I think it goes deeper than even criticism vs. suppressing criticism. That is, that it's less about what ideas people fall in line with, but that they aren't making them on their own and with each other, and that they get used to that.

> Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content.

https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-Censorship-China-...

> Our results offer rigorous support for the recent hypothesis that criticisms of the state, its leaders, and their policies are published, whereas posts about real-world events with collective action potential are censored.

https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/randomized-experiment...

> The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

-- Noam Chomsky

> Within the affluent democracy, the affluent discussion prevails, and within the established framework, it is tolerant to a large extent. All points of view can be heard: the Communist and the Fascist, the Left and the Right, the white and the Negro, the crusaders for armament and for disarmament. Moreover, in endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda rides along with education, truth with falsehood. This pure toleration of sense and nonsense is justified by the democratic argument that nobody, neither group nor individual, is in possession of the truth and capable of defining what is right and wrong, good and bad. Therefore, all contesting opinions must be submitted to 'the people' for its deliberation and choice. But I have already suggested that the democratic argument implies a necessary condition, namely, that the people must be capable of deliberating and choosing on the basis of knowledge, that they must have access to authentic information, and that, on this. basis, their evaluation must be the result of autonomous thought.

-- Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance" (1965)

Individual capable of critical thought and coherent mental models is kind of the pre-requisite for whatever groups do or fail to do. It's a chicken-and-egg thing, in a way, because such invididuals depend on society to be given the tools for that, or to at least not be suppressed when they build them from scratch. But a group made up of individuals who can't hold their own individual ground, will not fare better by multiplying that in the group, and giving individuals even less reason to think things through. The end results is people who can "support" this or that, but cannot act. They can choose, but not make. They can join, but not face.

I don't think that is an accident or a mistake, and people who are saying something like "1984 wasn't a manual" are sadly mistaken, because it is also a manual, it cannot help but be. Just like knowledge of medicine, knowing how to heal a person, is also knowledge on how to harm them. The trouble is when the abuse of insights overcomes the use of them.