A good movie about the "origins" of this is "The good shepherd".
It is a tale of a father being blackmailed (from 322 and foreign actors) due to the misfortunes of his son.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343737/
… and it's very common, one could almost say tradition, for high ranking societies to create various rituals that are "out there" so they can feel edgy and different.
There was a post last night with four pages from some psyop manual that detailed this.
Go read up on:
Social Identity Theory