If I were an evil genius and I wished to control a population and rob them of something which is inherent to them and otherwise good and true, there is a very effective way to do it. I might choose to do this because I fear this thing they possess, because it could foil my plans or be used to oppose me. Or, I might do this because I want the people to become bitter against themselves or against those to whom they pledge their allegiance; spending so much time with internal conflict, trying to reconcile or resist this desire/need which is inherent to their being. If I were an evil genius, this is what I would do:

First, I would do everything in my power to take this thing away from them and discourage them from doing it, believing it, owning it, keeping it, buying it, reading it, watching it, or otherwise satisfying this desire/need, and force it out of the public eye; not necessarily to make it evil/illegal yet, but just so it’s not so publicly discussed and popular; at the very least, so that it is socially accepted as a private thing. I cannot possibly get everyone at first, and I don’t expect to completely eradicate this thing from society, but that’s OK; in fact, I’m counting on it. Once I have done a fairly good job of removing the majority (or at least a large portion) of this thing from open society, I would begin the next stage. Slowly at first, to not arouse suspicion, I would begin disseminating propaganda praising those who abstain from this thing as being morally superior, righteous, and more evolved/civilized than those primitive, immature people who can’t control themselves and haven’t learned to live in harmony and peace. I would do everything I could to make it popular to abstain from this thing and to promote “true” strength and morality as being one who doesn’t need this thing and doesn’t want it. Once that has taken hold and become a widely accepted belief, then, I would begin a final round of restrictive propaganda demonizing this thing, claiming that it’s evil, and those who support it and, God forbid, openly {accept it & practice it} are, at best, misguided & “sick”, and, at worst, evil & crazy. Next, I would find every example of something bad happening from this thing, and plaster it on every news & entertainment medium; doing my best to take it out of context and ignore mitigating factors that might show the other side of the story. After this started to become the accepted norm (or to help it along towards that end) I would stage false flag events involving extreme outcomes and/or those in the public eye to back up the notion that this thing is evil and only leads to bad things.

Finally, to seal their cage, I would openly tempt them with this thing; offering to give it back to them, or providing ways for them to get it. However, at every opportunity in advertisements, news, and movies, I would juxtapose this thing with other things which that society deems as bad, gross, or morally compromised. I would then construct a stereotypical lifestyle to promote wherein this thing is central. This lifestyle would glorify this thing and say that everyone who condemns it is just a stupid bigot. It would show all the good aspects about this thing and do everything possible to make it seem appealing & tempting & good. It would then take this thing and juxtapose it with several other things which that culture deems as bad, gross, or morally compromised, saying, “All this stuff is OK. It’s all just a big sham. You see how wrong they were about this thing? All this other stuff is like that too. It’s all OK.”

This way, when my plan is complete, the entire culture would be fighting itself to ensure that this thing never reenters the culture, even though there’s nothing wrong with it and they are worse off without it. And even those who are fighting for this thing, to have it back, most of them will be deceived into fighting for some other things which are legitimately bad (at least in the eyes of that culture) which only reinforces the argument against the thing.

There is another way to reinforce the genuinely bad things to further cement them into the culture. If the genuinely bad things that we introduced are not being sufficiently accepted into the culture, or if we simply wish to accelerate it towards that end, there is something we can do. In cultures which possess some degree of {hostility or wariness} towards authority (either {[natural to their customs] or [resulting from societal friction]} ), there is a natural tendency to automatically push back against the use of force or overt coercion. By using the authority figure to conspicuously {attack or [attempt to prohibit]} the bad thing, we can trigger this response, and cause them to cling more tightly to it and thus rapidly absorb that thing into their identity/culture as a means of opposing the authority. Much like trying to take something from a child; even if they weren’t really all that attached to it in the first place, simply because someone is trying to forcefully take it from them, causes them to alter their perception of the thing: (1) “Since someone is trying to fight me to get this, then it must be more valuable/true/powerful/etc. than I thought.“, and (2) their sacrifices and {physical & emotional} investment in defending the thing will subconsciously rationalize the reinforcement of their attachment to it, and confidence of it; “I expended a lot of time, effort, & risk, in my fight to keep this thing, therefore, it must be true, and must be quite valuable to me; otherwise, everything I spent was an idiotic waste, and I don’t want to think of myself as an idiot; therefore it must be true, and it must be genuinely valuable to me.“