From what I've seen, in context, a whataboutism is concerned about the argument of moral authority and precedent from the person accusing a AES or progressive of something bad...

Here's some rules:

Apply it when it relates to the precedent of incidents that seem exceptionally bad, when committed by Actually-Existing-Socialist countries, but are ignored, if not justified in Capitalist ones... they could be explained as historical thinking of the time or justified under circumstances

For example: https://hexbear.net/post/2329752 (Homosexuality laws compared between historical Soviet Union and the West, lemmygrad meme)

Show

However, don't use irrelevant ones to detract from past mistakes, they make you look daft and aloof

The US drone strikes it's own citizens on foreign soil so yet again China is doing a bad thing that's not nearly as bad as what the US is doing and everyone just ignores what the US is doing and shouts BUT CHYNA! Racist hacks

I'll explain more later on...

  • Infamousblt [any]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Imagine actually taking debates with braindead libs seriously. They aren't arguing in good faith so there's really no point in us either. Libs are idealists; facts are material and therefore don't matter to them. You can't argue with an idealist by giving them facts, it doesn't work that way.

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Its more the outsiders not the libs, if I'm being honest...

      Besides, if I wanted to argue with more bad faith libs (outside of Lemmy), it would be in Reddit but I don't...

      Sorry pal if I included ye here...

    • Adkml [he/him]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Yea don't worry about overusing it it because no matter how perfectly you use it they'll just dismiss it.

      You can point out the fact they're being shameless uninformed hypocrisy, literally demonizing somebody for something while they personally help enact a more egregious version of that thing, and they'll stay say your criticisms are invalid.

      They'll knock you over the head, rod you blind and take all the clothes off of your back then turn around and condemn you for stealing from their garden. If you point out you had to because they robbed you blind and you'd starve otherwise they'll call it whatabaoutism.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Tons of leftists were once libs and we need a lot more people on our side before we can get much done. We have to get new leftists from somewhere -- if we write off all libs, where are we going to get all our people from?

      sankara-bass "We can never stop explaining"

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
          ·
          7 months ago

          A lot of people get radicalized (at least in part) from what they read on the internet. Dunks can be an effective way to get a point across, but they probably work best when complimented with more straightforward arguments.