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A comment on 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam. Parent comment

Re:'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's... by jordigh on Thursday May 09, 2019 @05:17PM (#19872526)
I may have been wrong to interpret this comment as whataboutism, but whataboutism isn't just some petty logical fallacy to invoke in internet arguments, but a well-established political tactic employed by governments of the world to justify their actions. It's on a different class of rhetoric than the others in this list.

Soviet Russia invoked it all the time to justify their actions, as does Trump and currently China. Whataboutism is a favourite tactic of oppressive regimes, "practically a national ideology".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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Re:'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's... by tptacek on Thursday May 09, 2019 @06:03PM (#19872884)
Nobody is denying that these canned arguments don't refer back to real things; they're just saying that they devolve into canned arguments and superficial, thought-destroying comparisons that degrade the site.

On "whataboutism", there's no debate to have; if you follow Dan and Scott's moderation comments, appeals to "whataboutism" have been verboten on the site for awhile now.

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