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{{short description|Soviet catchphrase}}{{use dmy dates |date=April 2024}}”And you are lynching Negroes” (; 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.{{citation|last=Ioffe|first=Julia|title=Kremlin TV Loves Anti-War Protests—Unless Russia Is the One Waging War - Studies in ‘whataboutism’|date=2 March 2014|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/116816/whataboutism-russia-protests-against-war-ukraine |url-status=live |magazine=The New Republic|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150922180534www.newrepublic.com/article/116816/whataboutism-russia-protests-against-war-ukraine|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=22 September 2015}}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. 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.{{citation|pages=533–535 |title= Encyclopedia of Conflicts since World War II |last1=Ciment|first1= James |last2=Hill |first2=Kenneth |isbn=978-1-57958-181-7 |year=1999 |publisher=Routledge|chapter=Czechoslovakia: Soviet Invasion, 1968}} After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the phrase became widespread as a reference to Russian information-warfare tactics. Its use subsequently became widespread in Russia to criticize any form of US policy.Former Czech president and writer Václav Havel placed the phrase among “commonly canonized demagogical tricks”.{{citation|last=Havel|first=Václav|title=On Dialectical Metaphysics|date=March 1980|journal=Modern Drama|volume=23|issue=1|pages=6–12|doi=10.3138/md.23.1.6|s2cid=170635138 |quote=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)|author-link=Václav Havel}} The Economist described it as a form of whataboutism that became ubiquitous after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The book Exit from Communism by author Stephen Richards Graubard wrote that it symbolized a divorce from reality.{{citation|title=Exit from Communism|pages=202–204|year=1993|editor1-last=Graubard|editor1-first=Stephen Richards|chapter=Ashes, Ashes ... Central Europe after Forty Years|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=978-1-4128-2318-0}}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.{{citation|last=Shalev|first=Chemi|title=Israel’s Right and GOP Convention Share a Penchant for Incitement and Delusion|date=22 July 2016|url=http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.732715|work=Haaretz|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161120133837www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.732715|quote=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’.|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=20 November 2016}} The British liberal political website Open Democracy called the phrase “a prime example of whataboutism”. In her work Security Threats and Public Perception, Elizaveta Gaufman described the fallacy as a tool to reverse someone’s argument against them.{{citation|last=Gaufman|first=Elizaveta|title=The USA as the Primary Threat to Russia|date=28 October 2016|journal=Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis|pages=77–102|series=New Security Challenges|publisher=Springer International Publishing|doi=10.1007/978-3-319-43201-4_4|isbn=978-3-319-43201-4|quote=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’.}}

