[loup-vaillant]

Yeah, that’s downright revolting. Not surprising I guess, but still.

Now there’s this white haired journalist that’s currently rotting in a British jail because of his work…

[smeagull]

Piers Morgan, Boris Johnson and Andy Coulson were journalists too for as much as that's worth.

[0dayz]

And this has to do with Russia... How?

Or are we just doing whataboutism?

[picadores]

Its standard bot behaviour. Acknowledge. Distract. Relativize.

What remains is a fog, the uncertainty about there being truth at all. Assange should not be in prison. But the law has not decayed in the west to the point, were its non-existant anymore, power-mad anarchy dancing naked but a paper-loincloth in the streets ala russia.

The should free assange, just to silence these bots.

[0dayz]

...what?

Who's the bot?

The post is about Russia and how they've now have arrested a lawyer because he's representing navalni.

So then point to be where the UK is part of Russia, or maybe just maybe we should hold the topic of "unfairly arrested" where we can talk all day long about assange, navalni or anyone else.

Besides assange is no lawyer, a better whataboutism would be trumps lawyers who are either arrested have charges against them.

[redwood]

That would make sense if you wanted to sow discord on the right. The post here does so for those that lean left. All of the above serve to weaken a sense that there's a difference between the autocratic China-Russia axis and the west.

[loup-vaillant]

Toplevel comment author here.

My main point was to remind that we too are at risk of suffering the same kind of authoritarianism we point our fingers to. Russia is currently being very blatant in how it uses trumped up charges to make an example of someone and discourage further opposition, but I felt obligated to remind everyone that they’re not the only ones.

The West does it less, and it does it more subtly, but everywhere I look (mostly Europe) there’s a substantial increase in the use of authoritarian practices. We’re not immune to full blown authoritarianism making a come back.

[0dayz]

Oh definitely, it's more annoying than anything.

I can sympathize with genuine causes but cheap potshots like whataboutism is just such a cynical means.

[voidr]

Pointing out hypocrisy is not "whataboutism" it's just simply pointing out hypocrisy.

This "whataboutism" was invented as a way to avoid uncomfortable comparisons, you can find a lot of stories in the west where if you replace Countryname with Russia and the story would sound plausible, here you go: "Russian whistleblower who uncovered that the Russian government spied on all of its people has fled to the US to avoid being imprisoned in Russia", talking about Snowden of course.