Whataboutism

Disingenuous, duplicitous, repugnant

Whataboutism is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary “as the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.”

We saw that alot this week, when the brutal murders of the Bibas children were revealed. So many responded not with horror or disgust at the inhumane treatment of these babies, but with the nonsensical rejoinder well Israel killed children when they bombed Gaza. Noted evolutionary psychologist and author of The Parasitic Mind, Gad Saad responded:

One of the interesting thing we have seen, particularly in the last 16 months of the October War, is for those who support Hamas to try to find reasons for their support beyond the usual judenhass. Whether it is adherence to the Soviet Union propaganda disinformatzia that Jews are not indigenous to the area called Judea (now Israel and the West Bank/Judea and Samaria)- as if the word “Jew” to describe those who are members of the Jewish People and practice judaism, was a name pulled out of a hat in some cabal meeting of the Elders of Zion at some time in the last millenia, joined with the Frantz Fanon Algerian instigated blood orgy philosophy of excising colonizers from a colonized nation, and/or the Islamist principle that Jews (and christians as well) are lesser than and that Muslim lands once conquered can never be returned to nonMuslims, conveniently taught as honor, these ideologies have coalesced to create Hamas and its supporters.

The truth is that what these individuals, mostly in the west, do on a daily basis is to try to obliterate the truth of what they believe and to deflect their actions onto those they wish to destroy, namely Israel along with all the Jews in the world and by extension western freedoms. The interesting thing here is that Hamas’ actions are so egregious that there truly is no way to divert the reality of what everyone in the world is seeing. The true monstrousness of Hamas and their supporters are on full display every day with every hostage exchange.

Look at the healthy, well fed, well clothes children chanting at the hand over of the Bibas babies’ murdered and mutilated corpses. There are no starving people in Gaza except for the hostages. There is no genocide in gaza when the numbers of your community have actually risen in the last year. Only the willfully blind do not see what is right in front of them. Survivors of genocide do not claim victory as Hamas has done because when you are genocided there simply are not enough members of your people left to make any kind of declaration. The Jews at the end of WW2 did not claim victory. The people slaughtered by Pol Pot did not claim victory. The Tutsis did not claim victory after the Rwandan genocide. Muslims did not claim victory after Srebrenica. The Yazidis did not claim victory after their slaughter by ISIS.

(The UN, ICC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Amal Clooney can say anything they want about the actions of Israel in the Gaza War, but pictures don’t lie and those with knowledge of the Laws of War also know the difference between collateral war damage and human rights violations. HERE, HERE. Just as Gad Saad expanded upon above. )

The western supporters of Hamas have not only been duped, but they happily have fallen prey to some of the most evil and vile propaganda emanating from al Jazeera, China, Iran, and Russia. From troll farms and AI bots, to antisemitic influencers who spread lies and falsehoods in order to defame the state of Israel, and by extension all who support her, the latest is the whataboutism when it comes to the Bibas babies and their mother.

But we have seen whataboutism used for a very long time. But never so blatantly done as we have witnessed in the last year and a half.

Now don’t confuse this for using the strawman argument, If you deliberately use a fake issue to argue against because it's easier to prove wrong than the real issue would be, you're using a straw man. By attacking a straw man, you make it look like you've successfully defeated your opponent's argument.

Basically a strawman argument has nothing to do with the initial premise at all. It is taking what is being discussed and turning into something entirely different in order to win an argument. While whataboutism is not refuting the issue at hand but saying that the one issuing the derision is actually supporting something far worse and hence their point is immaterial.

Strawman arguments is the purveyance of narcissism. Change the topic to something wholly unrelated in order to win an argument simply because you cannot lose. Whataboutism is the actions of cowardice because they cannot and do not want to deal with the truth in front of them, which is that they are repugnant, lacking in any modicum of humanity, in so many ways.

