[spaceseaman]

> virtually never mentioned

I (anecdotally) hear this tidbit in every comments section relating to Russia's involvement in the U.S. election. Almost as if it's a common talking point.

Reminds me a lot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

EDIT: ... And so a conversation was effectively derailed and nothing was gained. Arguing about the validity of Whataboutism or who is doing it isn't the point. It's a deflection technique that works in spite of you calling it out.

[raquo]

It's the line that Putin and Lavrov (foreign minister) have been pushing since forever: "you westerners are no better than us, stop shaming us for the shady things that we do". That's an easy way to keep your population happy – tell them that life is no better in other countries. Corruption is everywhere, police state is everywhere, etc. And most Russians believe that.

[marksomnian]

Whataboutwhataboutism-ism.

[Sommersonn]

There's a definition for that: "reverse cargo cult". Russians are told to believe that Westerners build their planes from branches and dirt too - but Westerners pretend better.

[bitJericho]

Well it's true in the us, Russia, china, Australia. That's not everywhere but that is quite a lot of ground.

[Retric]

Russia does not have actual meaningful elections. That's a fairly fundamental difference.

[0xbear]

Neither does the US really, in the sense that no matter who wins, you lose.

[bitJericho]

It's true. You can only win an election with piles of money. With gerrymandering and lying. The US government is a train wreck

[dunkelheit]

I think there is an important difference to whataboutism because what the parent mentions is not merely something similar but a reciprocal action.

Say, bringing up alleged violations of human rights in the US in response to mentioning censorship in Russia is whataboutism, but mentioning that not only Russia but both countries try to influence each others elections may signal that two countries are actually having a fair fight (for some definition of fairness) in the information wars as opposed to Russia being the sole aggressor.

[mc32]

Sure, but what about it? Does it not invalidate the basis for complaining, or at least the moral high ground, if you do the same thing? Of course on some level it can be a legalistic tool where while you might have done something illegal you can sue the other party for having done the same, like a countersuit.

I'm almost willing to bet that if Merkel was found to have interfered on behalf of Bernie, we'd hear some musings, but not nearly the vehemence we hear about alleged Russian interference (that particular accusation seems to have become muted recently, however).

[Clubber]

We discovered Merkel was spied on by the NSA. I believe she had her phone tapped. That was pretty big but it blew over.

[Ivoirians]

I don't think anyone is trying to make the case that their side is morally superior. The issue at hand is how to prevent and punish what looks to be serious, efficacious interference, not how to perfectly avoid being biased or hypocritical. Like, pointing out "liberals would be arguing less vehemently about interference if it had produced an outcome they wanted" is pretty meaningless, don't you think? And "they did a bad thing, but we do it too, so guess we can't do/say anything about it" is nonsensical in a world where we aren't all competing for moralistic brownie points.

Not that humanity would be better off if we were less biased, of course. <30 percent of Republicans and >70 percent of Democrats believe Russia tried to influence our election. Disheartening.

[mc32]

If say the Russians had had an information/disinformation programme to help Hillary win and she had won, I am sure Repubs would have cried to the high heavens, but I think the media would have been less vehement about it.

I do think the US does put forth the idea that we do operate from a relatively higher moral ground vis a vis Russia (and others) and human rights, freedoms, cronyism, corruption, etc. We have NGOs working to that effect in addition to the diplomatic ranks and corporate governance, etc.

It's not that we are wrong, but we're also not always right.

[reilly3000]

OP 'Balance Factor' has only made political comments with their HN account. Repeated discourse with an unstated agenda is an attack vector most of us aren't prepared to defend against.

[peoplewindow]

Political discourse is an "attack vector" now? Dystopian.

This is the kind of delusional thinking that powers most of the American hysteria over Russia. "I can't accept the reality that President Trump appealed to lots of people, so it must be the result of external manipulation of the stupids".

Occam's Razor says: maybe people who post on HN like to keep their political speech separated from their technical speech, the latter which can be done under their real name? That's how I do it. This account posts to technical stories sometimes but mostly to stories on social issues. I have another which is used mostly for technical stories.

The reason is simple enough: just look at the prior story I posted comments on ("At liberal tech companies...").

In the current atmosphere, especially in the west, there is absolute hysteria and a general mental breakdown going on amongst the sort of globalist/elitist population that thinks Trump is the anti-Christ and Brexit is Revelations. This is an atmosphere in which people find some random bot-driven Twitter account that publishes politically conservative stories and label it as a Russian plot on the basis of no evidence whatsoever ... and people start debating "why is Russia doing this?" instead of asking where's the evidence.

