DISINFO: US citizens, like the citizens of North Korea, have no influence on the country's decision making
SUMMARY
There is no democracy in the United States of America. The only difference between the United States and any of the most oppressive regimes in the world is that thanks to its theft of the whole world, it has become richer, and thus the contradictions in American society until recently remained hidden to the extent that the main political news on television was about a cat that is afraid of getting off the tree, and the political programmes of the rival presidential candidates were almost carbon copy. Therefore, there was no need for the army to control the citizens. The propaganda and the absence of alternative media (such as RT) were sufficient. Moreover, the citizens of the United States of America have the same influence over decision making as the citizens of North Korea.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative, which seeks to discredit the United States and liberal democracies by claiming that liberal societies are totalitarian systems and that liberal democracies, like 20th-century totalitarian dictatorships, practice repression against the population.
Although the US and other Western democracies today face multiple and serious domestic and foreign threats, it is not true that liberal democracies are obsolete, have collapsed or are being replaced with dictatorships. Reports of the death of liberal democracy have been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, the article’s attempt to equate the West’s liberal societies to totalitarian regimes is an obvious falsification of reality. According to the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, which is based on a large number of objective criteria, places the US is in 45th place out of 180 countries, whereas North Korea is in the last 180th rank.
Read similar cases claiming that the US is a totalitarian state, contemporary liberalism is becoming totalitarian and that the United States and the entire West are sinking into tyranny and degeneration.
This disinformation message appeared in the same article as the claim that the US is not a democracy and is run by the deep state and that countries like Ukraine are neither prosperous nor democratic because they submit to US influence.