The New Propaganda War
www.theatlantic.com
Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.

Here is the archived version.

If people are naturally drawn to human rights, democracy, and freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned.

The American extreme right and (more rarely) the extreme left benefit from the spread of antidemocratic narratives, they have an interest in silencing or hobbling any group that wants to stop, or even identify, foreign campaigns.

Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that “we are actually less prepared today than we were four years ago” for foreign attempts to influence the 2024 election. This is not only because authoritarian propaganda campaigns have become more sophisticated as they begin to use AI, or because “you obviously have a political environment here where there’s a lot more Americans who are more distrustful of all institutions.” It’s also because the lawsuits, threats, and smear tactics have chilled government, academic, and tech-company responses.

One could call this a secret authoritarian “plot” to preserve the ability to spread antidemocratic conspiracy theories, except that it’s not a secret. It’s all visible, right on the surface. Russia, China, and sometimes other state actors—Venezuela, Iran, Hungary—work with Americans to discredit democracy, to undermine the credibility of democratic leaders, to mock the rule of law. They do so with the goal of electing Trump, whose second presidency would damage the image of democracy around the world, as well as the stability of democracy in America, even further.

  • PaddleMaster@beehaw.org
    5·
    7 months ago

    It’s clever enough to show success in many countries and latch on to MAGA. They’ll use those countries as the experiment and use the successful methods in the countries they oppose.

    I found it interesting that these programs are trying to unite the extreme right and extreme left together.

    Being on the defense of these ever changing methods will exhaust us, and they will be successful if they keep at it long enough.

    • KillingAndKindess
      5·
      7 months ago

      I mean, its effective in its spread and ability to gain momentum at every opportunity, so its benefiting a select few at the moment, but…

      Just like cutting costs and underfunding upkeep of a business “makes” money until there is nothing left, if conservativism reaches a broad enough population like it intends to, it will eventually backfire. Cause unlike a company you can just leave/divest from, you can’t just up and leave the world (yet) for greener pastures.

      Hopefully we don’t have to wait until the earth has nothing left to give, and instead finally eat enough of the rich that they can’t make a comeback… hopefully