it seems like the implication is that if Americans aren't constantly ripping our hair out and rending our clothes over the genocide of the American Indians, we have no right to decry modern genocides, or something?

Yeah, but the issue isn't that they aren't ripping their hair out and decrying the crimes of the American empire, it's that these crimes are being presented as something in the past and not something ongoing (which they are).

The implication that killing "the other" is less bad than killing "your own" is also a major dog whistle.

You also need to approach, specifically in this instance, mass death from famine not from a position of "this was an intentional genocide", but from the historical perspective of the pain and suffering caused by transition from agrarian feudal society to industrial society.

The famines in Russia and China are always treated with a different pair of gloves compared to the famines caused by American industrialization (mostly pushed onto the native population and the stealing of land was used to feed a growing industrial proletariat), British industrialization (the Irish potato famine and at least a half dozen Indian famines that pushed the grain shortages on to "the other" to protect their own industrial proletariat).

Another thing to pay attention to is always the response to these famines within the context of a given socio political order. Both Manifest Destiny and British colonialism ignored the effects of the famine because the people it primarily effected were enemies of the imperial cores. Whereas both Russia and China experienced famines that harmed their own industrial output and forced them to reconcile the massive issues within their political structures. To the point that famines which used to be common were all but eradicated after massive political pressure to fix the issues that caused them.

The green revolution has given us ground to stand on as productive output per labor hour in the agricultural sector has massively improved and allowed for a majority of labor to be in industrial and service sectors, but now that we're experiencing the effects of climate change we're gonna start seeing the conditions for mass famine re appear.

And I guarantee that the US empire and Western powers will do what they always do and force the hand of their neo-colonies to absorb the mass suffering caused by grain shortage to maintain the proletariat in the core.

This isn't something that's "in the past", it's still standard operating policy all across the Western world. To siphon land and grain from imperial subjects and cause destitution and starvation to maintain profitable industry for their domestic bourgeoisie.

For me the concern in discussions like this is that it seems like the implication is that if Americans aren't constantly ripping our hair out and rending our clothes over the genocide of the American Indians, we have no right to decry modern genocides, or something?

Americans don't need to rip out their hair and rend their clothes. Americans need to give land back to tribal governments and pay reparations to Black people. Americans can then pay reparations to other marginalized minorities and other countries that the US has destroyed (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on)

It was absolutely evil what the US government and the governments of the several States did to the American Indians. Just like it was evil what the US government and the governments of the several States did to black Americans. And it was evil when the US government decided to drop nuclear weapons on Japanese civilians twice after Germany was defeated, instead of for example near Japan but with no human fatalities. And on and on.

So where are the reparations then? "Oops I made a big boo-boo" doesn't fucking cut it. Vietnam still has victims dying from Agent Orange. Laos still has millions of UXO littering their country. But has the US foot the bill to clean up the mess they caused? Of course not.

But that doesn't make it not evil or less evil what, for example, Putin is trying to do to Ukraine right now.

The US has killed far more people than Putin. Hell, Dubya alone has killed far more people in eight years than Putin did in his entire life. Orders of magnitude more people.

Or the various military coups in Africa right now.

Most of those coups are anti-French coups with popular support because no one there wants to be ruled by the French. It isn't a threat to democracy if some neocolonial puppet who's only there due to rigged elections got kicked to the curb by anti-French military officers.

And an American ought to be able to criticize those things and call for peace without having to list every evil thing America has ever done first. And the evil things that America has done shouldn't prevent individual Americans from calling out evils that they see.

Talk is cheap. When is the US going to actually do something about it? Where's the forty acres and a mule Black people were promised for turning on their plantation slavemasters?

And an American ought to be able to criticize those things and call for peace without having to list every evil thing America has ever done first. And the evil things that America has done shouldn't prevent individual Americans from calling out evils that they see.

Broadly, I agree with this and I can see this point of view. "What does America's evil have to do with it? I thought we were talking about Russia?"

There are several things which widened my perspective on discussions like these, though.

1. Oftentimes, America's evils have a lot to do with it. With regards to the current Ukraine war, the US and NATO have been ramping up aggression against Russia for years prior to the current invasion. The 2014 Maidan was a far-right initiative closely watched and de facto backed by the US, like in Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and countless others before. The fighting that this kicked off in the Donbas region has killed more than 10 000 people since then. What I've seen too often is this sort of historical context be waved off as "whataboutism", as though the direct material reasons for the current situation were irrelevant.

2. The point is often (or at least, it should be) to get people to think more critically about their media. The double standard constantly being applied to other countries is meaningful and worth scrutiny. Our western sources have the inherent privilege of being considered trustworthy and not propaganda, and from those sources we hear about how any foreign or dissident media is propaganda and therefore untrustworthy. This is a dangerous sort of thinking to internalize, because all media is propaganda, including the western sources. The end result - which is what this so-called "whataboutism" is often trying to bring attention to - is predictable: the typical US media consumer will see other countries have their history exaggerated, distorted and outright fabricated while the atrocities of the US are downplayed, quietly mentioned if at all. What we are told about other countries by our supposedly unbiased and reliable media often comes with a massive conflict of interest attached. (Further reading: Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky, and Inventing Reality by Parenti)