Whataboutism

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Whataboutism is a term for the Tu quoque logical fallacy popularized by The Economist for describing the use of the fallacy by the Soviet Union in its dealings with the Western world during the Cold War. The tactic was used when criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union, wherein the response would be "What about..." followed by the naming of an event in the Western world loosely similar to the original item of criticism.^[1]^[2] It represents a case of tu quoque or the appeal to hypocrisy, a logical fallacy which attempts to discredit the opponent's position by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with that position, without directly refuting or disproving the opponent's initial argument.

In 1986, when the Soviet Union belatedly announced a serious nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine after Western nations reported detecting unusually high radioactivity levels, it did so in one paragraph. The New York Times stated that^[3]

The terse Soviet announcement of the Chernobyl accident was followed by a Tass dispatch noting that there had been many mishaps in the United States, ranging from Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pa., to the Ginna plant near Rochester. Tass said an American antinuclear group registered 2,300 accidents, breakdowns and other faults in 1979.
The practice of focusing on disasters elsewhere when one occurs in the Soviet Union is so common that after watching a report on Soviet television about a catastrophe abroad, Russians often call Western friends to find out whether something has happened in the Soviet Union.