Autocratic Despair: The Podcast
Stare into the abyss of the United States' descent into Authoritarianism with a truly funny comedian from Green Bay, WI and a very serious PHD in Global Fascism Studies from Cal-Berkeley.
Very Funny. Very Serious.
Autocratic Despair: The Podcast
Trump's Hair Was a Longtime Subscriber to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter
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This week opens not with despair but with vanity — specifically, the sudden and much-discussed fullness of the President's hair. Somewhere around the Vegas speech, Trump's hairline staged a comeback that the internet spent a full week arguing about, and the White House declined to confirm, deny, or otherwise dignify. Nick's read is that we have now reached the stage of the republic where the toupee gets a press inquiry. And if it is a wig — still officially unproven, a hairpiece expert on record saying she doesn't think so — the truly confounding part is that the wig appears to be of his own hairstyle. The man had access to any hair he wanted, the full glory of the toupee, every option on the table, and he used the most powerful hairpiece money can buy to painstakingly recreate the exact hair he was already losing. He had the genie and wished for the same lamp. Nick, for the record, is rooting for the wig — a President with a wig collection has a weapon, a way to bury any bad headline by simply appearing in a new one, and honestly, given the alternative topics on the table this week, he would rather talk about a crew cut ("he's getting serious about Iran") than reckon with anything in the Epstein file.
Which is where the Wrestling Observer Newsletter comes in, because Nick's actual plan for the day It All Ends is not to dance in the street. It's to check Reddit — the pro wrestling parody board r/SCJerk, where the running gag is that every famous person who dies "was a longtime subscriber to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter," a loving send-up of wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer's habit of shoehorning that detail into his obituaries. Shinzo Abe was a longtime subscriber. Every dead celebrity is, whether or not they could have plausibly known the newsletter existed. With Trump, of course, it would actually be believable — the man hosted WrestleManias and put Linda McMahon in the Cabinet. Nick's plan for the aftermath is to be conspicuously, obnoxiously circumspect: no celebrating, just a slow drip of passive-aggressive midwestern grace aimed directly at grieving MAGA, reposting every gloating tweet with a wounded "we have to do better, our fellow Americans are hurting right now." A bit laid on so thick that anyone who gets it knows it's a bit, and no one else can prove a thing.
Despair numbers: Craig comes in measured, Nick a little higher, and the number is mostly an on-ramp to the thing that eats the rest of the episode — Tucker Carlson.
Because Carlson has a manifesto, and it is a lot. In June he broke publicly with the Republican Party; he can't stomach a war with Iran waged, as he sees it, at Israel's behest, and he's taken to calling the two parties a uniparty state posing as a democracy. Then, in the first week of August, he laid out ten things America should be in a ninety-minute livestream — careful to insist it was not a party launch (no paperwork, no fundraising, technically true) and to frame the ten points as merely the goals of whatever comes next. Nick reads them to Craig one at a time, single words with Carlson's own explanations attached, and asks Craig to supply the historical analysis. What follows is Craig getting progressively, genuinely angrier as the list unspools.
The ten: fair (equal laws, no special treatment for the Epstein class — which Craig clocks as the old fascist law-and-order appeal, the rule of law where they make the rules). Sovereign (freedom from foreign influence, "specifically nations like Israel," plus a swipe at banks and debt — which Craig names flatly as antisemitism, the claim that America is secretly controlled by an international conspiracy). Productive (an economy of tangible goods and American farmland over finance and surveillance — Craig hears the blood-and-soil fantasy, the productive native people versus the parasitic financial class, and calls it what it echoes: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the old-time religion of fascism). Beautiful (classical architecture, clean streets, an aggressive rejection of brutalism — a dog whistle stacked on a broken-windows racism about "unsafe" cities). Healthy (physical vigor, non-toxic food, and "absolute sobriety" — which sends Craig into the early-twentieth-century fitness-and-manliness movements that seeded a lot of right-wing organizing, plus a generational shot at the SSRI-and-Xanax crowd). Nick notes, for the record, that his own end-game plan involves becoming pleasantly addicted to benzodiazepines, and these people are now threatening even that.
