The Situation: Extortion as Governance (www.lawfaremedia.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Wren@lemmy.today to c/wildfeed@sh.itjust.works

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You have something you don’t want to become public—like, say, the details of your campaign’s relationship with Russian operatives or your own personal history of engaging with the leadership of the Russian Federation. And there are these witnesses who know things inconvenient to that objective and who are in trouble with the law. So you send them messages to stay loyal, reassuring them that they’ll be taken care of. You pardon the ones who do so. You threaten the ones who don’t.

And it works. There’s a damaging report, but that’s all.

And so the gangster tactics migrate to the conduct of governance itself. And you find that these tactics work in other situations too—like international diplomacy, for example. A new president in an emerging democracy shows up wanting military aid to deal with an ongoing foreign war by an invading power. You want him to announce he’s investigating your political opponent. So you tell him the two are linked. He knows he’s being shaken down, but what’s he going to do about it?

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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026

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