What About Whataboutery

Whataboutery is social media's primary currency, yet as George Orwell recognised this disposition has far deeper roots.

Given the incessant bad faithism of social media, and rising political tensions throughout the world – domestically and internationally – whataboutery seems to have intensified as a form of political communication. However, as a psychological disposition it is not new. Seeking to understand this phenomenon I’ve been re-reading George Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism” – an essay that remains an incredibly insightful exploration of the political mind. 

Whataboutery can best be described as a political perspective that believes two wrongs do make a right. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified because the United States invaded Iraq. Or any potential invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is justified on similar grounds. Extending from this, it is a perspective that, somehow, believes that if one opposes the invasion of Ukraine then one automatically supports the invasion of Iraq. Whataboutery is an inability to understand the world outside of group competition. 

Of course, for those who try to resist such impulses, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is brutal and wrong, the U.S's invasion of Iraq was brutal and wrong, and any potential invasion of Taiwan by the PRC would be brutal and wrong. It is not only possible to hold all three positions, but it is philosophically consistent to do so. It shouldn't be so difficult to reach this conclusion. Yet, far too often it is. So it is important to understand why.

Orwell’s essay does an exceptional job of explaining the disposition that drives this group-orientated thinking. He begins by explain his definition of “nationalism:”

By “nationalism” I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled “good” or “bad.” But secondly—and this is much more important—I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.

“Nationalism” in Orwell’s framing is not exclusively concerned with nation-states, it could also concern an ideology, a political party, class, ethnicity, religion, sex or gender. “Chauvinism” may be a better term, although this is often associated with male supremacism. “Tribalism” may get to the anthropological heart of the problem.

A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist – that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating – but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival is on the down-grade.

When considering Ukraine and Taiwan in the modern context this rings true. These states are given no agency of their own, they are not considered people with the right to exist in peace and determine their own futures, they are merely deemed to be appendages of the “great power units” that surround them. The terms Ukraine and Taiwan have become divorced from the actual people within them almost completely, they now merely signal a “side” that one must align with – NATO or Russia, the U.S or China. It is incomprehensible that one might empathise with the people whose lives are at stake. 

Of course, as humans we don’t operate with a perfect rationality. We orientate ourselves by group identities and we are prone to reactions based on these identities. This is instinctive, but it is not beyond our capacities to overcome – humans are capable of communication without resorting to constant positional signals, although Orwell’s nationalists are less so.

Whataboutery is driven by the instinctive, rather than the rational, part of the human brain. It doesn’t seek truth or consistency, but is designed as a demonstration of allegiance. Often the most effective way to signal allegiance is through actively avoiding truth or consistency. Real commitment and loyalty to a cause or group is best demonstrated by being publicly and confidently fallacious.

As Orwell writes: 

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.

Through this perspective, public debate is not about seeking solutions to human problems, it is not about assessing verifiable information and working towards outcomes that are of social benefit, public debate is simply a cynical and obsessive attempt to impose one group’s will on another.  

[A]lthough endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him.

Anyone who writes about India would be familiar with an intense form of whataboutery that would make even the most rabid Tankie blush. This is often accompanied by accusations of being paid to publish arguments that are either critical or insufficiently servile to a particular group (mostly, but not always, the BJP). The perspective is that humans are incapable of forming an opinion on an issue through knowledge, evidence and consideration, therefore a nefarious deep pocket is always lurking in the background, directing the writer to denigrate the favoured group. 

This is a nationalist mindset – not exclusive to India – that can best be described as a hyper anti-empathy. It believes that because they themselves are only capable of advancing the narrow and myopic interests of their own group then everyone else must suffer from the same affliction. To not be similarly narrow and myopic about one’s own group is to invite suspicion. Therefore the only motivation for making an argument is due to being a shill – working for piles of dark money, and engaged in an active conspiracy against the offended group. 

The mirror-movement to this hyper anti-empathy are a combination of what Orwell highlights as “negative nationalism” and “transferred nationalism.” Here there is a radical form of auto-enmity that morph into a grotesque display of malicious self-flagellation. The most obvious example is the aforementioned Tankies – impulsive and aggressive authoritarians who have a reflexive hatred of the West, especially the U.S, and as a result assert that any country that is an adversary of Washington and its allies is “correct” and wonderful by default. This mindset leads to a wilfully delusional praising of the most repugnant regimes as a juvenile display to their own self-loathing.

