Double Double Both Sides Trouble
Why the tactic of "What About" is bad for societal dialogue?
Hypocrisy, double standards, false balances. No matter how you phrase it, it is the political currency that makes the world go round these days. Donald Trump likes to use it whenever he faces a tough question, authoritarian governments criticized of human rights abuses love to throw it back at the West and international critics, while both sides viewing the Gaza war would deploy such tactics to attack the other side. Currently, the two most dominant strains of manipulated juxtaposition comes in the form of whataboutism and bothsidesism.
Whataboutism is the argumentative tactic of a person or group responding to an accusation or a difficult question through deflection. The tactic has a chaotic and murky history, but one of its key roots stemmed from the Soviet Union, which uses propaganda to perpetuate the image that the West is not better, or as bad, as the regime that later crumbled in 1991.
There are two uses of whataboutism, one is distraction, and the other is delegitimization. Distraction first. Many polticians and keyboard warriors often deploy the “what about” technique as a distraction to their own wrongdoings. For example, after being exposed to wrongdoing in the partygate scandal back in 2022, Boris Johnson falsely accused the opposition leader Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute notorious pedophile Jimmy Savile during his time as director of public prosecutions. In these cases, the use of whataboutism doesn’t match with the accusation others are pointing out. Users of the technique simply throw a misleading or half-true tidbit to the intended audience so they can temporarily get away from more scrunity.
Delegitimization is another key way whataboutism is deployed. Using the conflict in Gaza as an example, many pro-Israel supporters and anti-campus protestors refuted claims such as “Israel is an apartheid state,” by using examples like the Iranian regime’s treatment of women as gender apartheid. On the other side, pro-Palestine supporters use whataboutism to criticize the hypocrisy leaders and pundits have regarding the situation in Gaza. For example, after Joe Biden tweeted “No one is above the law” following Trump’s conviction, liberal journalist and pundit Mehdi Hasan tweeted back “How about Netanyahu? Didn’t you oppose (and attack) an ICC arrest warrant application for him?” The key use of whataboutism to delegitimize the argument of others is to say, “Hey, you think you are so high and mighty about your morals? Well your side does bad things too!”
More often, whataboutism is used with both distraction and delegitimization in mind. Whenever any country from the global south (Particularly China or Russia) was accused of human rights abuses, their spokespeople’s go-to argument is using whataboutism to criticize how Western countries like the US have human rights problems in their own countries. Not only that, using the quote “What about the war in Iraq?” has turned out to be incredibly useful whenever the West is trying to boost support for Ukraine. Journalist Gideon Rachman used the Trump trials and Hong Kong as a case study of how whataboutism can be manipulated which you can read in full with the link here.
What makes whataboutism so effective, and undeniably irritating, is the fact that the argument cannot be established as illegitimate. Despite the style of presentation and the person it comes from, the facts and points laid out by the “what about” user isn’t wrong. The accusations of how differently the West treats international law, provoking conflict, human rights violations, are indeed different in introspection compared to criticizing foreign actors. Also, it is natural in politics to compare one thing with another for clarification, it is just human nature.
The key problem with whataboutism is the way it drags down debate to a cynical level. In the eye of the “what about” users, nobody has the moral superiority because nobody is perfect. As a result, everyone can do whatever they want without consequences. It is perfect for politicians and groups who have no legitimate arguments left, plus whataboutism can be used as a veiled personal attack or defense. Case in point, here is what Bulwark founder and Republican political strategist Sarah Longwell observed when she was asking focus groups about GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
A fourth trend Longwell has noticed in her focus groups is the rise of whataboutism. She’ll point out to participants that Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were staged; Longwell then asks them what they make of that.
If compelling evidence is presented to MAGA supporters that what they’re being told by Greene or others is a lie, they don’t engage directly with the evidence. According to Longwell, “They say, ‘What about Ilhan Omar?’ They say, ‘What about [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]?’” As Longwell puts it, “They’ve got these things down, which is ‘Whatever you just showed me about Marjorie Taylor Greene is irrelevant because Ilhan Omar, because AOC, and I know lots about that, and I can tell you all about it.’” Some focus-group participants report that they like how Greene “speaks her mind.”