It keeps going. Honest (dismantle the classification system — a bone tossed to the 9/11 and UFO and birther truthers, and, as Craig notes, "anti-corruption is the socialism of fools"). Optimistic (pro-natalism, children at the center of the culture — which Craig hears as straightforwardly eugenic, a new race for a new age, and anti-woman to its core). Wise (education in "immutable truths" and "unchanging human nature" — potentially a viable anti-AI message, which is the dangerous part, bolted to an anti-trans traditionalism that points straight back at what the Nazis destroyed in Weimar Germany, then the best place in the world to be queer). Decent (wars of self-defense only — a direct echo of the original, pro-Nazi America First isolationists). And united (halt mass immigration, English-only, "a common national identity" — which Craig identifies as about as close to the fourteen words as Carlson can get without saying them).
And that's the trap. Most of it, on the surface, sounds good. Nick admits it plainly: if John Ossoff had released this list, he'd be running through a wall. Fair, honest, wise, healthy — who's against those? That's the whole design. As Craig puts it, this is Carlson triangulating, red-brown politics — leftist-sounding talking points laid right alongside actual Nazi-platform material, everybody gets a fair deal and a healthy life and a beautiful city, and then, quietly, at the end: but not everybody. Only the ones who belong.
They get through all ten and the analysis is just beginning — the usury "third rail" wink to the antisemites, the Building 7 slip, the "genetic heritage" tell under optimism — when they hit two hours and agree this is too big and too serious to rush. So they're holding the rest for next week: the mechanism underneath the manifesto, the coalition assembling around it, and where this particular fusion dish has been simmering since a certain episode about a potato. To be continued.
Autocratic Despair is a comedy podcast about surviving American authoritarianism. Nick Mortensen is a comedian and father of three from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Dr. Craig Johnson holds a PhD in global fascism, lectures at UC Berkeley, and wrote How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism.
I'm gonna give out one loud laugh when I see the first person post on the pro wrestling subreddit SC jerk that uh Donald Trump was a longtime subscriber to the Wrestling Observer newsletter. I'll laugh at that. It's one of my favorite gags. Anytime somebody dies of any wrestling import or even just a feeling dies, somebody will post on subreddit R SC Jerk that uh that thing was a longtime subscriber to the Wrestling Observer Network newsletter. Well, that's great. That's excellent.
SPEAKER_00Those guys go so deep. That's so wonderful.
SPEAKER_02My favorite one was when Shinzo Abe was assassinated. This is Autocratic Despair, the podcast. I'm Nick Mortensen, a comedian and father of three from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Each week on the Autocratic Despair Podcast, I stare into the abyss with my friend, Dr. Craig Johnson, a PhD in global fascism, lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 2025's most important book, How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism. Dr. Craig, on a scale of one to ten, where would you rate your autocratic despair this week?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh honestly feeling a little demoralized this week, you know. Not necessarily from Trump or other authoritarian crap, so I'm gonna say a five.
SPEAKER_02Anything you want to talk about here?
SPEAKER_01Uh, you know, just uh the general state of higher education and whether or not we believe that it's useful for people to learn how to think or read, or any sort of independent evaluation of themselves or their ability to understand anything about the world, whether or not we consider cheating to be normal. You just read enough tweets of people being like, Well, I wanted to read this book, but it was too hard, so I asked a robot to read it for me, and so I read the book. Like, if you don't want to read, don't. Just don't. Just don't read it. That's okay. You don't have to. Just don't lie. Just that kind of stuff. Yeah, nothing important. Well, Nick, where's your uh okay?
SPEAKER_02I'm at a six. I was at seven last week, and I kind of backed down from that because I don't know if you've noticed this, but Trump is clearly wearing a wig right now. Oh, yeah. It's about time he started wearing a wig. I'm fully on board with it. That's true. His health seems to be getting demonstrably worse. What's weird about it is that his toupee is not in the style of his hair from his 30s. The wig is of his hairstyle. Yeah. His hairstyle was specifically developed to function exactly as a toupee would.
SPEAKER_01That's a good point. His toupee is a comb over. There's some critical theory going on here. This is what folks would call a similar cron. Yeah. It's a mimic of a mimic. It's not supposed to look real. It's supposed to look fake.
SPEAKER_02It's supposed to look fake, but it's still his hairstyle. It's such a weird deal. It wouldn't fool anybody, except for all the people that buy his much more obvious lies. What a tangled wig we weave when our practice is to deceive. He's just locked into that hairstyle now. The prison of the comb over. Jesus, no. He can have any hairstyle he wants with the toupee. That's kind of the glory of the toupee. It might take a series of transition wigs over the course of a few months to get there gracefully, but uh he could do it. He's a billionaire. He could do that. He can afford that. Easy. The White House, for their part, would neither confirm nor deny that he's wearing a hair piece. So he's fooling enough people that there is some plausible deniability. Maybe he's waiting for the right moment. I don't think it matters what's on the front page. If he shows up trying to sell an obvious wig, that's gonna get headlines.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I feel like if I were 80 and that somebody was just like, What happened to your hair? I'd just be like, Oh, it's a new wig.
