It’s just a logical extension of “words as magic spells”. We’ve all come to realize that certain demographics view language as purely transactional - words as nothing more than a series of passwords that generate desirable outcomes for the speaker (as opposed to a cooperative exercise in mutual pursuit of an objective truth).

This dynamic gives rise to cargo cult behaviors among low IQ demos; black “intellectuals” in particular are very likely to espouse argumentative structures which they do not even remotely understand. These idiots heard someone else say “whataboutism”, so they filed that word under “winning arguments” and proceeded to deploy it with great confidence in totally incorrect contexts.

The other side of that demonic bell curve are the high IQ people who are legitimately good at lying, pilpul, and every other form of verbal manipulation. This is what we are actually talking about when we say “verbal IQ”. It’s not the ability to communicate clearly or succinctly. It’s about spinning twenty dollar words - many of them manufactured without majority consensus - in order to define reality in blatantly self-interested terms. That is what they are so skilled at doing.