The Autocratic Despair Podcast launches in May. Until then, enjoy this practice episode.

This week on Autocratic Despair, Nick and Dr. Craig open with something they haven't been able to do very often on this show: celebrate.

On April 12, Viktor Orbán — the international model for how to dismantle a democracy from inside one — conceded defeat in Hungary's parliamentary election after sixteen years in power. Péter Magyar's Tisza party won in a landslide, taking 138 of 199 seats on 53.6% of the vote, giving Magyar the two-thirds supermajority needed to amend Hungary's constitution.

The celebration is tempered by what Craig knows from his scholarship: that defeating an authoritarian at the ballot box is the beginning of the work, not the end, and that the institutional damage Orbán did over sixteen years — to the judiciary, to the media, to the constitution itself — will take a generation to repair even with a supermajority. But for one week, the show allows itself to note that the thing they've been telling their audience is possible — voting an authoritarian out of power — actually happened, in a country where the system was even more rigged than it is here.

Then the episode pivots to the story that brought Nick to an eight on the despair scale this week.

An explosive new report by journalist Kris Hermes on the independent news site Unicorn Riot has surfaced disturbing new details about the Prairieland terrorism case in Fort Worth, Texas — the landmark trial in which eight Americans were convicted of providing material support for terrorism for wearing black clothing to a protest outside an ICE detention center. For listeners unfamiliar with the case, Nick walks through the full story from the beginning: the July 4, 2025 protest at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas; the shooting that wounded a police officer; the unprecedented federal terrorism charges against eight people based on their clothing; the verdict on March 13; and the Attorney General's promise that "this will not be the last."

The Unicorn Riot report adds a new dimension: credible allegations that the jury may have been coerced. Amber Lowrey, sister of defendant Savanna Batten, describes hearing a "loud uproar" from the jury room about an hour before the verdict — sustained yelling audible in the hallway. Two male jurors were visibly crying when the verdict was read. . A paralegal named Tamera Hutcherson confirmed the fight occurred. Defense attorney Christopher Tolbert has filed a post-verdict motion for a new trial, arguing juror misconduct and possible coercion.

Nick and Craig then examine the federal judge who will decide the motion: Mark Pittman, a Trump-appointed Federalist Society founding member whose conduct during the trial included sanctioning defense lawyers for filing routine motions, declaring a mistrial over a Black defense attorney's Jesse Jackson memorial t-shirt on the day Jackson died, personally controlling all jury selection questioning, blocking the primary defendant from using a self-defense argument, and sealing the wounded officer's medical records from the jury.

The episode closes with an honest accounting of what is known and what isn't. The defense motion is pending. Judge Pittman could rule any day. Eighteen more Prairieland defendants face state-level trials, with the first scheduled for April 20. The question the episode leaves with the audience is whether the self-correction mechanisms of the American legal system still function — whether the courts can catch and reverse their own errors when the government has decided to call protest a form of terrorism.

Names said on this episode: Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Benjamin Song, Amber Lowrey, Christopher Tolbert, Tamera Hutcher

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When the weight of watching democracy erode gets to be too much, where do you go? In this episode, Nick and Dr. Craig Johnson explore the surprisingly serious topic of retreating into childhood comforts as a coping mechanism for Autocratic Despair — and why that instinct might be healthier than it sounds.

Then things get strange in the best possible way. Nick makes the case that WWE superstar Seth Rollins has become an unlikely avatar of the "Fashwave" aesthetic — the eerie intersection of authoritarian visual language and ironic pop culture — and Dr. Craig is forced to reckon with what that means.

Plus: Dr. Craig comes clean about his hobby. Turns out the man who wrote the book on fascism spends his free time painting miniature Warhammer figurines — and honestly, it makes complete sense.

***Dr. Craig and Nick wish to assure you that we do not mention professional wrestling in every episode.***

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In this preview episode of the Autocratic Despair podcast, host Nick Mortensen introduces Dr. Craig to Danhausen — a magical fun character from the WWE who is about to sweep the nation. Danhausen paints his face black and white, looks like a cartoon vampire, adds the suffix "-hausen" to everything he touches, and delivers his catchphrase "very nice, very evil" with the energy of a goth Mister Rogers. Nick's kids are obsessed. Dr. Craig is hearing all of this for the first time.

Nick explains that he took his kids to the recent No Kings rally with their faces painted like Danhausen — partly because the last rally was near Halloween and they expected to wear costumes, and partly because it made protesting feel like a festival. Then Nick admits the thought he wasn't expecting to have: the face paint would also make it harder for facial recognition technology to identify his children in a crowd. That realization cracks the episode open. Nick and Dr. Craig follow it into the chilling effect of mass surveillance at protests, Rep. Clay Higgins's boast about collecting "millions of digital images, billions of identifying data points" on No Kings attendees, and the landmark Prairieland case out of Fort Worth, Texas — in which a federal jury convicted 7 people on terrorism charges for their presence at a July 4, 2025 noise demonstration outside an ICE detention center in Alvarado. Seven of the eight were acquitted of attempted murder. The same jury convicted the 7 acquitted of providing material support to terrorists — based on the prosecution's theory that wearing black clothing to the protest made it harder for police to identify the one person who fired a weapon. Their names are Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, and Ines Soto. They are the first Americans in history convicted of providing material support to "antifa" — an organization that does not legally exist. Nick and Craig unpack what this verdict means for every American who has ever worn a hoodie to a demonstration, and why the Attorney General's promise that "this will not be the last" should be taken literally.

Very nice. Very evil. Same country

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