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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2619 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 6, 2022

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A common trope is that spies gets tapes of some politician doing something immoral or illegal, which is then used for blackmail. Allegations of this is rife, e.g. Trump in Moscow, Epstein, etc. Do we have any clear example of this actually working? E.g. some politician pushes policy X. Years later it is revealed that this was because of blackmail from Y. An example of failed blackmail would also be interesting, e.g. some politician saying "Y has an embarrassing video of me which they are using for blackmail, but I won't give in!" followed by Y releasing the video.

(I guess most of the time the blackmail is more a way to generally pressure someone and keep them in line. I also know that most cases probably wouldn't become known to the public)

Madison Cawthorn?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Cawthorn#Circulation_of_nude_video

Someone spread an embarrassing video of him, but it's not clear if any blackmail was involved.

And that, in conjunction with some other things, got him him unseated from government.

Do you really think whomever had the video in their possession didn't attempt to extract something from him first?

I think Cawthorn was drummed out for airing DC dirty laundry. I think the video was a combination of punishment and a way to discredit any future statements from him rather than an extortion attempt.

Also embarrassing him pour encourager Les autres.

Dan Savage has talked for years about the idea that eventually everyone's sexting will result in mutually assured destruction and cultural detente: if everyone has dark sex secrets no one can reveal anyone else's for fear of having their own revealed. Dan being a pervert (in tht nicest sense of the word) he views this as a positive thing.

But let's look at it the other way; Wheels had accused Congressional republicans of engaging in coke fueled orgies in Washington immediately before this. Not two weeks later some goofy bro video comes out of probably Cawthorn engaged in something possibly homoerotic.

This was sexting MAD in action: Madison threatened to spill the secrets of the temple in the streets, he got got. It sent a message to every other Freedom Caucus idealist: if you even think about revealing what Congressional leadership gets up to and you know that girl? Yeah, that one, you thought no one knew? She's in our pocket, we have the texts and the pics and the tapes. Talk shit, get hit.

It seems entirely plausible that whomever had the video released it just to ruin Crawthorn without attempting to do any blackmail. Or that they did a "traditional" blackmail for money, not the kind of political favors blackmail I'm discussing here. And if they did a blackmail, why wouldn't Crawthorn tell the details, or go to the police?

Yeah, it seems like the only political favor anyone wanted from Cawthorne was that he would go away.

And if they did a blackmail, why wouldn't Crawthorn tell the details, or go to the police?

Because there is more, even worse and possibly criminally actionable material in the offing?

Is that not how blackmail tends to work? This feels like a gimme question.

Is it? Blackmail works when the difference "what I'll release if you don't cave" minus "what I'll release if you do cave" hurts the target more than the cost of caving, so you want to maximize that difference. Releasing kompromat but not all-the-kompromat makes the difference smaller. It would be a good response to "I know you have material on me but I don't think you'll release any of it", but who wouldn't think that? Even bluffing blackmailers just pretend to have material they don't really have, they don't pretend to be willing to publish material they really wouldn't.

Or because there was no blackmail. I know that most cases of political blackmail is in shades of grey and veiled from the public, that's why I'm looking for clear-cut cases.

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