Wotabout
Sir: Whataboutism' used to be frequently a communist technique whereby any criticism of the Soviet Union was countered by refer- ence to some Western imperfections. You dared to condemn the horrors of the Siberi- an forced labour camps? What about the crimes of the French in Algeria or British violence in Ulster? This technique was often effective, and inhibited protest, par- ticularly by guilt-ridden liberals.
I was amazed to find that whataboutism is well and alive in The Spectator under the Pen of Edward Lucas (Books, 13 January). Reviewing Isabel Fonseca's book on the fate of gypsies, he complains that she judges recent East European regimes by excessively high western standards. For good measure, he reminds us of the 'racial murders in stable democracies like Britain and Germany'. Apparently, these give us 'a rather shaky platform to criticise the com- parable or even better record of most of the countries emerging from totalitarianism'.
If that were true, one wonders why hun- dreds of thousands of gypsies from Eastern Europe seek refuge in 'murderous' Ger- many and elsewhere? I find Lucas's argu- ment abhorrent simply because if we did not use our 'shaky platform' to express our concern at the present state of affairs in Eastern-Europe, its people could never hope to achieve the standards of Dutch tol- erance, Swiss stability or the level of Ger- man social security to which they aspire. Lionel Bloch 9 Wimpole Street, London WI
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