SPEAKER_01 0:03

The anxiety you feel when you meet a new person. What if they're a MAGA enthusiast? The panic you feel when your 11-year-old daughter's soccer coach sends the initial group text of the season, and you notice his contact photo is of him wearing wraparound sunglasses and sitting in the driver's seat of his car. That is autocratic despair. This is Autocratic Despair, the podcast. I'm Nick Mortensen, a comedian and father of three from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Join me each week as I stare into the abyss with my friend, Dr. Craig Johnson, a PhD in global fascism, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 2025's most important book, How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism. I went to the No Kings rally. Took my kids. It was in Green Bay, it's where I live. It was a little too cold for them to wear their Halloween costumes. The last time we did a No Kings rally was just before Halloween. So they had an opportunity to wear their costumes there, and they've kind of come to expect that from a No Kings rally. Yeah. So early in the week we were fishing their costumes out of the Halloween box. And um they both had these, I don't know, they both have these absurd costumes that require a battery pack because they're inflatables that they walk around in. Because that's what that's what's happening right now with the Halloween costumes. Atrocious. I blame Spirit Halloween. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And only Spirit Halloween. So they had to wear jackets this weekend. And in order to get them kind of excited, uh I painted their faces to look like Danhausen. Do you know Danhausen, Craig?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Uh not not particularly he's he's he he he he's a wrestler and he has like a he does like corpse paint, like like like if he's in a metal band, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Um he's a wrestler, but he's made it, he's made it to the big leagues now, the WWE, mostly a comedy character. Doesn't wrestle that much, does a lot of backstage antics, and of course is painted like a vampire in the face. And he sort of has like a vaudeville borscht belt way of talking. Spectacular. So his gimmick, his gimmick is every community has that that one guy that goes on the local access channel uh midnight every Saturday night and uh you know has like chiller theater.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Even the monster movie presenter guy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yes, yes. That's him. He's he's Sven Ghoulie next level. Wonderful. Oh, I love it. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Fantastic character uh for wrestling, uh, as long as he doesn't wrestle or become overexposed. And I think the WWE is using him right. Yeah. He's got you know, a lot of his skits are just like meeting you know meeting the characters from the WWE in the in the back of the stadium. And when he introduces himself to people, he he says, I'm Danhausen, uh very nice, very evil. Uh that's that's his thing. He's a very nice vampire, but he's also very evil. Because he's a vampire. But he's among the evil people, he's one of the nicest. I love it. That's great. It's it's great. I mean I think I know your taste for kitsch. Um it's it's downhausen coated. That's square down the middle.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

That's yeah, that's right down the middle for me.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

He walks around with a jar of teeth uh for reasons unexplained. Teeth appliques on his costumes. Nobody's asked why. Uh he seems to be getting more teeth in the jar each week. I don't want to at this point, I don't want to know. Like uh I want the mystery.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

No.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

There's there's nothing that is true that would he could come up with that would be better than my imagination for why this vampire guy uh travels around from city to city uh packing a jar of teeth in, I'm sure, an overhead container. He's got this vocal affectation where he appends the suffix housen on regular words, calls his fans fanhousens. His first night on the show, he showed up with a list of demand housens. It's so much fun. So much fun.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

That's too good. That's wonderful. Oh, I love I love a fun little character like that. And you're right, that is that is uh that is a good energy to to maybe bring.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah. One of the best things about Danhausen is his catchphrase. Uh because you know, when he interacts with these people backstage, they're big professional wrestlers, and he's this borsche belt vampire comedian. So they're just they're just like, get out of here, you know, get out of here, you nerd. They don't want anything to do with him. When he interacts with them, he he like hits him with this catchphrase, this big buildup, where he goes, You are cursed. And then he disappears. Like the camera goes over to the guy that he curses, and then it pans back, and Danhausen's nowhere to be found. And then it's just like a moment of just dumbfound realization from the wrestler that he's been cursed. And then usually something bad will happen, like a ladder falls over behind him. It's just this character is about to break containment into the national spotlight. WrestleMania is coming up, and it might not be then, but surely by whatever the WWE's Halloween uh pay-per-view is, Danhausen will have broken containment into the culture. I know this because I have been trying to get my children to watch professional wrestling with me uh for the last 12 years to no effect. There's nothing on professional wrestling more interesting than their iPads on any given day. But Danhausen, that's another story. I have to pause the TV when Danhausen comes on, and I can yell for them, tell them that Danhausen is on, and they will come running downstairs, so I unpause it.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Oh, that is a good indication, you're right, that this guy's about to break out.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

