Protection Racket
The blue text below is copied word for word directly from Wikipedia’s article entitled Protection Racket. The images were interspersed to illustrate my views.
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A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual…
…coerces a victim…
…to pay money, supposedly for protection services against violence or property damages.
Derka derka, Mohammed Jihad
Racketeers coerce reticent potential victims into buying “protection” by demonstrating what will happen if they don’t—they damage the victims’ property.
In most cases, the racketeers do not actually protect their client from anything but the racketeers themselves, and their “protection” is merely extortion. However, if their victim is seriously threatened by a third party, sometimes gangsters will protect their source of revenue.
Legitimate businesses are not the only victims of protection racketeers. Other criminals are also targeted, since they cannot ask police to stop the extortion.
Yousuf Raza Gilani, PM of Pakistan
However, for that same reason, criminals sometimes actively seek to buy this “protection”.
Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan
Paradoxically, in a parasitic relationship, the parasite both damages the host and prefers that the host remain healthy. Thus, when criminals are cheated or abused (e.g., a cocaine dealer is swindled by his supplier) they cannot turn to the police and instead rely on powerful gangsters to protect the gangsters’ income.
US Troops Guarding Poppy Fields
US military admits to Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade in Afghanistan
The person who periodically visits the victim to collect protection payments is called a “bag man.”
Disclaimer: The photographs herein are presented for purposes of observation, comparison, analysis, discussion, and education, as well as to advance awareness of civic, moral, religious, and social justice issues. No profit accrues therefrom. This constitutes “fair use” under 17 USC Sec. 107.
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