Part 3. Free Speech
Chapter 6. The Blackmailer
At first glance, it is not hard to answer the question, is blackmail really illegitimate?
The only problem it would seem to pose is, why is it being asked at all?
Do not blackmailers, well, blackmail people? And what could be worse?
First, blackmailers prey on people's dark hidden secrets.
They threaten to expose and publicize them.
They bleed their victims and often drive them to suicide.
We will find, however, that the case against the blackmailer cannot stand serious analysis,
that it is based upon a tissue of unexamined shibboleths and deep philosophical misunderstandings.
What exactly is blackmail?
Blackmail is the offer of trade.
It is the offer to trade something, usually silence, for some other good, usually money.
If the offer of the trade is accepted, the blackmailer then maintains his silence, and
the blackmailee pays the agreed-upon price.
If the blackmail offer is rejected, the blackmailer may exercise his rights of free speech and
publicize the secret.
There is nothing amiss here.
All that is happening is that an offer to maintain silence is being made.
If the offer is rejected, the blackmailer does no more than exercise his right of free
speech.
The sole difference between a gossip and a blackmailer is that the blackmailer will refrain
from speaking for a price.
In a sense, the gossip is much worse than the blackmailer, for the blackmailer has given
Can the blackmailee a chance to silence him?
The gossip exposes the secret without warning.
Is not the person with a secret better off at the hands of a blackmailer than a gossip?
With the gossip, all is lost.
With the blackmailer, one can only gain, or at least be no worse off.
If the price requested by the blackmailer is lower than the secret is worth, the secret
Holder will pay the blackmailer, this being the lesser of the two evils.
He thus gains the difference to him between the value of the secret and the price of the
blackmail.
When the blackmailer demands more than the secret is worth, his demand will not be met,
and the information will become public.
However, in this case, the person is no worse off with the blackmailer than he would have
been with the inveterate gossip.
It is indeed difficult, then, to account for the vilification suffered by the blackmailer,
at least compared to the gossip, who is usually dismissed with slight contempt and smugness.
Blackmail need not entail the offer of silence in return for money.
This is only the best-known form.
But blackmail may be defined without reference to either.
And in general terms, blackmail is the threat to do something, anything which is not in
itself illegal, unless certain demands are met.
Many actions in the public arena qualify as acts of blackmail, but instead of being vilified,
they have often attained a status of respectability.
For example, the recent lettuce boycott is a form of blackmail.
Through the lettuce boycott, or any boycott, threats are made to retailers and wholesalers
of fruits and vegetables.
If they handle non-union lettuce, the boycotters assert, people will be asked not to patronize
their establishments.
This conforms perfectly to the definition—a threat that something not in itself illegal
will take place unless certain demands are met.
But what about the threats involved in blackmail? This, perhaps more than anything else, is
the aspect of blackmail that is most misunderstood and feared. At first glance, one is inclined
to agree that threats are immoral. The usual dictum against aggression, for example, warns
not only against aggression per se, but also against the threat of aggression. If a highwayman
When it costs a traveler, it is usually the threat of aggression alone that will compel obedience.
Consider the nature of threats.
When what is threatened is aggressive violence, the threat is condemnable.
No individual has the right to initiate aggressive violence against another.
In blackmail, however, what is being threatened is something that the blackmailer does have
a right to do.
Whether it be exercising the right of free speech, or refusing to patronize certain stores,
or persuading others to do likewise.
What is being threatened is not in itself illegitimate.
It is, therefore, not possible to call the threat an illegitimate threat.
Blackmail can only be illegitimate when there is a special, foresworn relationship between
the blackmailer and the blackmailee.
A secret keeper may take a lawyer or a private investigator into his confidence on the condition
that the confidence be maintained in secrecy.
If the lawyer or private investigator attempts to blackmail the secret keeper, that would
be in violation of the contract and therefore illegitimate.
However, if a stranger holds the secret without contractual obligations, then it is legitimate
to offer to sell his silence.
In addition to being a legitimate activity, blackmail has some good effects, litanies
to the contrary notwithstanding.
Apart from some innocent victims who are caught in the net, whom does the blackmailer usually
prey upon?
In the main, there are two groups.
One group is composed of criminals, murderers, thieves, swindlers, embezzlers, cheaters,
The other group consists of people who engage in activities not illegitimate in themselves, but which are contrary to the mores and habits of the majority.
Homosexuals, sadomasochists, sexual perverts, communists, adulterers, etc.
The institution of blackmail has beneficial but different effects upon each of these groups.
In the case of criminals, blackmail and the threat of blackmail serves as a deterrent.
They add to the risks involved in criminal activity.
How many of the anonymous tips received by the police, the value of which cannot be overestimated,
can be traced directly or indirectly to blackmail?
How many criminals are led to pursue crime on their own,
by their own, eschewing the aid of fellow criminals in jobs that call for cooperation out of the fear of possible blackmail.
Finally, there are those individuals who are on the verge of committing crimes, or at the margin of criminality, as the economist would say,
where the least factor will propel them one way or another.
The additional fear of blackmail may be enough, in some cases, to dissuade them from crime.
If blackmail itself were legalized, it would undoubtedly be an even more effective deterrent.
Legalization would undoubtedly result in an increase in blackmail, with attendant depredations upon the criminal class.
It is sometimes said that what diminishes crime is not the penalty attached to the crime, but the certainty of being caught.
Although this controversy rages with great relevance in current debates on capital punishment,
it will suffice to point out that the institution of blackmail does both.
It increases the penalty associated with crime as it forces criminals to share part of their loot with the blackmailer.
It also raises the probability of being apprehended as blackmailers are added to police forces,
Police Forces, Private Citizen and Vigilante groups, and other anti-crime units.
Blackmailers, who are often members in good standing in the criminal world, are in an advantageous position to foil crimes.
Their inside status surpasses even that of the spy or infiltrator who is forced to play a role.
Legalizing blackmail would thus allow anti-crime units to take advantage of two basic crime-fighting
adages at the same time, divide and conquer, and lack of honor among thieves.
It is quite clear that one important effect of legalizing blackmail would be to diminish
crime, real crime, that is.
The legalization of blackmail would also have a beneficial effect upon actions which do
do not involve aggression, but are at variance with the mores of society as a whole.
On these actions, the legalization of blackmail would have a liberating effect.
Even with blackmail still illegal, we are witnessing some of its beneficial effects.
Homosexuality, for instance, is technically illegal in some instances, but not really
criminal since it involves no aggression.
For individual homosexuals, blackmail very often causes considerable harm and can hardly
be considered beneficial.
But for the group as a whole, that is, for each individual as a member of the group,
blackmail has helped by making the public more aware and accustomed to homosexuality.
Forcing individual members of a socially oppressed group into the open or out of the closet cannot,
of course, be considered a service.
The use of force is a violation of an individual's rights.
But still, it does engender an awareness on the part of members of a group of one another's
existence.
In forcing this perception, blackmail can legitimately take some small share of the
in liberating people, whose only crime is a deviation from the norm in a non-criminal way.
In reflecting on the old aphorism, the truth shall make you free.
The only weapon at the disposal of the blackmailer is the truth.
In using the truth to back up his threats, as on occasion he must, he sets the truth free,
truth free, very often without intent, to do whatever good or bad it is capable of doing.