Childish Rants or Putin-Style Propaganda?

When Trump calls Hillary Clinton a “colluder” he’s not just acting like a baby.

Evan Vucci/AP

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President Donald Trump does not directly answer questions about his campaignā€™s or administrationā€™s interactions with Russian officials. He deflects, pointing at his opponents. (That is, when heā€™s not outright denying the connections even exist.)

ā€œLook what Hillary Clinton may have gotten away with. Disgraceful!ā€ the president tweeted as his son came under fire for meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign with the explicit hope of obtaining negative information about the Democratic candidate. The president also complained on Twitter, ā€œWhy is that Hillary Clintons [sic] family and Dems dealings with Russia are not looked at, but my non-dealings are?ā€

It may sound like a defensive childā€™s playground cryā€”ā€œLook at what she did!ā€ā€”but it also echoes a traditional Russian propaganda strategy called ā€œwhataboutism,ā€ a diversionary tactic that sidesteps criticism by arguing ā€œWhat about them?ā€ or ā€œSee what my opponent did!ā€

The technique was widely used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War in battles with the United States for moral superiority in areas of human rights, says Dmitry Dubrovsky, a Russian scholar at Columbia Universityā€™s School of International and Public Affairs. For example, when the Soviet Union was criticized for actions like the imprisonment of dissidents, officialsā€™ response would be along the lines of, ā€œWhat about apartheid?ā€ The whataboutism strategy has made a comeback and evolved in President Vladimir Putinā€™s Russia. The Kremlin is no longer arguing about whoā€™s morally superior, Dubrovsky says; now it’s arguing that the morals underlying democratic ideals donā€™t exist at all.

Putin is a master of the method. In his June interview with NBCā€™s Megyn Kelly, he responded to questions about Russian interference in the US election by pointing back at the United States: ā€œPut your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are interfering in internal election processes.ā€ The statement both deflects the accusation back at the United States and questions the validity of election processes worldwide.

Trump seems to have embraced this tacticā€”and simplistic language is key. ā€œWhataboutism is an essential part of a human way of speaking,ā€ Dubrovsky says. ā€œItā€™s very childish. Thatā€™s why the populist is speaking in this language. Everyone understands it quite well,ā€ he says. ā€œThe strategy is to avoid any argument and to sound like you speak from your soul.ā€

In Trumpā€™s version of whataboutism, he repeatedly takes a word leveled in criticism against him and turns it back on his opponentsā€”sidestepping the accusation and undercutting the meaning of the word at the same time.

To charges that his campaign colluded with Russian interference in the election, the president retorted, ā€œHillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders. Is she allowed to so collude? Unfair to Bernie!ā€ He used the same approach against the previous president: ā€œThe reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win…and did not want to ā€˜rock the boat.ā€™ He didn’t ā€˜choke,ā€™ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good.ā€

When accused of obstruction of justice in the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump again appropriated the charge as a means to deflect it: ā€œThe Democrats have no message, not on economics, not on taxes, not on jobs, not on failing #Obamacare. They are only OBSTRUCTIONISTS!ā€

Trump even deployed a unique twist on this strategy earlier this year, defending Putin with a kind of ā€œwhat about usā€ approach: In a February interview on Fox News, when Bill Oā€™Reilly said ā€œPutinā€™s a killer,ā€ Trump responded, ā€œWeā€™ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our countryā€™s so innocent?ā€ In the interview, Trump did not address the underlying question: whether killing, by either nation, was a morally defensible action.

Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, has warned in Foreign Policy that Trumpā€™s use of whataboutism undermines American leadership abroad and at home: ā€œThe American president should do something about Russia interference in Americaā€™s elections because he is the American president. Full stop. But whataboutism takes away the responsibility to do the right thing.ā€

Dubrovsky now sees whataboutism in play by several leaders around the world. ā€œTrump, as well as Putin, as well as others, have followed this populist path,ā€ he said, pointing to French right-wing presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and the language used in Brexit as additional examples. ā€œRussia was a pioneer of this global shift in narrative, The situation globally is to destroy the principles of human rights or democracy or international dialogue. Or to deny that such principles exist at all.ā€

The overarching goal of whataboutism is to undermine international consensus about what actually constitutes democracy, Dubrovsky says, ā€œto destroy the democratic values of the truth.ā€

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