"these autocracies[, China and Russia,] are advancing in the methods of coercion, combining newfangled digital surveillance with old-fashioned terror and brutality. Some of these methods require a strong stomach, but these regimes are convinced that with the proper 'narratives,' they will not have to deploy them, except in certain extreme cases. This confidence rests firmly on the assumption that the narratives are state of the art, persuasive not as propaganda but as 'truth,' because as the world now understands, there is nothing much out there to challenge their 'leadership in the ideological sphere.' Even the West, with its sentimental attachment to Reason and the Enlightenment, considers objective truth a relic of that bygone era."
Martha Bayles, "Vladimir and Volodymyr: a pivotal moment in history," The hedgehog review: critical reflections on contemporary culture 24, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 44 (38-45).
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