And you are lynching Negroes

"And you are lynching Negroes" (Russian: "А у вас негров вешают", romanized: A u vas negrov veshaut; which also means "Yet, in your [country], [they] hang Negroes") is a catchphrase that describes or satirizes Soviet responses to US criticisms of Soviet human rights violations.[1][2]

The Soviet media frequently covered racial discrimination, financial crises, and unemployment in the United States, which were identified as failings of the capitalist system that had been supposedly erased by state socialism.[3] Lynchings of African Americans were brought up as an embarrassing skeleton in the closet for the US, which the Soviets used as a form of rhetorical ammunition when reproached for their own economic and social failings.[4] After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the phrase became widespread as a reference to Russian information-warfare tactics.[5] Its use subsequently became widespread in Russia to criticize any form of US policy.[6]

Former Czech president and writer Václav Havel placed the phrase among "commonly canonized demagogical tricks".[7] The Economist described it as a form of whataboutism that became ubiquitous after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[5] The book Exit from Communism by author Stephen Richards Graubard wrote that it symbolized a divorce from reality.[8]

Author Michael Dobson compared it to the idiom the pot calling the kettle black, and called the phrase a "famous example" of tu quoque reasoning.[9] The conservative magazine National Review called it "a bitter Soviet-era punch line",[10] and added "there were a million Cold War variations on the joke".[10] The Israeli newspaper Haaretz described use of the idiom as a form of Soviet propaganda.[11] The British liberal political website Open Democracy called the phrase "a prime example of whataboutism".[6] In her work Security Threats and Public Perception, Elizaveta Gaufman described the fallacy as a tool to reverse someone's argument against them.[12]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference edwardlucas was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Ioffe, Julia (2 March 2014), "Kremlin TV Loves Anti-War Protests—Unless Russia Is the One Waging War - Studies in 'whataboutism'", The New Republic, archived from the original on 22 September 2015, retrieved 17 December 2016
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference allisonquinn was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Ciment, James; Hill, Kenneth (1999), "Czechoslovakia: Soviet Invasion, 1968", Encyclopedia of Conflicts since World War II, Routledge, pp. 533–535, ISBN 978-1-57958-181-7
  5. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference economist was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference maximedwards was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Havel, Václav (March 1980), "On Dialectical Metaphysics", Modern Drama, 23 (1): 6–12, doi:10.3138/md.23.1.6, S2CID 170635138, the stabilization of certain commonly canonized demagogical tricks (A: Your subway does not operate according to the timetable; B: Well, in your country you lynch Blacks)
  8. ^ Graubard, Stephen Richards, ed. (1993), "Ashes, Ashes ... Central Europe after Forty Years", Exit from Communism, Transaction Publishers, pp. 202–204, ISBN 978-1-4128-2318-0
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference michaeldobson was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference kevindwilliamson was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Shalev, Chemi (22 July 2016), "Israel's Right and GOP Convention Share a Penchant for Incitement and Delusion", Haaretz, archived from the original on 20 November 2016, retrieved 17 December 2016, Trump told the New York Times this week that America is in such a mess in terms in terms of civil liberties that it cannot lecture foreign countries any more, which is an echo of old Soviet propaganda that responded to American reprimands with the retort 'And you are lynching Negroes'.
  12. ^ Gaufman, Elizaveta (28 October 2016), "The USA as the Primary Threat to Russia", Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis, New Security Challenges, Springer International Publishing: 77–102, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-43201-4_4, ISBN 978-3-319-43201-4, This quotation is a typical example of flipping the argument, failing to answer charges with accusations akin to the aforementioned joke: 'and you lynch Negroes in your country'.