Severe oppression wasn't the the topic of the comment I was replying to. It was regarding unreasonable fantasies of competence in government oppression. You ca

Severe oppression wasn't the the topic of the comment I was replying to. It was regarding unreasonable fantasies of competence in government oppression. You can construct an oppressive regime simply by dedicating enough people to it, but they still can't exceed the fundamental ceiling of wage:job_tenure:performance. Consequently, every example you mentioned routinely failed. In aggregate they accomplished oppression, but emotional pleas about "forgetting history" don't change the fact that we're talking about bureaucracies. And bureaucracies only ever approach a semblance of competency via brute force, either in resources or manpower.