SPEAKER_02He could do it multiple times if he just showed up for a different wig every time. Yeah. I feel like I'd welcome that. Yeah. Like I don't want to reckon with the Epstein stuff anyway. I'd much rather talk about Trump showing up with the crew cut. Oh, he's got he's got a flat top? He must be getting serious about Iran. Nice. He got slick back hair, you know, he's gonna goose the markets a little bit. He could just go full Gordon Gecko this time, you know. Or he could just go crazy Shay, like a 15-year-old boy who has yet to learn about Pamas. He could bring the collection of all the foam heads and all the wigs out. I'm a hundred percent certain his heads that he puts the wigs on look exactly like him. He's not one of those guys that would have a plain old sphere.
SPEAKER_01No, this is not a mannequin. This is a representation of the man himself. Slightly younger representation of the man. Probably 50, let's guess.
SPEAKER_02People get incredulous when he says he's running again in 2028, but he's not gonna be around. If he is, he's not gonna need to run for president. So every little acknowledgement of his old age and his bad health helped me remember that he's temporary.
SPEAKER_01He's an aging old man. This is reminding me of the longest-lasting dictator in Portugal. His name was Antonio Salazar. He was the dictator from the 30s until the 70s, until he had a stroke, went into a coma, and was removed from office. He was removed as prime minister and replaced by another guy. But then he recovered from his stroke. He woke up from his coma. He was still a little bit hampered by the results of the stroke, but he had been removed from office. Were there wacky hijinks? There were. What happened was that he had to stay in the hospital because he was still bedridden. He wasn't fully recovered from having woken up from this coma. And so they pretended to him that he was still the prime minister and would bring him documents and stuff to read and stamp and sign his name. He died thinking he was prime minister two years later. I could absolutely see those kinds of shenanigans happening inside the White House. I would welcome that. Absolutely. I don't even know if I'd be surprised if that's happening now, honestly.
SPEAKER_02It would be such a Twilight Zone level ending for that guy where it's like, well, we're never gonna catch him, but he's gonna be forced to live out the rest of his days, assuming he's the most important man on earth while everybody else is pretending that he is as well. We've done it before with Wilson. That might be the best possible ending for the Trump story. That's a monkey paw grasping situation. He's not going to prison. He's not even gonna be on trial for anything. A prison of his own decaying mind? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could get into that.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, it would be a pretty satisfying one, aside from him being at The Hague or something like that. As somebody deathly afraid of dementia, that would be a true nightmare that I could imagine him living out.
unknownDr.
SPEAKER_02Craig, do you have plans for when it happens? You know what I mean, right? It.
SPEAKER_01Actually, I do. I have a bottle of champagne, and I have a I have a bell that I'm gonna ring.
SPEAKER_02You're gonna stand on your front porch? I'm gonna get on my roof. People will probably be dancing in the streets where you live. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna be the most restrained and circumspect I've been through this whole process. I'm gonna give out one loud laugh when I see the first person post on the pro wrestling subreddit SC Jerk that uh Donald Trump was a longtime subscriber to the Wrestling Observer newsletter. I'll laugh at that. It's one of my favorite gags. Anytime somebody dies of any wrestling import or even just a feeling dies, somebody will post on subreddit R SC jerk that uh that thing was a longtime subscriber to the Wrestling Observer Network newsletter. Oh, that's great. That's excellent.
SPEAKER_00Those guys go so deep. That's so wonderful.
SPEAKER_02My favorite one was when Shinzo Abe was assassinated. It was a gag that I was getting tired of and somebody put Shinzo Abe was a longtime subscriber.
SPEAKER_01That's hilarious.
SPEAKER_02And it got me so, so good. It's one of my favorite things. I'm gonna indulge myself in that because I have to. That is very funny. And then I'm I'm gonna play it cool, I think.
