The generic term for this kind of fallacy is tu quoque.
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Arthur: The tu quoque argument is as old and bipartisan as they come in politics.
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Tu quoque is a subset of the so-called ad hominem argument: a strike against the character, not the position, of one's opponent.
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But it was just as common for conservatives to play tu quoque against liberals during racial controversies, repurposing the serious language of racial inequality as a partisan brickbat.
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His most eloquent defender, National Review's editor, William F. Buckley Jr., applauded McCarthy's Red-hunting investigations and ridiculed the tu quoque hypocrisies of McCarthy's "enemies"—liberals and moderates in both parties.
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Learned readers will identify this attack on AOC's alleged hypocrisy as a tu quoque fallacy, in which you accuse your opponent of inconsistency rather than arguing against the merits of their views.
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" Probably the most famous historical application of tu quoque was by apologists for the Soviet Union, who for decades habitually countered any American criticism of conditions there with, "And you are lynching Negroes.
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But liberals have largely avoided this tedious game of tu quoque because they realize there is a much bigger issue at play here: Is the president abusing his power in the service of a coverup?
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But they also contain conceptual and strategic flaws, which arouse the suspicion, rightly or wrongly, that they're being offered in bad faith—that they're being deployed intentionally as tu quoque appeals rather than in the spirit of mutual comprehension.
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Argumentum ergo decedo is directly related to the tu quoque fallacy when responding to political criticism. As whataboutism is used against external criticism, ergo decedo is used against internal criticism.
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Another commonly quoted variation of this Greek sentence in Latin is Tu quoque, Brute? Contrary to popular belief, the words are not Caesar's last in the play, as he says "Then fall Caesar!" right after.
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Lyrical themes of Sintax's music include anarchism, politics, violence, religion and philosophical concepts such as hypocrisy (tu quoque), double standards, self-righteousness, hate, war, sex, and other topics such as drug use and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
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Greene's Tu Quoque, also known as The City Gallant, is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Cooke. The play was a major popular success upon its premier, and became something of a legend in the theatre lore of the seventeenth century.
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Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair. For instance, in international relations, behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be quite good for a given geopolitical neighborhood, and deserves to be recognized as such. Christian Christensen, Professor of Journalism in Stockholm, argues that the accusation of whataboutism is itself a form of the tu quoque fallacy, as it dismisses criticisms of one's own behavior to focus instead on the actions of another, thus creating a double standard.
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In her work Security Threats and Public Perception, Elizaveta Gaufman described the fallacy as a tool to reverse someone's argument against them. Supposedly, use of phrases like these, exemplifying the tu quoque logical fallacy, was an attempt to deflect criticism of the Soviet Union by referring to racial discrimination and lynching in the United States.
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By that date in the summer of 1612, Cooke's play had already lost its original title; the Court records refer to the work as Tu Coque.Chambers, Vol. 4, p. 178. Greene's Tu Quoque would likely have become a key item in the Queen's Men's repertory, except for the unfortunate death of Thomas Greene in August 1612.
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In the trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès tried to present what was defined as a Tu Quoque Defence—i.e., that during the Algerian War, French officers such as General Jacques Massu had committed war crimes similar to those with which Barbie was being charged, and therefore the French state had no moral right to try Barbie. This defence was rejected by the court, which convicted Barbie.
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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. The conservative magazine National Review called it "a bitter Soviet-era punch line", and added "there were a million Cold War variations on the joke". The Israeli newspaper Haaretz described use of the idiom as a form of Soviet propaganda. The British liberal political website Open Democracy called the phrase "a prime example of whataboutism".
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Ioffe wrote that the phrase took the form of a "cartoonish reply", and had been extended after the fall of Soviet Russia to a similar strategy used by Vladimir Putin. In a 2015 article for the conservative magazine National Review, correspondent Kevin D. Williamson called the phrase "a bitter Soviet-era punch line." Williamson pointed out: "There were a million Cold War variations on the joke". Reporter David Volodzko wrote for the international news magazine The Diplomat in 2015 about "the famous tu quoque argument".
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Norwich became a de facto base of operations for Jolly's company, where they played at the King's Arms Inn; their repertory in this period appears to have included Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Cooke's Greene's Tu Quoque, Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and the Fletcher/Shirley play The Night Walker among other works.Bernard M. Wagner, "George Jolly at Norwich", Review of English Studies Vol. 6 No. 24 (October 1930), pp. 449–52. During this time, Jolly leased his London license to Killigrew and Davenant for £4 weekly.
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The play was revived by the Queen of Bohemia's Men and performed at Court on 6 January 1625 before Charles I. In the Restoration period, Sir William Davenant produced his own adaptation of Cooke's play in 1667; Samuel Pepys saw it on 12 September of that year. Davenant's version was not published in its own era, and no copy of it has survived. Francis Kirkman's 1662 volume The Wits uses a frontispiece that alludes to the play: a picture of a clown peeking out from behind a curtain is captioned "Tu quoque".
