APPLEBAUM: If you look at Russian system, or how Trump tries to communicate in a world where there's plethora of media, lots of information everywhere, they try to sort of pollute the system. Bannon calls it "flooding the zone with shit," others call it "firehose of falsehoods." If you keep repeating things that are lies, or half-truths, or inaccuracies over and over again, sooner or later, you get people to tune out. In a world where we have so much information and so much access to so much all the time, this has been proven the most effective way for autocrats to stay in power. What's the function of doing that, and why do people do it? They do it in order to build nihilism, to build disinterest. If you're bombarded all day long with lies, and you can see they're lies, and they sound strange, and you don't understand them, then sooner or later, you'll just tune it out. You'll say, "I don't understand what's going on, I don't know what's true and what's not true, I just want to stay out of politics and mind my own business." That's what modern autocrat wants. They want you to have no agency, they want you to stay outside of politics, they want you not to be part of politics at all. You almost don't need a political leader to feed you falsehoods all the time, because in modern social media your algorithm will do it for you. So, one of the effects of modern social media has also been to confuse people about what's true and what's not true, to undermine idealism, and to make people more cynical.