The USSR especially knew this. If everyone who speaks out gets a matching pair of lead brain piercings, you know to be on watch for dudes with silenced handguns. If everyone who speaks out gets: shot, hanged, thrown out a window, has their vehicle blown up, poisoned, burnt alive, etc, it suddenly becomes much harder to be on guard, and thus it’s harder to even organize and grow a dissident movement because everyone’s terrified that everyone else is there purely to assassinate everyone else.
The USSR especially knew this. If everyone who speaks out gets a matching pair of lead brain piercings, you know to be on watch for dudes with silenced handguns. If everyone who speaks out gets: shot, hanged, thrown out a window, has their vehicle blown up, poisoned, burnt alive, etc, it suddenly becomes much harder to be on guard, and thus it’s harder to even organize and grow a dissident movement because everyone’s terrified that everyone else is there purely to assassinate everyone else.