There’s a pattern, an unmistakable and increasingly dangerous pattern, in the rhetoric in the right wing. It is the pattern of deflection, distortion, and denial. It is the pattern of whataboutism: a rhetorical shell game in which any critique of government overreach or injustice is met not with evidence or accountability, but with a clumsy pivot to unrelated accusations about Democrats, liberals, or “the Left.”

It’s a strategy honed over the last decade into a political art form, particularly among right wing loyalists and the far-right media ecosystem that props them up. And today, as the foundations of democracy, education, and civil liberty continue to erode under the Trump movement’s grip on MAGA, this tactic has become the central mode of defense against legitimate criticism. The right wing is no longer about freedom. It is the movement of control and what about.

Recently, I have posted a series of posts on Cloaking Inequity a summary of authortarian actions taken by the Trump administration and its allies that are direct assaults on free speech and academic freedom. I’ve laid out clear and documented examples: the political attacks on universities like Harvard, Columbia, and many others; the weaponization of federal power against higher education institutions; the gagging of curriculum; the imposition of speech censorship from Florida to Texas to Oklahoma. I’ve spoken about book bans (are they burning them yet?), the chilling of faculty expression, and the coordinated efforts to undermine truth and history in public education. In short, I presented a pattern of authoritarian creep, where free inquiry and speech are crushed not by public consensus, but by state mandate and political intimidation.

The response on Facebook? “But didn’t the Biden administration force Twitter to take down posts?” This is what I mean. Rather than reckon with the real and growing threats to academic freedom and civil discourse from their own camp, right wing supporters reflexively deploy whataboutism to muddy the waters. They point fingers, misrepresent facts, and hope people won’t look too closely beyond their talking points.

Let’s address this specific claim. The so-called “Twitter Files”—a series of selectively leaked internal messages from Twitter, released with great fanfare by Elon Musk and right-wing journalists, were supposed to show a vast government conspiracy to suppress conservative speech. They did no such thing. In fact, multiple analyses, including by mainstream and conservative outlets alike, found that the files did not reveal any widespread censorship campaign directed by the Biden administration. The decisions Twitter made were often internally debated, inconsistently applied, and not evidence of coercion. The First Amendment, by the way, protects against government censorship, not content moderation by private companies. The government requesting the removal of illegal misinformation, such as COVID hoaxes or election lies, is not the same as forcing it.

But here’s the point: even if the Twitter Files had revealed something more damning, it would still not erase or excuse what is happening right now under Trump-aligned right wing leadership. That’s the essence of whataboutism. It demands we forget the actual issue being raised and instead focus on some half-related accusation against someone else. It’s rhetorical bait-and-switch. And it’s toxic to democracy.

The Trump movement doesn’t want dialogue. It wants domination. It doesn’t want nuance. It wants noise. And the right wing has fully internalized this tactic as their go-to play. When you question Trump’s documented praise for dictators? What about Biden shaking hands at events with Saudi leaders. When you point out Trump’s efforts to dismantle DEI and ethnic studies? What about Black-on-Black crime. When you note Trump’s 34 felony convictions? What about Hunter Biden’s laptop or Hillary’s server. And so it goes.

This constant pivot is meant to make you question the validity of any critique at all. It’s meant to drown out meaningful debate in a sea of misdirection. It’s meant to make it impossible to hold anyone accountable, because, after all, what about?

Let me be clear: there are legitimate debates to be had about free speech, content moderation, and government transparency. But we cannot allow bad-faith actors to collapse all distinctions in service of political defense. The Trump-era right wing has engaged in unprecedented attacks on academic freedom, such as launching Department of Justice investigations into faculty senate votes, demanding installation of university leaders over phantom DEI concerns, or using state legislatures to defund entire degree programs. These are not hypotheticals or misquotes. These are policies, actions, and laws. Trump’s playbook includes Project 2025, a detailed blueprint for consolidating power, purging public servants, and turning education into a right-wing indoctrination engine.

None of this can be justified by comparing it to poorly sourced claims from Twitter screenshots. The problem with whataboutism is that it pretends all things are equal. It strips away context, scale, intention, and consequence. It treats an unproven rumor as the same as an enacted law or executive order. It creates the illusion that because no one is perfect, no one is accountable. It is intellectual nihilism wrapped in faux fairness.

We must not fall for it. We must not meet every challenge with false equivalency. Instead, we must return to discernment. We must invite our friends, neighbors, and relatives, especially those seduced by right wing media and social media to look beyond the noise, at least the ones that are reachable. To ask: What is actually happening? What are the consequences? Who benefits? What’s the pattern here?

In the case of academic freedom, the pattern is clear. The Trump movement and its allies have made the university a primary battleground in their war on pluralism, knowledge, and truth. They seek to control what can be taught, who can teach it, and what kind of society students are trained to build. They have erased the stories of enslaved people, Indigenous resistance, and queer liberation from curricula. They have labeled critical race theory, a framework used mostly in graduate legal education, a national threat for kindergarten. They have fired DEI staff, forced university presidents to grovel, and stoked distrust of higher education itself. Their most recent move is to set a marker at UCLA for $1,000,000,000,000. When will academic leaders realize that strength is the only thing that bullies recognize?

That is not the same as a private company moderating content under pressure during a global pandemic. That is not the same as a procedural mistake or a one-off misjudgment. This is systemic, strategic, and sustained repression. And it is being orchestrated at the highest levels in the right wing movement.

To those who genuinely want to understand the difference, I say this: it requires sophistication. It requires a willingness to sit with complexity and nuance. It requires rejecting the easy comforts of partisanship for the harder task of principled thought. When Trump punishes professors, tries to fire or hire university leaders, criminalizes protest, or dictates curricula, he is not preserving freedom. He is weaponizing the state against it.

So let’s retire the whataboutism. Let’s raise the level of conversation. Let’s insist on clarity over confusion, accountability over ambiguity. It is not partisan to speak truth. It is not “both sides” to call out injustice. And it is not cynical to demand that leaders be better than the worst behavior of their opponents.

In fact, it is the only way forward. If we don’t confront the politics of deflection with the politics of truth, we will continue spiraling into a world where nothing matters, where all facts are negotiable, and where authoritarianism finds fertile ground in the fog.

So the next time someone answers your concern about book bans with “But what about Twitter?”, remember this: their goal isn’t to engage with the question, it’s to make sure the question is never asked again.

Don’t let them.

Speak up. Stay focused. Name it for what it is.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, once said, “It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” The right wing’s embrace of whataboutism is not a debate tactic, it’s a smokescreen for authoritarian creep. Book bans, media attacks, and social media distractions are tools to control what people know and think.

Truth still matters. And we must fight for it.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is a nationally recognized policy scholar, public intellectual, and civil rights advocate. A trusted voice in public policy, he has testified for state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, while also advising presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. His work has been cited by major outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and he has appeared on networks from MSNBC and PBS to NPR and DemocracyNow!. He is a recipient of more than 30 honors, including the 2025 NAACP Keeper of the Flame Award, Vasquez Heilig brings both scholarly rigor and grassroots commitment to the fight for equity and justice.