Yes, it’s also that authoritarian leaders grow plenty of friends and relatives who’d done really fucked up things. It’s not in their control to just do the oppression legally and possibly to explain (as in “it was such a time”, “those were imperfect measures and we’ve found a better way”), if they don’t do serial murder\rape and drugs trade and racket and theft, someone of their surroundings will.

That’s probably also why western political climates are slowly becoming more authoritarian - it’s the same mechanism, just much smaller and slower. Maybe it’s not drugs\murders\theft, but it’s gray legal area tax evasion, suppose. Then after a few years it’s something a bit worse, and so on, gradually.

Like it’s impossible to make an eternal engine, it’s impossible to make a political system without this.