What-About-Ism, The American Establishments Latest Taking Point In its Anti-Russian Crusade

I will be posting the next part of the series titled Historical Reflections soon, however I felt I needed to write something about the upcoming meeting between Biden and Putin, in particular in response to the latest talking point cooked up in the public relations centres of the American establishment, that is American spin doctors dismissing anyone who points out their hypocrisy on human rights as “what-about-ism”.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be sitting down in Geneva very soon, and in the build up to that meeting, President Putin had a sit down with mainstream media partisan NBC’s Keir Simmons. Keir attempted to confront Putin on the treatment of Alexey Navalny, who’s been jailed, according to Washington pundits, for challenging the power of President Putin. This isn’t a piece to discuss whether Navalny or Putin have the moral high ground, that’s beside the point of this post. The point is, America is once again – under the pretext of human rights – attempting to interfere in the domestic politics of another nation, particularly one it views as a geopolitical adversary.

When Putin shot back at his interviewer about the treatment of those who stormed the capital, and the fact that many of them are facing 15 to 25 years in prison for their actions, Simmons accused Putin of engaging in “what-about-ism”. This is an intriguing response, as its an attempt to divert attention. It’s a dismissal that implies that such allegations are illegitimate, whether because of who they’re from, who they’re directed at, or both. It’s a shrewd attempt to shutdown any discussion of the seemingly boundless hypocrisy of the American ruling class and the disparity between it’s rhetoric and it’s practice.

What’s more interesting is, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this talking point. I heard it a couple days ago on a podcast called The Power Vertical, (the title of the episode is When Biden Meets Putin) I’ve been looking online to learn more about Russia, and host Brian Whitmore claims to be an expert on the subject, according to the bio on his website he is a “Russia and Eurasia specialist and adjunct assistant professor in the McDowell Center at The University of Texas at Arlington”, he’s also “a nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council in Washington D.C”. I knew I was going to get a heavily slanted, pro-NATO take when listening to it, but I was still surprised at how venomous and toxic the rhetoric actually was. After guest Jonathan Katz, a senior fellow and director of democracy initiatives at the German Marshall Fund agreed with Biden that Putin “didn’t have a soul”, and referring to Putin’s government as a mafia-state, eventually the topic turned to Putin’s comments on the Capitol Hill rioters, which the host and his guest referred to as “insurrectionists”.

First of all, if you think the folks that stormed Capitol Hill on January 6th 2021, were “insurrectionists”, it shows not only a profound misunderstanding of the situation, but just how sheltered America and its elite really are. All one has to do is look at the people who stormed the Capitol to see what a sorry and silly lot they actually are. The Q-Anon Shaman? Sorry guys, he’s not some terrorist, but an eccentric man-child who spent too much time on the internet, and engaged in a LARP that went too far, lacking any coherent plan of action. These people didn’t know what they were doing, Trump told them to come and protest, so they did. The very fact that they did silly things like livestream on YouTube and take selfies, just shows how unprepared and unserious they were.

Real insurrectionist would’ve secured the building, taken hostages and at least attempted to take power. History is full of actual examples of real revolutionaries, none of them resemble the kooky motley crew of social outcasts that made up the Capitol Hill rioters. Real students of history should know this, if they are saying otherwise, they are either lying or delusional. Neither would surprise me. Real insurrectionists would’ve shot back when one of their own was shot dead by Capitol police. These people had no idea what they were doing, and had no idea they were going to find themselves inside Congress. 

It was at this point in the podcast where the term “what-about-ism” was used in regards to Putin turning the accusatory lens of human rights abuses around on the American political system. The fact that this term is gaining currency in different parts of the American establishment right now signals that this talking point will come to be used more and more to deflect counter-criticism from America’s rivals in the realm of human rights. 

I was only able to get to the 25 minute mark before I had to shut it off. Whitmore and his guest came off like petty, mean spirited middle school children, and while it was interesting to hear their ideas on how the US could further alienate Putin and the other officials of the Russian government, whether through seizing assets or preventing them from travel, the squeeze was not worth the juice. However, the podcast does provide the listener with a telling view of the institutionalized perspective on Russia that permeates the American foreign policy intelligentsia, and its not pretty.

If one cares to look, there’s plenty of ammunition for Putin or anyone else to point out political persecution in the US, particularily that of rightwing groups. One area in particular is the selective prosecution between groups of the right and left in regards to their violent street clashes, an example of which can be seen in the aftermath of the Charlottesville protest. During the Charlottesville fiasco in 2017, members of leftwing groups clashed with members of rightwing groups. In the aftermath of Charlottesville it was only members of rightwing groups that were prosecuted. One example is the Rise Above Movement, who were charged with crossing state lines to participate in a riot. Both groups of the left and right had members that came from out of state, yet it was only rightwing groups that were prosecuted for crossing state lines to incite a riot, despite the fact that RAM was on the side that had a lawful permit from the city to organize an event, and it was the leftist that was set on disrupting that event.

Nor did it matter that the event organizers reached out to police to collaborate on security, so as to ensure the event was peaceful. In fact the investigation that took place afterwards blasted police for corralling event attendees into so-called “counter-protesters”, after a state of emergency was declared by the governor and the event was declared an unlawful assembly. In hindsight it seems as if the goal of the police was to ensure violence would breakout, and when it did, it was those of rightwing political persuasion that were charged, and not those of the left. 

This is not a one-off occurrence, the same thing happened a number of times in the clashes between the Proud Boys and Antifa.

Black Lives Matter rioted across the US all of last summer, but the US Governments National Security memos cite “white supremacists” as the greatest internal security risk. There’s too many examples of politically motivated prosecutions of rightwing political activists to document here, and the sad fact is nobody cares, therefore any attempts to document it are ignored.

Let’s not forget the political censorship from big tech, or the fact that one stands an ever increasing chance of losing their job, and being eviscerated over both social and legacy media for defying America’s secular religion of intersectionality, sponsored by finance capital, perpetuated through pop culture and academia. There’s much, much more one could say on the partisan and repressive political culture in the US and other Western nations directed at those of a rightwing disposition, particularly those of European ancestry. The recent attention to Critical Race Theory and how it posits a world view which scapegoats whites is all well and good, but it’s really only the tip of the iceberg.

Now I realize Atlanticist apologists would argue there’s a difference between state censorship and corporate censorship, citing the “its a private company” argument, and while we don’t have time to debunk the private/public distinction in this relatively short post, all we’ll say is that we reject the argument that there’s any appreciable difference between the power of capital and the state in the American system. The American system despite any illusion otherwise is an overarching all encompassing system, wherein capital, media, academia, and the state comprise different parts of a totalizing whole. The illusion to the contrary is simply part of the evil genius of that system itself.

At any rate, this isn’t meant to be a study on the nature of the American system, or on the hypocrisy of its elite, but simply a statement that this hypocrisy exists, in spades. As the great power competition heats up Washington and its allies will, on the one hand, continue to hammer their opponents with accusations of “human rights abuses”, as a means of weakening their power at home and a broad. To this end it will continue to use its state-funded foreign propaganda networks such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to churn out it’s own anti-regime agitprop aimed at the domestic population of its rivals, while breaking all the rules they can get away with – such as in Russia where these entities refuse to comply with Russian regulations on foreign entities. On the other hand the media in service to the interests of the American elite will attempt to use accusations of “what-about-ism” as a means of shutting down any discussion of America’s own political repressions at home – itself done in the name of “human rights”.

It seems that Washington is hoping it can continue to use its favourite cudgel on it’s political enemies while being immune from the same attacks by its rivals, regardless of how well the shoe fits.

Let’s not make it so easy for them.