Gillian Schutte: The problematics of whataboutism

When I first encountered the term “whataboutism,” my skin crawled. What was this obnoxious term being tossed around with such smug conceit in social media debates? Middle-aged liberal academics, mostly members of “TheRoundTable!”—a Facebook page brimming with Daily Maverick editors, elitist NGO directors, and other self-satisfied liberals – seemed to revel in blocking any views that didn’t align with their own by employing this term with supersized superciliousness.If memory serves me right, this was my first brush with “whataboutism”. I had unwittingly followed a friend…