Is asking about hypocritical behaviour off topic?

Question

While I don't want to get into the specifics of the question or prolong the drama, I do want to ask about @divibisan's initial comment on the question.

Honestly, it sounds like you just want to call Trudeau a hypocrite, which is off-topic here. And I’m pretty sure you know that, hence the effort to twist this into a question. divibisan

While I understanding writing your random attack in the form of a question in order to push a PoV is not something we accept, is trying to find out if hypocritical actions have been undertaken off-topic?

A search for the word hypocrite in questions that are open with +3 scores sends back a dozen results. Looking for the work hypocrite in answers pushes it to nearly a hundred responses, and that's just on a simple word search for "hypocrite" not even looking at any of the variations or ways of implying that, which comes up a lot when people ask questions trying to understand the behaviour of their elected leaders and changes over time.

Answer 1

There's a distinction to keep in mind when we approach these kinds of questions:

1. The observation that a person's (or group's) behavior — actions and stated positions — in one context is paradoxically different than their behavior in a comparable context
2. The implication that this paradoxical difference in behavior is dispositional: solely a function of the person's mental state or character

Generally speaking, questions about hypocrisy inevitably fall into °2, because the notion of hypocrisy implies that there is no obvious contextual reason that someone chose A here and B there. 'Here' and 'there' are presumed to be sufficiently equivalent to preclude context as a causal factor.

The way @uhoh asked his question:

Did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously support the use of road blockades as a form of peaceful protest in India that are similar to the actions he has now invoked the Emergencies Act to end at home in Canada?

Seems to make that equivalence presumption, pushing the reader towards an assumption of hypocrisy. I mean, the literal answer to the question as asked is a one-syllable 'Yes' because that's factually Trudeau's behavior. But simply answering 'Yes' is entirely misleading, because it would necessarily endorse the undemonstrated and unjustified presumption of equivalence. The better way to ask the question is to keep it within the bounds of °1, e.g.:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously supported the use of road blockades as a form of peaceful protest in India; he has now invoked the Emergencies Act to end road blockade protests in Canada. What factors caused this difference in approach?

Stated this way, the question is far less likely to get pushback about bias or POV-pushing, and it gives answerers something to dig into and discuss. Some answers may conclude that Trudeau is in fact guilty of hypocrisy, others might find contextual reasons; that is within the purview of an answer. but we should go the extra mile to keep the implication of particular conclusions out of the questions we are asking.

Answer 2

Both the current answers tend towards issues with the source question rather than looking at general site policy and guidance.

I propose that as a general policy, questions regarding hypocritical behaviour are acceptable on the site, but require a notable claim rather than being the author's observation.

If behaviour has been challenged as hypocritical by political opponents or media reporting questions to clarify the behaviour, the nature of the hypocrisy and any provided mitigation are acceptable and on topic.

What the site is not is a home for speculative research, or what-about-isms where an author brings their own set of circumstances and framing and asks the site for judgement on the behaviour.

Answer 3

Here's what I'd propose as a general policy:

When asking a question about hypocritical behavior, questions should be focused specifically on the behavior not on the hypocrisy.

Whether someone is being hypocritical or not is a moral judgement, which runs afoul of both the "opinion-based" and "promote or discredit" close reasons. Any question that is focused on the hypocrisy is going to attract opinion-based answers and draw partisans to attack or defend the politician in question.

Instead, questions should be focused as much as possible on the objective similarities and differences in the behaviors and the situation in which the behavior took place. While this may still attract partisan-motivated answers, there is much more room for dispassionate and objective answers here.

So, for an example of a politician who acted 2 different ways in 2 different circumstances, a question should focus more on if/why the 2 situations are different, allowing the reader to judge whether those differences justify the different response, not on if the politician is or is not a hypocrite.

Answer 4

One of the roles of news media is to "hold politicians accountable" and the accountability of politicians is understood to be an essential element of several popular forms of government, especially of those where voting takes place and has teeth.

Questions that address the accountability of a prominent politician seem centrally on-topic here.

This is because accountability is presumably important if not necessary in several popular forms of government for it to proceed and function.

I guess the problem is that there are also ways to construct Stack Exchange questions that may appear to be asking about accountability as cover for pushing something else, and Politics SE is still in recovery from an elevated period of those. That means folks are on guard for that and some may even be in a state of hyper-vigilance.

In the case of the linked and now reopened question I quoted a BBC article that raised the question about Trudeau's consistency on the right to some kinds of protest, and perhaps over-carefully worded the question's title rather than assert anything myself, and the "You're just trying to..." comments ensued.

I'm not skilled enough in the art of politics to draft guidelines for how to tell the difference between a good Politics SE question in the hypocrisy/accountability regime, but I would certainly like to participate in the drafting of one!