Please keep canned arguments like "whataboutism" off HN. It's a form of name-calling in the sense that the site guidelines use that term, and also a shallow dismissal.
It's legit to point out inconsistencies and/or comparables in what someone else is saying (I'm not saying the GP did that—I'm just speaking generally). If you feel that something isn't really an inconsistency or isn't really comparable, you can always make an argument for why, but trying to shoot down the entire category of discussion with a label is not an argument. In fact, in this case the label itself is a fallacy.
If you have some person who helps older ladies cross the street, but then murders people at night, he is not a good person. You're judged by the combination of your actions, not for the cherry picked good ones.
It’s a very appropriate response to a hagiographic description of a man who was directly responsible for the death and suffering of innocents. That’s not “whataboutism”.
Whataboutism would be if the commenter were to point out that eg. Bill Gates is also really pro-healthcare and used his capitalist-derived billions to improve the lives of countless millions more people than the aforementioned homophobic communist tyrant.
We should have the same cynicism towards american leaders. Barak Obama is a mass murdered (far worse than Che). Bush killed more than a million iraqis (far worse than Che). Clinton bombed a pharma factory killing millions (far worse than Che).
So if you want to do whataboutism start with the US first, the single biggest perpetrator of violence in the world.
It's legit to point out inconsistencies and/or comparables in what someone else is saying (I'm not saying the GP did that—I'm just speaking generally). If you feel that something isn't really an inconsistency or isn't really comparable, you can always make an argument for why, but trying to shoot down the entire category of discussion with a label is not an argument. In fact, in this case the label itself is a fallacy.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html