It's not a question of the non-truth of the first option, but a question about the psychological reality of setting up folk-devils to divert attention from systemic crimes of far greater magnitude.
Focus on Putin, Trump, Biden, ...whoever, sucks oxygen from any discussion of the systemic structures causing whole orders of magnitude more death and misery.
Exactly the point I was making. You engage in whataboutism when it suits you. It's nothing to do with any ideological commitment to authenticity in discourse. It's just boring tribalism.
So... we should add poverty deaths in Ukraine and Russia to Putin's illegal invasion of another country? Like what the fuck are you actually talking about with your apples/oranges comparison!? Whataboutism is so pathetic...
But in a vacuum it wouldn't be required. It's about making choices regarding those issues we allow to take media attention, and more importantly, play the role of the 'enemy', literally the 'bringer of death' in this meme. Not poverty, not corporate greed, not the pathological indifference to suffering of the Big Mac munching consumer...
No. One bloke who's probably not even calling all the shots and will be dead and gone in a few decades whilst the whole bloody monstrosity carries on because everyone's attention is just on the next Disneyfied super villain.