It [the Internet] is as much a new opium for the people as a catalyst for democratic awakening.

This is as true in the “free” west as in the various “authoritarian regimes” identified. It is just that it is not the government regimes or apparatus of the states in the west that are producing and distributing mass opiates via the Internet. Chomsky would argue they do not have to: we manufacture our own consent and complicity, fomented by the media and marketing arms our corporate institutions.