Uhh, yeah, we don’t disagree that America often sucks. Pointing that out in response to criticism pointed at other authoritarian regimes doesn’t make them good. For example, talking about gulags is guaranteed to trigger someone to bring up America’s incarceration rate. Does that magically make gulags good? No, it’s whataboutism and deflection.
Agreed, just because something isn’t necessarily being actively argued about but lies within the subtext of the argument, doesn’t mean that one is being held to a different standard or being argued as a better system over the other. The fact of the matter is that if someone is arguing that gulags are bad, as an example, then they probably think the modern prison system is also bad. The heart of the argument is that forced labor institutionalization is bad and it shouldn’t take much introspection to understand that, but when someone enters the argument with whataboutism it’s now seen as bad faith because they don’t appear to understand the argument, just who’s making it and what side it’s currently criticizing.
When people want to pretend that communism is worse than capitalism because of gulags, that’s not whataboutism.
Because when capitalism is imprisoning as many people as communism, and also leaving millions to live on the streets, starve, etc. then it’s very relevant since you’re comparing them.
When you criticize only one system for things done by both, pointing that out isn’t deflection - it’s simply showing the hypocrisy. When that’s your only argument in the comparison, that’s very relevant.
When people want to pretend that communism is worse than capitalism
Basically nobody on lemmy does that, and that’s a strawman. Criticizing tankies and Stalin is not an attack on communism itself or a defense of capitalism.
The entire purpose of this meme is to point out the hypocrisy of condemning America’s wrongdoings (which we acknowledge) while defending the atrocities of a dictator just because they waved a red flag while doing said atrocities.
talking about gulags is guaranteed to trigger someone to bring up America’s incarceration rate.
I didn’t mean to imply the connection between America’s gulags and the Soviets. I meant to state it explicitly. And I also want to point out the meme itself is a whataboutism.
Uhh, yeah, we don’t disagree that America often sucks. Pointing that out in response to criticism pointed at other authoritarian regimes doesn’t make them good. For example, talking about gulags is guaranteed to trigger someone to bring up America’s incarceration rate. Does that magically make gulags good? No, it’s whataboutism and deflection.
Agreed, just because something isn’t necessarily being actively argued about but lies within the subtext of the argument, doesn’t mean that one is being held to a different standard or being argued as a better system over the other. The fact of the matter is that if someone is arguing that gulags are bad, as an example, then they probably think the modern prison system is also bad. The heart of the argument is that forced labor institutionalization is bad and it shouldn’t take much introspection to understand that, but when someone enters the argument with whataboutism it’s now seen as bad faith because they don’t appear to understand the argument, just who’s making it and what side it’s currently criticizing.
When people want to pretend that communism is worse than capitalism because of gulags, that’s not whataboutism.
Because when capitalism is imprisoning as many people as communism, and also leaving millions to live on the streets, starve, etc. then it’s very relevant since you’re comparing them.
When you criticize only one system for things done by both, pointing that out isn’t deflection - it’s simply showing the hypocrisy. When that’s your only argument in the comparison, that’s very relevant.
Basically nobody on lemmy does that, and that’s a strawman. Criticizing tankies and Stalin is not an attack on communism itself or a defense of capitalism.
The entire purpose of this meme is to point out the hypocrisy of condemning America’s wrongdoings (which we acknowledge) while defending the atrocities of a dictator just because they waved a red flag while doing said atrocities.
I didn’t mean to imply the connection between America’s gulags and the Soviets. I meant to state it explicitly. And I also want to point out the meme itself is a whataboutism.