@drq You could do that because of postmodernity, because there are a lot more ways of silencing people, other than legal imprisonment or execution, as well as a lot more agents, other than the state, actively implementing silencing.

This isn't a pure abstraction, this could be, if you'd wish so, a faithful representation of state of affairs, true not just today but the entire time language exists. Apply this optics wherever you wish and you're going to find it there — evolution and survival of the fittest among multi-memeular structures, constantly duking it out. Or don't, because as you have noted, it's farther away from actual life, not closer to it.