Whataboutism
A rhetorical tactic that responds to a criticism by raising a different, often unrelated, alleged wrongdoing — typically committed by the criticizer or their allies — in order to deflect rather than answer. The technique was widely used in Soviet propaganda and named in the West during the Cold War, but it has since become a default move in partisan rhetoric. Whataboutism succeeds when it shifts the conversation from the original claim to a competing accusation, leaving the original claim un-rebutted but no longer in focus.