Narco gangs have upped the propaganda stakes
In nobler times, there wasn’t just honour among thieves; besuited gangsters, freedom-fighting terrorists and even invading fascist armies would give the citizens of a town or city fair warning before they started maiming, bombing and wiping out the local population. Old-school villains and ageing counter-terrorism experts I know often speak of “putting the frighteners” on extortion victims or receiving “coded” telephone calls from the IRA: failure to comply meant “we’d have to break something” or worse.
