Writing in The Atlantic ahead of the publication of her new book, “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” Anne Applebaum argues that Russia, China, and “MAGA Republicans” are making “common cause” in an affront to freedom and “liberalism” (clearly used here in the European sense of freedom rather than in the American sense of leftism).

Applebaum cites talk by Russian officials of alleged Western biolabs in Ukraine, subsequently picked up by American social media and the Chinese and Russian state press as evidence of a “joint propaganda effort” between all the above players – as though they deliberately coordinated – that “helped undermine the US-led effort to create solidarity with Ukraine and enforce sanctions against Russia.” According to a YouGov poll, a quarter of Americans believed the theory, she added. Maybe that’s because it seemed like a totally plausible theory given all the lies that the Western establishment has been firehosing onto the average person over the past couple of years about everything from the origin of Covid to the efficacy of authoritarian lockdowns, anti-Covid jabs and mandates?

“They also heard false descriptions of Ukrainians as Nazis, along with claims that Ukraine is a puppet state run by the CIA, and that NATO started the war.” Canada’s Ottawa Citizen, outed NATO countries’ training of Ukrainian neo-Nazis to fight Russia long before the conflict went red-hot in 2022. NBC News wrote in March........

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