Blaming pop culture for criminal behavior, as President Trump did by linking “grisly video games” to mass shootings such as those in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, is a centuries-old tactic.

From the Athenian government’s execution of the philosopher Socrates for corrupting the minds of the city-state’s youth in 399 B.C. to the ban of Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn by Concord, Massachusetts, librarians in 1885, shifts in art, education, and science have been popular targets for governments seeking to assign responsibility for social ills.