Whataboutery and moral equivalency - weapons in the war on truth part 2

In my previous post I deconstructed a Facebook comment that was trying to use moral equivalency to downplay the actions of the Government advisor Dominic Cummings by claiming that people from all political backgrounds were breaking the rules. I pointed out several problems with the argument, including that it disregarded several inconvenient facts as it tried to build up justifications.

'Moral equivalency' and its close ally, 'whataboutery', are becoming very common tools on the right wing of politics. Usually Whataboutery starts literally with the words "What about..." followed by a completely unconnected issue. But it doesn't always have to be this way. Sometimes the whataboutery is implied. Here's an example that was shared by someone I'm Facebook friends with.

That's a shared post that had the original caption "the media is poison". The text above the photo is part of the image and says "This is the UK press breaking isolation rules so that can shame someone who broke isolation rules............[facepalm emoji]"

The implication there is that the media are hypocrites and therefore morally equivalent to the person they are trying to talk to. The aim of sharing that post is simple - to downplay the wrongdoing of the person who is being targeted by the media by pointing out that other people are now behaving just as badly.

Again we can deconstruct this. I have some points. For the purposes of this argument, I am going to assume this is a genuine photo and not something that has been repurposed. You do have to be careful with right wing memes because the photos often aren't what they claim to be. But let's take it at face value.

1) The journalists aren't following social distancing guidelines. They should be punished. Nobody needs to defend them.
2) The journalists would not be there at all if Dominic Cummings had followed the rules that he had been party to developing.
3) No "isolation rules" are being broken there. Social distancing rules are being broken in that picture, yes (see point 1) and, more importantly, Dominic Cummings broke quarantine rules. Those rules are to stop people who are ill with Coronavirus from travelling and potentially infecting other people. Breaking quarantine rules is more likely to infect other people with Coronavirus. That's arguably more serious than breaking social distancing rules.
4) The whatabouterist is trying to change the focus to the response. This is a common tactic, to change the discussion from the actions of the person in the spotlight, to try and talk about the reactions they have caused.
5) There is a faulty claim to a double standard here -  the criticism of the people in the picture is that they aren't following the rules. But the real double standard is holding the members of the media to a higher standard then the person they are investigating.

The description of the event as a shaming attempt isn't accidental either. This isn't about trying to "shame" a person. This is about the media challenging a person who has a lot of influence and power about their behaviour which has directly placed other people at risk of harm. Describing at as 'shaming' is an attempt to downplay it.

Here's another example of whataboutery, this time a quote from a newspaper columnist done up as a meme by an ultra-conservative (ie hard right) group called Reasoned UK and shared by a different Facebook friend.

My friend added her own commentary, saying: "I disagree with what he did, but there is never an excuse for bullying."

The quote is from Melanie Phillips who writes for the Times. For context, she's written some pretty racist columns about migrants in the past and is a climate change skeptic. She has also, and this is important, lost at least one journalism job after writing stuff that wasn't true. So, the first question we have to ask, is, is this true? Did Dominic Cummings experience intimidation and "bullying" from his neighbours?

But, let's say he did. Let's give Melanie Phillips the benefit of the doubt here. What is the argument? Apparently "[t]here is absolutely no excuse whatever for shouting at, intimidating and bullying". None, whatsoever!

We could debate that. She writes an opinion column. She has opinions. I have opinions. We all have opinions. We don't all have a national platform to broadcast our opinions.

But this is almost exactly the same whataboutery as in the first post I shared. It's criticising people for reacting. It's criticising people for being provoked. It's criticising the response. There doesn't seem to be an acknowledgement anywhere in this that people may have a right to feel angry, that actually some of what has happened here is the fault of the person who has done the wrong thing.

Now Melanie might have said that, but her article is behind a paywall. And the people who dressed her words up in this easily shareable quote have left any caveats that she might have included out.

We can debate the old idea that two wrongs don't make a right, and I would generally agree, but when people try and shift the focus to 'what about the reaction!?!?" they are doing it for a reason, and that reason is to gloss over the bad behaviour that has brought about that reaction. It's ultimately a form of victim-blaming

Whataboutery can take some pretty wild turns, as it turns out. I've got one more example, which I will save to my next post.

