Rarely has the word whataboutism been mentioned so often as last week. VVD members called for to be less critical of Mark Rutte, who deleted his text messages for years. After all, there are more important issues, such as the housing crisis, climate crisis and inflation crisis; shouldn’t we be talking about that? ‘Whataboutism!’ cried the rest. Admittedly, the defense of the VVD members was ironic: as if Al Capone’s lawyer laments during his tax fraud case that the judge does not want to talk about all the murders his client has committed.
But if you look at the facts, you will see that Mark Rutte has not acted in violation of the law. Jesse Frederik van The Correspondent delved into the Archives Act and the Chat Messages Guide (which exists) and concluded that the prime minister simply adhered to the rules and even the spirit of the law. Frederik comes from the left-wing Nijmegen, does not giggle compulsively and does not rule a country; I don’t see any direct leads to not trust him.
Nowadays it is very quickly said that something is a whataboutism or fallacy. When I suggested a few weeks ago that the national debate about the Candle Van Derksen was getting a bit long, and that there might be a little more focus on the war in Ukraine, people became furious: whataboutism! Still, there is little wrong with recognizing a certain hierarchy of topics that people can worry about, especially in times of social media hype.
Moreover, the fallacies always have the same, ramshackle argument; the incident is not an incident, but symbolizes greater injustice. In the case of Derksen, De Kaars would represent a culture in which cross-border is normal and laughable, and in Rutte’s case, deleting the text messages would represent a culture of lying and cheating. But that’s purposeful reasoning; evidence is sought for a long-standing belief.
Central to the fallacies are one’s own emotion, the display of virtue and above all: self-regard. Die Rutte not only knew text messages, but cheats us all! And that candle, Derksen actually lit it with us. Whoever claimed The Candle wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to our nation was downplaying what had happened to me, ahem, that woman, or no, all of us. Nonsense of course, you can find Derksen objectionable as well as find the attention too much for it.
Pointing out the existence of bigger problems is not pure whataboutism, by the way, because the crucial element of the youbak is missing. A pure whataboutism is to say that the Candle Woman would have been to blame if she hadn’t been drunk. Or say that the opposition is also doing everything wrong, and that we should therefore not whine about Rutte’s text messages. Disqualifying comments, nuances and relativizations such as whataboutism is often unjustified, in short.
The opposition may think that research populism (dixit Frederik) with regard to ministers works. And when success is measured by talk show invites, maybe it is. But the voter mainly sees an opposition that eagerly tries to grab a leader on small things, instead of coming up with an alternative, inspiring story. The VVD members who complained about the uproar were therefore right; other things are really much more important. Other matters, by the way, that voter Mark Rutte should have settled on for a long time.