Tu quoque

I see the "you, too" fallacy come up a lot in political conversations. Whenever somebody on the left does something bad, the right jumps all over it. But then the left points out that people on the right have done the same thing. And vice versa. There's also a modified version of the You Too Fallacy. It's when you say something like, "Yeah, but you did it more," or, "Your side was worse."

You Too is a fallacy of distraction. It's a form of the red herring fallacy. The fact that I did something bad obviously doesn't alleviate somebody else's guilt for doing something bad. So if I'm accusing somebody else of doing something bad, it's irrelevant whether I'm guilty of the same thing as far as their guilt is concerned.

The only use of saying, "You, too," is to try to point out an inconsistency in the other person. If I'm criticizing somebody for things I'm guilty of myself, then I'm just being a hypocrite. I don't see anything wrong with calling people out on their hypocricy.

In the case of political conversations, I'm not sure there's necessarily hypocricy, though. I'm perfectly happy to critize people on all sides of the political spectrum. After all, whether we are criticizing the left or the right, it's not me we are critizing. The fact that Trump or Biden did something bad says nothing at all about me. So if I critize members of one side, I'm not being hypocritical just because members of my side are guilty of the same things.

On the other hand, I do see a lot of people in political conversations openly critizing members of the other side but then defending members of their own side who do the same things. I think that is inconsistent. It shows bias, a lack of objectivity, a lack of fairness, etc. I'm not sure whether I see that more on the left or the right, but I do see it in both sometimes.