History

Early usage

File:Stalin 1945.jpg|thumb|upright|Use of the phrase was common in the Soviet Union during the Joseph StalinJoseph StalinThe use of the phrase as a reference to demagoguery and hypocrisy is traced to U.S. senator Edward W. Carmack during a May 31, 1902, speech in the U.S. Congress, where he said “Senators on the other side of the chamber began to wave the bloody shirt again...[saying] You are lynching negroes in the South. We are lynching them in the Philippine Islands.“After this the phrase was used as a Russian political joke about a dispute between an American and a Soviet man.WEB, ru,www.svoboda.org/a/24201410.html, Ваши письма, Стреляный, Анатолий, 2001-03-28, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty,www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/24201410.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20151126074320www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/24201410.html,">web.archive.org/web/20151126074320www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/24201410.html, 2015-11-26, live, After receiving criticism of his country because of the deaths caused by the 1903 anti-Jewish Kishinev pogrom, the Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve pointed out “The Russian peasants were driven to frenzy. Excited by race and religious hatred, and under the influence of alcohol, they were worse than the people of the Southern States of America when they lynch negroes.“NEWS,books.google.com/books?id=yuHhAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1476, The Kishineff Murders and Lynching, 1903-06-18, The Independent (New York City), The Independent, 2846, LV, 1476, 2018-02-02, 2019-09-01,web.archive.org/web/20190901183304/https://books.google.com/books?id=yuHhAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1476, live, {{citation|last=Lindemann|first=Albert S.|title=Esau’s Tears|year=2000|series=Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews|page=378|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-79538-8}}{{citation|last=Lindemann|first=Albert S.|title=The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank) 1894–1915|year=1991|page=219|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-44761-4|url=https://archive.org/details/jewaccusedthreea0000lind/page/219}} Soviet artist Dmitri Moor produced the lithograph Freedom to the Prisoners of Scottsboro!, after the 1931 trial of the Scottsboro Boys of Alabama.The treatment of the Scottsboro Boys popularized the phrase in usage by the Soviet Union against the US as a form of criticism against those who themselves criticized human rights abuses.{{citation|page=62|title=Post-totalitarian Spanish Fiction|first=Robert C.|last=Spires|publisher=University of Missouri Press|year=1996|isbn=978-0-8262-1071-5|url=https://archive.org/details/posttotalitarian00spir/page/62}} In his 1934 book Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?, Sherwood Eddy wrote: “In the most remote villages of Russia today Americans are frequently asked what they are going to do to the Scottsboro Negro boys and why they lynch Negroes.“{{citation|first=Sherwood|last=Eddy|title=Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?|pages=73, 151|publisher=Farrar & Rinehar|year=1934|location=New York|oclc=1617454}}Apparently, when the Soviet Union faced harsh words from the Western world over its civil liberties problems, it employed the phrase as a common retort.{{citation|url=http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/politics/10-03-2016/133777-sanctions_putin-0/|access-date=17 December 2016|date=3 October 2016|title=Sanctions against Putin? Sounds like a good old Soviet joke|work=Pravda Report|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160801082102www.pravdareport.com/russia/politics/10-03-2016/133777-sanctions_putin-0/|archive-date=1 August 2016}}{{citation|work=Press Gazette|issn=0041-5170|url=http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/why-the-russians-like-being-gagged/|access-date=17 December 2016|date=22 October 2007|title=Why the Russians like being gagged|first=Dominic |last=Ponsford}}In a 1930s argument with black student Pierre Kalmek, Bolshevik politician Dmitry Manuilsky said that in the United States “whites have the privilege to lynch Negroes, but Negroes do not have the privilege to lynch whites.” He called this a form of white chauvinism, asking: “Do we have a difference here between the salaries of Negro and white workers? Do we have the right to lynch Negro citizens?“During the Stalin era, praise for the quality of any aspect of US life prompted the rejoinder “Yes, but they lynch Blacks, don’t they?“{{citation|quote=in Stalin’s USSR any positive example of American life was proudly met with the retort ‘Yes, but they lynch Blacks, don’t they?’|page=92|title=Russian Crisis and Its Effects|first1=Tuomas |last1=Komulainen|first2=Iikka|last2= Korhonen|publisher=Helsinki University Press|year=2000 |isbn=978-951-45-9100-6}}{{citation|page=1|title=Russian Economic Reforms as Seen by an Insider: Success Or Failure?