SPEAKER_01That's a good move. I don't drink that much, but I have a flask. Is that every time I get an I voted sticker, I cover this flask with it. Perfect place to put them on a flask, actually. It's a great place to put them. I started doing it in 2016. So it's covered at this point. So that's the plan is I'm gonna ring this bell, I'm gonna crack open some champagne, I'm gonna run around, and then I'm gonna remember who's the president now and be upset.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna be so restrained, I'm gonna be conspicuously circumspect. I'm gonna try to center the true victims, mega enthusiasts. And I'll post something like I never agreed with Trump, but I know today my fellow Americans are really hurting. So I wanna, out of respect for my fellow Americans, table this. And then I am gonna go full dickhead for the rest of my life to these people.
SPEAKER_01I think that that is appropriate and fine. People should not be able to live this shit down. And I think that your suggestion that we could give them a day, honestly, that might be the best possible.
SPEAKER_02Because they're gonna cycle through all the stages of grief pretty fast. They're gonna get to the anger part. They're gonna try to combine it with the bargaining. There'll be people that think if we just kill enough liberals that day, it will resurrect Trump. Somebody's gonna post that on True Social. There will be people who think that. Paula White. Yeah, God, Paula White. It looks like we're getting a sequel to that red-brown alliance that we talked about in episode two, a whole potato or a hole in a potato. If you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it. There's some excellent quips. We were still on the Talarico train. You can see how far we've come as a podcast. We mentioned how Gro Canna had established that he'd be willing to work with anyone as long as they were of good faith. And he specifically shouted out Congressman Thomas Massey from Kentucky and recent Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green as people that were operating in good faith that he is willing to work with. Seemed a little dumb at the time. Now it makes a little more sense. There may well be a new third political party brewing in the United States right now. We've wanted a third party forever. That seems nice, right? Oh, so nice. It seems to be these days that you either got to be a MAGA enthusiast or a democratic socialist. And if you don't want that, there's nothing for you. But maybe this is the thing. Oh, yeah. Probably no chance that a third party would get anyone elected. Maybe, maybe not. They may not be able to get their candidates elected, but they very well could be the party that sways the vote for the name brand parties, which is why you ought to be paying attention to that. This new alternative party that doesn't exist yet, they've got some concepts and a leader. This whole operation is being fronted by Tucker Carlson, the man who has inspired more people to say, this fucking guy than anyone else in history. Him again? Tucker Carlson. Jesus. That fucking guy. Former top-rated commentator on Fox News, who parted ways with him because he was the leading purveyor of the stolen election for Trump in 2024 when he lost to Biden. He did the propaganda so well that it cost Fox News a billion dollars in lawsuits, so they hiked him. Tucker Carlson isn't going away easy. He's still a leading voice in the political podcast space. Still very influential over on Twitter. Still one of the great political minds of our day. That is true and that is sad.
SPEAKER_01Unironically, that is the case. He is an extremely influential person, very successful, very good at it.
SPEAKER_02Now that he's self-producing, the shackles are on. He's got guests on his show that are all over the map. He platformed Nick Fuentes for an hour last fall. Didn't say he likes him, didn't say he agreed with them, called Fuentes, quote, that little gay kid afterwards, but he still had him on. Tucker and some friends that you may know, if you're an astute political observer, have been cooking up a new movement. They're splitting off from MAGA because maybe they've gone too far. Maybe he's splitting off from MAGA because it didn't go far enough.
SPEAKER_01To cool with Israel, you see. I think that if anybody in the United States is going to successfully produce a big fascist movement, Carlson would be my bet now that Charlie Kirk is dead. Before Kirk's assassination, I would have said Charlie Kirk, but it's probably Carlson.
SPEAKER_02There's nobody better at making liberals angry than Tucker Carlson. No. Makes me angry. Just the thought of him makes me angry. Just the fact that I know that in my thought of him, he's not wearing any sock. But he does have boat shoes on. Ha! I know this for a fact.
SPEAKER_01He's wearing boat shoes with no socks. He doesn't wear the bow ties anymore, but spiritually. He's got a fabric belt on right now. Spiritually. And he does all this shit in like a fake hunting cabin full of trophies that he didn't get. It's just so dumb.
SPEAKER_02Tucker Carlson and the gang are about to make their play for the America First crowd. The real Americans who care about putting our country first don't want us to start foreign wars. They're not going for the Groipers, though, not yet. Gropers are incels, incels get no sex. And the people that are down with the Tucker Carlson movement absolutely fuck. They have to. It's part of the platform. Carlson's making his move. He's fed up. Trump bombed Iran. He kept protecting Israel and the Epstein class. Tucker Carlson's pissed. Trump's people are pissed. A little. They don't mind it that much because it's Trump and it makes the liberals upset too. And they'd rather have Trump than a liberal leftist who no doubt would have gotten us into World War III instead of this tiny little quagmire we're in in Iran. In June of this year, Tucker Carlson says he no longer could support the Republican Party. Can't stomach going to war with Iran at the behest of Israel. That's just a bridge too far. Carlson says the Democrats and the Republicans are in lockstep. The United States is a uniparty state posing as a democracy, controlled by Israel. It's nice to see there is a breaking point for those guys. Bombing Iran, fine if it's all right. But the second we do it as a collab with Israel, too much. Crosses a line. The first week of August, Tucker Carlson does a 90-minute live stream. Pretty spicy stuff in there. It's a complete break with Trump. Carlson doesn't just disagree with Trump, he accuses Trump of betrayal. He claims Trump's push for regime change war in Iran is suicidal and murderous.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02He specifically calls Trump out for threatening to erase their civilization with nuclear weapons on Truth Social. Called Pete Hegseth a bloodthirsty monkey. Oh wow. Calling for the murder of innocents, which is an incredibly aggressive, deeply personal bit of rhetoric to be aiming at a cabot official. It's hurtful. Yes. He probably could have gotten away with it had he called Heggseth a silverback gorilla. I'd rather be a bloodthirsty great ape than a bloodthirsty monkey. And I know Pete Heggseth would too.
SPEAKER_01That would have been a little easier his stomach.
SPEAKER_02I mean, monkey is a racially charged insult, uh certainly. That rhetoric towards a secretary of defense from a political commentary is the sort of stuff that used to end a career. Yeah. Nothing matters anymore. Oh no. He's careful to make sure that he says he's not launching a third party. He's just looking to share a manifesto that lays out ten things we should be. Says we can think of them as the goals of whatever comes next after it happens. But we all know what's going on. I think I can speak for you, Dr. Craig, when I say I've always been curious as to the vision that Tucker Carlson has of a future United States of America.
SPEAKER_01As a scholar of fascism, I am deeply curious because as we're about to get into when we talk about these points, maybe what Carlson wants is to make his own third party and like a weird appendix on the right wing, and that's going to be how he makes a little world for himself. Or it might be an attempt at an insurgency inside the Republican Party. And he's trying to build a new constituency, a new wing, a new faction inside the party that is more formalized, more organized, and not as deeply connected to Trump's person as MAGA is. I don't know. He's inscrutable. I do not want to scroot Tucker Carlson. Even if you were to try, your attempts will be in vain.
SPEAKER_02I have no desire to scrutin the man. Sweet. Tucker Carlson thinks we ought to have some goals, some aspirations. Tucker's got a list. 10 memorable bullet points that he'd like to walk us through. It's a manifesto, after all. No, thanks. We're supposed to have nothing nice to say about AI, but it has been great for manifestos.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, previously you had to go and copy-paste the Columbine shooters or something, but what is a mass shooting if not a cry for attention?
SPEAKER_02I mean, that's what they literally are, yeah. The least I can do is try to understand how the shooter sees things.
SPEAKER_01I want to be clear here. Nick and I are certified weirdos. Don't read their manifestos. I don't recommend that you do it. Uh the whole reason that you're listening to this show is that we can do it for you, and you don't have to. I gotta be honest with you, Dr.
SPEAKER_02Craig. Most school shooters they can't write for shit. I gotta go download the zip file. Google Gemini is a great tool. You can upload a manifesto and work through it chunk by chunk. The manifestos are getting better because the school shooters are using it. Ted Kaczynski wrote that shit on Typewriter. Just as an aside here, using a large language model for your manifesto is quite a choice. I get it, but you've already gone to some trouble to capture people's attention. Ultimately, you're really just cheating yourself. That's true. Kind of undermines the whole endeavor. I'm supposed to believe that you're so worried about being demographically replaced that you're creating a plan to have a glorious bloodbath that they'll be talking about on Kiwi Farms message boards for weeks to come. But you can't be bothered to give us your unvarnished thoughts. Are you really that bothered if you're using Chat GPT?
SPEAKER_01You got me a week, Snick. That's fucking hilarious. Fuck. These people are doing these like big civilization things, and it's like, oh yeah, we'll we'll be talking about that for weeks on end. For like a whole news cycle, we'll talk about that. Unless there's another school shooting in the next couple days. Or like you kind of fuck it up or something like that.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna tell you about the Tucker Carlson manifesto, don't you, Craig? Please. I'm gonna give you the single word he uses, a brief explanation of what he means. Then I'd like you to chime in for historical analysis. Are you ready? Absolutely. As far as Tucker Carlson is concerned, America ought to be fair, a society where immutable laws apply equally to everyone, completely eliminating the two-tiered justice system and the special treatment of the wealthy Epstein class.
SPEAKER_01Okay, now that's interesting. Fascists often appeal to law and order. Of course, it's their rule and they control the law. The idea that Carlson might be trying to create a sort of fascist populist anti-rich coalition, that's hearkening back to Trump 2016. Trump got on stage and was like, I know the system is rigged, I rig the system. That was part of Trump's original appeal. Trump combined that with his image as a player and a billionaire. Carlson doesn't have that image. Instead, he's gonna try to pretend to be more like an actual everyman, despite the fact that, you know, he's actually a Nepo baby. That's beside the point. Appealing to fairness, appealing to the rule of law, that's standard fascist shit.
SPEAKER_02It's a 10-point list. Number two out of the 10, as far as Tucker Carlson's concerned, America ought to be sovereign. Total freedom from foreign influence, specifically lobbying from nations like Israel. Freedom from domestic enslavement by banks and high interest debt.
SPEAKER_01Now that's just anti-Semitism. I am not a fan of any country anywhere, certainly not a fan of countries that oppress and murder people. I'm not trying to be an apologist for Israel, the country. Specifically calling out Israeli influence in US politics, that's an anti-Semitic dog whistle. Pairing that with talking about the control of banks, that's just shed of anti-Semitism. No question about it. The content of that point is him claiming that the United States is controlled by an international Jewish conspiracy. That's literally what that's saying. That's anti-Semitic. He tried to make it land a little bit by using the word usury. Oh my god. Wait, did he did he actually say that?
SPEAKER_02Of course he did. What fuck? Oh my god. Number three, Tucker Carlson thinks America ought to be productive, an economy based on creating tangible, beautiful, and useful goods, especially agricultural food from American farmland, rather than relying on financial speculation, military weapons, and surveillance tech.
SPEAKER_01Oh my okay, yeah. This is this is just Nazi shit. What the Nazis claimed they wanted was to take Eastern Europe and give it to good German farmers. That was their whole platform. We're gonna take all this beautiful farmland and we're gonna give it to German families. That has historically been a policy that the United States has had as it was taking land from indigenous people and from Mexican people during the U.S.'s various wars. Pretending that the U.S. agricultural economy was now built on slavery is also another classic when it comes to the United States' imagining of itself as an agriculturally productive nation, or that our agriculture is not currently based on undocumented immigrants, primarily from Mexico and from the rest of Latin America. Yeah, this is just especially paired with the previous point, saying that there is a parasitic financial class that is sucking the bones and blood of a productive, natural native group of people. That's the protocols of the Elders of Zion. That's some old-time religion when it comes to fascism. You're fired up, Craig. Oh my god. We're only to the fourth point.
SPEAKER_02Tucker Carlson thinks America ought to be beautiful, an aesthetically pleasing and orderly environment, prioritizing classic architecture and clean streets while aggressively rejecting brutalist concrete buildings, public drug use, graffiti, and crime. Does not like the architecture.
SPEAKER_01So this is him saying, We used to build things in this country. I'm sure that that's just something Carlson has said, right? I guess he wants all of our facades to look like a non decaying Gotham City or something like that. Big columns of enormous. Shouldered men carrying stuff. Aesthetically, I kind of like that too, because I'm a historian, but I also love brutalist architecture. An attack on brutalism, that's an anti-Semitic dog whistle. Again, because it's attacking Eastern European and Soviet-style architecture from the mid-century, attacking urban spaces as being unsafe. That's a racist dog whistle. That's right back to 80s, broken windows, New York is this unsafe cesspool, San Francisco is full of zombies. The idea that America should be beautiful, ultimately, I agree that people deserve to live in beautiful urban spaces. But this is, oh my god, this is wild. And we're only halfway.
