Reads like a comedy skit ^^^^ but is exactly how controlling large populations is done.
It's because straight-up mobster-style terror indeed scares the people you want to scare, but also scares the ones you don't.
Give conditional supporters and on-the-fencers a rationalized and reasonable(ish)-sounding explanation to fuel their own self delusion plus use as a "pushback weapon" when their "getting with the program" is questioned by other citizens, though, prevents widespread fear in the short term and gives people time to get used to "new ideas". (i.e. makes it easier for them to rationalize their complete surrender without resistance in the future).
It's not just part of the Takeover Manual, but confirmed by those I've met and talked to at length about the subject who've personally experienced it. People raised in a totalitarian society who risked everything to escape. In one case, a six month process of border jumping and hiding out in several countries on the way to the USA. If he'd been caught and sent back, he would have been tortured to death.
His take on the direction the "woke" Western world is moving now, you ask? Suicide.
