{"id":156015,"date":"2021-01-16T04:08:59","date_gmt":"2021-01-16T01:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/crying-whataboutism-doesnt-make-lefts-support-for-rioting-go-away\/"},"modified":"2021-01-16T04:08:59","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T01:08:59","slug":"crying-whataboutism-doesnt-make-lefts-support-for-rioting-go-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/crying-whataboutism-doesnt-make-lefts-support-for-rioting-go-away\/","title":{"rendered":"#Crying ‘whataboutism’ doesn’t make left’s support for rioting go away"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Crying ‘whataboutism’ doesn’t make left’s support for rioting go away<\/strong>”
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\u201cWhataboutism is the last refuge for someone who can\u2019t admit they\u2019re wrong,\u201d says journalist Tod Perry, who demands that we \u201cstop equating Trump\u2019s Capitol insurrection to Black Lives Matter protests.\u201d The Atlantic\u2019s David A. Graham likewise declares that conservatives\u2019 \u201ccomplaints about double standards are mostly whataboutism.\u201d Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times scolded the right for responses that were \u201cfull of whataboutism.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on here? The left has come to embrace whataboutism as an all-purpose shield against any attempt to put events in a social<\/a>, moral and historical context.<\/p>\n

The Oxford English Dictionary defines \u201cwhataboutism\u201d as \u201cthe practice of raising a supposedly analogous issue in response to a perceived hypocrisy or inconsistency.\u201d The term came into use in the 20th century, often describing a Soviet rhetorical gambit where any criticism of the USSR\u2019s rights record elicited an objection about the West\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n

Are conservatives\u2019 complaints about rioting double standards \u2014 lenient for Antifa, severe for MAGA \u2014 whataboutism? Graham dismisses the \u201csuperficial parallels\u201d and Peters disparages \u201cfalse equivalencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

We should, of course, reject false equivalencies, because they\u2019re false. But to complain about false equivalencies necessarily means that there are true equivalencies. It also strongly implies that different cases, though not identical, can be comparable in ways that fairly illuminate some underlying question.<\/p>\n

If it is legitimate for one side to raise such questions, it is illegitimate for the other side to use facile, tendentious accusations of whataboutism to rule them out of order. The point of that tactic isn\u2019t to win a debate but stifle it.<\/p>\n

It is indeed awkward for those politicians and journalists who defended or excused rioting around the country in 2020 to credibly denounce rioting on Capitol Hill in 2021. Asked about mobs toppling statues in public spaces, for example, Nancy Pelosi responded not with a denunciation but a koan: \u201cPeople will do what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rioting was \u201cunderstandable but regrettable,\u201d Jesse Jackson said, a quasi-criticism no one would think to app<\/a>ly to the Capitol Hill mob.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer-winning leader of the Times\u2019 1619 Project, also expressed equanimity and even pride regarding last year\u2019s unrest. \u201cIt would be an honor,\u201d she said, if the burning police stations and looted stores came to be described as the \u201c1619 Riots.\u201d She went on to explain, \u201cAny reasonable person would say we shouldn\u2019t be destroying other people\u2019s property, but these are not reasonable times.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if declaring \u201cthese are not reasonable times\u201d changes everything, then the loophole devours the rule, or even the idea of having rules. There is no injustice-validation tribunal to predetermine whose complaints merit suspending the ordinary strictures against rioting, so the question is crowdsourced. People decide for themselves about taking it to the streets.<\/p>\n

Insisting that BLM rioters are more aggrieved than MAGA rioters compounds the underlying problem: Contending that any grievance qualifies the otherwise categorical rejection of rioting puts us on a slippery slope to a dangerous place. Those who denounced last year\u2019s mayhem in dozens of cities deserve to be taken seriously when they denounce last week\u2019s mayhem in Washington. But those commentators who made different, worse choices have no right to expect we\u2019ll all pretend that these embarrassments never occurred.<\/p>\n

After Jan. 6, Jeremy Peters writes, \u201cTrump sympathizers were quick to try to shift the focus from the destructive scene in Washington and revive months-old stories about the fires and looting.\u201d It is strange to assert that riots that occurred months ago \u2014 gosh, who can even count how many? \u2014 are self-evidently unrelated to a more recent riot. It is particularly odd for a reporter for the Times, which mentioned the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in 82 different stories in 2020, to dismiss the hazy, archaic past.<\/p>\n

The whataboutism accusations mean that the people holding the megaphone can deliver crazy, dangerous pronouncements during one historical circumstance, then later use that power to decree that the earlier pronouncements are irrelevant. No decent person would even mention them. This message to conservatives resembles Eric Stratton\u2019s admonition in \u201cAnimal House\u201d: You f\u200a-\u200a-\u200aked up. You took us seriously. The moral of that story? Don\u2019t take them seriously in the first place.<\/p>\n

William Voegeli is senior editor of The Claremont Review of Books. Adapted from City Journal.<\/a><\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Crying ‘whataboutism’ doesn’t make left’s support for rioting go away” \u201cWhataboutism is the last refuge for someone who can\u2019t admit they\u2019re wrong,\u201d says journalist Tod Perry, who demands that we \u201cstop equating Trump\u2019s Capitol insurrection to Black Lives Matter protests.\u201d The Atlantic\u2019s David A. Graham likewise declares that conservatives\u2019 \u201ccomplaints about double standards are mostly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/AFP_Capitol-Siege-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[89643,1471,89089,4941,1621,70617],"class_list":["post-156015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-1-15-21","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-capitol-riot","tag-donald-trump","tag-protests","tag-the-left"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}