This week on the Autocratic Despair podcast, Nick and Dr. Craig take an unusually nuanced look at Cole Allen — the 31-year-old Caltech-educated tutor from Torrance, California who charged a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25 armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives in an attempt to assassinate President Trump and senior administration officials. Allen sent his family a manifesto minutes before the attack. His brother called police. Nobody died.

The manifesto is not what you'd expect. It's organized, self-aware, and structured around a series of anticipated objections with numbered rebuttals — including a theological argument that turning the other cheek applies only when you yourself are oppressed, not when others are being harmed in your name. Allen chose buckshot over slugs to minimize collateral casualties. He spared Kash Patel by name. He apologized to his parents for lying about having a job interview. He described himself as a "Friendly Federal Assassin." Nick and Craig sit with the discomfort of a manifesto that reads less like the ravings of a madman and more like the term paper of a person who reasoned his way, step by careful step, into something monstrous.

Craig provides historical context on who actually commits acts of political violence — and it turns out the profile is not the unhinged loner of popular imagination. The show then draws a Venn diagram that nobody in American media wants to draw: the overlap between the people who voted for Donald Trump and the people who have read The Turner Diaries, the 1978 white supremacist novel by neo-Nazi William Pierce that served as the blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing and whose "Day of the Rope" — a fictionalized mass lynching of journalists, politicians, and so-called race traitors — was explicitly invoked by rioters who built a gallows outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Nick and Craig ask what it means when the same book inspires both the people in power and the people trying to kill the people in power.

An update on the Prairieland case: nine Americans — Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, and Benjamin Song — were convicted in March of federal terrorism charges after a July 4, 2025 protest outside an ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas. Seven were acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of providing material support for terrorism based on the prosecution's theory that wearing black clothing constituted support. It was the first federal material support conviction against alleged antifa members in American history. This week: Judge Pittman still has not ruled on the defense motion for a new trial based on allegations of jury coercion. A second motion alleges a Brady violation — that the prosecution failed to disclose the wounded officer drew his weapon before anyone fired. Sentencing is scheduled for June 18.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode also contains an extended segment in which Nick lets Dr. Craig cook on a subject near and dear to his academic heart — citation formatting. If you have strong feelings about APA versus MLA style, this segment may cause elevated heart rate, involuntary fist-clenching, or the sudden urge to email your college professors. Nick understands approximately 40% of what Craig is talking about and is visibly trying to keep up. Listener discretion is advised.

Names said on this episode: Cole Allen, Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, Benjamin Song, James Talarico, Kash Patel, Mark Pittman

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This week on another preview episode of the Autocratic Despair podcast, Nick and Dr. Craig start with a confession: they both enjoyed the Atlantic's report on FBI Director Kash Patel's alleged drinking problem a little too much. And they want to talk about why that enjoyment felt so good and so rotten at the same time.

The Atlantic published a bombshell investigation alleging that Patel — the man running the agency that just convicted eight Americans of terrorism for wearing black clothes — has been drinking to the point of obvious intoxication, missing mornings, going unreachable behind locked doors, and panicking when his computer froze because he thought he'd been fired. More than two dozen current and former officials spoke to the reporter. Patel has denied everything and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit.

Nick and Craig sit with two reactions. The first is a flicker of hope disguised as schadenfreude: if Patel is drinking like that, maybe some part of him knows what he's doing is wrong. Maybe the substance abuse is the last remaining signal from a conscience that hasn't been fully extinguished — shame metabolizing itself as vodka because it has nowhere else to go. The second reaction is darker: since when do we take pleasure in someone's self-destruction? These are not the people Nick and Craig were three years ago. The show examines how sustained exposure to authoritarian cruelty has quietly recalibrated what its hosts are willing to enjoy, and whether noticing that recalibration is enough to reverse it.

A quick update on the Prairieland case: Judge Pittman has still not ruled on the defense motion for a new trial based on allegations of jury coercion. Meanwhile, a second legal thread has emerged — Benjamin Song's attorney has filed a motion arguing a Brady violation, alleging the prosecution failed to disclose that the wounded police officer drew his weapon before anyone fired. That fact only came out during the officer's own testimony at trial. Sentencing is scheduled for June 18. The clock is running. The names still need saying.

Then the show goes meta. Nick and Craig talk directly to their preview audience about what they're building, where the show is headed, and why Talarico Talk is the spine of the whole project. The weekly segment in which the hosts foolishly pin their hopes on a very normal yet annoyingly religious politician from Texas isn't a sidebar. It's the thing that keeps the show from collapsing into pure despair. The congregation is forming. The Talarico train is boarding. America has a Talarico-shaped hole. Nick and Craig want you on board — not because Talarico is a savior, but because the exercise of hoping for something specific is itself a form of resistance.

The episode closes with Nick offering extended and unsolicited advice on how to be a better uncle. Not necessarily a biological uncle — though that counts. Nick argues that "Unclng arts" are dying in America and that reviving them is one of the few things you can do this week that will make the world measurably better. Step one: avail yourself of the cornucopia of nicknames available for addressing children. These include but are not limited to: kid, big dog, chief, champ, and boss. Nick has opinions about when to deploy each one. He shares them whether you asked or not.

Names said on this episode: Kash Patel, Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Benjamin Song, James Talarico, Herman Bailey, Champ Bailey, Boss Bailey, Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson, Ray Allen, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, Beto O'rourke, Colin Allred, Ken Paxton, John Cornryn.

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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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A 3 minute preview of our podcast - The Autocratic Despair Podcast - with Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig Johnson that takes an excerpt from a podcast where we have a discussion about why we never got into Billy Bragg.

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