Of course, these people would never actually live themselves in the countries they claim to be paragons of human good, knowing that Western countries tolerate their vomit in a way that their professed utopias never would. Given the undeniable brutality of countries like Russia, North Korea and China, their whataboutery serves as these people’s primary form of deflection, and a way of never having to engage in any serious form of self-scrutiny.

At its core authoritarianism – regardless of its strain – is a mindset that cannot tolerate the complex jumble of the world as it actually is. So it needs to trade in absolutes – and often bald faced lies – in order to find mental comfort.

While these authoritarians are the most extreme example, within progressive discourse there is an instinct to assume that one’s own country, and its allies, are constantly behaving in wicked ways. There may be plenty of examples where this is the case – Australia’s treatment of maritime asylum seekers being one – but poor behaviour with specific issues and having a general demeanour of malevolence are two separate things. Orwell, using a term that nowadays has fallen out of use but is synonymous to modern progressive sentiment, writes: 

“Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory…In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy.”

Here Orwell highlights how positive and negative nationalisms work in symbiosis with each other. They are politics as a tennis match; an endless rally of self-aggrandisement and self-abasement with no intention of seeking truth, evidence, consistency or positive outcomes. To not focus on these things is to treat politics as a game, not something that has real world consequences and can cause genuine harm if care isn’t taken. Nationalisms in Orwell’s framing are the noise of politics. The sound that is amplified to create a malleable cynicism. 

Considering so much of our political discourse consists of such noise it is important to make the distinction between ideology and philosophy – between Orwell’s nationalism and the habits of consideration. Ideology is a grab-bag of ideas cobbled together and promoted as a subscription package. Often these ideas can be highly inconsistent or contradictory – I have written about this in regards to Fusionism, the dominant conservative ideology from the late-1970s to mid-2010s. Yet these subscription packages can form a compelling narrative that *feel* consistent. Political parties especially are in the business of cultivating feelings, rather than advancing a suite of coherent policies. 

In contrast to ideology, philosophy is the search for consistency and ethical truths. It is, or should be, guided by principle and empathy – a way of understanding the world outside of group competition. Philosophy can therefore be seen as the antidote to whataboutery, a method to focus the mind on ideas and outcomes, rather than teams. To build an understanding of the good that acknowledges the complex web of humanity, with its array of cultures, ideas and interests, and seek to find workable – and chiefly humane – forms of interaction and organisation. 

Yet it should be acknowledged that politics, like human existence itself, is unavoidably emotional. Overcoming this emotion is not easy, but it may also not be wholly desirable. In Francis Fukuyama’s much misunderstood book “The End of History and the Last Man”, the concept of the “last man” was that of an entirely rational and cosmopolitan human who inhabited the end of history – the conclusion of ideological competition. This person had no culture of their own, no links to practise or place, and as a result humanity may have been struggle-free, but it was dull, monotonous and devoid of feeling. The last man was human in name only.

Yet in order to avoid a world of conflict and chaos there should be a way to strike a balance between having a cultural affinity and being mired in uncritical obstinance.

Orwell writes: 

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

“Sink his own individuality” is an excellent phrase that illustrates the insecurity at the core of this tribalism. A lack of confidence in oneself and the need to immerse one’s own person into a larger unit, whether this be a country, ethnicity, religion, political party or figure, or ideology. In understanding this insecurity we can see whataboutery as an immature sword and shield, a way to project one’s own inadequacies onto the world. It is the fear of individualism and the fear of developing one’s own conscience, and therefore the fear of being human.

To be an individual is to not make the world more chaotic – a claim often made by the Chinese Communist Party; that there are just too many Chinese people to be individuals – it is Orwell’s nationalism that creates human turbulence. Yet individualism can exist within a wider cultural unit, and to flourish as people and societies this is a necessity. What we should seek from ourselves and each other are the discovery of principles and ways of being that are community spirited, but not communally minded.