Those who support Saudi Arabia often argue it isn’t the Saudi ‘commdar-in-chief’ (king) who supports terrorism, islamism or islam; it’s some other saudi or ‘one of the princes’.. alternatively they suggest ‘well what should or could the [innocent] king do if he wants to save his own butt?’.
These types of arguments are old & essentially pointless excuses. Not only these arguments do not exonerate ‘the saudi king’ of his culpability in terrorism, but also suggest massive corruption & hypocrisy.
Of course most know about saudi sharia law, chop-chop square, etc.. if the saudi king, himself, had any secular inclinations (since what? early 1900s) he’d be moving to Britain or Denmark.
Totalitarian regimes always have corruption somewhere, just because they select some people to take their wrath out on does not mean they have absolute control. There are generally those who are big (wealthy opposition, group opposition) or obvious opposition (facebook posters from Saudi Arabia itself) When you are outside of those two categories, even the Saudis cannot catch you. What a lot of people don’t realize is that a similar set of groups in the form of secret societies existed in Europe for the purposes of protecting each other from the wrath of the despotic European governments, they got together with special signs, passwords, etc. and didn’t publish out in the open to discuss material that the European rulers would either not approve, or material that was in the “iffy” territory. At the end of the day, those that aren’t shown to be obvious in their affiliation/beliefs or don’t show much of a following, are not high on the priorities for TPTB to bust.