Blog ·
Whataboutism, tu quoque and red herrings: three ways to change the subject
Some replies do not dispute a criticism. They move the conversation somewhere else. Three such moves are easy to confuse because all of them leave the original point unanswered.
Whataboutism
"You complain about our elections? What about the corruption in your country?" Whataboutism answers a criticism by pointing to a different wrong somewhere else, usually by the critic's side. Even if the other wrong is real, it does not show that the first criticism is false. Two wrongs do not cancel each other.
Tu quoque
"You tell me to stop smoking, but you smoke too." Tu quoque, Latin for "you too", points at the critic's own behaviour. The charge of hypocrisy may be fair, and it may be worth raising, but the doctor who smokes is still right that smoking is harmful. Hypocrisy is a fact about the person, not about the claim.
Red herring
"Why worry about plastic in the ocean when there are wars going on?" A red herring brings in a topic that feels related but does not bear on the question. It does not need to accuse anyone. It simply moves attention to something else. When the new topic is a bigger problem, the move is also called appeal to worse problems.
When it is not a fallacy
Comparison is not always evasion. If someone holds you to a standard they apply to nobody else, pointing that out is fair, as long as you also answer the criticism. And if the other topic really bears on the question, raising it is relevant. The test is whether the reply engages the original point or replaces it.
A fair reply
When you meet one of these moves, acknowledge the new point briefly, then return to the question: "That may be worth discussing too. But it doesn't answer whether our elections were fair." Naming the fallacy out loud often escalates; restating the unanswered question usually works better.