Sakharov actually owned it. He straight up was like "I don't care about them" He never claimed to be the champion of the Americans.

On the other hand, the Left seems to claim to be the main representative of women and gay rights for example, everywhere. You can't build your entire brand on "solidarity with the oppressed" and then ghost the moment you don't have the same specific advantage you want for your agenda.

Sakharov wasn't a hypocrite. That's the difference.

Expressing solidarity with the victims of genocide whom your government helped kill isnt a branding exercise.

Not unless you're a cynical, murderous psychopath.

It's an expression of basic human decency.

That's using a jurisdictional defense to protect a universal claim.

If the Left's platform was explicitly "We are an anti-imperialist check on Western power" then your argument would hold. But the actual platform is usually "Women's Rights and Gay Rights are Universal Human Rights"

You cannot claim such universal moral authority when it's convenient ("Justice everywhere!") and then retreat to the safety of a particularist stance ("I only care about what my tax dollars fund!") when it's difficult.

If your "basic human decency" only activates when the aggressor is your own government, then you aren't actually standing in solidarity with the oppressed. You are implicitly arguing that a victim's value depends entirely on the nationality of their killer.

> retreat [..] when it's difficult

Focusing on more tractable causes makes sense (fwiw I think there are more tractable causes than both of those geopolitical conflicts: millions and millions die annually from preventable global health ailments)

The Soviet Union was famous for engaging in whataboutism; they covered-up the true toll of Stalin’s purges (along with the human cost of their policies), and constantly oppressed Eastern Europe for almost 50 years. They are/were not a good example of anything.

Yes, whether it's the soviets using it to attack soviet dissidents or zionists using it to attack left wing critics, whataboutism is bad.

I think the difference here would be that it doesn't appear to be an attempt to downplay Palestine. Whataboutism involves both a claim of inconsistency and associated criticism but not all claims of inconsistency and associated criticism constitute whataboutism.