In defence of Whataboutism

Criticise Qatar for human rights, by all means, but spare me the lazy racism

Jonathan Glennie, December 2022

Qatar’s human rights record continues to be dissected as the football World Cup approaches the knockout stage, and so it should be. There are no excuses for a failure to ensure gay people’s rights or look after and fairly compensate migrant workers. Qatar has a case to answer on both counts.

Should we be watching the tournament at all? Should European team captains wear pro-gay armbands? Why the hell haven’t Qatar and Fifa found the money to compensate the families of construction workers that died building the infrastructure for the biggest show on earth?

All good questions deserving of vociferous campaigning. It is excellent that human rights campaigners are using this opportunity to highlight human rights.

And yet…

There can be a thin line between calling for change and denigrating another culture. It is crossed when instead of sticking to “This country is doing something wrong” you find yourself saying “Do you know what they do in these awful places?”

The tendency to slip from specific criticism to general disparagement is not the reserve of broadcasters. It happens in conversations with friends. Even human rights campaigners themselves – often from historical colonizer nations – sometimes fall into the trap of implying (deliberately or not) that the country they are talking about is lesser than their own.

Racism is a horrible word to have to use, but the implication that one’s own country is superior in a general sense to the one being criticized usually stems from a kind of racism. It’s not hatred. It’s a lazy racism. An arrogance. Sometimes overt and sneering; often just an unchallenged assumption of superiority.

The line is a thin one. Did English satirist Ian Hislop cross it when he criticised ex-footballer Gary Neville for taking money from an “appalling country”? Did German talisman Jurgen Klinsmann cross it when he criticized a supposedly Iranian “culture” of bullying the referee, then amusingly expanded his critique to cover Guatemala and Central America as well? We will argue over how generous to be to seasoned commentators like these, but neither sounded quite right to me.

They should have tried a bit of Whataboutism instead.

IN DEFENCE OF WHATABOUTISM

Whataboutism is “the technique of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue”, and the accusation of Whataboutism usually comes accompanied by the confident look of someone who thinks they are on solid argument-winning ground. Whataboutism tends to be considered deflection tactic in ethical and political debate. But increasingly I am thinking that we need more Whataboutism, not less!

Unlike cultural relativism, which undermines the idea that there are universal values and rights which all humans hold dear, Whataboutism does the opposite. It insists on applying a human rights perspective more consistently, wherever abuses have been committed.

Of course we shouldn’t avoid doing something right because at other times we have done something wrong, or for fear of being called inconsistent or hypocritical. Rather an inconsistent hypocrisy than a guilty inability to act.

But asking someone to refrain from the intellectual exercise of Whataboutism is usually a self-serving attempt to shut down an alternative perspective that might highlight the limited nature of your own. In fact, Whataboutism is a key tool in a critical brain and the basis of many a sensible debate. It could be a crucial aspect of a more powerful approach to human rights campaigning in the 21st century. Humbler. Less arrogant.

Two types of Whataboutism are required to make sure that thin racist line remains uncrossed: Whataboutus? and Whataboutthem?

WHATABOUTUS?

Whataboutus is the application of a critical lens to one’s own culture, the recognition of the negative in one’s own history. We are invited to sneer at the Qataris for their faults. Fine. But Whataboutus? If Qatar has built the World Cup on the back of migrant workers, so the British Empire was built on theft and the USA on slavery.

Do we have to list the present-day human rights problems committed by the countries doing the sneering? Take the USA, where black people are murdered by white police, crazily regular school shootings leave scores of children dead, innocent people are detained for years without charge in Guantanamo Bay prison, and the mentally ill are still put to death in some states.

Or take Europe and the inhumane way immigrants are treated and talked about, and the thousands dead in the seas. And yet, as the Iranian manager Carlos Queiroz rightly said to a reporter, the players from these countries are never quizzed about their country’s human rights record.

It is not so long ago that the US and UK invaded Iraq unprovoked, on the basis of lies, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. That didn’t stop us all enjoying the 2012 London Olympics. That’s different, some argue. But is the unprovoked invasion of countries less abominable than human rights abuses within a country’s own borders? Or is that just an easy way to get your own country off the hook?

None of this is to say we shouldn’t campaign on human rights. Quite the opposite. We should do so with gusto. But also with consistency, and therefore humility.

Because even if Europeans are right about gay rights (they are) it appears to have been ever-so-conveniently forgotten that as recently as a few decades ago, people the age of my parents were being electrocuted and prosecuted for expressing their homosexuality. Sure, the UK has moved on and it should be proud of that. But are the British in a position to sneer so much at countries holding similar ideas to the ones they themselves held in recent history? How could those people treat gay people so badly, Europeans ask. Well, perhaps if they just ask their parents they would get a pretty good answer. It’s wrong to clamp down on homosexuality – but to treat such attitudes with exaggerated disdain is foolish and forgetful, arrogant and ahistorical.

WHATABOUTTHEM?

Whataboutthem requires an even rarer shift in perspective. This aspect of Whataboutism requires imagination, education, and generosity. It questions whether the negative news beamed across our screens really sums up a people and prefers to seek out the positive aspects of a culture that have perhaps not been broadcast. Cultures are multifaceted; histories are rich. The Qatari resistance to homosexuality doesn’t sum up Qatar and its people any more than the UK’s resistance to homosexuality in the 1950s summed up the 1950s British. Qataris should be criticised for what they get wrong but have as much right to be defined by their greatest moments and best qualities as every other nation.

But as you watch Qataris being criticized and belittled in this World Cup coverage, do you ever see an international media outlet ask what the rest of the world could learn from Qatar, including the countries from which Messrs Hislop and Klinsmann hail? Culturally. Economically. Politically. The question never gets asked. Why? Not because the west has nothing to learn, but because it thinks it doesn’t. The idea doesn’t even occur. That’s the definition of arrogance.

A NEW WAY TO CAMPAIGN

Whataboutism should never be a diversionary tactic designed to shield Qatar or any other country from criticism. In fact, the tragic irony is that Qataris, being human, are no less prone to arrogance and racism than anyone else. The way migrant workers are treated is only possible because they too are unfairly looked down on. Elites across the world need to dial down the self-regard and dial up the empathy.

Whataboutism encourages humble reflection, but it shouldn’t dim indignation. A bit more of it could bring our world closer together and portend a more nuanced and effective approach to overcoming the continued human rights abuses in our world, based on solidarity and respect, rather than condescension.