SPEAKER_02Number five, Tucker Carlson believes America ought to be healthy. By healthy, he means a population characterized by physical vigor, access to non-toxic food, and absolute sobriety. Absolute sobriety? Rejecting the societal dependence on pharmaceuticals like SSRIs, amphetamines, and benzodiapanine. Are you kidding me? There'll still be some Cape Cods at the club from time to time.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Okay, yeah. This is Make America Healthy Again. All of that is hearkening back to early 20th century, early right-wing formations that are all about emphasizing masculinity and manliness and the national character by making kids go out and be Boy Scout, having fitness clubs. A lot of the seeds for many organizations that ultimately become right-wing organizations are in early gyms, gymnastics clubs, and shit like that in Germany and the US. That's all there. And then we have this host crunchy anti-GMO, anti-science. We have an attack on the psychiatric industry. We have a sort of veiled generational attack, a Xanax generation, an SSRI generation. That's an anti-millennial attack, for sure.
SPEAKER_02That's my plan, Benzos. When I've decided that it's all over, Dr. Craig, I'm not going to prison. I'm going on Benzos. Xanax. My ace of the hole. Unassailable. This might not be something we can solve in my lifetime, but at least there's Xanax. We really can't let him win now. This is wild. Item number six already. Tucker Carlson thinks America ought to be honest. A government that is legally forbidden from lying to its citizens, achieved primarily by dismantling the national security classification system to expose institutional corruption. What? They don't want you lying to them anymore. Now that's an interesting one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's throwing a bone to the conspiracy theory wing. UFO truther people, the 9-11 truther people, the birthers, people who say that Obama wasn't born in the US. That's a bone thrown to those people. It's also an anti-corruption message, which is the kind of thing that politicians often say when they don't have any actionable things that they want to do and are just sort of like vaguely stuff is bad. And it's because of this particular man. And if we imprison this particular man, then it'll be over. Anti-corruption is the socialism of fools. There I said it.
SPEAKER_02This is what everybody's going to be running on from now on, anti-corruption.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I know. Anti-corruption is something that the Democrats talk about a lot. It's a losing game. That sucks that you said that because that's what I was hoping would end it all, the corruption and the investigations. It's not going to help. Maybe I'm wrong, but anti-corruption actions and activism and movements, those have taken place in all sorts of countries throughout the last 20 years. And what's happened?
SPEAKER_02It's a very pessimistic outlook, Dr. Craig. Tucker Carlson will not stand for that. Because Tucker Carlson thinks America ought to be optimistic. Oh. A forward-looking pro-natalist society that places the creation and raising of children at the center of its culture, rejecting the short-term profit-driven mindset of the current ruling class.
SPEAKER_01Once again, this is just fascism. We need to build a new race of new men commensurate to our new age. That's just Nazi race propaganda. There's nothing going on there. It's also anti-woman. Clearly, the content of this is abortion should be illegal, prophylactics should be illegal, abortifacient should be illegal, and birth control should be illegal. Clearly, what this means. They want Americans to fuck. They don't want them to fuck. They want them to have children. Fucking for fun. They don't want that.
SPEAKER_02Why don't you be optimistic? Maybe do some fucking. Not fucking for you, fucking for the future.
SPEAKER_01Literally, what he's saying is close your eyes and think of England.
SPEAKER_02That's what he's saying. Now we're into the eighth point. To Tucker Carlson and the gang, America ought to be wise. We should have an educational system focused on teaching children immutable truths, practical physical reality, and unchanging human nature, rather than chasing fleeting technological trends or ideological conditioning.
