Certainly if you can thoroughly evade the spotlight that's a good alternative and one most of us are taking right now, as we speak. Such situations do exist historically as well, no doubt, you mentioned one.

I didn't mean to overly generalize in the first comment, as you say I was assuming a "nowhere to hide" scenario because in this particular case (and similar cases these days) that's what it was: the Twitter spotlight (the modern Eye of Sauron) was about to shine upon them, and they needed to frame their role thus that it reflects a positive light. Like meeting drunk soccer fans in an alley, you gotta declare yourself to be a friend of their club, if they friend/foe query you.

Generally/Typically I do think that it is the easiest way (note the superlative, "the safest way") to evade prosecution when you're one of the prosecutors yourself. But of course that's hard to quantify, let alone when the domain spans across human history.

I didn't mean to say that typically there are no alternatives which could also keep you safe, or that the safest way is always to join the most radical part of the winning faction. But even if you're including a margin a safety in that "least possible amount", that still puts you closer to the crazy's bad side than being one of their bannermen. If they can target e.g. Richard Dawkins / UVA / Lewin they can target anyone.

Which is why, of course, ahem, I wholeheartedly support the crazies. If they asked ...