This was one of the favorite tactics of southern segregationists governments. It’s why freedom riders buses were bombed and so many organizers were disappeared and murdered. It’s ‘good’ (effective) if the state’s goal is to let civilians do the dirty work of eliminating dissident
there are a lot of ways for the state to suppress dissident speech. one particularly bad one is by having armed agents of the state stand by and do nothing while partisan-aligned thugs or paramilitary groups beat you because of your speech, and then have the DA decline to prosecute the assaulters.
ISTM this also supports the argument that the law and law enforcement are always and everywhere fundamentally political institutions. Law enforcement resources are finite as is court capacity. Choices about who gets charged for what crime are inherently political choices.
The same is true of higher courts and civil suits. Courts of appeal (including SCOTUS) have incredibly constrained resources. Regardless of outcome (which is obviously very subject to judicial political bias), which cases get heard at all is and must be an inherently political decision.
