This Authoritarian Life

🎙️ Our "Turning Points" season pivots from the dramatic electoral shifts in Hungary to a sudden constitutional crisis in Turkey. In an unprecedented move, a regional court has annulled the 2023 congress of the main opposition party (CHP), effectively decapitating its elected leadership and handing control back to a defeated old guard.

In this episode, Erdem and Kristóf dissect how Erdoğan is attempting to engineer a "controlled opposition." Together, we trace the roots of this drastic state intervention back to the CHP's sweeping victories in the 2024 local elections. Those wins signaled a credible threat to the ruling AKP, which is currently struggling to maintain its popularity amidst a crippled economy, soaring inflation, and mounting public anger.

The conversation pushes hard against the limits of traditional party politics in a deeply authoritarian landscape. By exploiting internal factionalism and relying on archaic legal mechanisms, the regime has paralyzed the institutional opposition, raising serious fears that Turkey's multi-party system has effectively come to an end. Drawing comparisons to the political stagnation of pre-2026 Hungary, we ask whether hoping for a return to democratic "normalcy" within the current parliamentary framework is a trap.

Can grassroots, grievance-based politics—such as the recent wildcat miners' strikes or a resurgence of the Gezi spirit—overcome a captured institutional opposition? How will the Kurdish political base react to the crushing of the main  republican party? And what happens when the opposition's political imagination remains entirely limited to political parties that the state can dismantle at will?

🎧 Tune into This Authoritarian Life — "Hijacking the Opposition: Is This the End of Multi-Party Politics in Turkey?", with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren. Third episode in Season 3 exploring authoritarian turning points.

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🎙️ Our Hungary election mini-series continues in the wake of a seismic result: Péter Magyar's Tisza party swept Fidesz from power with a two-thirds supermajority, ending sixteen years of Viktor Orbán's rule.

In this episode, Kristóf is joined by his former party co-founder and political economy scholar Gábor Scheiring to make sense of what happened — and the treacherous transition ahead. Together, we trace how Orbán's political settlement unraveled under the weight of a stagnant low-wage economy and exhausted moral authority. The conversation pushes hard against the celebratory end-of-history narrative. Magyar, a former Fidesz insider, won by pairing an anti-corruption message with Fidesz-lite nationalism. Now, armed with a two-thirds supermajority, he faces an entrenched Fidesz apparatus that still wields massive influence over the media, economy, and judiciary. Drawing on the cautionary example of Slovakia — where a pro-European correction gave way to a new cycle of illiberalism under Robert Fico — we ask whether Hungary risks repeating the pattern. 

Can Tisza move beyond the short-term "sugar rush" of unlocking billions in frozen EU funds? What happens when a new dominant party fills the entire democratic space, with only a weakened civil society to enforce accountability and no left-wing challenger in sight? And what does Orbán's defeat mean for the European far right?

🎧 Tune into This Authoritarian Life — "Hungary After the Landslide: Is This the End of Illiberalism?", with Gábor Scheiring and Kristóf Szombati. Second in a two-part series on Hungary's 2026 election.

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🎙️ Our Hungary election mini-series begins nine days before the April 12 vote.

In this episode, Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren discuss what is actually at stake in Hungary's election — beyond the question of whether Viktor Orbán wins or loses. Drawing on Kristóf's recent trip to Budapest and his earlier ethnographic research on how Fidesz built power in rural Hungary, the conversation explores the tense atmosphere before the vote, the rise of Péter Magyar, and the limits of his promise of "regime change."

What happens when the clientelist machinery that helped sustain Fidesz’s rule begins to falter? What does Péter Magyar’s promise of ‘regime change’ actually amount to? And how much of the system Orbán built might survive even if Fidesz loses power?

🎧 Tune into This Authoritarian Life — Hungary Before the Vote: Is Orbán's System Cracking?, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren. First in a two-part series. After the vote, we'll be joined by political economist Gábor Scheiring to discuss the result and its wider implications for authoritarian politics in Europe.

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues at another frontline: policing  as a site of concentrated state violence and neoliberal austerity management.

In this episode, we speak with Alex Vitale — Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College, coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project, and author of the influential book The End of Policing. He joins us from New York, where he serves on the transition team for Mayor Zohran Mamdani's new administration, helping to build a Department of Community Safety.

• What do real estate developers have to do with why your city sends armed officers to deal with homelessness?
• Newark's violent crime is at a 60-year low — not because of more policing, but less. What are they doing differently, and why is New York so far behind?
• Abolition is a powerful critique — but what happens when it has to become policy? What compromises, resistances, and contradictions emerge when the theory meets City Hall?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 5 — The End of Policing?  Abolitionism in New York’s City Hall, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues at another frontline: the university — where political repression and economic precarity work together to silence critical voices and disempower those who produce knowledge.

In this episode, we speak with Aslı Vatansever — a sociologist of work who was dismissed from her position in Istanbul after signing the 'Academics for Peace' petition and now lives and works in Berlin, where she wrote At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity.