When I started painting my kids' faces, the objective was just sort of to anchor in uh memory for them of protests being a good time. Yeah. But I came to realize that if I painted their faces properly, it would help defeat whatever whatever facial recognition technology is behind uh any kind of surveillance that would happen there. That's possible, yeah. And I think I was right to do that. There was a the there was a congressman who reacted to this New King's rally. Uh Clay Higgins, one of the uh dumbest congressmen from Louisiana. Like he was I think he was a police officer that was corrupt. So of course he ran for office. So then he became a congressman. Yeah, he had all the qualifications. And here is what Clay Higgins, the MAGA enthusiast congressman from Louisiana, had to say uh in an internet post about this. This is Clay Higgins. We have millions of digital images, billions of identifying data points, height, weight, shoe size, tattoos, gait. AI eats that stuff. Success. It really wouldn't be hard to find out exactly who these people are. Now, what could be the point of that?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

What he's talking about is mass surveillance, and you know, that's what you're talking about trying to get around with, you know, painting your face and stuff. When it comes to attending rallies like this, you know, we're not trying to suggest to people that they should be afraid, although, you know, you have to be aware that these are the sorts of things that there are potentially attacks on that the government might retaliate in some capacity. Um I don't think that that should be in the front of people's minds. I think that protesting is good. Um but when it comes to government surveillance, yeah, I mean, of course the government wants to know who opposes it. Um these protests were some of the biggest in US history. I think the biggest. Yes, the biggest, uh the most recent one. And so that means that like cracking down on every single person, clearly not possible. But the point is that, like, remember like last month, some defendants in Texas lost a case saying that they were going to be tried as terrorists. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. Some activists in Texas got tried as terrorists because they did a peaceful protest at an ICE uh concentration camp. And some of the people who were tried as terrorists weren't there. They weren't present during this demonstration. They were just on the same signal chat as the people who were there. So, like, simply because they knew the people who did the protest, even though they weren't there, they were still tried for terrorism. And this kind of like reach is something that the government is clearly intending to be doing. This isn't new with Trump. Uh, you know, the United States government has been doing this since the 1920s. Uh it did this in the 60s, it did this during the war on terror. Uh the difference is that the Trump administration is significantly more gloves-off uh about this sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Aaron Powell Can I ask you about Signal? Is is is not the main drawing point to Signal is that it's anonymous or is that telegram?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Signal is not necessarily anonymous. What it is is encrypted. So it's difficult, not impossible, but difficult for uh another person or a government to look into your signal chats unless they're in the chat. You remember like those journalists got leaked stuff from Pete Higgseth a while ago? That's because he put them in the chat.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Jeff Goldberg from The Atlantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just you just like you just like fucked up and just like put them in there. As one does. When when it comes to the government getting access to signal chats, usually it's by seizing a device. Uh so like at a border or when they're arresting somebody, they'll seize a device and then they'll open it, um, either by cracking it somehow, like like electronically, or by forcing you to open it biometrically, like literally forcing your finger onto your phone, or forcing the phone in front of your face so that it opens your phone.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Can they do that legally?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yes, they can. Uh, they can't do that. Um this is why if you attend a protest, you need to turn all that stuff off uh before you go. Uh if you're not just gonna leave your phone at home, uh, which maybe you want to do, or bring a burner phone. But burner phones can basically only do SMS, which is not encrypted. It's a tough one, right? It's a tough, it's a tough call.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

It adds a layer of complexity to protest, I can tell you that. It does.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

It does.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

You want to have your camera on you. Most people do.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yes. And that's the other thing is that like the government used the fact that these people were using signal at all as evidence that they were terrorists. So simply the fact that they wanted their communications to be private was used by the government as evidence that they were terrorists.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Aaron Powell The government may or may not have the actual content of those messages.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Aaron Powell So the government has those messages because they got access to them because they use somebody's phone or computer. Oh, okay. A random signal chat, you know, that you are on is the most secure way to do communication online unless you are yourself a like internet security professional, which most people aren't, right? And so a signal is the best bet we got. It's not perfect. If the NSA, the Russian secret intelligence branch wants to know, they could probably figure it out. Your local sheriff's department? Maybe not. Probably not.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

And that really is all you can do in this mass surveillance age.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

You can't stop somebody from stealing your bike. There's no theft-proof lock. But what you can do is deterrence, you know. Uh, and that's uh that's the same analogy here. You can just make it harder.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I think people are gonna stop going to these rallies with that kind of intimidate. I mean, it definitely has a chilling effect.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Which is why I hesitate sometimes to talk about these things because going to protest is good. It's good to go to protests, it's good to be surrounded by other people who disagree with the government, it's good to get galvanized, you know, to feel that fellow feeling. I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. Like, that's that it works, it's important. But at the same time, we can't ignore the fact that there's some there's some danger, there's some violence. Very possible.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