Whataboutery and moral equivalency - weapons in the war on truth part 1

Something that frustrates me most in the political conversations I see around at the moment is "whataboutery" and "moral equivalency".

I'm going to use some examples that I've seen on Facebook in the last couple of days that were responses to the recent row over the actions of the Prime Minister's advisor Dominic Cummings to illustrate these debating tactics. In fact, they aren't debating tactics. They are attempts to shut down the debate or derail it into the long grass.

I tend to see these more when people are trying to defend the Tories or actions of those even further on the right. They have been very common on the anti-EU side of the Brexit argument, and they are almost universally used by apologists for Donald Trump.

That's not to say they couldn't be used by anyone, from any political ideology, supporting any political aim. Or really any argument at all. You see these arguments all the time in sports when shady, loaded individuals want to take over a football club for example, and fans are looking for a reason to justify their continued support for a club that is now owned by a human rights violater with a reputation for torture.

But I tend to see them deployed most often on the political right. They are used to minimise terrible moral actions and deflect away scandals. They have been very effective in the propaganda wars on social media. They tend to get shared by people who aren't very good at recognising propaganda.

There is a subtle difference between the two."Moral equivalency" is the fancy term for saying "they're all as bad as each other!" Moral Equivalency gets rolled out any time a person's degenerate behaviour is questioned. Here's an example; the first comment left on a post that my friend Sian shared on Facebook about Dominic Cummings.

The joke that Sian shared is that if you 'cut out' the mask and wear it you can drive wherever the f*ck you want during lockdown. This joke incidentally, was ripped off by the Daily Star, and printed on their front page.

The very first comment is a classic piece of Moral Equivalency.

"Or Welsh Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, or the Scottish Dr. Seems it doesn't matter what political party there are idiots in them all who bend the rules to suit them [angry emoji]"

Do you see the attempt to make an equivalency case? Well, says our erstwhile commentator, they're all as bad as each other.

There are so many problems with this approach it's hard to list them all, but we can deconstruct this argument to see what the person using it is trying to do.

1) It casts shade on somebody else from a different part of the political spectrum to try and provoke a defence of that person. (It's a shame for them they can't do better than Stephen Kinnock. I can't imagine anyone jumping to his defence.)

2) If they don't provoke a defence of that person, it is still minimising this as just a political disagreement. They're basically saying 'You are only disapproving because he's an advisor to the Tory Prime Minister.' That's basically invalidating a person's opinion by accusing them of bias. It's an attempt to negate the argument by changing the basis of the argument from examination of a person's actions to debate about their beliefs.

3) It's an attempt to downplay and justify. But justifying bad behaviour by citing another person's bad behaviour is juvenile. That's like me telling my Mum I shouldn't be told off for kicking the cat because my brother forgot to feed the cat last week*.

*this is an analogy. No cats were actually kicked or neglected in the writing of this blog post.

4) This is a good example of someone trying to "kitchen sink" an argument - throwing in all the examples they can to show that there are loads of people breaking the rules out there.

In this case the person doing the 'kitchen sinking' is factually wrong which is counter-productive to their argument. The "Scottish Dr" was an employee of the Scottish Government, not a member of a political party. (As far as I'm aware, anyway. I never saw any party affiliations mentioned when the news cycle was about her.) And, more importantly, she resigned when her rule-breaking was discovered.

That actually shows a level of contrition and acknowledgment of wrongdoing that has been completely absent from Cummings. In fact, the "Scottish Dr" is an example of a high ranking government advisor who owned her rule-breaking and took the consequences rather than trying to avoid them. The commenter either doesn't know this or doesn't care. They just want as much evidence as possible. Facts don't matter. Kitchen sinkers are rarely deep thinkers.

5) It makes all wrongdoing equally bad. It's similar to when the tape came out with President Trump describing his approach to women as "grab them by the pussy" and his supporters replied with whatever bad thing they thought his opponents had done. 'They're all as bad as each other' implies that every action or attitude is of equal standing. 

6) It reduces accountability. "Of course Dominic Cummings ignored the lockdown rules and quarantine restrictions - he's a political advisor, that's what people in politics do..." Such an attitude basically gives people a free pass and doesn't hold them accountable for their actions.

I have some more examples but this has turned into a long post, so I will write about them in part 2.