|first=Vladimir Aleksandrovich|last= Mau|publisher=Royal Institute of International Affairs|year=2000|isbn=978-1-86203-108-1}} Throughout the 1930s, white men traveling from the US to the Soviet Union on business reported to the US consulate in Riga, Latvia, that locals asked them about the dichotomy between living in a free society and “the ‘lynching’ of blacks.“{{citation|first=Meredith L.|last=Roman|pages=121, 183–184|year=2012|title=Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928–1937|series=Justice and Social Inquiry|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=978-0-8032-1552-8}}{{citation|title=Swift to Wrath: Lynching in Global Historical Perspective|editor1-first=William D.|editor1-last= Carrigan|editor2-first=Christopher |editor2-last=Waldrep|isbn= 978-0-8139-3414-3|publisher=University of Virginia Press|pages=215–236|chapter=U.S. Lynch Law and the Fate of the Soviet Union: The Soviet Uses of American Racial Violence|year=2013|first=Meredith L.|last=Roman}} The term worked its way into fiction literature books written in the country, and was seen in this context as criticism of foreigners.{{citation|pages=122–124|title=In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction|first=Vera Sandomirsky|last= Dunham|author-link = Vera Sandomirsky_Dunham|year=1990|series=Studies of the Harriman Institute|isbn=978-0-8223-1085-3|publisher=Duke University Press}} Years later a science fiction comic, Technique - The Youth{{snd}}1948.{{snd}}No. 2 titled “In a world of crazy fantasy” () featured a poem of political attacks on the cover which included a similar line: “Every planet’s Negroes are being lynched there.“WEB, ru,www.fandom.ru/about_fan/sf_16.htm, fandom.ru, Ð’ МИРЕ БРЕДОВОЙ ФАНТАСТИКИ, dead,www.fandom.ru/about_fan/sf_16.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20160304030429www.fandom.ru/about_fan/sf_16.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20160304030429www.fandom.ru/about_fan/sf_16.htm, March 4, 2016, The phrase became a common witticism used among Soviet citizens; a parable involved a call-in program on Radio Moscow where any question about their living conditions was met with the answer: “In America, they lynch Negroes.“{{citation|page=386|title=The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America|first1=Philip A.|last1=Klinkner|first2=Rogers M.|last2=Smith|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-226-44339-3|url=https://archive.org/details/unsteadymarchris00klin/page/386}} A US citizen living in the Soviet Union in 1949 was arrested after complaining the government barred him from work; a local paper made fun of his expectation of fair treatment, writing of the US as “the country where they lynch Negroes.“{{citation|page=409|title=The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921|year=2002|isbn= 978-0-8047-4493-5|publisher=Stanford University Press|first=Bertrand M. |last=Patenaude}} In 1949 Soviet author and war poet Konstantin Simonov gave a speech at a Soviet jubilee event honoring poet Alexander Pushkin (who had African ancestry), where he delineated between the Soviet Union and the Western world by simply using the phrase to refer to English speakers: “There is no need for those who hang Negroes to commemorate Pushkin!“{{citation|access-date=17 December 2016|url=http://www.pushkiniana.org/index.php/14-articles/224-voronina-article14#_ftnref10|title=’The Sun of World Poetry“’ Pushkin As a Cold War Writer|first=Olga|last=Voronina|journal=The Pushkin Review|volume=14|year=2011|doi=10.1353/pnr.2011.0000|pages=63–95|s2cid=192161265|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161222112147www.pushkiniana.org/index.php/14-articles/224-voronina-article14#_ftnref10#_ftnref10|archive-date=2016-12-22|url-status=dead}} Historian Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov wrote in his 1953 book The Reign of Stalin that Soviet media put forth the notion that US citizens “are unanimous in pursuing an anti-colour policy, and that the average American spends his time lynching negroes.“{{citation|author-link=Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov|first=Abdurakhman|last= Avtorkhanov|pages=193–195|title=The Reign of Stalin|publisher=Bodley Head|location=London|oclc=557567661}} Perpetuation of the phrase during the Soviet period engendered negative feelings towards the US from members of the working class.{{citation|title=First Rule: No Blacks!|work=The eXile|first=Sofia|last=Brook|date=4 November 2005|access-date=17 December 2016|url=http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7942&IBLOCK_ID=35|quote=During Soviet times, the Soviet working class hated America because everybody knew ‘tam linchuiut negrov’ (they lynch blacks over there).|archive-date=17 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191217044643www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7942&IBLOCK_ID=35|url-status=live}}{{citation|title=The Russian Economic Reforms Through the Eyes of Western Critics|first=V.|last=Mau|year=2001|journal=Russian Social Science Review|volume=42|issue=6|pages = 31–59|quote=This was the same in the Stalinist Soviet Union, when, in response to any story of a rise in the well-being of the Americans, the vigilant Soviet worker was supposed to utter something proudly along the lines of ‘But on the other hand, you lynch blacks there!’|doi=10.2753/RSS1061-1428420631|s2cid=155281602}}

