Word: Whataboutism

Wed Sep 10 12:42:19 UTC 2014

Barry Popik created a valuable entry for "Whataboutism" recently. So I
decided to revisit the topic which was discussed in a thread I
initiated on the ADS mailing list in February 2014. Here is a link to
Barry's entry:

Whataboutism (Entry from September 05, 2014)
http://bit.ly/1wfRjjQ
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/whataboutism/

Hugo found an intriguing GB snippet in a book with a 1990 GB date. He
also found some excellent matches in the Usenet archive starting in
June 2000. It looks like Barry found the June 2000 and other Usenet
matches independently. I found an interesting 1994 GB match for "What
aboutism" with a space separator. When I posted the 1994 match several
months ago it was unverified. Now, I have verified the 1994 match in a
U.S. book edition, and the details are below. There was a 1993 U.K.
edition which I have not seen.

Here is a link to the start of the ADS thread in the archive:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;27aa64e7.1402A

Here is a link to Hugo's message:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;1b8cd96e.1402B

Here is a link to the old message about the 1994 match:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;fbd01122.1402B

Here is additional information about the 1994 match which has been
verified using scans.

Year: 1994
Title: May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast
Author: Tony Parker
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, New York
  (Originally published in the UK in 1993 by Jonathan Cape)
Quote Page 136
(Verified with scans)

[Begin excerpt]
After Enniskillen, I was left feeling totally sick, and very conscious
of the same feelings of many of our people about it. They were
disgusted and rightly so. And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' -
you know, people who said 'Yes, but what about what's been done to us?
What about Bloody Sunday in Derry, what about the shooting of three
defenceless people in Gibraltar by the SAS?' That had nothing to do
with it, and if you got into it you were defending the indefensible.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 3:21 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Word: Whataboutism
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Excellent searching, Hugo, thanks! Thanks for your responses, Tom and
> DanG. Here is an example that probably dates to 1994 and references
> the conflict in Northern Ireland. "What aboutism" is used instead of
> "Whataboutism".
>
> Year: 1994
> Title: May the Lord in His Mercy be Kind to Belfast
> Author: Tony Parker
> Publisher: HarperCollins
> (Google Books snippet data may be inaccurate)
>
> [Begin extracted text]
> And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' - you know, people who said
> 'Yes, but what about what's been done to us? What about Bloody Sunday
> in Derry, what about the shooting of three defenceless people in
> Gibraltar by the SAS?'
> [End extracted text]
>
> Garson
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 6:04 AM, Hugo <hugovk at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Hugo <hugovk at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Word: Whataboutism
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Nothing in:
>> ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian (1821-2003) and The
>> Observer (1791-2003)
>>
>> ---
>>
>> An unverified Google Books snippet:
>>
>> Educating the intelligent child - Page 24
>> books.google.com/books?id=_IFYAAAAYAAJ
>> Victor Serebriakoff - 1990 - Snippet view
>> However, we have to beware of what I call 'But- what-about?-ism\ There
>> is an absurd concept of morality which says that no good thing shall
>> be done for anyone unless it can be done for everyone. Because, sadly,
>> there are people with no legs ...
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Google Groups
>>
>> June 2000
>> You say that " history is very important as it causes
>> the issues of modern time."   I agree.    But I think it was Seamus Mallon,
>> leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in NI (the party which
>> continues to attract the support of the majority of Nationalist voters
>> through its support for unification through democratic and constitutional
>> methods) who referred to the curse of NI politics of "whataboutism" -- "what
>> about 1914?"   "what about 1648?".    When you've got two groups living in
>> the same place with long-standing and legitimate grievances against each
>> other they can either continue to rake over the coals to no conclusion ever
>> or they can they can say something like "we've got very good reasons for not
>> liking each other and not trusting each other, but we've got to find some
>> way of living together and running our own affairs in a half-way civilised
>> manner".
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.politics.misc/1rV6UXns5No/33bxRGE2ICUJ
>>
>> Wikipedia: "Seamus Frederick Mallon (born 17 August 1936) is an Irish
>> politician who was the first deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland
>> from 1998 to 2001."
>>
>> Sept 2000
>> Thus missing my point - that as soon as someone condemns one thing
>> in Northern Ireland a bout of "whataboutism" starts listing atrocities by
>> other groups. There is an assumption that somone who criticises, say,
>> Republican groups is a Loyalist sympathiser or pro-British and vica versa.
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.culture.irish/U43-EWyX_sQ/FDspeRr4u-4J
>>
>> Oct 2000
>> This paragraph contains almost everything to be expected from an
>> Israel cheerleader: the `whataboutism' (`the Palestinians' attacking
>> schoolbuses)
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.books/jteejv0nO18/ZULazzjS8uMJ
>>
>> Feb 2002
>> He singled out Edward Said for
>> particular chastisement, accusing the Middle Eastern literary critic of
>> engaging in shameless whataboutism -- the tendency to excuse the atrocity of
>> September 11 by pointing to the victims of American foreign policy. Islamic
>> fundamentalists may have bombed the World Trade Center, but whatabout.?
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.politics.democrats/hF4H0Kh6d84/R3iLo_3EaUcJ
>>
>> Oct 2002
>> So we move quickly past a condemnation of mass murder to a cascade of
>> whataboutism. Americans died on 11 September, thatąs terrible, but what
>> about the victims of American foreign policy? In the present, Palestinians
>> and Iraqis. Half a century back, Iran. For decades, Soviet apologists were
>> quick with their riposte to Americans: łWhat about the Red Indians?˛
>> Whataboutism is the stuff of feuds, not politics. It is not an engagement
>> with reality, but a retreat from it into stampeding certainty.
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.movies.kubrick/ktunkBTrtXY/-OMCdcRJTdgJ
>>
>> ---
>>
>> A 2007 World Wide Words newsletter:
>>
>> WHATABOUTISM  Barry Rein found this in The Economist of 29 October.
>> It means to change the focus of an argument or deflect criticism by
>> raising a different issue - "never mind this injustice, what about
>> ... ". It's not quite a neologism. There are various examples to be
>> found in discussion forums online, though it is vanishingly rare in
>> print. One online post said it was used in Northern Ireland during
>> the Troubles by Seamus Mallon of the Social Democratic and Labour
>> Party, who called it "the curse of Northern Irish politics".
>>
>> http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070521073402/http://worldwidewords.org/backissues/wbi071103.txt
>>
>> ---
>>
>> As an aside, the 2008 Economist article says:
>>
>> [Begin]
>> For example: A caller to a radio program asks, "What is the average
>> wage of an American manual worker?" A long pause ensues. Then the
>> answer comes: "U nich negrov linchuyut" ("Over there they lynch
>> Negroes")--a phrase that, by the time of the Soviet collapse, had
>> become a synecdoche for Soviet propaganda as a whole.
>> [End]
>>
>> A brief 2008 Russian discussion of it (which mentions the WWW
>> newsletter) under the title includes this (Google translated) reply:
>>
>> [Begin Google translation]
>> And I remember the bearded anecdote, where it was " and you hang Negroes . "
>>
>> The short version:
>>
>> Nixon says Brezhnev: "You in stores empty! Salaries small. Books of
>> interest could not be found ..." Brezhnev retorted: "And you hang
>> Negroes".
>> [End]
>>
>> http://forum.lingvo.ru/actualpost.aspx?bid=29&tid=93334&mid=522895&p=1&act=quot
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Hugo
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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