But no country has devoted more time and care to the art of propaganda than China, where the emperor Qin Shi Huang governed, in the third century B.C.E., with a policy he called “Keep the Masses Ignorant and They Will Follow.” Mao sanctified propaganda and censorship as essential parts of Thought Work, and he relied on them to reframe the Long March as a strategic triumph, not a crushing defeat. Five years after Mao died, his heirs’ final act of devotion was to issue an official declaration on Mao’s tumultuous reign. They said it was 70 percent correct and 30 percent wrong—an imponderable
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