Growth during the Cold War

During the Cold War, the leftist French publication Combat used the phrase to criticize the operations of the House Un-American Activities Committee, pointing out what it saw as corruption of “a nation that lynched blacks and hounded anyone accused of ‘un-American’ activities.“{{citation|page=136|title=America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe |isbn=978-0-691-10256-6|year=2002|publisher=Princeton University Press|first= Volker R. |last=Berghahn }}{{citation|page=28|title=Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization|first=Richard F.|last=Kuisel|year=1993|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-07962-5|url=https://archive.org/details/seducingfrenchdi00kuis/page/28}} Use of the phrase as a tu quoque fallacy grew in popularity in Russia during the 1960s, and was used as a widespread quip between Russians. In this version, an American and a Soviet car salesman argue which country makes better cars. Finally, the American asks: “How many decades does it take an average Soviet man to earn enough money to buy a Soviet car?” After a thoughtful pause, the Soviet replies: “And you are lynching Negroes!“{{citation |chapter-url=https://sidewiseinsights.blogspot.com/2011/06/pot-meet-kettle-fallacies-part-3.html |title= Pot, Meet Kettle (Fallacies, Part 3) |chapter=Ad hominem tu quoque |last1=Dobson |first1=Michael |date=7 June 2011 |publisher=The Sideways Institute|access-date=17 December 2016|author-link=Michael Dobson (author)|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161109002455sidewiseinsights.blogspot.ca/2011/06/pot-meet-kettle-fallacies-part-3.html|archive-date=9 November 2016}}BOOK, ru,books.google.com/books?id=i9dKAAAAMAAJ&q=%22%D1%83+%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%81+%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87%D1%83%D1%8E%D1%82%22, Советский Союз в зеркале политического анекдота, Soviet Union in the Mirror of the Political Joke, Shturman, Dora, Tiktin, Sergei, 1985, Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd., 978-0-903868-62-4, 58, 2019-01-28, 2020-03-06,web.archive.org/web/20200306233721/https://books.google.com/books?id=i9dKAAAAMAAJ&q=%22%D1%83+%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%81+%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87%D1%83%D1%8E%D1%82%22&dq=%22%D1%83+%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%81+%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87%D1%83%D1%8E%D1%82%22&hl=en, live, The phrase garnered numerous iterations during the Cold War period. Its pervasiveness in Russian society reflected a strong sense of Soviet socialist patriotism.{{citation|page=90|title=Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change|first=Gordon B. |last=Smith|publisher=Macmillan|year= 1992 |isbn=978-0-333-53576-9}} When the government faced criticism for discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union, the idiom was used with excessively sentimental tone to complain about racism in the United States.BOOK, 978-0-7475-9578-6, The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West, Lucas, Edward, 2009, Bloomsbury Publishing, 307, Castigated for the plight of Soviet Jews, they would complain with treacly sincerity about discrimination against American Blacks. (footnote: the accusation ‘and you are lynching negroes’ became a catchphrase epitomizing Soviet propaganda based on this principle.),archive.org/details/newcoldwarhowkre0000luca/page/307, It was used as an aphorism among fellow Soviets during the Mikhail Gorbachev period, as an answer to complaints about the lack of civil and political rights including freedom of movement.{{citation|page=247|title=Russia’s Sputnik Generation|first=Donald J.|last= Raleigh|series=Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies|isbn=978-0-253-21842-1|year=2006|publisher=Indiana University Press}} A variant used during this time as a form of reciprocity when faced with criticism over imprisonment and treatment of Refuseniks, was to put the focus on race in the United States criminal justice system.{{citation|quote=you beat up Negroes!|access-date=18 December 2016|url=http://sfppr.org/2016/08/moscows-synchronized-themes-and-techniques/|archive-date=18 December 2016|first=Marek Jan |last=Chodakiewicz|author-link=Marek Jan Chodakiewicz|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161218072332sfppr.org/2016/08/moscows-synchronized-themes-and-techniques/|date=30 August 2016|title=Moscow’s Synchronized Themes and Techniques|journal=SFPPR News & Analysis}} A similar phrase was used to counter complaints about Soviet transportation inefficiency.{{citation|pages=70–72|quote=’But we’ve been standing here for twenty minutes now,’ says the American, ‘and there hasn’t been a train on either track.’ ‘Yes, but you in America, you beat the negroes!’|title=Hammer and Tickle: Clandestine Laughter in the Soviet Empire|publisher=The Golem Press|year=1980|isbn=978-0-911762-20-4|first=Petr |last=Beckmann |author-link=Petr Beckmann|location=Boulder, Colorado}}In 1980 then dissident and later president of the Czech Republic and writer Václav Havel characterized the phrase among “commonly canonized demagogical tricks.” In scholarly research it has been described as “an increasingly powerful propaganda tool with the intensification of the Cold War”.BOOK,www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003092131-17/lessons-civil-rights-movement-activists-xenophobic-times-cheryl-greenberg, The Lessons of the Civil Rights Movement for Activists in Xenophobic Times, 2020-11-12, Routledge, 978-1-003-09213-1, en, 10.4324/9781003092131-17, An Unfamiliar America, Greenberg, Cheryl, 206–222, 225247159,

