关于whataboutism， 维基的中文很短，
英语有几段分析和一段批评， 有点意思，
Psychological motivations
The philosopher Merold Westphal said that only people who know themselves to be guilty of something "can find comfort in finding others to be just as bad or worse."
[98] Whataboutery, as practiced by both parties in
The Troubles in Northern Ireland to highlight what the other side had done to them, was "one of the commonest forms of evasion of personal moral responsibility," according to Bishop (later Cardinal)
Cahal Daly.
[99] After a
political shooting at a baseball game in 2017, journalist
Chuck Todd criticized the tenor of political debate, commenting, "What-about-ism is among the worst instincts of partisans on both sides."
[100][101]
Intentionally discrediting oneself
Whataboutism usually points the finger at a rival's offenses to discredit them, but, in a reversal of this usual direction, it can also be used to discredit oneself while one refuses to critique an ally. During the
2016 U.S. presidential campaign, when
The New York Times asked candidate Donald Trump about Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's
treatment of journalists, teachers, and dissidents, Trump replied with a criticism of U.S. history on civil liberties.
[102] Writing for
The Diplomat, Catherine Putz pointed out: "The core problem is that this rhetorical device precludes discussion of issues (ex: civil rights) by one country (ex: the United States) if that state lacks a perfect record."
[102] Masha Gessen wrote for
The New York Times that usage of the tactic by Trump was shocking to Americans, commenting, "No American politician in living memory has advanced the idea that the entire world, including the United States, was rotten to the core."
[103]
Concerns about effects
Joe Austin was critical of the practice of whataboutism in Northern Ireland in a 1994 piece,
The Obdurate and the Obstinate, writing: "And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' ... if you got into it you were defending the indefensible."
[104] In 2017,
The New Yorker described the tactic as "a strategy of false moral equivalences",
[25] and
Clarence Page called the technique "a form of logical jiu-jitsu".
[105] Writing for
National Review, commentator
Ben Shapiro criticized the practice, whether it was used by those espousing
right-wing politics or
left-wing politics; Shapiro concluded: "It's all dumb. And it's making us all dumber."
[106] Michael J. Koplow of
Israel Policy Forum wrote that the usage of whataboutism had become a crisis; concluding that the tactic did not yield any benefits, Koplow charged that "whataboutism from either the right or the left only leads to a black hole of angry recriminations from which nothing will escape".
[107]
