Not in a broad context - I would rather eat rocks than engage in a lengthy discussion of tu quoque as a philosophical concept. I encourage people to abandon the silly idea that all arguments have to be airtight according to a particular conception of 'logic' and arbitrary 'rules' of debate.
Specifically, let's talk about "whataboutism" in the way it is deployed as a rhetorical device to make it seem irrelevant or deceptive when criticism of communism/socialism is met with charges that capitalist countries engage in the same kind of allegedly unacceptable behavior or worse.
For example, let's take the idea that communism is bad because it oppresses its people. One might respond to that by saying, well, America, the most capitalist country in the world, has the highest population of prisoners of any nation that has ever existed in history.
Or how about the idea that communism relies on violent use of force to maintain its rule? One might say, well, capitalism also uses violence to maintain its own rule, and always has, from forced famines and mass displacement of native populations to slavery and White Terrors.
For a final example, there's the idea that under communism, there is no free speech or democracy. One might claim that, in America, there are also all sorts of restrictions on free speech and democracy forced on people by both the government and by capital itself.
The stock response is that this is a variant of the "tu quoque [you also]" logical fallacy. It may be so that these things happen under capitalism, the argument goes, but that does not excuse or justify their existence under socialism, and any attempt to claim otherwise is a dodge, a distraction.
Comments