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View submission: Elon Musk misleadingly suggests other celebrities made controversial 'Nazi' gesture
Musk's salute aside, since his (his supporters') argument does not hold any water anyway, I do think it is a fair way to respond in some cases. An argument based on "others did it too" isn't necessarily wrong by default in the way you imply.
When the main immediate problem you address is that people are critizing or punishing you, while they did not do so or don't do so for others, calling out hypcocricy is fair, is it not?
So to take a school example and you have a potentially racist teacher. You're the only black kid in class and you're the only one being punished by that teacher for coming late to class, you are right that in the first instance you as an individual were late and the punishment would be justified. But if the teacher set examples before where that wasn't ever punished he invited more people to ignore the rules and has some respinsibility to bear. Secondly, if there's a pattern of applying double standards, it's fair to call that out.
It doesn't even have to be about something black and white like a racist teacher. Teachers are human, and they will end up liking some students more than others a little. And back in my days I've definitely seen this affect how teachers judge deeds by students.
If a student finds themselves in such a situation and observes "injustice" I think it shouldn't be shrugged off and it'll in my opInion just make it harder to get through.
It at least requires an honest explanation of why the others weren't subjected to punishment while one student happens to be.
In Musk or Trump's case, it's so much easier in my opinion to attack it up front and expose the excuses as a made up construct. If you just ignore it and say, "this is about you", someone might conclude you are saying "we indeed don't judge Taylor Swift for makIng a Nazi salute, and that's not the topic today". When in reality it's "wtf, sure we would have been upset about that too, don't lie about that picture in the first place and certainly don't pretend we'd have been okay with it".
There's nothing here!