In popular culture, there are quite a number of stories (nearly all sf and fantasy) over the years (I don't even think Henry Kuttner, (or maybe it was Cathy Moore) was the first, and he/she/they was/were writing this stuff in the 1940s, if not '30s) that used the concept. That memes are weaponized is simply an extension of learned psychological techniques, and who's to say it didn't start with the classical Greeks or before?