[jcranberry]

That's a few autocratic countries. Such a statement is obviously not true in general. For starters you have dictatorships which have been based upon absurd and shameless lies. North Korea currently, Haiti under Papa Doc, Turkmenistan under Niyazov. In addition I'd imagine hiding news is the first line of defense, but if that fails none of these autocratic governments are not above lying (and I'd bet you find the dictators of those countries have lied many times when it suited them, if evidence is available).

[buboard]

I m talking about specifically “fake news” , lies that are generally obvious yet for emotional reasons persistent

What s different about autocrats is that they will unscrupulously plant evidence and kill everyone who knows