Use in post-1991 Russia

File:Krievijas RevÄ«zijas palātas priekÅ¡sÄ“dÄ“tājs (4187361112).jpg|thumb|upright|Prime Minister of Russia Sergei Stepashin unsuccessfully used the phrase in a joke in a 1999 visit to the National Press Club.]]{{further|Russia and Black Lives Matter}}After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the term had become a synecdoche in Russia, as a reference referring to all of Soviet propaganda. During a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1999, then-prime minister of Russia Sergei Stepashin attempted to tell a joke using the phrase as a punchline at a speech before the National Press Club. He faced a disturbing quiet from the audience in response to his attempt at humor, and he later observed those in the US have difficulty understanding the Russian perspective on comedy.{{citation |access-date=17 December 2016 |url=http://old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1999/7/article/premier-laughs-alone-in-us/274307.html |work=The Moscow Times |title=Premier Laughs Alone in U.S. |date=30 July 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161218000519old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1999/7/article/premier-laughs-alone-in-us/274307.html |archive-date=18 December 2016}}File:Václav Havel na Václavském námÄ›stí 17. listopadu 2009c (cropped).jpg|thumb|Václav HavelVáclav HavelIn a January 2008 article, The Economist popularized the term whataboutism for the repeated usage of this rhetorical tactic in the Soviet Union. The magazine wrote, that the tactic became overused, and by the time of the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, it had become a figure of speech which was used in reference to the entirety of Soviet propaganda.{{citation |url=https://www.economist.com/europe/2008/01/31/whataboutism |title=Europe.view - Whataboutism - Come again, Comrade? |newspaper=The Economist |access-date=17 December 2016 |date=31 January 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160803224739www.economist.com/node/10598774 |archive-date=3 August 2016 |url-status=live }}With the election of Barack Obama as US president in November 2008, The New York Times expressed the hope that the tactic could see decreased usage: “In Russia, for example, where Soviet leaders used to respond to any American criticism of human rights violations with ‘But you hang Negroes,’ analysts note that the election of Mr. Obama removes a stain.“{{citation |work=The New York Times |access-date=17 December 2016 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05global.html |url-status=live |quote=In Russia, for example, where Soviet leaders used to respond to any American criticism of human rights violations with ‘But you hang Negroes,’ analysts note that the election of Mr. Obama removes a stain. But they speak of it without reference to their own treatment of ethnic minorities. |title=For Many Abroad, an Ideal Renewed |first=Ethan |last=Bronner |date=5 November 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160724174836www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05global.html |archive-date=24 July 2016 |page=A1}}{{citation| title=The Princeton Reader: Contemporary Essays by Writers and Journalists at Princeton University |year=2010 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-14308-8 |page=261 |editor1-first=John |editor1-last=McPhee |editor2-first=Carol |editor2-last=Rigolot}}In a 2009 article, journalist George Feifer recounted that when he traveled to Moscow to cover the American National Exhibition in 1959, he faced those who were using the phrase against him. Feifer believed that: “Skilled propagandists stationed among the listeners regularly interrupted to repeat questions intended to discredit me. Why did America tolerate shameful poverty and lynch Negroes?“{{citation|last=Feifer|first=George|title=While Khrushchev And Nixon Debated, A Dialogue Was Born|date=23 July 2009|url=http://www.rferl.org/a/While_Khrushchev_And_Nixon_Debated_A_Dialogue_Was_Born_/1783945.html|work=Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205074836www.rferl.org/a/While_Khrushchev_And_Nixon_Debated_A_Dialogue_Was_Born_/1783945.html|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=5 December 2020|url-status=live}} In 2011, author Michael Dobson wrote that the phrase was a form of the pot calling the kettle black, and a “famous example” of the tu quoque fallacy derived from a “famous 1960s era Russian joke.“During the Ferguson unrest in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, after a white policeman who shot and killed an unarmed black adolescent was not indicted, state-controlled press coverage in Russia was highly critical of racism in the United States. Writing for The Moscow Times, journalist Allison Quinn posited that coverage of the protests in Ferguson served as an optimal method to distract media from the Ukrainian crisis. Quinn said, “American racism provided a go-to argument of American hypocrisy for years under the Soviet Union, with phrases like ‘Well, you lynch negroes’ hurled back at the U.S. in response to any allegations of human rights violations in the Soviet Union.” She compared the Ferguson unrest coverage by Russia state-controlled media to prior use of this phrase as a form of Soviet propaganda.{{citation |url=http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/soviet-propaganda-back-in-play-with-ferguson-coverage/511975.html |title=Soviet Propaganda Back in Play With Ferguson Coverage |last1=Quinn |first1=Allison |access-date=17 December 2016 |date=27 November 2014 |work=The Moscow Times |archive-date=30 January 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160130115901www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/soviet-propaganda-back-in-play-with-ferguson-coverage/511975.html |url-status=live }} Writing in March 2014 for the American liberal magazine The New Republic during the Ukrainian crisis, Julia Ioffe made a similar comparison as Quinn regarding Soviet versus the 2014 use of the technique. 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.By 2015, the phrase had entered the common lexicon in Russia as a tool to criticize any form of US policy. Russians used the term between themselves so often it became a form of satire, as a ubiquitous rejoinder to all crises dealt with and low quality of life, including purchasing groceries or dealing with road congestion.{{citation|last=Maynes|first=Charles|title=Police Shootings: As US Grieves, Russian Media Gloats|date=12 July 2016|url=http://www.voanews.com/a/russia-us-shootings/3415248.html|work=VOA News|access-date=17 December 2016}}{{citation|last=Tsvetkov|first=Ivan|title=Russian whataboutism vs. U.S. moralism: Is attack the best form of defense?|date=4 September 2014|url=https://rbth.com/opinion/2014/09/04/russian_whataboutism_vs_us_moralism_is_attack_the_best_form_of_defens_39387.html|work=Russia Beyond the Headlines|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180323080724www.rbth.com/opinion/2014/09/04/russian_whataboutism_vs_us_moralism_is_attack_the_best_form_of_defens_39387.html|location=Russia|quote=Even in the USSR, people poked fun at the efforts of propagandists, joking that in response to a question from Washington about poor living conditions in Russia, Moscow’s reply would be: ‘But you lynch blacks.’|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=23 March 2018|url-status=live}}{{citation|last=Adams|first=Bruce|title=Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes and Jokes|page=71|year=2007|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-44407-1}}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”.