Pablo, don’t hit your little brother!” “But mom! The other day you hit him!” The child’s response to the mother is a classic of childish cunning and a classic of adult cynicism. It has a name in English, whataboutism, whose translation into Spanish would be something like ‘and-you-what’, plus an ism at the end.
The definition of the phenomenon would be the following: an attempt to divert attention from a damage, injury or offense in the present with an episode from the past, to create a deceptive moral equivalence, to point out the accuser as a hypocrite. We see it every day in all contexts, but most notably in politics. Typically, a party spokesperson accused of stealing or lying or breaking promises responds: “Oh, what about you? Who are they to criticize us? Do you forget that time when…?
This is exactly the tactic used today by Donald Trump, accused this week for the umpteenth time, this time for the attempt to subvert democracy in the United States when he held, neither more nor less, the nation’s presidency. Trump’s response is: “And the son of Joseph Biden, what?”
Hunter Biden lives under suspicion of exploiting his father’s name to win business contracts abroad. There is still no conclusive evidence against the son of the current president, but that has not stopped Trump from accusing the father on social networks of being corrupt, the Biden family of being “criminal”.
Ytuqueism comes naturally to Trump, a child in the body of an orange cow, and it comes out of Soviet tradition to his friend Vladimir Putin, whose response to criticism of the war in Ukraine is: “And the interventionism of the West , that?”.
I see variants on the same move almost every week in the comments that are published under my columns in the digital version of La Vanguardia: “You talk about Russia and Ukraine, but what did the Americans do in Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam, what ?”, or “Putin threatens nuclear war, but Hiroshima what…?”.
How to answer? The temptation is to enter the debate. Saying something like “Hunter Biden is only accused of doing dirty business; Trump wants to tear down the pillars of the US constitution.” Or “Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, was a tyrant; Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is a democrat.” Then the counter-response would come: “But Joseph Biden knew that his son was a criminal”; or “Zelensky wanted Ukraine to join NATO and Putin responded with a purely defensive invasion.”
As for the mother of the insolent baby, she could tell him: “Yes, Pablo, but I spanked your little brother because he threw the scrambled eggs on the floor…”. To which smart Pablito would reply: “Ah, but you said it: my little brother is no saint. I hit him because he hit me first…”.
Once started on this path, the ytuqueísta has already won. He achieved his goal of diverting attention from the initial theme, postulating the notion of moral equivalence, raising the possibility that the opponent is a hypocrite.
So how do we avoid falling into the trap? Easy. Do not answer. Or say: that’s another topic. We can deal with it another day, if you want. But right now what we are talking about is this, not that. Tell me what response you have to this specific aggression, to the one today, the one now, to the one you just committed, my dear Pablito/Donald/Vladímir, and if you don’t have an answer, shut up, or admit your mistake and promise not to do it again. do it never again.
The problem is that in the personal sphere this logic can be useful, but in the political sphere, it is difficult. When you enter public land you enter tribal land. The members of the Trump tribe or the Putin tribe want, want, need to believe that their idol is right. They cling to his arguments, however demagogic they may be, and convince themselves that he is the victim, not the aggressor.
The good news is that, while in politics lies and evasions pay off, in the legal field they are useless. Putin will be saved. He will not have to defend himself in court in The Hague. But Trump has it complicated. One day not too far away he will be put on trial for something very similar to treason. If he tries to base his defense on the Hunter Biden case, the judge will tell him, as his mother would tell Pablito, to shut up, not to get sick.
