In order to govern and control a population, apart from the use of violence, people’s consent must be achieved via what Louis Althusser once called ideological state apparatuses: the education system, entertainment, religion, the political system and so on. Noam Chomsky’s book ‘The Manufacture of Consent’ discusses the important role of the media in this, and Antonio Gramsci wrote much about hegemony – the methods used by the dominant class to legitimize their position in the eyes of the ruled over – a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that disguises the true fist of power.

However, possibly the most basic and arguably effective form of social control is eugenics, a philosophy that includes reduced reproductive capacity of ‘less desired’ people.