{{citation |first=Kevin D. |last=Williamson |author-link=Kevin D. Williamson |url=http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398133/brute-force-left-kevin-d-williamson |work=National Review |access-date=17 December 2016 |title=The Brute-Force Left |date=8 February 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161118073429www.nationalreview.com/article/398133/brute-force-left-kevin-d-williamson |archive-date=18 November 2016}} Reporter David Volodzko wrote for the international news magazine The Diplomat in 2015 about “the famous tu quoque argument”. The piece said that the term was used as a way to criticize capitalism as practiced in the Western world.{{citation |work=The Diplomat |access-date=17 December 2016 |url=https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-history-behind-chinas-response-to-the-baltimore-riots/ |title=The History Behind China’s Response to the Baltimore Riots |first=David |last=Volodzko |date=May 12, 2015 |archive-url=web.archive.org/web/20160428092343/https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-history-behind-chinas-response-to-the-baltimore-riots |archive-date=28 April 2016 |quote=Soon Americans[,] who criticized the Soviet Union for its human rights violations[,] were answered with the famous tu quoque argument: ‘A u vas negrov linchuyut’ (and you are lynching Negroes).}} Writing for the British liberal political website Open Democracy in 2015, journalist Maxim Edwards observed: “The phrase ‘and you are lynching Negroes’ has entered Russian speech as a prime example of whataboutism, a hypothetical response to any American criticism of Soviet policies.“{{citation |url=www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/maxim-edwards/book-review-hamid-ismailov%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98-underground%E2%80%99 |first=Maxim |last=Edwards |work=Open Democracy |date=13 May 2015 |title=Book review: Hamid Ismailov ‘The Underground’ |archive-url=web.archive.org/web/20161013080607/https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/maxim-edwards/book-review-hamid-ismailov%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98-underground%E2%80%99 |archive-date=13 October 2016}}Michael Bohm, a US reporter who is working out of Moscow, became the target of the phrase after he appeared on Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, which aired on the major state-run television channel Russia-1.{{citation|title=Russia’s TV talk shows smooth Putin’s way from crisis to crisis|date=12 December 2015|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-television-talk-shows-smooth-putins-way-from-crisis-to-crisis/2015/12/12/a151fa5a-6c4b-11e5-91eb-27ad15c2b723_story.html|newspaper=The Washington Post|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161209053831www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-television-talk-shows-smooth-putins-way-from-crisis-to-crisis/2015/12/12/a151fa5a-6c4b-11e5-91eb-27ad15c2b723_story.html|archive-date=9 December 2016|url-status=live }} Commentator Igor Korotchenko wrote: “people like Bohm dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they lynched Negroes.” In a 2015 contribution to the Russian journal International Affairs, Russian Federation Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and editor-in-chief Armen Oganesyan lamented the likelihood a Russian rejoinder to an international treaty’s publication by the US State Department would be viewed as a form of the “you lynch Negroes” response. Ryabkov and Oganesyan wrote that this reaction harmed the collaborative process as it was important for nation-states to disagree and enable discourse.{{citation|last1=Ryabkov|first1=Sergei|title=We Are Relevant, Influential and Respected|url=http://eastviewpress.com/Files/IA_FROM%20THE%20CURRENT%20ISSUE_No.%204%202015.pdf|journal=International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations|issue=2|pages=57–72|year=2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923163152www.eastviewpress.com/Files/IA_FROM%20THE%20CURRENT%20ISSUE_No.%204%202015.pdf|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=23 September 2015|last2=Oganesyan|first2=Armen|author-link1=Sergei Ryabkov|author-link2=Armen Oganesyan}}Journalist Catherine Putz commented on the phrase in a July 2016 article for the international news magazine The Diplomat, and compared it to use of whataboutism by businessman and politician Donald Trump: “Criticisms of human rights in the Soviet Union were often met with what became a common catchphrase: ‘And you are lynching Negroes’.“{{citation|last=Putz|first=Catherine|title=Donald Trump’s Whataboutism|date=22 July 2016|url=https://thediplomat.com/2016/07/donald-trumps-whataboutism/|work=The Diplomat|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160722115822thediplomat.com/2016/07/donald-trumps-whataboutism/|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=22 July 2016}} Writing for ChinaFile after Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election, James Palmer feared an increase in racism “would give a brutal new credibility to the old Soviet whataboutism whenever they were challenged on the gulag: ‘But in America, you lynch Negroes’.“{{citation|last=Palmer|first=James|title=China Just Won the U.S. Election|date=9 November 2016|url=http://www.chinafile.com/viewpoint/china-just-won-us-election|work=ChinaFile|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110151755www.chinafile.com/viewpoint/china-just-won-us-election|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=10 November 2016}} Writing in July 2016 for the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev made a similar comparison: “Trump told [T]he New York Times this week that America is in such a mess in terms of civil liberties that it cannot lecture foreign countries anymore, which is an echo of old Soviet propaganda that responded to American reprimands with the retort ‘And you are lynching Negroes’.” Shalev followed up on this analysis in a September 2016 article, writing: “Trump conducts pro-Russian propaganda along the same lines as the old retort ‘And You Hang Blacks’ with which the Soviets tried to deflect U.S. criticism of their human rights abuses. He isn’t troubled by Putin’s political opponents being murdered, because ‘people get killed here too’.“{{citation|last=Shalev|first=Chemi|title=Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Trump|date=30 September 2016|url=https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2016-09-30/ty-article/tinker-tailor-soldier-trump/0000017f-e095-d804-ad7f-f1ff9ad70000 |url-status=live |work=Haaretz|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161113144825www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.745198|access-date=17 December 2016|archive-date=13 November 2016}}In 2017, in response to the UK’s criticism of the annexation of Crimea, the Russian ambassador to the UN suggested that the UK should first return the Falklands and Gibraltar.NEWS, Tom, Parfitt, Give back Gibraltar before criticising us, says Russia, The Times, 4 February 2017, en,www.thetimes.co.uk/article/give-back-gibraltar-before-criticising-us-says-russia-8scvm32n9, 2021-09-12, 0140-0460, Following the 2024 Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin gave a speech after the close of voting on March 17. He acknowledged the February 2024 death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who had been held in a Russian penal colony, but did not comment as to the cause of death or who was ultimately responsible. “As for Mr. Navalny{{snd}}yes, he passed away. It is always a sad event. And there were other cases when people in prisons passed away. Didn’t this happen in the United States? It did, and not once.“NEWS, Edwards, Christian, Russian presidential election 2024: Putin extends one-man rule after stage-managed election devoid of credible opposition,www.cnn.com/2024/03/17/europe/putin-wins-russia-presidential-election-intl/index.html, 20 March 2024, CNN, 17 March 2024,

Use in Eastern Europe

Alternate versions of the phrase have been used in Eastern European satellite countries then-controlled by the Soviet Union, such, that it was ported for usage in Poland.{{citation|title=Annus Albaruthenicus {{=}} Hod Belaruski|journal=Annus Albaruthenicus |page=138|year=2005|location=Krynki, Poland|publisher=Villa Sokrates|issn=1640-3320|oclc=52382844|quote=And they beat up Blacks at your country!}}{{citation|title=The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs|journal=The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs|volume=16|page=90|year=2007|publisher=PISM|issn=1230-4999|oclc=679958426}}WEB, Śmigielski, Zbysław, 2007-03-06, Gdzie Murzynów biją albo racjonalizm na cenzurowanym,www.racjonalista.pl/kk.php/s,5397, live,www.racjonalista.pl/kk.php/s,5397," title="web.archive.org/web/20190312041401www.racjonalista.pl/kk.php/s,5397,">web.archive.org/web/20190312041401www.racjonalista.pl/kk.php/s,5397, 2019-03-12, 2016-12-01, pl, And at your place, they beat up Negroes!, The phrase also saw usage in other languages, including Czech,WEB, Petráček, Zbyněk, 2008-03-14, Nepoučitelný Topolánek,www.lidovky.cz/nepoucitelny-topolanek-0sy-/ln_nazory.asp?c=A080314_074502_ln_nazory_nev, live,web.archive.org/web/20201205074841/https://www.lidovky.cz/nazory/nepoucitelny-topolanek.A080314_074502_ln_nazory_nev, 2020-12-05, 2016-12-01, Lidové noviny, cs, And, in turn, you beat up blacks!, Hungarian,WEB, A pragmatikus szocializmus évtizedei,www.elib.hu/02100/02185/html/45.html, live,www.elib.hu/02100/02185/html/45.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20161027052211www.elib.hu/02100/02185/html/45.html,">web.archive.org/web/20161027052211www.elib.hu/02100/02185/html/45.html, 2016-10-27, 2016-12-01, Hungarian Electronic Library, hu, And in America, they beat up Negroes, and Romanian.WEB, Cazimir, Ștefan, 2002, Acordul de la Peleș,www.romlit.ro/acordul_de_la_pele, dead,www.romlit.ro/acordul_de_la_pele," title="web.archive.org/web/20161108053911www.romlit.ro/acordul_de_la_pele,">web.archive.org/web/20161108053911www.romlit.ro/acordul_de_la_pele, 2016-11-08, 2016-12-01, România Literară, ro, Yes, but you are lynching Negroes!, Similar phrases in the languages of Eastern Europe include:

• (“And, in turn, you beat up blacks!“)
• (“And in America, they beat up Negroes“)
• (“And at your place, they beat up Negroes!“)
• (“Yes, but you are lynching Negroes!“)
• (“Yes, but you are beating up Negroes!“)

Usage by other countries

In addition to Soviet Union and its satellites, and later, Russia, similar deflecting arguments related to racism in the United States have been used by a number of politicians, diplomats and state-controlled media from countries whose human rights abuses have been criticized by the United States government, NGOs or citizens. Countries which have been said to use the “Are you lynching Negroes” rhetoric in the early 21st century include China, Iran, Syria and North Korea.WEB, Meet the New Cold War, Same As the Old Cold War,gizmodo.com/meet-the-new-cold-war-same-as-the-old-cold-war-1660328270, 2021-09-12, Gizmodo, 13 January 2015, en-us, WEB, 2015-01-13, The New Cold War, And Australia’s Role In It,www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/01/the-new-cold-war-and-australias-role-in-it/, 2021-09-12, Gizmodo Australia, en-AU, WEB, 2020-08-25, Iran plays the race card {{!, Opinion |first=A.J. |last=Caschetta |url=https://www.newsweek.com/iran-plays-race-card-opinion-1526972|access-date=2021-09-12|website=Newsweek|language=en}}WEB, 2019-11-23, Trump Betrays Hong Kong Protesters, Foreign Policy,foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/22/hong-kong-protests-xinjiang-donald-trump-xi-jinping-china/, 2021-09-12,web.archive.org/web/20191123000608/https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/22/hong-kong-protests-xinjiang-donald-trump-xi-jinping-china/, 2019-11-23, live, WEB, 2020-06-06, Don’t Be Fooled by China’s Support of the Black Lives Matter Movement,foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/05/us-injustice-protests-china-condemnation-cynical/, 2021-09-12,web.archive.org/web/20200606124552/https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/05/us-injustice-protests-china-condemnation-cynical/ , live, Foreign Policy, Ho-fung, Hung, 2020-06-06, WEB, Kim, Jo, With Support for ‘Black Lives Matter’ China Crosses a Thin Line,thediplomat.com/2020/06/with-support-for-black-lives-matter-china-crosses-a-thin-line/, 30 June 2020, 2021-09-12, thediplomat.com, en-US,

Analysis

{{further information|Whataboutism#Defense}}The 1993 book Exit from Communism, edited by Stephen Richards Graubard, argued that this saying encapsulated an overall divorce from reality: “Perhaps there are and perhaps there are not prison camps in Siberia, perhaps in the United States they do or perhaps they do not lynch blacks ... Ultimately it does not matter whether we are for real or just pretending: it is all just part of the story.“In her 2016 work Security Threats and Public Perception, Elizaveta Gaufman characterized the phrase as a form of reversing someone’s line of reasoning against them. Gaufman wrote that by using this phrase in an argument one was tacitly refusing to answer queries posted to them and instead responding with condemnations.

Agency of African Americans

It has been argued that African Americans have had a more nuanced position in this issue between the two states, highlighting their agency despite being used for propaganda gains of others. While repeatedly confronting the exploitation of African Americans by and for the gains of Soviet propaganda, African Americans have nevertheless been expanding on such use for the sake of the raised issue of racism and its institutionalization; this effect of the instrumentalisation is being often lost when discussing the issue, and has been criticized.WEB, Emily Couch, 2020-02-18, Why We Should Stop Portraying African Americans as Victims in the Soviet Propaganda Game,www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/why-we-should-stop-portraying-african-americans-victims-soviet-propaganda-game, live,web.archive.org/web/20200720000400/https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/why-we-should-stop-portraying-african-americans-victims-soviet-propaganda-game, 2020-07-20, 2020-07-20, The Wilson Center, The Wilson Center & Kennan Institute, African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a staunch anti-communist, and she wrote a 1951 essay titled “Why The Negro Won’t Buy Communism” which criticized communist propaganda targeting African-Americans.WEB, Allison, Andrew D., Zora Neale Hurston: a genius of the south and anti-imperialist voice,studentsforliberty.org/blog/zora-neale-hurston-genius-of-the-south-anti-imperialist-voice/, Students For Liberty, 29 March 2021,

See also

{{div col|colwidth=22em}}

• Ad hominem
• Antanagoge
• Black Lives Matter
• Character assassination
• Clean hands
• Discrediting tactic
• Double standard
• Fallacy of relative privation
• False equivalence
• Lynching in the United States
• Physician, heal thyself
• Poisoning the well
• Precedent
• Psychological projection
• Race card
• Recrimination
• Red herring
• Russian political jokes
• The Mote and the Beam
• The pot calling the kettle black
• Two wrongs make a right
• Victor’s justice
• Whataboutism
• “Where have you been for eight years?”

{{div col end}}

References

{{reflist|30em}}

Further reading

• {{citation|year=1901|journal=The Independent|oclc=4927591|editor1-first=Leonard|editor1-last=Bacon|editor-link1=Leonard Bacon|editor-link2=Joseph Parrish Thompson|editor2-first=Joseph Parrish |editor2-last=Thompson|editor-link3=Richard Salter Storrs|editor3-first=Richard Salter|editor3-last= Storrs|volume=53|page=2059|title=Tolstoy and Swinburne|quote=The white men, he says, who lynch negroes are murderers, and nobody bothers them.}}
• {{citation|magazine=Life|editor-link1=John Ames Mitchell|editor1-first=John Ames|editor1-last= Mitchell|year=1902|volume=40|page=412|issn=0024-3019|oclc=1643958|title=Russian Quakers|quote=let loose from Russia at the desire of Count Tolstoi and others, ... We are gulled to an incredible degree by venders of bogus cures; we lynch negroes.}}
• {{citation|access-date=17 December 2016|work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/138276877/|title=I Would Die Rather Than Work for Rockefeller - Tolstoi’s One Ambition to Die a Martyr’s Death|date=9 August 1903|page=13|first=James|last=Creelman|quote=In the United States you have lynchings every year, every month, every week, almost every day. You hang negroes, shoot them, roast them, it is an ordinary thing in your country. Yet you feel that you can address a petition to the Emperor of Russia.|archive-date=5 December 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205074839www.newspapers.com/newspage/138276877/|url-status=live}}
• {{citation|quote=You have virtually no hindrances to individual development, and you lynch negroes, form trusts, and adopt imperialism.|year=1905|title=The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine|page=797|volume=69|publisher=The Century Company|location=New York}}
• {{citation|first=Sherwood|last=Eddy|title=Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?|pages=73, 151|publisher=Farrar & Rinehar|year=1934|location=New York|oclc=1617454}}
• {{citation|access-date=17 December 2016|url=http://old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1999/7/article/premier-laughs-alone-in-us/274307.html|work=The Moscow Times|title=Premier Laughs Alone in U.S.|date=30 July 1999|archive-date=18 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161218000519old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1999/7/article/premier-laughs-alone-in-us/274307.html|url-status=live}}
• {{citation|title=India Afire|year=1951|first1=Harris|last1=Wofford|first2=Clare Lindgren|last2=Wofford|author-link1=Harris Wofford|publisher=John Day|page=98|oclc=1110227|location=New York}}
• {{citation|page=85|chapter=Tu Quoque|title=Authoritarian Backlash: Russian Resistance to Democratization in the Former Soviet Union |series=Post-Soviet Politics|first=Thomas|last=Ambrosio|year=2009|isbn=978-0-7546-7350-7|publisher=Routledge}}
• {{citation|doi=10.1080/14650045.2016.1214910|journal=Geopolitics|volume=22|issue=3|title=Defence and Promotion of Desired State Identity in Russia’s Strategic Narrative|first=Joanna|last=Szostek|year=2016|pages=1–23|s2cid=151569771|url=http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/167877/1/167877.pdf|access-date=2019-01-28|archive-date=2020-12-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201205074836eprints.gla.ac.uk/167877/1/167877.pdf|url-status=live}}

External links

{{Fallacies}}{{Soviet Union topics}}