Whataboutisms: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22329/il.v43i1.7304Keywords:
fallacy of relative privation, false dilemma, false equivalence, implicit bias, red herring fallacy, social justice, tu quoque fallacy, whataboutismAbstract
The rhetorical function of whataboutism is to redirect attention from the specific case at hand. Although commonly used as a rhetorical move, whataboutisms can appear in arguments. These tend to be weak arguments and are often instances of the tu quoque fallacy or other fallacies of relevance. In what follows, I show that arguments involving a whataboutist move can take a wide variety of forms, and in some cases, they can occur in good arguments. I end by considering how whataboutist arguing in social justice contexts can be harmful to arguers and to the audiences for their arguments.
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