One year ago this month, Merriam-Webster.com added the word “whataboutism” to its dictionary, a nod to its increasing use in this polarized political environment.
The dictionary defined it as “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.”
Whataboutism — you’ve probably been exposed to this rhetorical device and its close cousins: denial, deflection, disinformation and bothsidesing.
Bothsidesing, per Merriam-Webster, “refers to the media or public figures giving credence to the other side of a cause, action, or idea to seem fair or only for the sake of argument when the credibility of that side may be unmerited. The term is also used to describe public figures equivocating about a seemingly condemnable action saying that people on both sides are equally responsible for that action.”
Whataboutism is when some question is asked and instead of dealing with it, the response is “What about Hunter Biden’s laptop?” or “What about Hillary Clinton’s emails?” or, in the case of inquiries about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election — “What about the civil unrest in 2020?” a reference to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
I raised the matter of whataboutism in my conversation on the latest “At the Table” show with David Corn, whose new book is “American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.” Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones and an MSNBC analyst.
Corn’s book digs into the history of Republicans cultivating, exploiting and tolerating extremism. It’s useful historical context to understanding why so many Republicans remain silent in the wake of election denial, conspiracy theories and ongoing threats to our democracy.
A response Corn said he often gets to his book is that “Democrats do it too.”
“There are crazy ideas on the left, there’s extremism on the left. And you know, so ... both sides do it. ... What about crazy conspiracy ideas on the left about George W. Bush and the Iraq War, something like that?
“And I say, well, you know what, you’re wrong.
“There’s a true asymmetry here. You know, we look ... for symmetry, we look for balance in the world. It’s kind of reassuring — that side does it, that side does it, you know, the truth is in the middle.
“But often, that’s not the case. Often in the world, reality is not in balance. It’s not in sync. It’s not equal on each side.
“So you know, the point I make is that the Republican Party has embraced various forms of extremism and that every major Republican Party candidate and president, you can point to an instance of them doing that.
“Even Mitt Romney, who by all accounts is a decent fellow, individually when he ran for the presidency in 2012, he embraced Donald Trump at the time that Donald Trump was the number one purveyor of the racist birther conspiracy theory about Barack Obama. And so he validated Donald Trump, he said you are a member of the Republican coalition that we care about, while Donald Trump was viewing racist extremism.”
I told Corn I was surprised that Trump leveraged to the White House the birtherism lie that Obama was not born in the U.S.
Said Corn, “... Again and again and again, you have Republican leaders, endorsing, embracing putting up with accepting this crazy stuff on the right. You can’t find an example of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Michael Dukakis, Fritz Mondale or Joe Biden embracing anything similar, you know, embracing a conspiracy theory.
“… And so, the Democrats have never had this relationship with the far left or left extremism as Republicans have had with that with the right. So when you get to whataboutism, and you can say, ‘OK, what about Hunter Biden?’
“Well, Hunter Biden is one guy, and whatever happened with Hunter Biden and his laptop and anything is a peanut compared to an insurrectionists riot that was meant to overturn an election and throw out the votes of, you know, what is it? 80-odd million Americans.”
Said Corn, “So yeah, you can point to things you don’t like on the left. But there needs to be an idea of proportionality here, right? But of course, they don’t want that. They look for the deflection, and the media often takes the bait.”
