Over the past few weeks, members of the Exvangelical movement have been sharing their often-brutal experiences in private Christian schools with the hashtag #ExposeChristianSchools. Like so much of the Exvangelical movement, the hashtag has provided a space for people who grew up in Evangelical Christian culture to lament, vent, and find others with similar experiences. Of course, there’s been some backlash, and one of the most frequent and cringeworthy responses to these posts has been “Well, what about Muslim schools?” Honestly, what about them? Most of the Exvangelical commentators don’t have any experience with Muslim schools; they have experience with Christian schools. It makes more sense for Exvangelical commenters to focus on the problems they understand and can potentially do something to alleviate, leaving the other issues for later on when they’ve done more research on them (should they choose to engage these issues at all). Still, this response highlights one of my favorite logical fallacies that’s been all over the place recently: whataboutism.

Okay, quick technical detour:
In logic, an ad hominem attack (from the Latin for “to the person”) is when you focus on an individual making an argument but never refute the argument itself. For example, “Of course [insert your least favorite politician] is wrong about the economy. [Politician] doesn’t know the first thing about finances.” Notice how I haven’t actually dispelled the politician’s argument; I’ve only criticized the politician. That’s the ad hominem attack’s fatal flaw: it might sling some mud at a person, but it never provides a substantive critique of a position.

There’s a further variation on this strategy called ad hominem tu quoque (Latin: “you also”), which is the technical term for “I know you are, but what am I?” To use our example from above, “How can [politician] call the other party’s candidate a liar when [politician] lies all the time!?” Again, the argument has not refuted the politician’s original accusation, and even if the speaker is correct about the politician’s lies, there’s always the possibility both politicians are liars. This tu quoque attack levels an accusation of hypocrisy without ever dispelling the politician’s original point that the other party’s candidate is a liar. So we’re clear that ad hominem attacks don’t actually further an argument even though they’re one of the favorite tactics in American politics? Cool. Moving on.

Whataboutism is a particularly self-righteous spin on the ad hominem tu quoque attack where an arguer (most often a commenter on social media) brings in an unrelated topic to accuse the original arguer of being biased. For example…

“You don’t like the current president? Well, what about all the problems with the other candidate? Things would have been so much worse.”
Notice how this argument doesn’t refute any of the problems with the president, yet it’s one of the most popular rebuttals out there.

“You say you’re concerned about human rights violations at the border, but what about the right to life being violated through abortion?”
Again, this commenter has not dispelled any arguments about the border, only introduced an unrelated topic to make the original speaker look hypocritical.

And then there’s the example from the beginning of this post: “You say you’re upset at the abuses in Christian schools, but what about Muslim schools?” This isn’t a good faith argument; it’s an attempt to derail and distract from the issue at hand, and we’re all better off just ignoring these kinds of comments.

So the next time someone replies to you with “Well, what about…” take a moment to ask yourself, “Does this person genuinely want to engage my point and get my views on this other issue, or is this just an attempt to lead me down a rabbit trail?” If the answer is rabbit trail, you’re better off just ignoring the comment and moving on.