And I'd no time at all for 'What aboutism' - you know, people who said 'Yes, but what about what's been done to us? ... That had nothing to do with it, and if you got into it you were defending the indefensible.
Source: wiktionary
Whataboutism
//ˌwə.təˈbaʊ.tɪ.zəm//
Synonyms for "whataboutism" (2 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (1)
Noun(1 words)
Related words (1)
Noun(1 words)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Related terms
3 entriesderived
1 entriesderived from
1 entriesrelated to
4 entriesTranslations
30 translations across 18 languages.
Afrikaans
1 entries- watvanisme noun (propaganda technique)
Chinese Mandarin
2 entries- 比爛主義 /比烂主义 noun (propaganda technique)
- 臭蟲論 /臭虫论 noun (propaganda technique)
Dutch
3 entries- jij-bak noun (propaganda technique)
- whataboutism noun (propaganda technique)
- whataboutisme noun (propaganda technique)
Finnish
1 entries- whataboutismi noun (propaganda technique)
French
2 entries- qu’en-est-ilisme noun (propaganda technique)
- whataboutisme noun (propaganda technique)
German
1 entries- Whataboutism noun (propaganda technique)
Hungarian
2 entries- figyelemelterelő visszakérdezés noun (propaganda technique)
- viszonvádaskodás noun (propaganda technique)
Indonesian
1 entries- whataboutisme noun (propaganda technique)
Italian
1 entries- benaltrismo noun (propaganda technique)
Japanese
2 entries- お前だって論法 noun (propaganda technique)
- そっちこそどうなんだ主義 noun (propaganda technique)
Korean
1 entries- 물타기 noun (propaganda technique)
Persian
1 entries- پسچهایسم noun (propaganda technique)
Polish
1 entries- whataboutism noun (propaganda technique)
Portuguese
2 entries- e-aquilismo noun (propaganda technique)
- entãosismo noun (propaganda technique)
Russian
4 entries- вотэбаути́зм noun (propaganda technique)
- какнасчёти́зм noun (propaganda technique)
- перево́д стре́лок noun (propaganda technique)
- приплета́ние noun (propaganda technique)
Spanish
3 entries- falacia de «y qué hay de» noun (propaganda technique)
- y tú más noun (propaganda technique)
- yquehaydeísmo noun (propaganda technique)
Swedish
1 entries- whataboutism noun (propaganda technique)
Ukrainian
1 entries- якщодої́зм noun (propaganda technique)
Sample sentences
6 total sentences available.
Soviet propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed 'whataboutism'.
Source: wiktionary
'Whataboutism' was a favourite tactic of Soviet propagandists during the old Cold War. Any criticism of the Soviet Union’s internal aggression or external repression was met with a 'what about?' some crime of the West, from slavery to the Monroe doctrine.
Source: wiktionary
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?'
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.