Context and intent matter

The article ‘What-aboutism’ and the Universal by Chris Horner (3 Quarks Daily) provides an example of an atrocity—the bombing of a school—that people would see the need to tell the world their opinion about. He writes of the hypothetical commentator,

“It is a war crime and you name it as such[,] as an evil, criminal thing. Soon after the words leave your mouth, or get posted online, someone responds with something along these lines: yes, that’s all very well, but why just condemn that? What about..? They then name some other, maybe similar atrocity that you haven’t mentioned. ”

Of interest is that the person who “names it as such, as an evil” is considered to be an additional victim here, because they were just saying something that they—and, supposedly, society—view as an unalloyed good thing. They are annoyed that it might not be received as such. Anyone who rains on their parade of mutual adulation becomes the enemy. At that point, they will lash out and accuse anyone questioning the narrative of “what-aboutism” or of being on the side of those who bomb schools. That way, of course, lies madness.

You can read the rest of Horner’s analysis, but I felt that, despite his detour through Hegel, he missed the higher-level issue. He seems to be straw-manning what-aboutism in his essay. Horner’s hypothetical commenter is a primitive, poorly expressed example of someone trying to open a dialogue. There are better ways of doing this. Many others would be, perhaps clumsily, trying to alert an empathic potential ally to other injustices, to draw them into a discussion of a bigger narrative than just a single bombing.

Asking why someone is “reporting” on something and not on everything else is completely valid. Asking where they’ve gotten their information and how sure are they whether their information is even correct is perfectly valid. Alerting them that they’re taking sides in a war—even unknowingly—can be a public service. Almost no-one has enough information to really know what to think. A lot of us have the luxury that we don’t have to choose a side or make life decisions based on insufficient information. So why do it anyway?

It has very often been the case that people repost information that they’ve read or heard somewhere without ever questioning whether they’re being roped into a propaganda effort. Was a building even bombed? Does the town even exist? Was it bombed recently? Is there footage or images? Is the footage from months or years ago? Is it even the same war? Was the building actually a school? Was it being used as a school? Were there children there? Were there soldiers there?

That’s not what-aboutism; it’s trying to figure out what’s going on. And even what-aboutism can be useful, even though its possibly annoying for people who don’t feel like thinking about what they’re actually saying. They just want everyone to be on their side. They’re not just saying that they support e.g. Ukraine. With their silence on everything else, they’re either admitting wholesale ignorance or admitting they don’t care about those other things. Maybe they have a good reason why this is the only issue worth caring about.

It’s good to make people think about why they’re so emotionally invested in one thing and not at all invested in several other even more horrific situations. Are they being honest with themselves? Or are they being corralled into a propaganda effort that will benefit the same elite that always benefits while making things utterly worse for everyone else?

Cheering on an extended war “until Ukraine wins” implies support for a lot of suffering with it, for everyone except the people doing the cheering. Are those cheering sure that what they’re cheering on is good? That is will lead to better outcomes than other strategies?

Africa will suffer from lack of food, Ukraine will be flattened, Russia’s economy and people are being set back decades, Europe is painting itself into a corner with only the U.S. as a “friend”, climate change has taken a back seat as countries ramp up their LNG, oil, and coal production.

A single person’s superficial cheering of a war effort isn’t significant. Millions and millions of unthinking voices, though, help push things in the exact wrong direction. And that cheering of war is often implicit: when someone expresses horror at an atrocity, they usually leave implicit that they support the violence directed against the perpetrators of that atrocity.

What we’re seeing in Ukraine is corporate warfare. Media companies, banks, energy companies, military contractors, all fighting over market share. What-aboutism is one of the few ways of making more people aware of this.