The propaganda machine at the Office of the Prime Minister has begun to feed a new form into social media manipulation. Like its most successful ones when the Labour Party was in Opposition, this one is simple, easy to use, and mindless. It is also an affront to the principles of logic, but that should go without saying.

This is the way it goes. A small crowd of people begin to gather on Facebook or the internet comments-board, expressing their dismay at the scandal of the day. Despite the many factors that have been designed to frighten people off from criticising the government and its actions in public, some of them are saying a little of what they think about, for example, the way money was paid under the table to Konrad Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s tool, Neville Gafa, for medical visas. Or they might say part of what they think about Konrad Mizzi himself, and of his wife in Shanghai. Immediately, the paid government trolls – some of them with real names, others with fake profiles, still others with Disqus user-names - swarm in with the same refrain or variants of it: “Where were you when (the Nationalists did XYZ)?” or “What about what THEY did/are doing?”).

Instead of countering criticism of this government’s reprehensible and questionable actions and choices with explanations and factual rebuttals, as logic dictates, they use the form favoured in village squares and market-bars: “Ghax ma tmurx tara x’ghamilt int/x’ghamlu l-familja tieghek?”

This is, of course, completely irrational. What the governments of the past, formed by another political party, did or did not do is irrelevant to any discussion about the present government, led by the present prime minister, are doing today. This is not a competition of who did worst or had the most scandals (not that there’s any doubt who’d win that particular competition), but an assessment of the government right now.

“Where were you when…”, though, has the effect of derailing the discussion and perplexing those who complain. If you are not trained in sticking to the point, and if you do not think clearly enough to be able to do this naturally, it’s easy to find yourself doing exactly what these government trolls want you to do: segue from criticising this government to defending or making excuses for the governments of the past.

Don’t do it. If you are on line criticising the government because of the latest scandal, and one of these trolls or government tools comes at you with the words “where were you when…?”, just blank them completely, or even better, write “You know, it really is none of your business.”

There is a name for this manipulative propaganda tactic, and it comes straight out of the propaganda toolbox of the former Soviet Union. Did I say ‘former’? It’s still being used today by the television channel RT, formerly Russia Today, a propaganda outlet for Vladimir Putin’s pro-Russia, anti-West ambitions.

This propaganda technique was first used by the Soviet Union in its interactions with the governments of Western Europe and the United States of America during the Cold War. When fully justified criticism was levelled at the Soviet Union, which kept hundreds of millions of people imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet response was “What about…?”, followed by reference to something that was done in the West. 

This is the failure of logic known in that discipline as tu quoque (what about you). Joseph Muscat is the prime practitioner of the illogical tu quoque retort, and during his first two years in power, he used this method as standard when answering questions at press conferences or speaking in parliament. But after the Panama Papers scandal, it was starkly noticeable that he stopped doing it. I imagine he couldn’t find a tu quoque retort which fitted that particular scenario.

Whataboutism/tu quoque/where-were-you-when is a logical fallacy sometimes known as ‘the appeal to hypocrisy’, because it attempts to discredit the opponent in an argument by claiming that he or she has not been consistent. In this way, the person who feels under attack by the criticism, and who knows that the criticism is justified, tries to avoid addressing it by making the critic the subject of personal discussion instead.

Though whataboutism, as a propaganda tool, is firmly associated with Soviet Russia, the term itself was popularised by Edward Lucas, a senior editor, in an article he wrote for The Economist in 2008. Lucas pointed out that the tactic is now being used again in contemporary Russia, evidence of the resurgence in that country of the Cold War, Soviet-era mentality in its political leadership.

That Malta’s current government has borrowed many of its propaganda tactics, and methods of controlling public opinion and freedom of expression, from the least democratic parts of the world is no secret. I thought perhaps my readers, many of whom have noticed this overnight blitz of ‘where were you when’, might like to know that it is the oldest Soviet manipulation tactic of all, its earliest use recorded in 1947, and that it actually has a name: whataboutism.

Actually, that’s a better idea: when you see a government troll on social media or the comments boards repeating ‘where were you when’ in any one of umpteen situations, simply post one word in reply: ‘whataboutism’.

 

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