Of course, your discussion opponent may actually accuse you of whataboutism because if you point out the hypocrisy in their argument they have no answer. They may also call you a racist for good measure. This happened to me and was the last straw before I deleted Instagram. I pointed out that the Palestinian Authority were hypocrites for memorializing a journalist accidentally shot by Israeli troops years ago in Hebron because the PA is one of the worst criminals in denying freedom of the press along with the torture and murder of journalists. That the PA doesn’t actually care about journalists this was merely an attempt to vilify Israel. I was called all manner of names by someone purporting to be a sociology professor.

(By the way the Times of Israel editor who posted the report about the memorial did not come to my defense. In fact this person said nothing. What this says about the Times of Israel is up to the individual reader. I used to have a blog on TOI but stopped writing there shortly after this interaction. [It is linked in my bio however.] I still read their headlines. But take most of their opinions with a grain of salt, except for Haviv Rettig Gur, him you need to listen to. I combine my information with The Jerusalem Post, and Israel Hayom. Never Haaretz. Oh heavens to betsy definitely never Haaretz. Haaretz is the MSNBC, al Jazeera and Pravda bible of the self-loathing Israeli crowd all rolled into one convenient space.)

I find whataboutism something quite interesting in human interactions. The inability for people to simply accept that their side may be wrong and that their side may have committed egregious sins is interesting. I think it comes down to humans needing an infallible god as well.

Since today’s “politics,” and I use that word lightly when discussing the proHamas murderous hordes of the west, has replaced religion then there is the transference of reverence, infallibility to a god to political machinations. What you worship can never be wrong. The actions of the secular god is without fault. The actions of the secular god cannot be challenged. The actions of the secular god cannot be made to be egregious nor harmful to humanity. It is only those who do not embrace the new religion that need to be wiped clean from the earth. And so we see the wastebaskets with Jewish Stars in every proHamas rally or event worldwide. (The gordian knots in which the sign carriers use to say they are not calling for Jewish genocide but only to destroy Israel is something extraordinary to behold. That they actually believe this is what is so unbalanced and irredeemable about the western proHamas apparatchik.)

The irony of course, is that Hamas is not secular. It is virulently Islamists, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in most Arab/Muslim nations. They don’t care about western freedoms, but because they embrace the debauchery of Fanon then the western Marxian simpletons think that Hamas represents their world view. They do not see that if the world of the Islamists come to be, the first ones to be beheaded will be those marching with red banners, gay pride flags, who participate in pro abortion marches, and slut walks.

They should pay heed to what the Islamists in Iran did to their compatriots after the 1979 revolution. But they won’t because they refuse to see that Hamas represents the same evil as the Iranian Mullahs (Ok these dolts probably think that Iran is the good guys here as well). They think they are on the same side as the Islamist, wanting to create a perfect more better world. But they are not. And the only ones who will save them from themselves is Israel and others who are the bulwark against Islamist slaughter. But there will never be a thank you for saving these western ingrates from themselves.

Even as Islamists rampage through Europe with terror attack after terror attack. These morally deficient numpties will make a statement, as the leader in Northern Ireland did by saying that Israel will have to make peace with Hamas, like the parties in Northern Ireland eventually came together to make peace. (See it’s not just the country of Ireland that is morally vapid, but all of Ireland that is willfully ignorant about who and what Hamas and Islamists are.)

So I have learned to ignore whataboutisms lately. I see the use of them as ignorance, a moral failing or worse, a deliberate provocation and a means to psychologically harm. Those that use this tact mean to throw the truth off guard and to try to undermine the reality that we are in a fight for what is right and true in this world. That there is moral difference between gleeful barbarism and casualties of war. They want us to question our own morality and humanity, while they invert the meaning of words, of actuality, and try to tell us what we see right before our eyes is not what we are seeing.

IT IS DAY 506 OF THE HOSTAGES BEING STARVED AND HELD IN THE TERROR DUNGEONS OF GAZA 🎗️

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