When it comes to controversial issues, whataboutism provides an easy dead end but stifles consensus or learning from the other side. If you are a pro-Israel supporter and you have a discussion about the Israel-Palestine conflict with a pro-Palestine student protestor, whataboutism is perfect if you hate to continue any dialogue. The hypothetical pro-Israel supporter can shut down any discussion that Israel’s actions constitute genocide and war crimes because “Why aren’t you caring about the war in Ukraine as much as Gaza? Sudan has a civil war and its people are suffering death and famine, is that not a genocide?” While the hypothetical pro-Palestine student could shut down the conversation by saying “Why are you so hypocritical and defend Israel’s war crimes to Gazans, while you condemn Russia for invading Ukraine?” There isn’t anything that both sides use that is incorrect or false, but it sure stifles any nuanced discussion further because it is so irritating.
Speaking of irritating, bothsidesism is a cousin of whataboutism that provides similar, if not worse, damage to political discourse than people think. Bothsidesism is equating both sides and drawing an equivalence when there is none to draw from to begin with. It is more widely used by centrists than progressives and their counterparts in the right who mainly use whataboutism.
If you want to find examples of bothsidesism, the New York Times Pitchbot (DougJBalloon) on Twitter (X) is a treasure trove of how the media uses this technique in their reporting, and more importantly, headline writing. Often, the source comes from the New York Times, which produces splendid both sides headlines in recent months like “A ‘Laundry List’ or a ‘Feel’: Biden and Trump’s Clashing Appeals to Black Voters.” Most popularly used by DougJBalloon and the NYT headline writer is the phrase “Here’s why that’s a problem for Joe Biden.” In the Twitter parody account’s case, they wanted to point out the ludicrousness many in the news media prefers to link random news events to Joe Biden’s unpopularity. In the NYT’s case, it’s because they do it all the goddamned time.
On surface-level, bothsidesism is irritating because it feels like journalists and headline writers are desperately seeking for the pony where there isn’t one to begin with, and dispiriting knowing these headlines are crafted to boost clicks online and on social media.
But seeing it in a more fundamental level, it warps how people perceive politics. Within US media, the horserace portrayal often ignores the stakes of the election. Despite Trump being a convicted felon/adjudicated rapist/wannabe dictator on day one/fascism adjacent presidential candidate, news outlets often have to compare something bad about Trump with something bad about Biden although there is no equivalence there. For example, people see Trump as a criminal, but many people also see Biden is old, therefore both candidates are unpopular with voters. There isn’t anything factually wrong here, but the fact that being old and being indicted and convicted of crimes is totally unrelated and pointless to be compared against, and it also suggests the tendency towards neutrality given the context that many right-wingers call mainstream news outlets “biased” and “fake news” because they portray Trump poorly in the press.
Moreover, it perpetuates a negative view of politics. Last year, a NYT opinion headline simply wrote: “Why Is Joe Biden So Unpopular?” Well, part of it has to do with the Times and other media coverage of him! We learned recently from recent Semafor interview with Joe Kahn that the Times have increasingly written bad headlines and stories about Biden as “revenge” for not sitting down for an interview with the newspaper. Thanks to the increased negative news stories from such outlets, which have a wide readership audience, it perpetuates people’s negative perceptions on the candidates, hence reflected in polling, which creates a doom loop cycle given many news agencies like the Times publish poll results.
In essence, both bothsidesism and whataboutism end in the same result: The disillusionment and division in political discourse, and the irritation of talking to opposing sides given their tendencies to pull out defenses like these.
To people in the journalism business, and readers regardless of politics, here is some sound and important advice from CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour during her Commencement Speech at Columbia's Journalism School in 2023 about being .
It is my mantra and I've learnt it through bitter experience in the field. Be truthful, but not neutral bothsiderism, on the one hand, and on the other hand, is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective or truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule, and it is in weighing all the sides and all the evidence, hearing everyone reporting everything, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating.