The key for them is exploiting otherization. If I don't see my opponent as human, any sort of tactic is acceptable for use in engaging them. Non-humans get sent to the slaughterhouse for later consumption. Non-humans get their homes fuckin bulldozed so that a parking lot can get built there. Any underhanded Machiavellian scheme is acceptable. By any means necessary becomes bible. The key is to have as few holes ideology as possible, so that you can trick people into adopting this framework based off of instinctual circuitry and conditioning. Dystopia and totalitarian 101 is simply trashing entire concepts so that you didn't even know that that was an option and so when you come up with it yourself organically, you sound like a crazy person to other people for bringing it up.
To make sure certain information is locked away, or destroyed- or at the very least is categorized as boring and unimportant in the layman's mind. That way creativity is the only way to resurrect those thoughts, but the issue with that is when entire philosophies and frameworks for ideology are built on so much pre-existing knowledge as well as trial and error, you can create a scenario where no one is ever getting back to the capability they once had to understand and reason.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with a good friend of mine, I was basically saying that the guy in the Trump admin who was responsible for leaking the signal chat to the fucking editor and chief of the Atlantic should probably be investigated and probably should go to prison. Because there ain't no way he just "accidentally" did that and if he did, that is a colossal fuckup for his party, his admin and also for his position in the first place. I told this good friend of mine that Goldberg should also be arrested and investigated because him having this information in the first place and being the supposed random lightning rod to receive it is just very suspicious. The whole situation was encased in stank, for me anyways. None of it really makes sense, still doesn't make sense to me. It's entirely possible that the Trump admin wanted to leak the signal chat in the first place to pull something somewhere else, no clue, no idea.
He replied "we can't do that, we can't prosecute Mike Waltz because if we do THEY win" and I thought, holy shit, my bro is straight up defending someone he never met and didn't vote for, for a major fuckup that makes him look like a traitor simply because of party affiliation and otherization.
Kind of wonder if it matters in the first place or if it was simply another fabricated event that different people with the authority to decide, simply decided that it should happen for some reason or another.
Anyways, that's just an example of standard public discourse that made me think of how powerful it would be if you could stake these concepts into peoples minds. At that point, if you properly otherize political opposition- disagreement does not merely become a disagreement based on bad ideas and shitty arguments from one side or another, it is based on your personal ego being attached to your opponent being wrong, always. Being the enemy, always, never being right about anything, always, being a non-human, always.
Once you get people thinking like this it is difficult to get them to unite for a common good or meaningful societal change.