You do not have to execute people on the main square to convince them they are under a death threath. And if you can convince them to vote in dictatorship you can most certainly get them to shut up regarding death threaths.

2001 anthrax attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its FBI case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. The crime remains unsolved. Senator Patrick Leahy, one of the recipients of an anthrax letter, publicly stated just before the sixth anniversary of the case that he believes people within the US government know the source of the anthrax powder.^[1]

2001 anthrax attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although the anthrax preparations were of different grades, all of the material derived from the same bacterial strain. Known as the Ames strain, it was first researched at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Ames strain was then distributed to at least fifteen bio-research labs within the U.S. and six locations overseas.

(Have I mentioned how much I like TribEXT?)

Now, I will not claim that it was perceived as a general death threath to opposing politicians and journalists. Perceived among themselves that is. I have no way of proving that, in fact it is the sort of thing that generally stays unclear until a regime falls and archives are opened or until people die and historians are let into archives and given access to letters and diaries. I am merely submitting that it is a possibility which (if true) I think would go a long way in explaining the extremely weak spines in DC.

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You're right, but the retrospective legalization of a murderous purge was just step 9 of 10 in the Gleichschaltung (Wikipedia)

In the summer of 1934, Hitler instructed the SS to kill Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the Nazi party's SA, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and several aides to former Chancellor Franz von Papen in the so-called Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934/July 1, 1934). These measures received retrospective sanction in a special one-article Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense (Gesetz über Maßnahmen der Staatsnotwehr) (July 3, 1934).

We have met the enemy, and it is us — Pogo