If I am a psychopath in charge of destroying culture, my process looks something like this:

- Mandate terrible thing.

- If nobody fights back, great, enforce it and make it normal.

- If only a few people fight back, isolate/villify them (but not too much, lest others come to their defense).

- If lots of people fight back, back down somewhat (but not all the way), and chip away through gradual, lesser terrible things to eventually reach my goal of mandating the bigger terrible thing.

It applies to literally any position of power where a person or cohesive group is in charge of people they hate or otherwise see as disposable.