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Even if President Roberts lied in his Congressional testimony, this does not establish a precedent that makes it acceptable for President Williams to do so as well (at best, it means Williams is no worse than Roberts). By invoking the fallacy, the contested issue of lying is ignored. The tu quoque fallacy is a specific type of "two wrongs make a right". Accusing another of not practicing what they preach, while appropriate in some situations, does not in itself invalidate an action or statement that is perceived as contradictory.
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Cambridge University Press, 2016. . This phrase is thought to have inspired the more famous wording, "Et tu, Brute?" which was used by Richard Edes in his play Caesar Interfectus which later likely inspired William Shakespeare for his Caesar play. While "Et tu, Brute?" is the best known Latin version of the phrase in the English- speaking world due to Shakespeare, another well-known version in continental Europe is "Tu quoque, fili mi?" (or "mi fili?" with the same meaning), which is a more direct translation from the Greek.
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Adoration of the Magi is a c.1521-22 fresco by Perugino in the Cappella dell'Adorazione dei Magi (also known as the Capella del Presepio) in the Madonna delle Lagrime church in Trevi. It shows the Adoration of the Magi. It is signed on the base of the throne :P E T R U S D E C A S T R O P L E B I S P I N X I T and inscribed below the throne is this couplet :TU SOLA IN TERRIS GENITRIX ET VIRGO FUISTI :REGINA IN CELIS TU QUOQUE SOLA MANES .
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53 "narcisso floreat alnus" (the alder with narcissus bloom). In Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC – 17 AD) was also familiar with narcissi, in his recounting of the self-loving youth who is turned into the flower, in the third book of his Metamorphoses l. 509 "croceum pro corpore florem inveniunt, foliis medium cingemtibus albis" (They came upon a flower, instead of his body, with white petals surrounding a yellow heart) and also the fifth book of his Fasti l. 201 "Tu quoque nomen habes cultos, Narcisse, per hortos" (You too, Narcissus, were known among the gardens).
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He wrote his will on 3 January 1614 and was buried inside St. Saviour's church, now Southwark Cathedral, on 25 February. Around the time of his death Cooke had resided in Goat Yard, in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark In his will, Cooke names John Heminges and Henry Condell as trustees of his children – his sons Francis (born in 1605) and Alexander (1614), and daughters Rebecca (1607) and Alice (1611). Cooke's wife acted as his executrix. Alexander Cooke had a brother John; John Payne Collier speculated that this John Cooke was the author of Greene's Tu Quoque.
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The play was first published in a 1614 quarto issued by the bookseller John Trundle. (The play was published without an entry in the Stationers' Register, which was unusual though not unknown. Trundle – whose shop bore the sign of "the Nobody" – would publish A Fair Quarrel three years later, in 1617, also without a Register entry.) In this first edition, the work was called Greene's Tu Quoque, or The City Gallant; and it was under its ad hoc title that the play maintained its fame. The first edition bore a picture of Greene, in costume, on its title page.
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In a reversal of roles, Staines becomes Bubble's servant. Staines gets his revenge by making Bubble a pretentious fool, worse than the natural fool he already was. Through a series of disguises and cheats, Staines eventually manages to reverse his situation, till he is the master and Bubble the servant once again. Greene's Tu Quoque gives a rich picture of everyday life in its era; it "uses tennis rackets, tobacco pipes, cards, dice and candles to establish a life of debauchery in visual terms...and a begging-basket with scraps of food to symbolize the natural result...."Leggatt, p. 57.
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Fallacious ad hominem reasoning is categorized among informal fallacies, more precisely as a genetic fallacy, a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance. Ad hominem fallacies can be separated in various different types, among others are tu quoque, circumstantial, guilt by association, and abusive ad hominem. All of them are similar to the general scheme of ad hominem argument, that is instead of dealing with the essence of someone's argument or trying to refute it, the interlocutor is attacking the character of the proponent of the argument and concluding that it is a sufficient reason to drop the initial argument.
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Tu quoque "argument" follows the pattern: # Person A makes claim X. # Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X. # Therefore, X is false. It is a fallacy because the moral character or actions of the opponent are generally irrelevant to the logic of the argument. It is often used as a red herring tactic and is a special case of the ad hominem fallacy, which is a category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of facts about the person presenting or supporting the claim or argument.
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Susan Benesch remarked that while dehumanization "makes genocide seem acceptable", accusation in a mirror makes it seem necessary. Kenneth L. Marcus writes that the tactic is "similar to a false anticipatory tu quoque" (a logical fallacy which charges the opponent with hypocrisy). The tactic does not rely on what misdeeds the enemy could plausibly be charged with, based on actual culpability or stereotypes, and does not involve any exaggeration but instead is an exact mirror of the perpetrator's own intentions. The weakness of the strategy is that it reveals the perpetrator's intentions, perhaps before he is able to carry it out.
