The Soviets knew it, studied it scientifically, and taught their agents and useful idiots in the West how to employ it.
Another example is the entire Political Correct movement.
Brought to the US by (can’t remember which one, exactly) a writer of the School of Marxism in Frankfurt during the early 1930s. The concept was that if people could be made to control what they allowed themselves to say, they’d also control what they allowed themselves to think. The more ridiculous the say-control, the more complete the ideological control of the mind.
The end phase of PC is that it can be used to sort out the ideologically compliant from those who still retain an ability to think independently.
We’re seeing a rather full blossom of that reality in many of our schools, from elementary up through college and university now.