In his book '' The New Cold War '' ( 2008 ) , Edward Lucas characterized whataboutism as " the favourite weapon of Soviet propagandists " . Juhan Kivirähk and colleagues called it a " polittechnological " strategy . Writing in '' The National Interest '' in 2013 , Samuel Charap was critical of the tactic , commenting , " Russian policy makers , meanwhile , gain little from petulant bouts of ' whataboutism . National security journalist Julia Ioffe commented in a 2014 article , " Anyone who has ever studied the Soviet Union knows about a phenomenon called ' whataboutism ' . " Ioffe cited the Soviet response to criticism , " And you are lynching negroes " , as a " classic " form of whataboutism . She said that '' Russia Today '' was " an institution that is dedicated solely to the task of whataboutism " , and concluded that whataboutism was a " sacred Russian tactic " . Garry Kasparov discussed the Soviet tactic in his book '' Winter Is Coming '' , calling it a form of " Soviet propaganda " and a way for Russian bureaucrats to " respond to criticism of Soviet massacres , forced deportations , and gulags " . Mark Adomanis commented for '' The Moscow Times '' in 2015 that " Whataboutism was employed by the Communist Party with such frequency and shamelessness that a sort of pseudo mythology grew up around it . " Adomanis observed , " Any student of Soviet history will recognize parts of the whataboutist canon . " Writing in 2016 for '' Bloomberg News '' , journalist Leonid Bershidsky called whataboutism a " Russian tradition " , while '' The National '' called the tactic " an effective rhetorical weapon " . In their book '' The European Union and Russia '' ( 2016 ) , Forsberg and Haukkala characterized whataboutism as an " old Soviet practice " , and they observed that the strategy " has been gaining in prominence in the Russian attempts at deflecting Western criticism " . In her book , '' Security Threats and Public Perception '' , author Elizaveta Gaufman called the whataboutism technique " A Soviet/Russian spin on liberal anti-Americanism " , comparing it to the Soviet rejoinder , " And you are lynching negroes " . '' Foreign Policy '' supported this assessment . In 2016 , Canadian columnist Terry Glavin asserted in the '' Ottawa Citizen '' that Noam Chomsky used the tactic in an October 2001 speech , delivered after the September 11 attacks , that was critical of US foreign policy . Daphne Skillen discussed the tactic in her book , '' Freedom of Speech in Russia '' , identifying it as a " Soviet propagandist 's technique " and " a common Soviet-era defence " . In a piece for CNN , Jill Dougherty compared the technique to '' the pot calling the kettle black '' . Dougherty wrote : " There 's another attitude ... that many Russians seem to share , what used to be called in the Soviet Union ' whataboutism ' , in other words , ' who are you to call the kettle black ? Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev told '' GlobalPost '' in 2017 that the tactic was " an old Soviet trick " . Peter Conradi , author of '' Who Lost Russia ? '' , called whataboutism " a form of moral relativism that responds to criticism with the simple response : ' But you do it too . Conradi echoed Gaufman 's comparison of the tactic to the Soviet response , " Over there they lynch Negroes " . Writing for '' Forbes '' in 2017 , journalist Melik Kaylan explained the term 's increased pervasiveness in referring to Russian propaganda tactics : " Kremlinologists of recent years call this ' whataboutism ' because the Kremlin 's various mouthpieces deployed the technique so exhaustively against the U.S. " Kaylan commented upon a " suspicious similarity between Kremlin propaganda and Trump propaganda " . '' Foreign Policy '' wrote that Russian whataboutism was " part of the national psyche " . '' EurasiaNet '' stated that " Moscow 's geopolitical whataboutism skills are unmatched " , while '' Paste '' correlated whataboutism 's rise with the increasing societal consumption of fake news
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Whataboutism