Reply To: Another day another dirty Tory

[Siderite]

If you want to die on the hill of arguing that “what about x” is some great debating techinique, be my guest. It just makes you look illogical. I laid out why it’s a bad technique, because “what about x” does nothing to justify the wrong in the first place. You have ignored the examples I have given to demonstrate this, along with the explanation. I take it you think Corbynites saying “what about Tory Islamophobia?” is a good debating technique to charges of Labour anti-Semitism. Good to know. I think it looks daft, because it does nothing to counter the criticism. You don’t need to be an expert in anything to understand why this is a bad debating technique, but seemingly I must be an idiot for thinking “what about” does sod all to argue against the charge.

“Which ‘expert’ came up with that one? No doubt you’ll enlighten us. I can hardly wait to find out).”

I am sure they’re just an ‘expert’ because they disagree with you. You can never be wrong, of course, and it has been well documented. If you cannot understand something so simple, it’s not my fault. These reasons are why it’s a fallacy, not because some expert just said so with no justification. Don’t like it? Provide arguments against its fallacious nature then, instead of moaning that others don’t think that your debating technique is always superb. It’s hardly ‘quasi-intellectual’ to point out something like this. The illogical nature of whataboutery should be evident.

“I’d also say you have to be pretty daft to interpret “I’m certainly not defending him” as being a deflection; and you’d have to be even more daft to interpret it as a “defence”.”

You forgot to mention that this post was not the first response of me on this thread. I made it quite clear as to my objections in my original post, and you objected to those points. I am not missing the point to my own damn debating topic in this thread. Where did I say that I’m certainly not defending him to be deflection? Please don’t lie and twist words to suit your own agenda, yet again. It should have been obvious I was speaking as a generalisation about this tactic and on about whataboutery being a deflection, which is a thing people do, as to which this statement is not.

I’d say it’s pretty daft to think that “what about x” is a good defence to a point, but that’s obviously because I am an ‘expert’ and not up to speed of the great Bucks school of debating where every instance can be dismissed with a whataboutery. Maybe they should teach it to law schools. Murderers can be found not guilty because of the killer defence of “what about the other case where someone in a similar circumstance got away with it?” After all, only ‘experts’ think this is a bad argument, and they can just be dismissed.