The United States on September 13 said the Russian news outlet RT is taking orders directly from the Kremlin and working with Russian military intelligence to spread disinformation around the world to undermine democracies.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States has gathered new evidence that exposes cooperation between RT and four other subsidiaries of the Rossia Segodnya media group, and it intends to warn other countries of the threat of the disinformation.
In addition to RT, Rossia Segodnya operates RIA Novosti, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik, but the announcement on September 13 focused largely on RT. The outlet, formerly known as Russia Today, has previously been sanctioned for its work to allegedly spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.
When you understand both are whataboutism because it’s about the deflection not the action or the accusation, you’ll understand whataboutism.
And how do I know he has kids? I’m gonna trust an axe murderer?
Okay, so you not being able to spot the difference does not mean there isn’t one. While your “nuh uh’s” are kinda funny, you can’t just redefine words any time it’s convenient for you, not when they’re commonly used by others. Not all deflections are whataboutisms, just one single type, specifically, to an accusation. Like the very first line in the article, that says:
the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation
So, it’s what we call a hypothetical, where I was proposing two axe murderers that targeted families. It’s just a possible thing that we can think about to discuss a finer point. So, if we say he has kids, since he doesn’t exist in the first place, then he has hypothetical kids.
edit: Just to save you a little scrolling, since I’m such a nice guy:
The problem with your hypothetical is that it doesn’t exist. The information is coming from an axe murderer and your just magically asserting the family is real and what he says is real.
The problem is when your an axe murderer, I no longer trust you. Just as we shouldn’t trust the USA because they do all the bad things they say others are doing. It’s an accountability issue. Which is if you want to say your a good guy, you kind of have to actually be a good guy.
*Edit. This is why I said innocents get caught up in gang wars but the police can’t do anything because the source of information is gangsters
Hypotheticals don’t have to exist, that’s what makes them useful. Is it possible that an axe murder could have kids? Of course it is, they can have sperm, right? So, it’s a workable hypothetical. We can then use it to illustrate how actions that hurt innocents are not necessarily right, just to punish someone related to those innocents.
We don’t need to ask the axe murderer anything either, we can check birth records. Like with the US covid propaganda scheme, we don’t have to believe the govt, we can check international news sources if we like.
You can conveniently forget about independent information sources, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
