For thousands of years, tyrants and small-minded people have always tried to shoot the messenger. It seldom stops the message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Khwarezmia#...
Suppression of the press is unfortunately very effective in the short term. Historians may eventually uncover the truth but it will be far too late.
As Frank Herbert said: "History is written by historians"
I don't believe this is true, I'm just pointing out we'd have no way of knowing.
It's theoretically impossible to know. This is just a fun thought exercise though, not trying to have a real argument.
The first is an ideology. For an ideology to even be a threat there has to be a lot of believers in the first place.
The second is a secret. Killing someone before they can spill the beans is viable.
For example the president maneuvering the US into WW2 would have been a scandal at the time, but after the war WW2 was seen as inevitable so the now pubic records didn’t cause an uproar.
Or the MKUltra declassified documents. If it has come out at the time, it would have been scandalous, but 30 years later it’s seen as not worth pursuing criminal charges, or even stopping similar things from being done in the future.