There's a common perception that democracy ends with a battle, soldiers in the streets, a coup d'etat, the fall of a government.

But we know that democracy can be lost one little step at a time.

We've reported on it and lived through it.

And when we look at America today, right now,

we see a place where the slide to autocracy has already begun.

It's not some distant future, it's the present.

I'm Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

I'm Peter Pomerantse of a senior fellow at the

S&F Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

We're the host of a new podcast from the Atlantic, Autocracy in America.

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Andrea, when you think of propaganda, what first comes to mind?

Mm, you know, Uncle Sam posters during the war effort, you know, I want you and Rosie the Reviter, you know, we can do it.

And, you know, war posters from World War II and World War I, you know, where they're

asking people to buy bonds or to ration food. I mean I think even

Looney Tunes had wartime cartoons that served as propaganda.

Ooh, oh wow and it's interesting that the history stuff is my first thought too. These

really bold visually driven posters basically almost like advertising

billboards except the products being sold, are political causes.

And I guess there is something appropriate about that because the people who've created propaganda

historically learned some of their tactics from the advertising

industry.

And one of the core ideas in advertising is that, you know, while you're in one way appealing

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