A Cold War joke: an American rocket scientist and a Russian rocket scientist meet at a conference. The American starts to ask his new comrade, “so, how are things going with the Soviet space shuttle prog-” and the Russian cuts him off and says “but you lynch black people!”
The Soviets relied on that old trope time and time again whenever they were confronted about their human rights abuses, and such “whataboutism” remains a sign of desperation for someone who is being put on the hot seat in an argument.
But does that mean it’s never appropriate? I came across two pieces this past week, from Jeff Jacoby and Eugene Volokh, arguing that whataboutism can actually be appropriate in some circumstances.
Both argue that people who sneer “whataboutism” are often deflecting from their own hypocrisy and double standards, which in turn can raise questions about what they really think about the issue that has them so riled up.
Volokh in particular says it can be a useful debating point not so much when you or your preferred politician is accused of clearly illegal behavior (Joe Biden’s classified documents woes don’t make Donald Trump’s own transgressions any less criminal, though they might make it politically harder for him to be prosecuted) but when it’s kind of a gray area.
His example is when a judge is accused of “political activity,” which is prohibited by the federal judges’ code of conduct but contains many exceptions and gray areas:
Let's say the underlying question is quite contested: Say, for instance, that Judge Walter is faulted because the judge's spouse is involved in controversial politics, or because the judge was hobnobbing with politicians, or because the judge spoke to an ideological group. That's not against any clear defined rule: The Code of Conduct for federal judges, for instance, forbids "political activity" by judges, but doesn't define the term (other than prohibiting some specific kinds of such activity), and has an exception for various "law-related pursuits and civic, charitable, educational, religious, social, financial, fiduciary, and governmental activities," so long as they do not "detract from the dignity of the judge's office, interfere with the performance of the judge's official duties, reflect adversely on the judge's impartiality, lead to frequent disqualification, or violate [certain particular] limitations."
The question then might be how one interprets these vague terms, or what broader ethical or legal principles one thinks apply here, or what institutional norms may have developed that elaborate on the formal rules. And there it makes sense to ask: How would the critics react when judges from (to oversimplify) their own side of the aisle, say Judge Christopher, behave similarly? If they wouldn't or didn't see any problem with that, that might mean that actually the rules or principles don't clearly condemn what Judge Walter did. Likewise, it might mean that the supposed institutional norm hasn't really been recognized.
In either event, asking "What about what Judge Christopher did?" might lead us to reasonably conclude that Judge Walter's behavior was fine. To be sure, perhaps we might conclude that Judge Christopher's behavior was also bad (even if people didn't notice it at the time) and Judge Walter's behavior was therefore bad, too. Or we might conclude that the behaviors are actually quite different, and should be treated differently. Or we might conclude that we shouldn't fault Judge Walter or Judge Christopher personally, but that on reflection we should establish norms or rules going forward forbidding such behavior. But in any event, bringing up the "counteraccusation" would be helpful.
And this is so because of an obvious feature of human nature: When people are asked to apply vague standards, they routinely interpret them more harshly against their adversaries than against their friends. The best way of checking that tendency is to think about how the standard applies to both. If the reaction of those who like Judge Christopher is "Judge Christopher did nothing wrong," then maybe their initial reaction criticizing Judge Walter stemmed from their disapproval of Walter on other matters, and not from a fair application of the asserted principle or norm.
Of course, maybe their bias is in their endorsement of Judge Christopher's actions—maybe they were unduly kind to Judge Christopher, rather than being unduly harsh to Judge Walter. Or maybe the answer is somewhere in between. But in any event, thinking about how one's analysis applies to one's friends as well as one's foes can help one take a more fairminded view of the matter.
Up here, #cdnpoli Twitter has been a veritable Woodstock of whataboutism this past week, after Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre spoke to a “think tank” which has engaged in some trollish if not downright offensive conduct in recent years:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rigid Thinking to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.