Whataboutism isn't new, nor is it intellectually dishonest to point out when it's being used. Soviets started using it during the cold war era, and it's still in use as a deflection tactic today.

> Whataboutism isn't new

You are absolutely correct, however I would argue that it has only relatively recently entered the common HN lexicon. The vast majority (~675 out of 704^) of comments using it here in the comments are < 2 yrs old.

Admittedly the first comment on HN that used the term is 7 years old, but that comment [0] predates the creation of the wikipedia article (frequently trotted out when invoking the term here) by about a year.

As an aside, I'd love see a dataviz app that shows the lifecycle of terminology and memes that thrive in various internet discussion boards.

0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2944345

^well it'll be 705 including this post ;)

Interesting timeframe on increased usage on HN. That may be correlated with the current president of the United States using it frequently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Use_by_Donald_T...

Again, that still doesn't make it new or intellectually dishonest to point out.