We may have some reach by the time the next No Kings rally rolls around. We're going to a new feed for the public, so we may have some reach. I think I'd like to try to start an online movement where more people paint their faces like Danhausen uh at those rallies. I mean, that would be fun. That'd be really fun. He's a character that's obviously gonna break containment, so and you know, even if he's even if they don't know who he is, it could be like the the new Guy Fox mask.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like all of these movements, you know, the most recent major protest wave movements, they all have their like aesthetic. Uh the Hong Kong protests, everybody had umbrellas. I can't remember what they were called in France, but you know, those the those protests where they they were all wearing yellow jackets, they were all wearing like yellow hazard jackets. Um, there's the guy Fox masks. And so, yeah, you know, having having like a unified aesthetic is helpful. I mean, this is one of the reasons that people uh wear all black uh when they're doing black blocks stuff. Um it's partly because it's harder to identify them, and it's also because it's unified aesthetic. Incidentally, in this in this Texas case that I was talking about, simply owning clothing that was all black, like like they raided these people's homes, and they were like, you have these all-black outfits that are just like that you can buy from Walmart.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

I think I might be onto something with this recommendation that more people wear face makeup. Vanhausen themed. But uh more of this makeup might actually make for a slightly more intimidating protest. That's possible, yeah. Those people, if they saw, you know, there's nine million people out there protesting the other day, if say 10,000 of them were dressed like Danhausen, uh, with the white face paint and the kind of like witchy, menacing look, they people wouldn't necessarily know that was for Danhausen, but it would upset all of the Christian fundamentalists, that's for sure. That is true, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Uh and so that's I guess a danger. But at the same time, part of protest is fun and joy and play. Uh, and so if people, if people get something out of dressing like this, you know, fun, silly character and cursing the US government, I think that would be positive, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

I think there's like a ambiguity point there that would sort of be like the other the obverse side of the coin to the uh okay signal, meaning white supremacy. Yes. Uh in you know, the a lot of these a lot of these young people they like to be transgressive to sort of make subtle political points that they can deny uh in in the case anybody calls them out. And I I think I think that a lot of people, if they saw Dan Housen face paint on marchers, they would start calling them demonic. They probably would, you're right. I think there's some value in a panic about the demons uh of the New King's rallies. Maybe it'll be the would be the reason to get violent with the protesters, but that little hint of menace there might benefit the rally some.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

The hint of menace that you're talking about, that's one of the things about what protests are. Like a peaceful protest is a is a claim to the government. Look what we can get people to do. Think about what else we could get people to do. That is what a protest is. The government already knows that a lot of people don't like Trump, right? Everybody knows this. We've known, we know this. The question is, what are people going to do about it? And people are willing to take time out of their day. If people are willing to disrupt other people's lives, I mean, this is the challenge of, this is the purpose of protests that violate the law, that, you know, take a street or block a highway or some other thing. The point of it is to threaten the government. That's what its function is. And I think that this is one of the this is one of the critiques that people make of No Kings is that it is a protest that has no disruptive content. And I think that there's I think that there's a value for that as being like an entry point, a lowest common denominator thing. It's not comparable to the things that were happening in the civil rights era. Those protests were illegal. Driving across state lines with a bus that had an integrated passenger set where people were black and white on the same bus, that was illegal. Black people sitting at the lunch counter, that was illegal. Black people at Woolworth's, that was illegal. Marching between your church and the mayor's office in Birmingham, Alabama, illegal. These are things that are disruptive to everyday life and that like directly violate the law. Uh, the point being to show that the law was was illegitimate. And so No Kings isn't comparable in that capacity. It's uh, or at least most of them. Like some of the No Kings rallies did engage in some stuff, marching on streets and things like that. But mostly they're uh on the sidewalk, you know, they're on the side of the road, which makes them a very different kind of protest. Again, I don't think that they're bad. They're just kind of like an entry point.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

I think the numbers are there now where they can there can be a little implicit menace.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Especially one that's sort of cartoonified. I don't know when the next No Kings rally is, but you know, stay stay tuned for that. I think organically speaking, a lot more people are going to be made up like Danhausen without our call for action at all. But uh I think we can take credit for it. Uh something happening organically.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I would be glad to take credit for it. As long as as long as he doesn't get milkshake ducked.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

The Autocredic Despair Podcast with Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig Johnson. Available wherever you get your podcast.