Brian Lear on WNC a new article by Ann Applebaum in the Atlantic called The New Propaganda War has an old Bill Clinton quote near the top.

It's from March of 2000 when Clinton was president and giving a speech about why he supported much more trade with China

Despite China still being a cruel authoritarian regime wasn't that long after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

It was 11 years later, but it was still very much on people's minds.

One reason Clinton was four more opening to China was this shiny new thing called the internet.

Now there's no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet.

Good luck.

That's sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall.

Well, China has been nailing a lot of Jello to a lot of walls ever since and also making a mockery of the serious premise behind Clinton's laugh line, this thought that came next. In the knowledge economy, economic innovation, and political empowerment,

whether anyone likes it or not will inevitably go hand in hand.

That was March of 2000.

Where are we now?

And Applebaum is with us, Staff Writer for the Atlantic,

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced

International Studies, where she co-directs a program on disinformation and 21st century

propaganda.

She has a forthcoming book called Autocracy Inc. The dictators

who want to run the world and that related Atlantic magazine cover story now is

called the new propaganda war about how the autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere

are making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the

world. One of the scariest things to me before we bring in on, after reading

the article is her take that in the past, autocrats usually had to pretend to be for democracy

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