steff
Senior Associate
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Joined: Dec 30, 2010 17:34:24 GMT -5
Posts: 10,772
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Post by steff on Aug 15, 2017 21:06:52 GMT -5
Since President Donald Trump’s political rise, pundits and news junkies have learned what seems like an entirely new vocabulary to discuss his rhetoric: gaslighting, alternative facts, fake news. What about whataboutism? Analysts have been dinging Trump for whataboutism for months, particularly in recent weeks. In fact, during a press conference on Tuesday, Trump spouted a textbook example of the practice. In addressing his tepid, vague denunciation of the protests that led to fatal violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, he responded, “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? ... You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent.” That is to say, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members may be bad, but people on the other side have also done bad things. What about them? So what is whataboutism, and why do we keep hearing about it? What it means Whataboutism refers to the practice of deflecting criticism by pointing to the misdeeds of others. Oxford Dictionaries defines it as “the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.” Essentially, it’s an appeal to hypocrisy ― a logical fallacy also known as “tu quoque.” Instead of proving that your opponent’s claim is wrong on its face, whataboutism argues that it’s hypocritical of the opponent to make that claim at all. (Oh, you think I shouldn’t cheat on a test? What about that time you took a crib sheet into your calculus exam last year?!) www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-is-whataboutism_us_59932909e4b00914164043a4?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
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