For The Atlantic’s June cover story, “Democracy Is Losing the Propaganda War,” staff writer Anne Applebaum reports on how autocrats in China, Russia, and other places around the world are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom everywhere.

“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned.

To accomplish this, Applebaum reports, autocracies are now making systematic efforts to influence both popular and elite audiences, including via the use of state-controlled media—most notably China’s Xinhua news agency and Russia’s RT, but also Venezuela’s Telesur network and Iran’s Press TV, along with numerous others—to create stories, slogans, memes, and narratives promoting the worldview of the autocracies. These, in turn, are repeated and amplified in other countries, translated into multiple languages, and reshaped for local markets around the world.

When these stories make their way to the U.S., Applebaum reports, “a part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying.