[CharlesColeman]

> Citing whataboutism is often used as an intellectually soft way to avoid responding to claims of hypocrisy. It's pretty much always used like you are using it nabla, to sidestep a challenge of hypocritical behavior.

No, it isn't. At its core, true whataboutism is an deliberate attempt to distract and derail [1] a thread away from its actual subject with charges of national hypocrisy. Derails of all types are definitely things that need to be resisted, because otherwise we'd exhaust ourselves talking about nothing but Donald Trump and the top 10 most controversial American geopolitical activities.

That said, I think there's relatively little true whataboutism, compared to similar derails that are exactly the same in form, except they lack the deliberate intent to derail and distract.

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=derailing%20...