Comment on Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's Zionist Bar Problem

• Noja@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Whataboutism, nice. But surely starting another war was the only reasonable choice for hamas…

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  • davel@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    This is Holocaust exceptionalism. It is a trivialization of the slow. grinding genocide that Israel has been prosecuting for the last eighty years.

    The great majority of Gazans were born in and have lived their entire lives in that open-air prison, that ghetto, their parents having been condemned there, many after their homes were stolen in the Nakba ethnic cleansing campaign. All Palestinians in Israel have lived under apartheid, settler-colonial rule their entire lives, in their own land, under military occupation.

    Your whataboutism thought-terminating cliché is in bad faith.

    Citations Needed podcast: Whataboutism - The Media’s Favorite Rhetorical Shield Against Criticism of US Policy

    Since the beginning of what’s generally called ‘RussiaGate’ three years ago, pundits, media outlets, even comedians have all become insta-experts on supposed Russian propaganda techniques. The most cunning of these tricks, we are told, is that of “whataboutism” – a devious Soviet tactic of deflecting criticism by pointing out the accusers’ hypocrisy and inconsistencies. The tu quoque - or, “you, also” - fallacy, but with a unique Slavic flavor of nihilism, used by Trump and leftists alike in an effort to change the subject and focus on the faults of the United States rather than the crimes of Official State Enemies.

    But what if “whataboutism” isn’t describing a propaganda technique, but in fact is one itself: a zombie phrase that’s seeped into everyday liberal discourse that – while perhaps useful in the abstract - has manifestly turned any appeal to moral consistency into a cunning Russian psyop. From its origins in the Cold War as a means of deflecting and apologizing for Jim Crow to its braindead contemporary usage as a way of not engaging any criticism of the United States as the supposed arbiter of human rights, the term “whataboutism” has become a term that - 100 percent of the time - is simply used to defend and legitimizing American empire’s moral narratives.

    Ben Burgis at Current Affairs: Is “Whataboutism” Always a Bad Thing?

    Discussing the crimes of our own country as well as the crimes of others is not always an effort to downplay other countries’ crimes—it can be a test of whether we are serious about our principles.

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    • davel@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      @BrainInABox@lemmy.ml, remember that you’re on lemmy.world, where reporting someone for being a Zionist is likely to only backfire.

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      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Good point. I’m probably just giving them new moderator candidates lol.

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  • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Funny how Israel constantly bombing, shooting, and kidnapping Palestinians prior to October 7th wasn’t an act of war, but when Palestinians do it back suddenly it is.

    Also good to see we’re at the point of referring to any and all analogies as “whataboutism”

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