• Why are precarity and repression "two sides of the same coin" — and how do they produce hopelessness and self-censorship?
• What happened to Turkish academics who signed the Peace Petition — and why did the German response to the university protests against Israel's war in Gaza feel like déjà vu?
• How do scholarships supporting 'scholars at risk' work as a type of stigma and trap?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 4 — Unsafe Positions: How Precarity and Repression Silence the University, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues at another frontline: culture — where authoritarian power doesn’t just silence dissent, but reshapes the institutions that decide what gets staged, funded, and celebrated.

In this episode, we speak with Piotr Rudzki (dramaturg; formerly of the Polski Theater in Wrocław) and Kristóf Nagy (anthropologist; author of an ethnography of the Hungarian Academy of Arts) about how cultural worlds are reorganized under illiberal rule.

• Why is defunding today’s most effective form of censorship?
• How does co-optation work through grants and patronage?
• What do terms like “culture war,” “cultural takeover,” and “hegemony” clarify—and what do they obscure?
• And where can autonomy still be built: underground, inside institutions, or through collective organization?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 3 — Defund, Co-opt, Replace: How Authoritarians Reshape Culture, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues one another urgent frontline: Serbia.

In this episode, we speak with activist-journalists Anastazija Govedarica Antanasijević and Iskra Krstić about the student-led uprising that has reshaped political life in Serbia. What began with campus blockades after the collapse of a train-station canopy rapidly grew into a nationwide movement demanding systemic change.

How did students introduce direct democracy through plenums and zborovi?
How did they build alliances that cut across class, region, and ethnic divisions—including between Orthodox and Muslim communities?
How did environmental movements prepare the ground for this moment?
And with elections approaching, can a transformational movement survive authoritarian pressure and institutionalization?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 2 — From Blockades to Reclaiming Politics: Serbia’s Student Uprising, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

Further resources:

Read Saša Savanović's piece on the meaning of "systemic change":
https://www.masina.rs/eng/with-largest-protest-in-serbia-behind-us-what-do-we-mean-by-changing-the-system/

Watch the documentary "Wake up Serbia" by director Raul Gallego Abellan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3t4EiRYzHM

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life begins at one of today’s most tragic frontlines: Gaza.

In this episode, we talk with Guy Shalev, anthropologist and executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, about how medicine has become a political weapon in Israel’s war on Gaza and in the broader occupation of Palestine.

How has Palestinian healthcare been de-developed over the years and what did this mean for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza before the genocide? What were the possibilities and limitations of human rights work before and after October 7? How have Israeli medical institutions been complicit in the destruction of Palestinian lives? And can there still be space for accountability after such devastation?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 1 — Politics of Life and Death: Gaza and the Weaponization of Medicine, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

Read more on...

-why the cumulative dismantling of Gaza’s health system amounts to genocide: https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/

-the complicity of the Israeli medical establishment: https://archive.ph/lzxNc

-the torture of medical staff from Gaza in Israel: https://www.phr.org.il/en/torture-of-medical-workers/

-the blocking of medical evacuations: https://www.phr.org.il/en/urgent-call-for-humanitarian-corridor/

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In this sixth episode of This Authoritarian Life we look at how language is used to entrench authoritarian power. Authoritarian leaders have long realized the power of propaganda, deploying radio, television and more recently social media to cement certain ideas as truths, to vindicate an exclusive right to lead the political community, to name threats and enemies, and to delegitimize critics and opponents. While they are not the only ones to deploy propaganda, they do this in particular ways. We talk to linguist and communication expert Anna Szilágyi who, after working for a decade as a journalist, has studied the deep grammar of disempowering 'language games' and recently launched a global educational program called “Words Break Bones" to raise public awareness of the power of words in private and public life.

What is the most effective strategy for killing compassion in a society? How can pronouns be used to cement walls between people? What is the significance of military metaphors? And, most importantly, how can we find a way to navigate the minefield of authoritarian propaganda?  

🎧 To find out, tune into this sixth episode of This Authoritarian Life "The Language of Authoritarianism" with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren!

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In this fifth episode of This Authoritarian Life we continue to investigate the impact of war on contemporary politics. We look at the case of Russia where our guest Arkadij Lomonosov has until recently worked as a journalist and anti-fascist activist. Reflecting on his own upbringing and personal infatuation with the young Putin in his teens, knowledge derived from long years of monitoring ultranationalist and neo-fascist groups, Arkadij illuminates Putin's appeal and the narrower attraction exercised by the neo-fascist street scene, the mutually beneficial and constantly evolving relationship between the regime and different factions of the far-right, and the way in which the war in Ukraine has re-energized the latter, while unexpectedly also leading some of its most prominent members to join the Ukrainian side.    

What is the ribbon of Saint George and how did it help Putin rebuild Russian national identity? What ideas and interests is the uneasy symbiosis between Russia’s increasingly imperial regime and neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups based on? How did leading far-right activists end up in Ukraine after 2010? And what do the US under Trump and Russia under Putin have in common?

🎧 To find out, tune into this fifth episode of This Authoritarian Life “Intertwined: The Regime and the Far-Right in Russia’’ with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren!

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