Comment by jwr 2 days ago
Whataboutism doesn't get us anywhere — saying "but what about X" (insert anything for X here) usually results in doing nothing.
Some of us would rather take a stand, imperfect as it is, than just sit and do nothing. Especially in the very clear case of someone (Kagi) doing business with a country that invaded a neighboring country for no reason, and keeps killing people there.
I think "no wars of conquest" is a bright line that was crossed by Russia, that hasn't been crossed by other nations in a long time. And I think it's important for the whole world to take a stand on that, not just the nation that was invaded. It's not a "random stand."
I find it much easier to take a strong stand on Russia/Ukraine than on Israel/Palestine. The history of Israel/Palestine is much more of a gray area. Palestine has used plenty of aggressive actions and rhetoric that make Israel's actions more understandable (if not justified).
Example of actions: Gaza invaded Israel and killed, raped, and kidnapped civilians on October 7. Ukraine had no such triggering event that caused Russia to invade.
Example of rhetoric: Gaza's political leaders have said they want to destroy Israel. I don't think anyone in power in Ukraine has said they want to destroy the Russian state.
Plenty of people boycott Israeli goods and there's an increasing trend of moving away from reliance on American services also.
"enthusiastic support"
https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/52279-net-favour...
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/10/03/how-american...
etc etc....
I'm not sure what collective West you're referring to; but apparently it excludes every major Western European nation, America, and Canada.
I am amused by my (unpopular and downvoted by now) comment by the scourge of "whataboutism" sparked a discussion, where comments begin with "how about" :-)
That is exactly my point! Saying "but what about" is akin to saying "you shouldn't do anything, because there is another unrelated $thing happening elsewhere". I refuse to follow this line of thinking.
Doing something is literally the opposite of doing nothing. This is complete gibberish.
> Why this particular stand?
First, any stand is better than whataboutism and just sitting there doing nothing.
Second, this stand results from my thoughts. It is my stand. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Third, in the history of the modern world there were very few black&white situations where there was one side which was clearly the aggressor. This is one of them.
> First, any stand is better than whataboutism and just sitting there doing nothing.
I definitely disagree with this. There are many cases where you might take the wrong stand, especially where you do not have detailed knowledge of the issue you re taking a stand over.
It's still better to take a stand even when there is a risk of being wrong because there is always a risk of being wrong. Don't let fear of being wrong or not knowing everything (which is impossible) stop you from standing up for your beliefs. Instead, stand up for what you believe, but be open to having your mind changed. If new information comes to light which changes your position that's perfectly acceptable.
It's a lot easier to live with yourself when you act according to your best understanding of the situation than when you allow fear to paralyze you into inaction at a time when you should have done something.
> wrong stand
But that's the whole point, isn't it? What is "wrong"? You decide.
You see people in a peaceful country getting invaded and being bombed, shot, raped and tortured? You decide if this is "wrong". I'm just saying that you should decide, rather than say "but what about something else".
I was very conscious of this comment being called out as a 'whatabout', it was still only thing I could think of and wrote it bit carefully.
My point was that we should either not take an issue with things like this and block everything in the whole country because their government is bad. Or we should do the same for other countries too.
Google is worse than Yandex, no? At this time, Russia is (debatably*) more evil than the USA, but that doesn't mean Yandex is more evil than Google. And I'm told Yandex has better search results.
* most of the evil stuff Russia's done, the USA's done way more of
Not only is "whataboutism" literally anti-communist jargon, you're using it wrong. It was meant to refer to when the US would criticize some aspect of the USSR and the USSR would point to the fact that the US was an apartheid state. The point was that the accusation that the US was making was entirely different from the observation that the USSR was making - it was simply a change of subject.
You can't call for a boycott on a cosmetics company that experiments on dogs if you are a rival cosmetics company that experiments on ten times as many dogs.
“whataboutism” is the reddit word for calling out hypocrisy
Why this particular stand? Is doing nothing any better than taking what are essentially random stands? Obviously if you are Ukrainian this will be an important stand to you, but otherwise doing things based on a mix of what the media you like focuses on or whatever is not really very different from doing nothing.