SPEAKER_01Whew. Okay, now this one's a tough one because it could be an anti-AI statement. And I think that building an anti-AI coalition is a politically viable position open to somebody either of the left or the right. I think that that's really viable. People are worried about whether or not their children are going to be able to think and read and get jobs. They should be worried about that. AI is a cash grab by elite rich, powerful people, and so presenting it that way is probably good. That's the problem with this whole platform. I think it's going to be extremely popular, at least on a certain segment of the US population. That's what you need 10, 12, 15% to make a big, powerful coalition and get other people to ride your coattails. That's what Trump did. This wise thing, it's also clearly we gotta return to traditional values. It's anti-trans. This is straight back to Nazi shit. Germany was, prior to the Nazis, the best place in the world to be. If you were gay or trans or gender not conforming or something like that. It was the best place in the world to be. Even in the German Empire, it was a relatively good place to be. One of the first public advocates for the rights of queer people was in the Kaiser Wilhelm German Empire. Even in the 19th century, they were pretty good about that kind of stuff. The Nazis reversed all that, burned all the books, and killed everybody. That is specifically what this is hearkening back to. And the fascists who read it know that. They know exactly what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_02They're trying to thread the needle on AI. Yes, they are. They haven't gone full rejection of it. There's a certain group of people that would get on it based on that. Carlson calls for AI to be understood. Yes. Straddling the fence there a little bit. Yes. That's as anti-AI as he can be. We know who's bankrolling him. On the nine. Tucker Carlson believes that America should be decent. A fundamentally pro-human nation that strictly wages war only in self-defense, refusing to tolerate the killing of innocents or the prioritization of abstract systems over human lives.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that's hearkening back to the original America First Movement, which was an isolationist movement inside the US around the Second World War, which was also a pro-Nazi movement. The original isolationist America First movement was saying this is war that's happening in Europe. We don't need to get our hands dirty. We don't need to get involved in any of this. We shouldn't concern ourselves with it at all. It was primarily a movement run by German Americans, like my ancestors. Although German Americans were politically divided between the right and the far left in the 19th century and early 20th century. This is that. This is an oldie time isolationist right wing, which is one of the things that Trump said and lied about.
SPEAKER_02Very indecent of him, and there's not going to be any room for that in Tucker Carlson's America. No indecency. The last point that Tucker Carlson makes in his manifesto. Oh boy.
SPEAKER_01This is unmasked. That's as close to the 14 words as he's gonna get in this manifesto. Those of you unfamiliar, the 14 words are a classic white supremacist slogan about a white future and white children and yada yada.
SPEAKER_02We must ensure a future for our white children. Something, something.
SPEAKER_01This is the 14 words filtered through GPT or Gemini, one of them, right? Making English the sole federal language. Like fuck right off. What are you afraid?
SPEAKER_02Most of what Tucker had to say is pretty difficult to oppose. Sounds like a pretty solid set of ideas. I like the wise, I like the decent, I like healthy, optimistic, beautiful. I too would like to see us aspiring to be fair, honest, and why? Those things are all super.
SPEAKER_01This is the problem, is that aunts and uncles around the country are gonna hear this and be like, I don't know. I like decency.
SPEAKER_02If it was anybody other than Tucker Carlson, I'd be pretty interested. If John Osnaff had put out this manifesto, I'd be running through a wall for him right now.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's the issue here. This is Carlson talking about some leftist talking points, while he's also talking about actual Nazi fascism. The words he's using, a lot of it is gonna sound great to people. This is Carlson triangulating. As you said at the beginning of the segment, this is red-brown shit. This is full-on Nazi party platform stuff, alongside saying, yeah, you know, everybody should get a fair deal. Everybody should have the right to a healthy life, everybody should have the right to a nice urban space. And then at the end, he says, Well, but not everybody though, only the ones who belong.
SPEAKER_02Tucker Carlson, I still managed to throw some dog whistles in it. It can't be all from the new album. Gotta play the hits, right? While criticizing the high interest rates is a standard populist talking point, he made sure to jam the word usury in there. Usury has some centuries-old historical ties to anti-Semitic tropes. Yeah, that's medieval shit.
SPEAKER_01He subtly acknowledged that by calling it the true third rail. Oh, he called it the third rail? Okay, well, that means that he wants people who are politically motivated by anti-Semitism to throw all of their weight behind him.
SPEAKER_02Also, normalized 9-11 conspiracy theories during that section on honesty casually slipped in a reference to the collapse of the World Trade Center Building 7. He frames all upstanding 9-11 truthers as normal people just asking questions who are unfairly maligned as Nazis. That means that he's going to try to blame 9-11 on Israel. I haven't heard any analysis taking a position that this is full-on. Mask off, oldie time Nazi talk, but it clearly is.
SPEAKER_01This is This is This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. I take it back.
SPEAKER_02I take it back. I'm at a seven. There's much more to say on this topic, but both Dr. Craig and I have hard outs with this. Let's talk about this next week. We're gonna table it and pick it up again next week. This seems to merit that kind of in-depth analysis.
SPEAKER_01This is this is some serious serious business.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Until then, thank you for staring into the abyss with us this week. This has been Autocratic Despair, the podcast. Stare into the abyss with friends, the Autocratic Despair podcast with Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig Johnson. And don't forget Dr. Craig's other podcast, 15 Minutes of Fascism, available wherever you get your podcast.
