Ratfucking

Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their book All the President's Men.

Woodward and Bernstein's exposé All the President's Men reports that many staffers who had attended the University of Southern California such as Donald Segretti, Tim Elbourne, Ronald Louis Ziegler, H. R. Haldeman and Dwight Chapin had participated in the highly competitive student elections there. UPI reporter Karlyn Barker sent Woodward and Bernstein a memo "Notes On the USC Crowd" that outlined the connection. Fraternities, sororities and underground fraternal coordinating organizations such as Theta Nu Epsilon and their splintered rival "Trojans for Representative Government" engaged in creative tricks and underhanded tactics to win student elections. Officially, control over minor funding and decision-making on campus life was at stake but the positions also gave bragging rights and prestige. It was either promoted by or garnered the interest of major political figures on the USC board of trustees such as Dean Rusk and John A. McCone. It was here that the term ratfucking had its origin. It is unclear whether it was derived from the military term for stealing the better part of military rations and tossing the less appetizing portions away or if the military adopted the phrase from the political lexicon.

The term was made famous in Australia after the phrase was attributed to the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit when he allegedly used the term in reference to China. During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, candidate Ted Cruz said "Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him", a euphemised reference to the term.

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