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The play was first printed in 1629 in a quarto issued by the stationer Matthew Rhodes. (The work was not entered into the Stationers' Register prior to publication. This violation of the rules was unusual, though not unprecedented; the same is true of a few other plays of the era, like Greene's Tu Quoque in 1614, and A Fair Quarrel in 1617.) The title page states that the play had "lately" been acted, first at Court before King Charles I and then "publicly" at the Blackfriars Theatre, by the King's Men. Carlell dedicated the first edition to two personal friends, Thomas Carey, second son to the Earl of Monmouth, and William Murray.
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Thomas Heywood, actor in the company, contributed the greatest part. John Webster's The White Devil and The Devil's Law-case, Thomas Dekker's If This Be Not A Good Play, the Devil Is in It, and John Cooke's well-known The City Gallant (Greene's Tu Quoque) were also included. They also came into possession of some older plays, including Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. The audience appears to have disapproved of The White Devil in 1611, and in later years the Red Bull as the cause of, or scene of, noted riots which are recorded in court cases. In 1616, the Queen's men, now directed by impresario Christopher Beeston, moved into Beeston's new indoor Cockpit Theatre.
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Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. Whataboutism is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda. When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Soviet response would often be "What about ..." followed by instancing of an event or situation in the Western world. According to Russian writer and political activist Garry Kasparov, it is a word that was coined to describe the frequent use of a rhetorical diversion by Soviet apologists and dictators, who would counter charges of their oppression, "massacres, gulags, and forced deportations" by invoking American slavery, racism, lynchings, etc.
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260px Cooke's play was performed by Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull Theatre in 1611. The play satirises Coryat's Crudities, the travelogue by Thomas Coryat published in that year. The company's leading clown, Thomas Greene, played the role of Bubble in the play, and his rendering of Bubble's catch phrase "Tu quoque" (Latin for "you also" or, colloquially, "the same to you"), repeated through the play, captured the audience's fancy. The play was performed twice at Court, on 27 December 1611 and 2 February 1612 (Candlemas night), before King James I and Queen Anne; Greene, representing his troupe, received a payment of £20 for the two performances on 18 June 1612 (which shows how long the players sometimes waited for money from their royal patrons).
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Besides for his tu quoque defense of arguing that French actions in the Algerian War were no different from Barbie's, Vergès spent much time attempting to prove the Resistance hero Jean Moulin had been betrayed by either the Communists, the Gaullists, or both, which led him to argue Barbie was less culpable than those who had betrayed Moulin.Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan 2002 pages 203–204. Vergès claimed Moulin's colleagues were "playing a double game" and all those in the Resistance "whether they were anti-Gaullists or anti-Communists forgot their duty to the Resistance because of partisan political passions".Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan 2002 page 203.
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After Vergès's return to normal life he resumed his legal practice, defending Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, convicted of terrorism, and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The thrust of his defence in the latter case was that Barbie was being singled out for prosecution while the French state conveniently ignored other cases that qualified as crimes against humanity. Vergès adopted a tu quoque defense, asking the judges "is a crime against humanity is to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more seriously crimes...the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence?", going on to say there was nothing his client did against the Resistance that was not done by "certain French officers in Algeria" whom Vergès noted could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's amnesty of 1962.
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Born in Gualeguay, Entre Ríos, Barroetaveña owed his fame to an article published in La Nación on August 20, 1899, titled '"¡Tu quoque juventud! En tropel al éxito" -- "You too, youth, in the rush for success!" -- which criticized young people who supported the regime of Miguel Juárez Celman: ::"This affiliation is nothing more than the renunciation of civic life by the young, in favor of absorption into a superior will that converts them into the mere instruments of the Executive". The article precipitated a historic political movement that led first to the creation of the Civic Youth Union, of which Barroetaveña was president, then to the creation of the Civic Union in 1890, then to the Revolution of the Park, and in 1891 to the creation of the Radical Civic Union, of which he was a founding member and national deputy on various occasions.
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The 19th century "Wild West" became for Germans in the 1950s-1960s a "distant, vaguely defined past" where it was the Americans who were perpetuating genocide while German immigrants to the United States like May's cowboy hero Old Shatterhand became the ones who were trying to stop the genocide. There was an implicit tu quoque argument to Indianthusisam in West Germany that nations on the Allied side such as the United States had also committed genocide in the 19th century with the obvious conclusion that therefore there was no reason for the Germans to feel especially guilty about the Holocaust. In East Germany, this message was made explicit where policies of the United States government towards Indians in the 19th century were linked to capitalism, and therefore the treatment of American Indians showed the brutal, rapacious and genocidal nature of American capitalistic imperialism. In East Germany, there were so many films devoted to the subject of the Indians that the term Indianerfilme was coined to describe the genre.
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