It is a witch burning atmosphere. Trump and Brexit didn't happen because of Russia, except maybe in the sense that Hillary Clinton adopting a policy of starting a hot war between America and Russia turned voters away from her and towards the anti-Russia-war Trump. These things happened because of mismanagement and an attitude of "we can't hear you" towards large segments of the population from the sort of people who are attracted to politics.

Now they've been forced to progress from "first they ignore you" and "then they laugh at you", they've moved on to "then they fight you". Their weapon of choice being an attempt at disenfranchisement through claims that anyone who disagrees with their agenda doesn't really disagree. They've just been reprogrammed through Facebook ads bought by those evil Russians. Once you take out the malign mind-control of a shadowy international conspiracy, Clinton would definitely have won!

[CaptSpify]

Interesting as this is the first I've heard about it (anecdotal as well).

Though I admit most of my news on this comes from non-comment based news sources (tv, etc)

[dclowd9901]

The US has a long and sordid history in interfering in the political affairs of other countries.

That said, our government doesn't subjugate dissenters or lock up journalists. They let our corporations do that.

[knz]

The US alone? Or every major political power in human history?

And if you don't believe Russia is actively running interference in other countries via "little green men" etc then I'd encourage you to read more about the current political affairs of nation states like Ukraine or Georgia. Or about a little historical event called the iron curtain and it's associated revolutions.

Many horrible things have been done in the name of Western hegemony but let's not pretend these actions occur without provocation from other geopolitical actors or without context. Can and should we do better - absolutely. But the real world isn't always as nice as our morality would like it to be.

As for your second point, are political opponents of Western leaders being beaten to death in prison? Or banned from voicing their views? Or disappeared in the night? We've got a long way to go before we're comparable to Russia in terms of how dissent is stifled.

[korzun]

In most cultures, you don't criticize somebody for something while doing the exact opposite.

Whataboutism does not apply to 90% of conversations but don't tell that to people who think they are smart by bringing it up.

Whataboutism:

A) 'You interfered with our elections!!' B) 'You bombed a children hospital! What about that?'

NOT Whataboutism:

A) 'You interfered with our elections!! YOU HACKED OUR ELECTIONS!!! PUTIN ORDERED TO STEAL OUR VOTES!!! B) 'That's great, you have been doing the same thing for decades all over the world. Mind shutting up?'

[jmull]

You make a poor point.

First, your definition of whataboutism doesn't jibe with ones in common use, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.

Second, your "NOT" example only works if A and B are equivalent, which, obviously they are not for several reasons. (the tactics and secrecy are different as are the elections.

Actually, you make a very poor point, when I consider the the insult you hurled at someone for daring to bring up whataboutism -- a term apparently invented to describe the tactic of deflecting criticism of Russian actions, which is exactly this situation.

Poor show.

[bllguo]

Sorry, but I fail to see the difference between your contrived examples. And I'm amused that you think people are being pretentious for bringing up "whataboutism," when the term itself is arguably a colloquialism.

[kemerover]

I never understand what is wrong with "whataboutism". When someone pretends that he has a moral highground, it is a reasonable thing to call them out on it. If you dont't want a conversation to be "derailed", stop making unsupported, wrong or dubious assumptions.

[rblatz]

It's basically breaks down to "two wrongs don't make a right."

[kemerover]

I don't see how this phrase is relevant?

[Firebrand]

Just because A doesn't do X, but asks B to do X, doesn't mean B can argue the value of not doing X by saying “A doesn't do X, so neither should I" because: A (-X) ≠ B (-X)

[kemerover]

So what? Now tell me in terms of the US and Russia what is the connection between your imaginary situation and reality.

[pnw_hazor]

Never heard of the term until Trump took office.

Whataboutism was okay during President Obama's term. Bush's screwups were often brought up to deflect criticisms lodged against President Obama.

edit: meta

[tim333]

Obama didn't do it noticeably, Trump often, hence you hear about it.

[stevenwoo]

On the one hand, a better beef for Russia would be the US military intervention on Soviet soil for the anti Bolshevik forces in 1917, on the other hand, that's a incredibly long time to hold a grudge/cold war, though Iran's theocracy looks like it's going to milk US interference in their country for a couple more generations, too.

The other side of this is Russian involvement in the US/Western Europe seems to follow many of the key points of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics where Putin has already though direct military action or political involvement, accomplished the goals of distancing the UK from Europe, made progress on retaking Ukraine, allied with Iran, gotten a windfall with Turkey being run by an authoritarian and distancing itself from the West, and diminished the US in the eyes of the world with the election of Trump.