logical fallacy where criticisms are deflected by raising unrelated criticisms of the…
A logical fallacy where criticisms are deflected by raising unrelated criticisms of the opposite side.
- And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' - you know, people who said 'Yes, but what about what's been done to us? ... That had nothing to do with it, and if you got into it you were defending the indefensible.
- Soviet propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed 'whataboutism'.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for whataboutism. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA