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**Next Comes What**

Author Andrea Pitzer reveals what we can learn from the rise of strongmen around the world to thwart Trump and his allies.

Latest Episodes:

Turning the World to $hit Jun 25, 2026

We are in the midst of the deliberate worsening of every aspect of existence. But we don't have to accept it.

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This week, "Next Comes What" considers the enshittification of the world. Andrea Pitzer lays out Cory Doctorow's theory of how the internet got ruined and then extends that concept to the deliberate destruction of nearly every aspect of modern life by government and tech companies globally. (You can read more about the concept in Doctorow's book, Enshittification.) Andrea considers the enshittification of detention in the U.S., and the parallel destruction of any functioning parts of immigration in the country. Together, those have led to the expansion of concentration camp detention through ICE campaigns and DHS policy.

She also takes on the enshittification of health care and climate policy, and discusses how these shifts make the public more dependent on authoritarian leaders just to survive. People become reluctant to demand more, for fear that the system will unleash even more punishment. Andrea considers the ways that the unmasking of secret meetings under the auspices of tech giants reveal how the stage is set for further disempowerment and enshittification of daily life. The episode closes with a look at the importance of radical hope and ways to imagine a better world, which can begin with tackling specific, concrete policies close to home.

0:00 – What Is Enshittification? Cory Doctorow's Term Explained

1:27 – Google's Enshittification: How Search Results Got Worse

2:44 – Enshittification Beyond Tech: From Politics to Daily Life

5:51 – Fascism and Enshittification: A Century-Old Playbook Returns

9:06 – Policing, Detention, and the Weaponization of Concentration Camps

11:17 – Immigration Policy Enshittified: Refugees, Detention, and Global Crackdowns

17:09 – Climate Crisis, Water Bankruptcy, and the Manufactured Supercrisis

18:11 – Healthcare Under Attack: DOGE Cuts, Medicaid, and the NHS

19:14 – Propaganda, AI, and the Billionaire War on Reality

24:35 – How to Fight Back: Civil Rights, Renewable Energy, and Demanding Better

Profiting off forced labor in ICE camps Jun 18, 2026

Concentration camps using forced labor are alive and well today in America. But there's a lot we can do to put an end to them.

Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/forced-labor-in-concentration-camps WATCH YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y1NNhzA9cT8 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews Listen everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475 This week's episode of "Next Comes What" tackles the use of forced labor of detainees at ICE facilities around the country. Andrea Pitzer looks at the massive expansion of profit from the country's two largest detention contractors, GEO Group and CoreCivic, and details the hunger and labor strikes detainees have been conducting nationwide. She also considers the history of forced labor in concentration camps around the globe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beginning with German genocide on Shark Island in what is today Namibia, she also describes how mandatory work was used in Soviet Russia, under British rule in Kenya, in post-Revolutionary China, and elsewhere. In each country, the international trend of concentration camps fused with preexisting local history and culture to create different models of forced labor. In the case of the U.S., Andrea suggests that mandatory work in ICE detention rises out of the long use of prison labor. Noting that the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution left in place a slave-labor exception for convicts, she traces the way that arrests and convict leasing continued the work conditions of slavery for many Black men and boys in the wake of the Civil War, despite emancipation. Yet forced labor in ICE detention adds another layer of injustice, in that the vast majority of people held in immigration detention don't even have charges filed against them, let alone a conviction. Andrea closes the episode with a look at ways that people have fought back under extraordinary conditions in the past and are resisting now--including ideas for those looking to eliminate forced labor in the US and to abolish ICE.

0:00 Introduction – Delaney Hall strikes & forced labor in ICE detention today

3:13 Overview – A survey of forced labor in concentration camp settings

5:45 Nazi work camps – Forced labor from 1933 through WWII

6:55 Why detention makes forced labor worse – expendability, punishment, profit

9:44 Pre-Nazi precedents – Shark Island / German Southwest Africa (early 1900s)

10:33 World War I – Ukrainian Canadians interned as "enemy aliens" in Alberta

12:09 The Russian Revolution & Gulag – Forced labor under the Bolsheviks

12:26 The Gulag system – Expansion, quotas, starvation rations, the Dead Road

15:01 Post-WWII & the Iron Curtain – Western vs. Soviet models of camp labor

18:00 US domestic roots – Slavery, the 13th Amendment exception, convict leasing

22:01 Scale of deportation – The administration's 15–20 million target

24:46 Resistance – Gulag uprisings, Free Alabama Movement, the Menocal lawsuit

27:42 What you can do – Calls to action, spotlighting strikes near you

30:21 Outro

White solidarity dooms democracy Jun 11, 2026

Race nostalgia has infected nearly every political argument made today. A look at what it is and how to stop it.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer considers the prioritization of white South Africans in US refugee policy, noting that they make up literally the only refugees currently being admitted to the United States. She explores how that policy is part of a larger map of racial grievance that has already led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people of color around the globe--a choice enthusiastically embraced by the current administration. Laying out a theory of the angry daddy as the model deliberately adopted by Trump and his fellow travelers, Andrea explores how it gets injected into politics as a promise to not only provide for the chosen followers of the leader, but also to punish those deemed less worthy.

Walking listeners through the ways that solidarity with racially aggrieved white communities frames the entire political enterprise running the government today, Andrea then turns to the ways the same concept likewise animates the strategies adopted by those who see themselves as opposing Trump. She questions the tendency to seek macho white male candidates, as if these are the only politicians capable of securing democracy. Looking at the recent expanded damage to the Voting Rights Act inflicted by the Supreme Court and the frenzy of gerrymandering it has unleashed, Andrea explains how the tendency to raise up white men as savior candidates on the left will only speed and amplify the disappearance of candidates of color from office nationwide. The episode closes with some way to think about taking action to address the corruption and crony networks that make this kind of resegregation possible.

0:00 White South African Refugees and Trump's Race-Based Immigration Policy

1:16 The $100 Million Taxpayer Cost of Afrikaner Refugee Policy

3:27 White Solidarity and the Roots of MAGA Race Nostalgia

7:22 Strict Father Politics: How Authoritarian Psychology Drives Voter Behavior

12:25 Strategic Racism: How Politicians Use Dog Whistles to Divide America

17:26 USAID Cuts and the Hidden Cost of White Refugee Policy

20:42 Andrew Sullivan, Demographic Change, and the Eugenics Trap

23:41 Democrats Adopting White Solidarity Tactics to Win Back Voters

28:18 How to Fight Corruption and White Supremacy at the Local Level

What should Democrats be doing? NOT THIS! Jun 04, 2026

Why are elected Democrats punishing the very people who voted for them?

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This week's episode tackles the tendency to criticize Democrats when Republicans are the principal drivers of authoritarianism in the U.S.right now. Andrea Pitzer tries to answer the perennial question "What do you want Democrats to do, if they don't control any branch of government?" Her response boils down to giving examples of harmful actions from several Democrats voters had hoped would do more.

She considers Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's recent appearance with Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has endorsed genocide against Palestinians and encouraged violence in the West Bank. She also considers recent actions taken by three governors: Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and Jared Polis of Colorado. These Democratic governors have undercut their party and democracy alike—in one case by pardoning an unrepentant criminal election denier who betrayed her office, in others by inviting the state police to brutalize demonstrators or by ignoring the will of the people and the legislators of her own party.

0:00 – What Do Voters Want From Democrats Right Now?

1:18 – Democrats Acting Like an Opposition Party: Early Examples

5:35 – Chuck Schumer's Failure to Lead

7:18 – Schumer at the Israel Day Parade With Bezalel Smotrich

8:59 – Virginia Governor Spanberger's Veto Spree Against Her Own Party

12:53 – Colorado Governor Polis Frees Election Denier Tina Peters

15:33 – Delaney Hall: What's Happening Inside the Newark ICE Detention Facility

21:27 – Mayor Ras Baraka vs. Governor Sherrill: Who's Actually Fighting Back?

26:23 – Why Democratic Politicians Must Oppose Authoritarianism — Lessons From History

PropagandA.I. May 29, 2026

Four hundred years of propaganda is way too much. Here's how we can push back.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer traces the introduction of the idea of propaganda and its role in nearly everything bad that's being sold to the American people today. She begins with the pope's recent encyclical warning of the dangers of AI, and then steps back to another pope, one from the seventeenth century, who introduced the idea of propaganda to the world. In between, she looks at Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who created wartime propaganda and then made a killing using the same tactics to sell cigarettes to women.

From misrepresentations to stunt marketing, the half-truths and open lies of propaganda are still very much with us. All these tactics boil down to treating human beings as things, cheating people, and dividing humanity. Andrea considers the useful tool that machine learning could have been if the billionaire class had been satisfied to develop it for use in the big-data, tech, and science worlds that reflect its actual usefulness. Instead, they've sought to maximize profits by selling humanity a lie about how it can be a companion, a therapist, and a creative genius. Andrea closes with how to recognize the dangers and build a world that's more resistant to propaganda.

0:00 – AI, Propaganda, and the World Being Built Without Your Consent

0:40 – Pope Leo's Encyclical: What the Catholic Church Gets Right About AI

1:57 – Edward Bernays: The Father of Propaganda and the World He Made

5:52 – Cigarettes, Coups, and Corporate Manipulation: Bernays' Real Legacy

8:04 – How Social Media Primed Us for a Concentration Camp Society

16:16 – AI Is the New Propaganda: Tech Billionaires and the Myth of Intelligence

23:08 – Father Coughlin to Trump: A Century of Demagogues and Groupthink

26:24 – How to Think Beyond Propaganda and Build the World You Actually Want

26:46 – The AI Resist List: Global Movements Pushing Back on Big Tech

28:36 – Say What You See: Anti-Propaganda as a Radical Act

MAGA's American Eugenics May 21, 2026

Wild-eyed extremists running our government have resurrected hateful pseudoscience.

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This week, "Next Comes What" looks at the various ways that the administration has adopted discredited historical views on eugenics and turned them into policies that have already killed hundreds of thousands of people. From RFK Jr. undermining vaccine programs and environmental regulations here at home to DOGE cutting lifesaving USAID programs abroad, the US government is actively dismantling the nation's public health apparatus.

Andrea Pitzer talks about her reporting decades ago on the history of American eugenics and the legendary Buck v. Bell case that the US Supreme Court used to allow involuntary sterilization of people deemed defective. The episode has a cameo from someone Andrea met back then: Paul Lombardo, a leading US voice on bioethics and the history of eugenics. Lombardo frames the current administration's policy as not just influenced by our eugenic legacy but as actually adopting eugenics.

Andrea also addresses the ways that current obsessions with fertility, purity, and genetic superiority are reanimating discredited principles of eugenics. Though the federal government's footprint in public health is too massive a lift for local programs to replace through small-scale efforts, the episode closes with ideas on how to keep a record of what's happening, push back politically, and stem the effects of the current eugenic tide until this administration can be consigned to the dustbin of history.

0:11 — MAHA's American Eugenics: How Trump and RFK Jr. Are Reviving a Dark History 2:26 — The Origins of American Eugenics: From Francis Galton to Madison Grant 4:57 — RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary: Anti-Vax, Germ Theory Denial, and Public Health Sabotage 6:17 — Purity Culture and Pseudoscience: The Eugenic Logic Behind MAGA Health Policy 10:01 — Carrie Buck and Buck v. Bell: The Supreme Court Case That Enabled Mass Sterilization 12:27 — What a Leading Eugenics Scholar Says About the Trump Administration 14:40 — USAID Cuts and Global Eugenics: How Foreign Aid Destruction Fits the Pattern 16:50 — Pro-Natalism, Birth Rates, and the Billionaire Push to Control Who Reproduces 21:55 — Negative Eugenics in Immigration Detention: Disease, Neglect, and Population Control 28:59 — What You Can Do: Protecting Public Health in Your Community

Why Nonviolence Wins May 14, 2026

When times get grim, it's tempting to resort to political violence. But what if nonviolence packs a bigger punch? Listen & Subscribe Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Full post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/on-violence Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get podcasts: https://pod.link/1779885475 WATCH YouTube: https://youtu.be/AOwdAIDU7tg TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews About This Episode This week's episode looks at Cole Allen, who's facing federal charges after trying to bring weapons into the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Washington Hilton in April. Andrea Pitzer talks about the desperate times we face as a country and lays out why she chooses nonviolent responses. She walks through a handful of reasons that frame her decision to reject violence, from the effectiveness of past nonviolent movements at home and abroad to nonviolent tactics' greater precision as a tool. And she shares her personal conviction, after growing up in a violent household, that she doesn't want to inject more violence into a system already saturated with it. Andrea also frames violence as hardly attention-getting in the US at this point. It's intended to be dramatic theater, but it's so omnipresent, it can become background noise to Americans. Considering the divide between Stephen Miller's ultraviolent approach on immigration, and Tom Homan's less spectacular violence, Andrea looks at how Trump embraces violence and has a solid understanding of how to use it for political theater. But what if nonviolent theater is more surprising and more effective in response? The episode closes with ways to think about using nonviolent tactics in your own community and the larger world. Chapters 0:00 Cole Allen's Weapons Arrest at the White House Correspondents' Dinner 3:20 Why Political Violence Tends to Backfire 3:47 Assassination, WWI, and the Unintended Consequences of Violence 5:37 Why Strategy and Discipline Are Essential for Real Change 8:26 America's Policed Society: How Violence Becomes the Default 17:58 Trump's Relationship with Violence: Rhetoric, Power, and Impunity 19:31 Why the Civil Rights Nonviolence Model Still Applies Today 22:09 Stephen Miller vs. Tom Homan: The Politics of Immigration Violence 24:34 Nonviolent Theater as the Most Powerful Counter to Authoritarian Power

How to Treat a Sick Society May 07, 2026

There are a lot of ways to cure our ailing country. Here's how to convince the patient to cooperate.

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Here's a link to the Duke panel on public health and families in immigration detention that Andrea mentions in the episode: https://warpwire.duke.edu/w/MUoJAA/

This week's episode of Next Comes What considers our crisis of democracy through the lens of medicine. Andrea Pitzer looks at recent rulings by U.S. courts on the Voting Rights Act and mifepristone, as well as a billionaire purchasing his second copy of the Constitution and suggests that what's wrong with our society will take more than just elections to fix (though elections remain critical!).

Andrea uses a framework of public health to think about how improvements can happen. If diagnosis is understanding what's going wrong, what condition we're dealing with, prescription is figuring out what the best treatment options are. There's a lot of solid diagnosis out there from people doing incisive analysis of our democratic collapse, and a number of good suggestions on how to fix our systems and fireproof them from future authoritarian threats.

But the hardest part of public health work is getting individuals and communities on board--getting people to buy in. Andrea runs through ways that do and don't work, arguing that there's no need to coddle racists or endorse hate to meet people where they're at. She argues for creating a vision of a society that people will want to be part of, one that will deliver for them and invites them to come along. In the end, we'll have to get some people involved who aren't on board yet. Andrea closes by arguing that the patient is treatable, and that in fact countless successful local examples of organizing and successful change are already happening around the country.

RE-UP: What's in a Concentration Camp? May 01, 2026

A guide to understanding our new concentration-camp era and how to fight it. A re-release of a Next Comes What from July 10, 2025.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-s-in-a-name

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In this episode, Andrea Pitzer lays out the definition of a concentration camp and breaks down each part of it. She looks at international trends in concentration camps across the last century and the specific U.S. history that has made the country vulnerable to propaganda demonizing immigrants and others. Addressing the advantages and disadvantages of comparing modern detention facilities to concentration camps and even Auschwitz, Andrea explores why what we choose to call these places matters. Coming to the conclusion that the new camp in the Everglades is a concentration camp and signals a massive expansion of extrajudicial detention that threatens all Americans, Andrea offers listeners a big-picture plan for how to strategically insert themselves into efforts to combat the concentration camp trend, from local projects to national movements.

RE-UP: One Day Trump Will Be Gone Apr 23, 2026

A look at the ways that lives of tyrants come to an end, and how that might shape what you should be doing now. Re-release from August 28, 2025.

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A look at the ways that lives of tyrants come to an end, and how that might shape what you should be doing now. This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at Trump's recent signs of mental and physical decline and addresses the long history of authoritarians hiding infirmity and the resulting costs of their deception. She considers how the last Shah of Iran misled nearly everyone about his cancer, destabilizing his country, the Middle East, and a U.S. election in the wake of his lies. Andrea recalls officials' obsequiousness toward a series of late-Soviet leaders from Brezhnev to Chernenko, and the comic ways that leaders have lied to the nation.

As Trump continues to dismantle so much of what's good about the U.S., with old outrages grinding on while new ones seem to arrive hourly, running from crisis to crisis can feel like using a thimble full of water to put out a forest fire. Considering the Miccosukee people of Florida's recent victory against the concentration camp in the Everglades, Andrea uses their focus on their values and their way of life to suggest an approach for people nationwide to find meaningful and effective paths to respond to Trumpism. One day, he'll be gone. What do you want to bring into being in the world that will outlast him?

Actions to Take and Andrea's Book Break Apr 14, 2026

Actions to take while Andrea takes the rest of April off to finish her next book, SNOWBLIND.

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You can find all the links Andrea mentions here: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/april-10-friday-roundup

Movement Call: National Day of Action to Stop ICE Warehouse Detention, April 14 https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/932124/

Communities Not Cages: National Day of Action to Stop ICE Warehouse Detention, April 25 https://www.mobilize.us/notabovethelaw/event/934571/

MayDay Strong, May 1 https://maydaystrong.org/

Planet of the Camps Apr 09, 2026

Trump is using deportations to create an international concentration camp system. We need to shut it down.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at third-country deportations of immigrants under Trump—when detainees are forced out of the U.S. but can't be sent to the country they emigrated from. Washington now has agreements in place with dozens of countries, and reports about the conditions of detention are grim. Delving into the history of cross-border camps, from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the 1940s to Operation Condor in South America decades later, Andrea shows the past harms that have occurred in these systems.

Moving closer to the present day, she identifies the War On Terror after 9/11 as a pivot point for the creation of third-country black sites in the name of counterterrorism. Noting the lasting damage of those sites both to the host countries and back in the U.S., Andrea explores the current trajectory of third-country transports, which have been limited thus far. But 13,000 immigrants are currently at risk for this kind of deportation. The episode closes with suggestions on how to take action and a referral to the Third Country Deportation Watch website, as well as listing some successes in fighting back against deportation to high-risk settings like Libya.

0:00 Trump's Reckless War and the Road to Madness 0:43 Wars Abroad and Concentration Camps at Home: The Historical Link 2:44 ICE Violence, Kidnappings, and Citizens Shot in the Street 3:02 Trump and Miller's Global Concentration Camp Network 4:25 Third-Country Deportations: Exporting Cruelty Around the World 6:22 The CECOT Prison Deal: Venezuela, El Salvador, and the Disappeared 10:49 13,000 Immigrants Targeted for Third-Country Deportation 12:31 Historical Precedents: Nazi Transit Camps and Soviet Deportations 15:23 The War on Terror's Black Sites and the Legacy of US-Backed Torture 19:16 How to Fight Back: Legal Aid, Journalism, and Organizing

'No Kings' Is Even Bigger Than It Looks Apr 03, 2026

The movement behind the biggest single-day protest in US history understands that the assignment is to save democracy.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/does-no-kings-matter WATCH YouTube: https://youtu.be/yz-1BW4D3cA TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews This week's episode looks at No Kings protests, asking what role they can or can't play in freeing the country from Trump and his collaborators. Andrea Pitzer recounts last Saturday's events around the country, including her morning spent crossing the Memorial Bridge in DC with protesters. A look at research conducted over the weekend by Dana Fisher, a professor at American University, reveals who the protesters are, why they showed up, and what they're planning to do. Andrea suggests that this series of coast-to-coast demonstrations are creating a nationwide fabric knitting communities together at the ground level, bringing the rest of the country into conversation and action, mirroring successful local resistance in places like Chicago, LA, and Minneapolis. Looking at the current regime as a challenge larger than any one person or party, she points to the vast convulsion against the president and his policies as the beginning of a national reconstruction—one based on rejecting the current litany of exclusion and hatred. In closing, Andrea points to national groups like States at the Core (https://www.stacup.org/) and Indivisible and the ways they're maintaining momentum—from plans for May Day to training on how to organize on the ground where you live. She considers the community actions with long traditions that are gaining strength around the country, and new tactics that people are inventing to transform the world. Watch The Breakdown with Erica Chenoweth and Steve Levitsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0MmLBxxziA See Dana Fischer's 'No Kings' data: https://danarfisher.com/2026/03/29/anti-war-sentiment-surges-at-no-kings-3/

The Science of Partying Against Fascism Mar 26, 2026

People who aren't already standing up against fascism can be persuaded to. Here's how to reach them without having to embrace hateful policies.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/no-thing-that-they-believe

WATCH YouTube: https://youtu.be/oVb88YNIeBA

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This week's "Next Comes What" focuses on the work and ideas of Anat Shenker-Osorio. A cognitive linguist, Shenker-Osorio has made a career of seeing what kinds of messaging help persuade the public to support progressive issues and candidates. Host Andrea Pitzer talks to her about the tactics activists used to win abortion rights in Argentina, and how a series of campaigns in Australia helped free people seeking asylum who were held offshore in concentration camps for years. They discuss why embracing hateful views in the name of convincing "moderates" is a dead-end strategy, because moderates—at least in the way they're trotted out for these debates—don't really exist. "It's not the job of a good message to say what's popular," Shenker-Osorio says. "It's the job of a good message to make popular what we need said, because we have an agenda we need to enact, and because that's how we win."

The episode closes with Shenker-Osorio herself making suggestions about effective terms for everyday folks to use in speaking out against Trump and his minions, as well as specific actions we can take to push back right now—including taking some joy in resistance.

0:00 - Why Words Matter: Introducing Anat Shenker-Osorio & the Science of Political Messaging 3:43 - What Is the Race Class Narrative and How Did It Change Progressive Strategy? 7:03 - Abortion Rights in Argentina: How Organizers Won with Values-Based Messaging 8:29 - Australia's Offshore Detention: A Case Study in Messaging Failure and Victory 11:20 - Base, Persuadables, and Opposition: How to Target Your Message for Maximum Impact 15:16 - Why Hyper-Moderation Fails: Stop Copying the Right to Beat the Right 22:08 - How Shifting Culture Shifts Votes: The Power of Social Proof and Same-Sex Marriage 26:34 - Drop "Administration," Say "Regime": The Language We Need Right Now 30:13 - Hope vs. Despair: What to Do When Change Feels Impossible 34:35 - Action Items: Protests, Boycotts, and Nonviolent Resistance You Can Join Today

What counts as a concentration camp? Mar 19, 2026

Concentration camps are spreading across the US today. Here's why it matters what we call them.

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Read the February post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-counts-as-a-concentration-camp

WATCH YouTube: https://youtu.be/W3aMgiR9mMI TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews

This week's episode is a response to Jake Tapper discouraging the use of the term "concentration camp" on CNN while interviewing a bookstore owner describing people in his community being sent to concentration camps during ICE operations. Andrea Pitzer looks at Tapper's consistent stance and traces it back to at least 2019 in an interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in which he acknowledges she might be using the term "concentration camp" correctly on a technical level. But he points out that most Americans think of death camps when they hear those words. And he talks about the pain that overuse inflicts on those who suffered in Nazi camps and on their families.

Andrea looks at Dachau in particular, which was not a death camp, and wonders whether Tapper would consider it a concentration camp or not, and whether it only became a concentration camp nearly a decade into its existence, after the extermination camps were set up. If Dachau can be called a concentration camp, then what about the camps with similar conditions and similar functions that were operating in other parts of the world. She considers what actually constitutes a camp, at what point those camps can accurately be named, the uses of doing so, and the risks of not seeing what is happening before our eyes.

The Most Divorced Men in History Mar 12, 2026

Is there a link between a specific subset of men who resent their exes and everything wrong in the country today?

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-most-divorced-men-in-history

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The latest "Next Comes What" considers Trump and his lackeys through the prism of being the most divorced guys in history. Andrea Pitzer points out how reckless and chaotic the administration's actions are, and notes the oft-discussed concept of divorced-guy energy, in which some men adopt self-destructive behaviors and become resentful of their exes. She offers up Trump himself, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, and RFK Jr. as examples. JD Vance and Stephen Miller qualify in their own ways, despite not being divorced. Andrea considers Elon Musk perhaps the most divorced guy in the world.

The episode then covers a recent study from Rural Sociology actually identifying a pattern among some (but not all) men in communities undergoing social or economic shifts, in which they embrace risk-taking and often self-destructive behaviors. When the researcher asked why in interviews, this particular group of men often brought up a partner they were no longer with, and expressed resentment about that person. She considers them in light of the already-identified concept of reactive protest masculinity. Andrea takes a hypothetical leap (because the study was quite small), and wonders whether this is a scientific identification of divorced-guy energy, and suggests what it might mean for the country if a similar pattern is happening in and around the White House. She closes with thoughts on how to push back on what Trump is doing if this administration is in fact acting out reactive protest masculinity on a global scale.

Trump's trying the authoritarian handbook. Will it break him? Mar 05, 2026

Classic authoritarian tactics reveal what Trump is hoping to do, but they may backfire.

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Watch Andrea as part of the 50501 call "Fighting and Winning Against Trumpʻs Concentration Camps" https://youtu.be/IyszCsiUq2U?si=HB1te6l_tfRog3b4

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The latest "Next Comes What" covers two significant events from the last week: the massive bombing attack conducted by the U.S. and Israel on Iran and OpenAI's announcement that it would partner with the government just hours before the attack began. Andrea Pitzer looks at the guardrails OpenAI competitor Anthropic had attempted to set up in recent weeks, drawing red lines around fully autonomous weapons and any use of its products for domestic surveillance. And she outlines how Open AI appears to have agreed to something that Anthropic would not in order to seal the deal with the government. Both the bombing of Iran and the possible opening of floodgates for increased domestic surveillance reflect two classic strategies of wannabe and established authoritarians.

Andrea explains how such leaders use external conflict to try to unify the people behind problematic policies, and expand domestic surveillance to suppress dissent. But right out of the gate, the war on Iran is unpopular with the American public. And recent work from Marcel Dirsus suggests that increased surveillance can actually work against tyrannical aims over time, creating the illusion of control, as governing elites become more isolated and paranoid. Trump may very well not get what he wants out of either tactic. Andrea closes the episode with some thoughts for how to take action.

Trump is sending pregnant girls to Texas. Why? Feb 26, 2026

The US is detaining pregnant children in Texas and limiting their access to health care. We shouldn't tolerate this obscenity.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/mothers-and-the-disappeared WATCH THIS EPISODE YouTube: https://youtu.be/TAdTQWt_5cg TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews

Our episode this week looks at events in San Benito, Texas, where pregnant immigrant minors are being detained by the US government. As recently as 2024, the facility was kept from receiving pregnant minors due to mismanagement of medical appointments and care plans. More importantly, the former head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement during Trump's first administration has explained that moving pregnant girls there from around the country is done entirely to keep them from getting access to abortions.

Andrea Pitzer discusses the significant risks that pregnant adolescents face in giving birth compared to women in their twenties. She also looks at the history of pregnant detainees in Argentina under dictatorship, where hundreds of women were killed after giving birth, their children handed off to members of the military or their allies to raise as their own. The toll of that especially heinous family separation has torn families apart for generations in Argentina.

Don't Help Trumpism Survive Trump Feb 19, 2026

Small fixes to ICE brutality can be dangerous, because they run the risk of entrenching what we want to stop.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/institutionalizing-harm

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This week's episode begins by considering the reforms to ICE operations that some Democratic leaders are demanding, as well as remarks by Hillary Clinton last weekend in Germany. Andrea Pitzer argues that what Democratic leadership is calling for runs the risk of making the overall Trump project on immigration permanent. She looks at how the talk of reforms is well-intentioned, but by failing to likewise address the larger problem, the opposition could solidify the expanding network of camps going forward.

Andrea considers three examples from the history of detention at Guantanamo of how small shifts had huge, unfortunate repercussions, The first is from Bill Clinton's first term, and shows how an attempt to save the lives of some migrants in detention at Gitmo was successful, but it came at the cost of leaving the site a legal black hole with no guaranteed rights for detainees. The second example comes from the post-9/11 era, when the Supreme Court gave minimal rights to detainees in the third year of War on Terror abuses there, but did so without addressing the larger abomination that Guantanamo represented. Andrea's third example looks at the expeditionary project model used in 2007 to build Camp Justice for the big trial of 9/11 suspects expected to take place on the island. That trial has still not happened. But in recent weeks, the same expeditionary model has been funded through a Navy contract to stand up detention camps for immigrants on a vast and expedited basis inside US borders. Andrea closes with recent successes from everyday people and ways that anyone can take action to stop ICE and close the camps.

What do you call warehouses full of humans? Feb 12, 2026

The Trump administration is pushing to acquire warehouses to stage mass deportations. But we can bust the concentration camp boom.

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This week Andrea Pitzer talks about the Trump administration's move toward the warehousing of human beings as part of its war on immigrants and everyone else. She looks at why this shift is a threat and why it's necessary for everyone to resist it now. All over the globe for more than a century, how to detain vast numbers of individuals with the least investment in their care has been a key concern of most of the world's worst leaders. Andrea explores how the US is now run by one of them. She looks at conditions in detention, the mushrooming expansion of camps, and what that means for every American. The episode closes with the many ways communities have successfully been fighting warehouse detention near them, and other ideas for how to resist and document the inhumanity being installed in towns and cities across the country.

THIS is What Momentum Looks Like Feb 05, 2026

A sea change is underway. Take heart, and keep going.

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This week's episode focuses on two events from Texas in recent days. The first is the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from a detention camp after court intervention. The second is the stunning upset in a Texas state senate race, which pro-labor veteran Taylor Rehmet won handily, though Donald Trump had defeated Kamala Harris in the same district by double digits just over a year ago. Andrea Pitzer looks at these recent happenings and despite the violence and turmoil still taking place nationwide, believes a sea change is underway. She walks listeners through recent court cases and polling that are going very much against the Trump administration. She traces local actions in places like Virginia and New Jersey working to keep ICE detention facilities out. She notes recent research from sociologist Dana Fisher, who has found tremendous support for organizations engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, including sit-ins and blockades.

It's not that the government isn't continuing to terrorize whole cities and communities. What the president and his allies are finding out is that being able to terrorize a people is often not sufficient to force them surrender. Bringing everyone into this fold of civil rights and humane treatment won't happen automatically. It takes work. But the seeds have been planted, and a movement is growing.

Survival shouldn't require sainthood Jan 29, 2026

Demanding a perfect victim to justify outrage when law enforcement kills someone is a trap we don't have to step into. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-innocence-trap Watch YouTube: https://youtu.be/-z3OVVkJBXM TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews This week, Andrea Pitzer considers four recent killings by law enforcement officers responsible for apprehending or detaining immigrants. She goes through the huge outpouring of sympathy after the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and notes the public tributes to them nationwide. The New Year's Eve killing of Keith Porter Jr., a Black man, drew outrage in Los Angeles, but did not get as much attention across the country for reasons that Andrea ponders. She then considers the ways the deaths of those seen as "good people" can galvanize Americans against state violence, but also run the risk of stepping into a trap. The case of the death at Camp East Montana in Texas of Geraldo Lunas Campos, who had served sentences for criminal conduct in the past, including sexual contact with a minor, is more uncomfortable to consider. But Andrea argues that his offenses don't justify the building of a vast system of concentration camps, his being swept into them years after serving his time, or his being killed by guards in detention. And she warns that he is just as much of a canary in a coal mine for the risks faced by all Americans, documented or not, if we allow agents of the government to execute people with impunity. The longterm law enforcement violence that has been cheered on from both sides of the aisle has set the stage for where we are at now, and is an issue we will have to address as a country before we can truly be safe from the nightmare that ICE and Border Patrol are inflicting on the country today. The episode closes with what you can do to deal with this government violence and immigrant detention operations that are still taking place nationwide.

What 'ABOLISH ICE' Should Mean Jan 22, 2026

The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards. We can end the current nightmare.

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This week's episode discusses how societies come to concentration camps, and the ways ICE is helping the US to solidify into a concentration-camp regime. Andrea Pitzer discusses the rapidly rising numbers of those detained in immigration detention--some 66,000 at the end of 2025--with the agency's already stated eventual goal of arresting millions. She looks at the kidnappings, deliberate blindings, the murders of detainees in Texas and of random people out on the streets, and the general terror currently unleashed on cities led by politicians opposed to Trump. Andrea explains how concentration camps aid the rise of police states, and the ways terror becomes entrenched into bureaucracy. We are already deep in that process, and this year is critical.

We must stop the calcification of the detention-camp system before we lose the ability to fight back. The US is currently holding more than three times as many people in immigration detention as the Nazis held in their concentration camp system in the spring of 1939, more than six years into the Third Reich. This situation has come to pass, Andrea argues, because of long-standing deep weaknesses in our system that have enforced second-class citizenship for millions at each stage of American history, allowing politicians to manipulate public fears for their own gain. But we also have a heritage of extraordinary resistance from everyday people, and Andrea outlines ways that everyone can help shut down the authoritarianism that is already here and getting worse.

Finding Your Outside Voice Jan 15, 2026

The US government is attacking its own people (and others), but you don't have to spend your life feeling helpless or marinating in fear and fury.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-just-happened-7ad4

Watch this episode

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This week's episode covers the gravity of the moment in the US, the curse of glib centrist pundits, and how to come together in useful ways to fight the abuses the federal government is inflicting on civilians daily. Andrea Pitzer considers recent violence, particularly the murder of Renee Good, and looks at the ways we absorb current events and how we talk to one another and why they matter. Referencing the tendency to snipe at others who have similar views, Andrea addresses that the upside is that we do want to connect and change the current landscape. But the downside is that we often just go online to tear into or demotivate one other. Meanwhile, many pundits exist in some other universe entirely, where nothing changes or nothing matters.

Dissecting a clip of David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour, Andrea outlines how his comparison of the conflict between ICE and unarmed civilians to an Ivy League football game reveals centrist pundit preoccupations and uselessness. They want to preserve a status quo in which there are two morally equivalent sides, while they get to referee. Yet the work of demonstrators and the brave people standing up to ICE across the country (especially in Minneapolis right now) are making a difference. US public opinion on ICE is shifting quickly and dramatically, which will help motivate politicians who haven't yet found a voice to protect the American people in the short run—and in the long run offers an opening to shatter the agencies that are methodically brutalizing the country. Andrea closes with an idea of how we might bring our voices together more powerfully going forward.

Why This Is Bigger Than Trump Jan 08, 2026

Donald Trump is just a symptom of our national disease. We have to--and we can--change the system that coughed him up.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-century-long-year

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This week, Andrea Pitzer focuses on the U.S. attack on Venezuela, looking at what we know, how recent events fit into history, and why it's important to stop Trump. But she also dives into why the president is just a symptom of what ails the country. The episode speed-runs the last two centuries of U.S. policy in the Americas, and the long history of intervention. Andrea shows how Trump's administration is mired in the rhetoric and fixations of the last century, with control over oil and anti-Communist obsessions determining how his advisors respond to almost every situation.

More importantly, she talks about Trump as merely the vessel of the real dysfunction afflicting the U.S. This illness could have wormed its way into the Democratic Party instead of the Republican Party, building a propaganda machine and bringing some virulent, billionaire-backed populism to power in some other form. But it didn't, and we are where we are. Which means we have to fight the Republicans' assault on democracy while simultaneously building a new kind of national governance that rejects the rot at the core of the current system. Andrea quotes her former editor Laura Helmuth arguing that we need to "move slow and build things." The episode closes by referencing a handful of the evidence-based policies that would transform everyday Americans' lives, and encourages listeners to work for one long-term change that matters to them.

This is your brain on propaganda Dec 26, 2025

The tactics Trump allies are using to gin up hate against trans people reveal how propaganda works and why it's so dangerous.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/you-re-soaking-in-it TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews In this week's episode, In this last episode for 2025, Andrea Pitzer reviews recent actions by the US and state governments targeting trans women and trans youth, showing how propaganda takes root and becomes effective over time. She considers the recent announcement by RFK Jr., the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the government's direct targeting of medical care for trans kids. Bizarre bathroom measures taken in Texas also get a mention, and show how politicians use these measures to garner political power for themselves. Turning to the UK, Andrea explores how quickly propaganda can shift a country's baseline acceptance for rights of minority groups when staff at key news outlets actively embrace exclusion. Considering how the recent shift in the US toward transphobia is being generated--especially the wave of anti-trans legislation--Andrea discusses evangelical Christianity's strong tradition of policing gender roles. From women's rights to the acceptance of gays and lesbians in the US, she shows how the expansion of rights is being strategically undone today. Rep. Sarah McBride's informal speech on the Capitol states last week about being trans, as well as her prior public statements, offer useful ways to think about sidestepping the kind of back-and-forth that's unlikely to be productive in addressing transphobia. Andrea considers the value and shortcomings of shitposting in offering solidarity and changing hearts and minds. She closes with a look on how to find the most effective means to help close to home, where propaganda is weakest and easiest to undo.

Shredding Public Knowledge Dec 11, 2025

Why the Trump administration (and a lot of other people) are trying to kill journalism, and what we can do to stop them.

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In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer looks at a new report on journalism from the Roosevelt Institute that reveals how corporate interests have prioritized power and profit, shattering news organizations and journalism itself. She goes further than the report to suggest that the current attack is not just on journalism but all public institutions in the US, from universities to public schools, hospitals, and the very idea of independent knowledge. This suppression of the right to know facts and establish reality is a hallmark of authoritarians, and Andrea outlines a few past examples from around the world. Journalism in the US has faced creeping destruction for decades, but now it's all accelerating with devastating speed, not only on the corporate side, but as a direct result of White House actions: through personal attacks on journalists, the recent White House "media bias" project, the stripping of credentials from any real Pentagon Press Corps, and more.

The Roosevelt Institute report outlines how public-interest obligations have been ignored, and media institutions have been made vulnerable to capture in ways that leave them unable to withstand authoritarian pressure. Andrea looks at those reporters and outlets who are still fighting the good fight, and closes with what you can do to help.

Get the full report: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/political-economy-of-us-media-system/

No one knows exactly what will end Trump Dec 04, 2025

None of us know what exactly will end Trump's rule. But we can keep expanding the possibilities. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/this-may-be-the-last-time Watch: https://youtu.be/TOrj4Yfp9JY TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews Our episode this week is a deep dive into the variety of ways the president's current authoritarian overreach is meeting blowback. Andrea Pitzer covers developments from recent days, including a Washington Post report about the deliberate execution of two shipwreck survivors in September after the U.S. military destroyed their boat at sea. She notes that Trump policies have already brought death to hundreds of thousands of civilians around the globe, but these two casualties seem to be particularly unsettling to a number of officials, as well as elected officials. Walking through many other recent ways that Trump's allies have refused to go along with his attempts to maintain or even expand his powers, Andrea speedruns multiple Senate votes aimed at upending Trump's tariffs, a state politician rejecting the call for gerrymandering, the blue wave in last months' off-year elections, the defeat of his attempt to keep the House from voting to release the Epstein files, and more. She continues by singling out other roadblocks, from CEO refusal to fund Trump's ballroom and the endless parade of judges attempting to hold the president to the rule of law, in some ways that appear to be sticking. Going through examples from history in Kenya, Argentina, and right here in the US, Andrea finishes by talking about how no one knows the moment when a demagogue's movement will collapse, and suggests some ways for us to speed up the process along through local actions on the ground.

Quiet, Piggy Nov 26, 2025

Trump's denigration of women is part of the authoritarian playbook. Here's how to stop it.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/quiet-piggy

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Our episode this week looks at Donald Trump saying "quiet, Piggy" to a reporter aboard Air Force One and the larger context of what the president is doing. Andrea Pitzer looks at Trump's long history with denigrating women, from journalists who ask him hard questions to his ex-wife Ivana, who at one point asserted in a sworn deposition that he had raped her. Andrea explores how Trump's behavior with women represents more than just his own perverse attitudes; it's a recognizable element of authoritarianism. And the pattern of how people in power are currently speaking about and treating women is a political bid to roll back the clock on half a century of progress for women, from Title IX to abortion and job security.

Looking at everything from tradwives to attacks on trans women, Andrea sketches out how the larger wave of those in charge trying to force women into specific roles and keep them there is a naked bid for power—one we should resist. The episode ends with a list of ways to support women in the workplace and in daily life, whether it's speaking up when they're denigrated or standing up for abortion rights, access to child care, and basic dignity. 00:00 Trump's Piggy-ness 00:40 Trump's Disrespect Towards Female Reporters 01:16 Trump's History of Misogynistic Remarks 07:36 Historical Context of Misogyny in Authoritarianism 11:10 Modern Impacts of Trump's Rhetoric and Policy 24:28 We Can Do Better

Update your bingo card Nov 21, 2025

What if you threw a party to transform the country—or at least your little corner of it—and everybody came?

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/of-by-and-for-the-people

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This week's "Next Comes What" is a snapshot of a city responding to the havoc of the second Trump administration, and follows the drafting of a candidate for Congress who aims to flip the tables. Andrea Pitzer visited Roanoke for the fourth time in the last year, having been intermittently involved in a group of do-gooders who gathered to support the vulnerable groups Trump had specifically targeted in the runup to the 2024 elections. Later, as the administration and its allies took aim at federal workers, farmers, Medicaid, and more, the group realized everyone was at risk. Their movement grew from meetings coordinating with existing nonprofits to protests and educational programs.

This week, the core protest group formally drafted journalist and author Beth Macy to run for Congress, opposing a Republican incumbent who has stopped holding town halls for months at a time and refuses to meet with his unhappy constituents. Andrea traces the growth of the movement to reclaim Virginia's sixth district for the people, and attends Macy's coming-out party as she announces her candidacy. The episode closes with what it all means for the rest of us.

Ending Trans Panic Nov 13, 2025

Standing up for trans folks isn't just the right thing to do—which it is!—it's also a way to win elections.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/stop-trans-scapegoating

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews Our episode this week focuses on how trans people have been demonized by politicians, and why that approach backfired in elections around the country last week. To find out why this kind of hate mongering seems to be a weapon of choice for the Republican Party right now, Andrea Pitzer looks at the many prejudices that transphobia taps into, going back to the Lavender Scare, McCarthyism, and beyond. She considers how part of the hostility to trans identities also rises out of women gaining civil rights, and Republican frustration that they can't slot everyone into the roles they prefer. Andrea looks at two trans lawmakers in office now, and suggests they (and trans people as a whole) shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of carrying the banner for trans rights. Recalling an interview with researcher Mike Jones from more than a decade ago, Andrea recounts how he found that heroes in policy narratives are even more effective than villains in getting people to come aboard. She analyzes the different ways that Abigail Spanberger and Zohran Mamdani addressed trans issues. Both campaign styles, she finds, offer strategies to effectively counter Republican demonization of vulnerable groups in America. Andrea ends by discussing ways that we can all embrace the hero narrative and show that we're strong enough to stand up for everyone's rights.

We won. Now what? Nov 06, 2025

Tuesday was a big day for democracy! But only if we follow through on its promise.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/just-a-wave-not-the-water

Watch this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlDH54C4azc

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This week, we celebrate the immediate results of the November 4 elections— which delivered key victories for candidates running against Trumpism and offering concrete policies to benefit their constituents. Andrea Pitzer looks at how, win or lose, elections do matter. But they're only one tool. Pointing out how even winning candidates can abandon the platforms they ran on, or give into donor pressure once in office, she lays out how the ultimate power remains with the people. There are many other ways that voters and non-voters alike can impact their communities.

Andrea considers the degree to which dedicated voters can sometimes demonize non-voters or blame them for failures at the ballot box. But nonvoters may have given up hope in our system altogether. And in any case, if getting out the vote is the goal, persuasion is more likely to work. She considers the ruptured promise of our republic, and the ways in which she still believes elections can lay the foundation to repair it. But only if we understand that Tuesday may have been a wave, but we ourselves are the water.

Why Trump Wants Chaos Oct 30, 2025

Trump's immigration policies may be echoing Nazi history, but that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do about it.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-bad-things-get-worse

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This week's episode tracks the administration's shift in immigration enforcement as the power given to Border Patrol expands. Andrea walks listeners through the origins of and tactics used by Border Patrol and ICE in recent decades, as well as the ways unstable leadership and a lack of accountability have shaped their evolution. She turns to a conversation that she had last December with immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in which he laid out the two paths detention and deportation would likely take in the new administration: one in which Tom Homan became ascendant, the other in which Stephen Miller took charge.

Andrea notes that the Miller approach seems to have gained the upper hand for now, and it's far more dangerous for Americans across the board. Diving into Nazi history, she outlines the way that an abusive law-and-order model for governing was defeated by the reign-of-terror concentration-camp model, and sees the U.S. as now moving more fully into the latter mode. But she points out that even if you failed to imagine how quickly U.S. guardrails would give way to expanding violence against civilians, you don't have to let that earlier failure of imagination keep you from thinking of ways to protect yourself and others. The episode closes with mutual aid actions that can help those most affected, as well as thoughts on preemptively closing some doors to immigrant enforcement operations.

What NO KINGS Means Oct 23, 2025

Saturday's NO KINGS is the beginning of a movement. Thoughts on what it means and where we go from here.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-just-happened

Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/-ozqcCEtRRc?si=nyvG3tY3-UGofGEd

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This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at the October 18 No Kings marches and rallies nationwide and jumps into what seven million people showing up means for the country. She narrates the Saturday march from Arlington National Cemetery across the Memorial Bridge into DC and along the National Mall. Along the way, she talks to demonstrators, members of the National Guard stationed in the District, and DC cops. She recaps surveys of those who showed up and what matters to them, including data from Dana Fisher* and some great points made this week in a conversation between Erica Chenoweth and Steven Levitsky.** Addressing why police departments around the country put out press releases, Andrea wonders if—for their own reasons—they're trying to create some distance between themselves and the administration. She also reviews how shook the White House was by No Kings.

Different people will play different roles in mass protests, and they may diverge even more in their approaches as mass protests become a mass movement. Andrea considers how this range of experiences, goals, and tactics can be a strength, rather than something that deepens conflict. And as always, at the end, she reviews ways to think about and take action in the moment, to push back against authoritarianism.

* Fisher's topline data from Saturday is now available here: https://danarfisher.com/2025/10/23/nokings-2-0-brings-joyful-resistance-across-the-us/

** You can see the whole conversation between Chenoweth and Levitsky in The Breakdown from the Ash Center: https://youtube.com/live/dqoSPLEK2Mg?si=C1f53eivbGGV2Pm3

How to Spook a Fascist Oct 16, 2025

Our society is descending deeper and deeper into authoritarianism, but hitting the streets this weekend is a good way to push back.

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This week's episode looks at the US crisis and how protest plays a key role in demanding a more accountable democracy. Andrea Pitzer considers the many ways that the administration is trying to suppress dissent. By calling the demonstrators terrorists, America haters, and supporters of Hamas, Trump's allies are trying to intimidate those who oppose them. But they're also revealing just how frightened they are. The government's response to inflatable frog and unicorn costumes, impromptu marching bands, and at least one naked bike ride has made them look ludicrous, and helps to expose the violence our expanding police state is unleashing on its own people.

Andrea explores what protests are doing right now in the country, and what they have the potential to do. She addresses the limits and failures of democratic movements as well, with a nod to why it's crucial for you to get involved right now if you can. She covers how to take action if disability or your personal risk level makes it inadvisable or even impossible to march. Looking at recent research on the power of popular protest and at the risks of backsliding into authoritarianism, Andrea explains how developing communities of public dissent and mutual aid can help not only in building real democracy, but holding all leaders accountable going forward.

The State of The Degenerate Union Oct 10, 2025

Public apathy is a greater danger to the country than actual oppression in this moment. As our first anniversary approaches, we've gathered the most important bits from the debut year of "Next Comes What."

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Nearly a year since the 2024 election and the start of "Next Comes What," Andrea Pitzer brings together the most critical parts of what she's shared so far on the podcast. She begins with a look back at the first post-election episode, and predictions she made about how 20th-century events in Chile, Germany, and Russia were likely to repeat here in the U.S.

Offering a mea culpa for her biggest misstep, Andrea gives a state of our degenerate union today, considering where things stand with the Courts, Congress, the executive branch, our institutions, and the people. Pulling together success stories from at home and abroad, she considers how both overreach and resistance are likely to unfold from here. In closing, Andrea reminds listeners about the upcoming October 18 "No Kings" events and provides specific paths to action going forward.

You don't have to swallow frogs Oct 02, 2025

If you aren't sure what you stand for, you're going to get played.

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Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/yVS10nrdWu8?si=okUVNHwIpOe98aTF

This week, Andrea Pitzer considers the recent conversation between New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and what it means for all of us as American authoritarianism expands. The two men shared very different thoughts about what the moment requires, including their doubts about each other's approach. Andrea summarizes the talk and suggests that Coates's emphasis on history and his intellectual heritage offers more possibilities for avoiding paralysis in the moment. She worries that Klein's willingness to barter away protection of some vulnerable populations leads to a lost state in which it becomes impossible to stand for anything.

Sharing a Czeslaw Milosz quote about a man who rationally convinces himself to swallow live frogs, Andrea suggests that Klein has lost sight of the fact that doing something unpleasant isn't the same as doing something effective. She closes with thoughts on how you can find your own moral or ethical center—one that might offer some clarity on how to take action today.

Kill this podcast? Sep 25, 2025

What if my telling you there's still time to save democracy keeps you from thinking you need to act now?

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/mind-the-gap

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This week's "Next Comes What" focuses on the difference between staying on top of the administration's attacks on democracy and actually doing something to save democracy. Nearly a year into the podcast, Andrea Pitzer outlines the ways that Trump continues to overreach, even as he grows more and more unpopular. The federal government is in the process of hiring people who seem willing to assault Americans (documented and not) on the streets. Yet it doesn't have enough of them to silence the majority of Americans who oppose Trump. Now is the time to act. But Andrea wonders whether constantly telling listeners that there are still actions they can take is too reassuring. Do people get lulled into thinking things will just be fine, and they don't need to stand up?

In the last week, a Congressional candidate, a Chicago pastor, and elected officials have faced attack or arrest by law enforcement agents ostensibly carrying out immigration operations. But what most of us need to do in our communities is nothing nearly that heroic. Andrea looks at rising food insecurity and ways we can tackle the effects of immigration detention and tariffs close to home. She closes with a look at a study by university researchers who suggest that most U-turns—even those that radically reorient a country toward authoritarianism—wind up leading to greater democracy in the end. Authoritarian U-turns are often followed by counter-shifts that reverse the harms and result in the growth of democratic rights and institutions. But one key to these reversals is that they need to happen quickly. It's up to us to go to work in our communities today checking Trump's power and rebuilding our freedoms.

A Few Bad Men Sep 18, 2025

It only takes a few bad men to ruin scientific progress for everyone.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and read Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/bad-medicine This week's episode covers how RFK Jr. and Donald Trump are rejecting science and data to eliminate competing authorities in government. Andrea Pitzer looks to the past for the ways that science and scientists have been used to further dictatorial regimes. Touching on the example of Einstein, she addresses how his work was dismissed as Jewish science, and the Nazi tactics that eventually forced him into exile. She also considers the converse situation, when Joseph Stalin lifted up Trofim Lysenko, who rejected genetics in favor of unsound theories of agriculture. Soviet promotion of Lysenko's ideas led to a rejection of science and countless deaths, a situation with many looming parallels in RFK Jr.'s attacks on vaccines today. Andrea considers how destroying public science helps aspiring and established authoritarians create their own mythic realities and forces their constituents to live in an alternate world, where all information and benefits flow directly from the leader. While Trump and his allies are deep in the process of enriching themselves and garnering more power, the president insists on rejecting facts on the ground at every turn. Andrea ends the episode with talking about ways you can help make sure your community accesses the health resources it needs, and offers some specific suggestions for fostering scientific reality close to home for kids and adults alike.

Why Speaking Out Matters Sep 11, 2025

DC shows how to push back against a government clamping down on vulnerable Americans, and how to stand up for what we believe in.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and read Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-do-you-stand-for [This week's episode was recorded before Charlie Kirk's assassination, so you'll find only one reference to it in a brief clip here. But Andrea Pitzer will cover it further in her written post on Friday for Degenerate Art: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/.] This week, Andrea considers the value of letting others know what you stand for and building community together, in public. She outlines the ways that the preemptive caving we've seen from corporations, universities, and local governments is a response to the government's own vice signaling, which needs to be opposed. Narrating her afternoon at the "We Are All DC" march in Malcolm X Park in DC last weekend, Andrea describes the many groups that showed up and the ways people found to show what matters to them. She addresses the symbolic value of Sandwich Guy's actions in August, which happened just a few blocks away. Pointing out that the mushy middle can never be represented by politicians looking to court that sector for votes, because it doesn't stand for anything, Andrea talks about the role of everyday people in establishing ethical norms for the country. It's possible to use virtue signaling as a spur to action and set an agenda for a new and true American democracy.

Why Journalists Ignore Reality Sep 04, 2025

Journalism is reverting to a pre-kindergarten state in the face of Trumpism, but we can still get the word out.

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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/see-no-evil

This week's episode considers how coverage of Trump's second administration by journalists and public intellectuals is failing Americans on an institutional level. Andrea Pitzer walks through recent coverage that refuses to analyze the framework offered by the president for sending the National Guard to DC. Flashing back to her years teaching martial arts and self defense, she explains how she coached pre-kindergartners to "spot the con" in dangerous situations, even though their minds weren't yet developed enough to be able to rely on abstract thinking to connect the dots on a higher level. She laments how some veteran journalists appear to be afflicted with the same limitations today.

Sharing historical examples of betrayals by journalists who refused to see what was happening right before their eyes, she describes Soviet writer Maxim Gorky's betrayal of concentration camp detainees held at the Solovetsky Islands in 1929, and the passive collaboration of Walter Lippmann and other journalists with the whitewashing of correspondent George Polk's death in Greece in 1948. Criticizing the response made by Semafor's Ben Smith to a question about whether democracy is currently in danger, Andrea runs through a whole series of examples in which the press seems to be willfully blind to the present threat. The episode closes with a list of news outlets that are meeting the moment and need support, as well as some concrete ways listeners can themselves get the word out to their fellow Americans.

One Day Trump Will Be Gone Aug 28, 2025

A look at the ways that lives of tyrants come to an end, and how that might shape what you should be doing now.

Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/t0Trm8k1lgc?si=mZGNVV8-UrAB-PdX

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-trump-is-gone

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This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at Trump's recent signs of mental and physical decline and addresses the long history of authoritarians hiding infirmity and the resulting costs of their deception. She considers how the last Shah of Iran misled nearly everyone about his cancer, destabilizing his country, the Middle East, and a U.S. election in the wake of his lies. Andrea recalls officials' obsequiousness toward a series of late-Soviet leaders from Brezhnev to Chernenko, and the comic ways that leaders have lied to the nation.

5 Ways Concentration Camps Close Aug 22, 2025

The ways that concentration camps get closed down and how we can make that happen.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/how-does-this-end

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This week's "Next Comes What" explores patterns in what's forced concentration camp systems around the world to close in the past. Andrea Pitzer mentions a few larger systemic issues present in most countries where concentration camps are able to take root, but spends the episode focused on how camps themselves get shut down. She explores examples in which defeat in war, the death of a "cult of personality"–style leader, international pressure, court intervention, or internal dissent have been the triggering force.

Andrea reviews the administration's stated goal of detaining and deporting tens of millions of people currently in the country, and notes the logistical impossibility of any humane detention and deportation project of that scope. Even when peak detention levels have been reached, and the population held by a given country in camps is on the decline, she notes, it frequently takes years to dismantle any large system. Analyzing the role that various triggers might play to halt or reverse Trump's rapidly expanding detention network, Andrea emphasizes that in the U.S. more than in many of the countries she's studied, it's likely to come down to everyday people taking action. The episode closes with suggestions on how to do that.

How We Got to Fascism Aug 14, 2025

What history best explains the authoritarianism surging in the U.S. today?

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-origin-story-for-a-villain

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This week's "Next Comes What" considers where the expanding oppression in the U.S. comes from. America has centuries of experience with genocide, incarceration, and racism to rely on as the government embraces authoritarianism. Yet Trump and his most fervent followers also mimic the rhetoric and actions of twentieth-century fascist movements in Europe and elsewhere. Andrea Pitzer looks at the roots of the misery being deliberately inflicted on vulnerable populations in the country today.

She recalls a Kurt Vonnegut line about villains and society that suggests one way to think about what's happening now. The truth is that there's no hard line between domestic and international political violence against civilians. In fact, technology over the last century has evolved quickly and led us to a place where these movements are cross-pollinating and global, even as local and national culture still shape violence in critical ways on the ground. Andrea turns this around to note that the repetition of these abuses in many places and times also sparked countless forms of resistance that have worked in the past and offer hope for us going forward.

How to Get ICE Out of Your Town Aug 06, 2025

A step-by-step list for assessing your community's relationship with ICE and learning how to end it.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/de-iceing-your-town

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This week, Andrea Pitzer answers a request she's been getting from many readers and listeners lately: figuring out ICE's involvement in a given community and what to do about it. To get some expert advice, she talked to Oliver Merino of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Oliver is from Alexandria, Virginia and has been involved in addressing mistreatment and abuse of immigrants for more than a decade. In this episode, they discuss concrete ways to find out what level of cooperation ICE currently receives from your local law enforcement. Oliver lays out specific actions everyday people can take to reduce both official and unofficial partnerships. He also covers a number of other ways anyone can help their neighbors who have already been targeted by the government. The situation on expanded ICE funding on the federal level is grim, but there's still a lot that most of us can do to change policy and reduce harm at the local level.

Don't Wait Jul 31, 2025

What if we already have what we need to do what has to be done? An unlikely story of magic and surprises, with receipts.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/pity-the-person-who-needs-something-from-me

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This episode of "Next Comes What" is a strange and magical story about coincidence and connection. Andrea Pitzer steps away from the current crises in the US to talk about needs and expectations that we have about one another and the tendency to want to believe someone somewhere else has more answers and will be more ready to lead, or at least more ready to act. Andrea recalls a passing exchange on Twitter from more than a decade ago that's become meaningful to her, and discusses it with her husband, who suggests she write about it.

Meanwhile, she goes off to a cabin in the woods for a week for a solo writing intensive to work on a book, and tries to put off the many requests people make on her time, so she can focus on her work-in-progress. She somehow ends up interrupted anyway, and the connections between the tweet from twelve years ago and someone entirely different who is interrupting her at the cabin form a startling closed loop—and a good reminder that we're bound together in ways we barely notice. All this winds up being a map for finding a way to invent the world we hope to live in.

The Lost and The Returned Jul 24, 2025

Listening to the voices of the disappeared who have come back is a first step toward changing what's happening all around us.

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This episode of "Next Comes What" looks at the recent departure from El Salvador of hundreds of men President Trump deported last spring to the CECOT camp there. Andrea Pitzer remembers seeing a Peter Greenaway production in the 1990s that used an actual historical ledger of the dead bodies pulled out of the Seine in Paris two centuries ago, and thinking about accountability to history. Underlining the importance of preserving events, she talks about a Paris protest in 1961 when the historical record was deliberately muddied, and the French government tried to censor and cover up a massacre. More than a hundred Algerians were killed while protesting peacefully against a curfew targeted directly at them. Many bodies fell into the river; others were thrown in to drown. Unlike the corpses in the 19th-century ledger from the Peter Greenaway film, these bodies and the lives they represented were erased for decades by the authorities.

Andrea then looks at the reappearance in recent days of the men the US government tried to disappear into a black hold of detention in El Salvador. Addressing the importance of logging the vanished and the dead and listening to the voices of those who return, she begins to address how we might interrupt the cycle.

The Same Damn Thing But Worse Jul 17, 2025

Concentration camps perpetuate themselves, but the fight against them shapes the future, too.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/choking-on-the-cruelty

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Watch this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6XoJL6puGU&list=PLijFVcbACdeU0Zk5DeB1R_CHwCHjPJ5lF

This episode of "Next Comes What" looks at how concentration camp systems grow, how the existing institutions choke on them for at least a while, and what that means in terms of trying to stop those who want to expand our concentration camp society. Andrea Pitzer explores how some camp systems have been influenced by those created in foreign countries, while others rely more strongly on a country's own preexisting internal history. Sometimes immigration, as with Nazis to South America in the wake of World War II, shifts the political or detention environment. In each case, there are usually both foreign and domestic influences.

Andrea looks at how everything from camps for Japanese Americans during World War II and immigrant detention at Guantanamo in the 1990s shaped the Everglades concentration camp and the constellation of similar camps the Trump administration is working to create now. Listing ways to block and undo this drive toward detention, Andrea includes networks of demonstrations and training opportunities that can connect listeners to concrete ways to help.

What's in a Concentration Camp? Jul 10, 2025

A guide to understanding our new concentration-camp era and how to fight it.

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Addressing the advantages and disadvantages of comparing modern detention facilities to concentration camps and even Auschwitz, Andrea explores why what we choose to call these places matters. Coming to the conclusion that the new camp in the Everglades is a concentration camp and signals a massive expansion of extrajudicial detention that threatens all Americans, Andrea offers listeners a big-picture plan for how to strategically insert themselves into efforts to combat the concentration camp trend, from local projects to national movements.

How to Prevent a Full-Blown Dictatorship Jul 03, 2025

The budget bill unleashes a detention system that threatens every American, but we can still act.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/america-s-not-so-secret-police

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Watch the video of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldNLnCJy5w

Police-State Blues

This week, Andrea looks at how police-state tactics are increasing across the country, not least with the debut of a new concentration camp in the Everglades. She draws parallels between the US and Nazi Germany (this is what people are always asking about) and shows how, in fact, our tilt toward authoritarianism now has many more echoes from that era than existed in the U.S. during Trump's first administration.

The episode also considers the effects of the budget bill and how such massive funding for ICE detention and related projects could lead to repetition of another part of history in a different country: 2016 Russia, where the creation of an army-size National Guard under Putin's control marked the point where internal dissent and any significant opposition to his rule became almost impossible. Andrea suggests that we may be rapidly approaching a similar lockdown, but we aren't there yet. She lists a dozen things you can do to stop the ICE power grab.

Against a Rogue Court Jun 26, 2025

The Supreme Court uses the shadow docket to stick a knife into due process. But every toehold matters when you're taking back the country.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/rogue-scotus-on-the-loose

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In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer looks at Monday's Supreme Court ruling, which permits the government to send immigrants from U.S. soil to countries they did not come from and to which they have no connection, places where they might be tortured or trafficked. The decision, on the shadow docket, included a dissent but no explanation of the majority's rationale.

Andrea considers what this means in terms of rights for immigrants and everyone else, and how—barring future decisions limiting it, clarifying it, or reversing it—this decision is likely to lead to violence, abuse, and concentration camp patterns of detention for those we deport abroad. She also explores how the time required to negotiate agreements with countries the US will need to bully or bribe into taking detainees will lead to even worse overcrowding in existing US detention facilities. With news of plans for a new Florida detention center nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz", officials are emphasizing the role of pythons and other reptiles to keep prisoners on site. The episode finishes with some examples of local communities fighting detention facilities and ideas for what you can do to take action yourself.

A Movement That Can Stop Trumpism Jun 19, 2025

Millions hit the streets last weekend to secure democracy and change America.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/there-is-no-final-boss

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This week "Next Comes What" focuses on the five million (or so) Americans who turned up in cities and towns across the country last Saturday for No King's Day. Andrea Pitzer looks at the arc of nationwide protests from 2017 and 2020 and connects 2025 to them as a way to think about what's unfolding: a mass movement capable of rejecting Trumpism and transforming the country. Framing the fight for democracy as an ongoing effort rather than any "one and done" phenomenon, she stresses the importance of continuing to show up between the big events. Andrea recounts her reporting from two Saturday demonstrations in Falls Church, Virginia, where she lives, and considers what happened in the rest of the country. Often hopeful, yet touched by tragedy, June 14 was a wake-up call made and answered by America itself.

How We Dissent — #NoKings Lessons from LA & DC Jun 12, 2025

People in the streets of LA and staff at NIH show all Americans how to stand up to power.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/standing-up-to-power

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In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer looks at actions in Los Angeles and at NIH from recent days as models for how we might each be able to shore up democracy in our own communities. She runs through a timeline of how ICE arrests in California drew residents to protest, which was met with violence by law enforcement. After the Trump administration triggered then escalated the crisis, the president took the likewise unnecessary steps of deploying the California National Guard and U.S. Marines. Andrea considers the destructive nature of these actions and the threat to democracy that they represent, as well as highlighting a few ways that Californians found to resist this overreach.

The second half of the episode focuses on an interview with Rui Carlos Sá, a program director at NIH, whom Andrea first met at a "No Kings" demonstration in February. As one of the signers of Monday's Bethesda Declaration calling out the damage the new administration is inflicting on the National Institutes of Health, Sá talks about the importance of NIH and how he made the decision to stand up publicly. Andrea closes with a look at things we can do to follow in the footsteps of people speaking out in DC and LA, with an emphasis on the upcoming "No Kings" demonstrations across the US on Saturday, June 14.

The Concentration Camp Tendency Goes Global Jun 05, 2025

The Trump administration is accelerating the concentration camp tendency worldwide, worsening conditions people are held in around the globe.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-concentration-camp-tendency-part-2

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This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at overseas expansion of the concentration camp tendency that sits at the heart of federal policy right now. This exclusion of whole groups from society is something the US is actively promoting overseas. By making plans to or actually sending people to Libya, South Sudan, El Salvador, and Panama, the current administration is creating an overseas network of concentration camps. As the US leads the way, problematic detention is being tipped over into more dangerous territory. Meanwhile, massive cuts to US aid globally are staggering international efforts to deal with political and economic crises abroad, including reducing rations in refugee camps in several countries. Andrea considers what everyday Americans can do at home and abroad, offering the example of Camden, Delaware, where community outcry ended a collaboration agreement between local police and ICE.

Stick around for the details of a June 11 event at noon ET hosted by Harvard that you can sign up to attend virtually, where Andrea will be joined by former Kamala Harris policy advisor Ami Fields-Meyer and resistance-movement researcher Erica Chenoweth in conversation about ways irregular detention is expanding and how we can strengthen democracy. (Register here: https://ash.harvard.edu/events/concentration-camps-and-the-machinery-of-repression-lessons-for-saving-democracy/.)

Why Dictators Love to Suspend Habeas Corpus May 15, 2025

The constitutional right that keeps you from disappearing—and why Trump wants to suspend it.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/disappearing-bodies

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What dives into the writ of habeas corpus and how it protects U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike. Andrea Pitzer considers Stephen Miller's comment that the administration would consider suspending habeas corpus depending on how U.S. courts rule on immigration cases underway now. She looks at how ruptures in these kinds of guarantees led to dictatorships lasting more than a decade in places like Chile and Nazi Germany.

Turning to events closer to home, Andrea walks listeners through the times habeas corpus has been suspended in the U.S., and how battles over it dominated key cases in War on Terror detentions at Guantanamo. The establishment of military zones along the border and the arrest of Newark mayor Ras Baraka compound the issue of who gets to detain people and who gets to contest those decisions. Andrea closes by looking at what people are doing to take action, and what you can do, too.

How to Keep Grifters from Stealing Your Soul May 08, 2025

Who really invents the world we all live in? We do.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/who-invents-the-world Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe This week, Next Comes What considers the shell game played by dictators and billionaires alike, as they seek to gain power over humanity. Andrea Pitzer explores the new twist in the story of millionaire-turned-lifestyle-guru Bryan Johnson, who's now trying to found a new religion based on optimizing and preserving the human body. She considers the case of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, who's trying to prevent people from learning details of the secret deals he made with gang members to make him look like an effective leader. Andrea looks at Donald Trump's attempt to likewise appear omnipotent in ways he is not. Then she turns to how AI is being pushed hard across the board in ways that make it difficult to avoid using. Each of the cases she reviews reveals powerful actors trying to make everyday people dependent or even helpless in the face of who really runs the world. But politicians ought to serve at the will of the people, and companies should provide technology that serves humanity instead of undermining it. The large mass of us, from ditch-diggers to artists, invent the world each day. We hold a power that we shouldn't surrender, despite those with bad motives trying their best to take it from us.

How to Fight the Concentration Camp Tendency Apr 29, 2025

What matters more than money to Trump and his billionaire allies?

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-concentration-camp-tendency

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This week's episode looks at a common theme uniting the cruel policies of the second Trump administration: the concentration camp tendency, an attempt to remove whole groups of people from society. From the homeless to trans people and the mentally ill, from Black folks to immigrants, our current president is looking to erase people from daily life, or even to physically expel them from society altogether.

Andrea Pitzer discusses this approach, in which groups not complying with an authoritarian's idealized society get excluded in a widening circle. As a country we've allowed a billionaire class to rise, one that preaches a gospel in which they should never be inconvenienced or interfered with, no matter what cost that has for others. Andrea looks back to a book on young children that explains this phenomenon and shows how even preschoolers can understand it. Yet we've let an exclusionary impulse capture the nation. It doesn't have to be that way, and we can stop it.

How Antisemitism Warps — History's Most Flexible Weapon Apr 24, 2025

Hate cultivated over time becomes a tool to destroy everything, and it's happening in America today.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-window-dressing-on-hate-2-0-b153 Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe This week's episode looks at the enduring bigotry of antisemitism, as well as how America's home-grown prejudices mirror and echo the damage done by antisemitism. Andrea Pitzer describes how the political usefulness of hatred of Jews in Europe became an all-encompassing conspiracy theory, in which Jews were both superhuman and defective, Marxists and capitalists. She traces how that conspiracy theory spread around the world. While the United States as a nation is much younger than these hatreds, the country has its own bigotries and exclusions that have been with us for centuries. Andrea looks at full citizenship and who gets excluded from it as a way to understand who gets demonized in America today. The Trump administration is binding all our conspiracy theories into one vast one, openly stoking hatreds to gain more power. The episode closes with ways to talk to people in your life who may be susceptible to these hateful (but for some, powerful) false narratives.

Trump's Intolerable Acts Apr 17, 2025

By sending immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador, Trump is trying to seize the power to silence any American he wants.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/beyond-seas Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions. ------ This week, Andrea Pitzer traces the arc of the kind of renditions the U.S. government is doing right now and looks at how a clean through-line exists from Nazi tactics to the methods used to disappear immigrants today. She explores why the U.S. is in such a dangerous moment, perhaps the most dangerous of the last half-century. The system of deportation and detention that Trump is trying to build parallels the use and structures of past concentration camps, and Andrea walks listeners through the similarities. Going back to the Declaration of Independence, a beautiful part of our flawed country has been the expansion of protection against arbitrary detention at the whim of a despot. It's worth standing up for. As always, at the end, Andrea includes suggestions about what actions to take, reminding everyone that there are many effective things they can do right now. Not being able to fix every crisis in a given moment doesn't mean you can't push back against the administration in countless concrete ways.

How to Defy a Death Cult Apr 11, 2025

Trump's tariff mayhem fits a larger pattern. Death and destruction are the only things he's good at.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/government-by-death-cult

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at how Trump's actions devolve to doing the maximum harm to the most people. She goes down to the National Mall to see how D.C. observed the Hands Off protests that were held around the country on April 5. She meets a mother and daughter who are descendants of a French Resistance fighter. They remind everyone that if you wait until an oppressive government is already targeting you to act, it may be too late. Andrea considers the rising death toll from various Trump decisions, including cutting off support in key regions for the World Food Program.

Tying the administration's current efforts to punish nearly everyone it can to the idea of death cult, she considers the historical examples of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and cult leader Jim Jones. Andrea outlines how the American public got acclimated to mass death during the first Trump administration, when he launched the adversarial government response to Covid that would eventually deliver the deaths of more than a million Americans. The end of the episode outlines specific ways to fight back against the death cult seizing the country.

Keeping Musk Rattled — Don't stop. It's working! Apr 03, 2025

How taking on extreme wealth can fight the entire Trump agenda.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/playing-in-takedown-mode

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For this episode, Andrea Pitzer checks out a local #TeslaTakedown protest last weekend just outside DC, where she considers who showed up and what effect protesting Elon Musk might have. Given the accelerating damage to Tesla's bottom line, Musk's public response, and mounting pressure on the administration to do something about him, these protests are a way for minimal public effort to have maximum impact.

A look at the ongoing boycott against Target and buycott to support Costo reveals that these efforts by consumers seem to be having the desired effect as well. Andrea reviews brand new research on what was accomplished by Black Lives Matter, and it might surprise you. Despite all the backlash and racism about the movement, the protests seem to have worked most effectively in the heart of Trump country.

The episode ends with a reminder about the HANDS OFF! protests nationwide planned for Saturday, April 5, aimed at protecting Medicaid, Social Security, libraries, and a lot more—while demanding civil rights for all.

Not A Reality Show — Sooner or Later, We're All at Risk Mar 27, 2025

A local community tackles Trump's destructive agenda and politicians who collaborate with it.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/anatomy-of-a-movement

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Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story?

Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

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Andrea Pitzer returned to Roanoke, Virginia, where she spoke in the days after the 2024 election, to see how the community is organizing to protect itself against Trump. She visited the weekly Monday protest outside the downtown office of Congressman Ben Cline to find a collection of frustrated but energized people demanding answers. After the protest, over 100 locals attended an organizing meeting at the library, where Andrea spoke briefly about the many risks and opportunities facing all of us right now. This week's episode looks at parts of what she shared in that meeting, as well as the role of local action and learning to sit in the uncomfortable places where we might do the most good. Andrea explains how stability is contagious and finally answers the question of how to explain to others why they should care about other people.

Time to Act — Fighting Ignorance While We Still Can Mar 20, 2025

The dismantling of our government has begun, which means fighting ignorance is critical. All of us are due for some education.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/unbreaking-things

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You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

This week's episode takes on what to do in the face of the ongoing lawlessness of the Trump administration. The courts are working to uphold their role; Congress is pretty inert for now. Yet even if both branches of government rise to meet the occasion by pushing back against the current administration, a lot will come down to us, to everyday people around the country. Andrea Pitzer talks about the weird dynamics created by online rage, and exactly how that nuclear-grade energy could be better used elsewhere. She considers the different kinds of ignorance we're facing and strategies for overcoming it. Building community groups and coalitions, understanding peoples' needs and what motivates them, and easing the suffering that's already been unleashed—addressing these harms will also help us get ready to take bigger actions as Americans.

Why Protest Now — The #TeslaTakedown is a Great Start Mar 14, 2025

Showing up in public can derail Trump's attempts to destroy the federal government. #TeslaTakedown is a great start.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-protest-packs-a-punch

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

You can find a #teslatakedown protest here: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer tackles what protest can accomplish and covers the March 7 Stand Up for Science demonstration in DC. She notes that physical bodies gathered together to demand change remind the government who really runs the country, and explains how vital it is to exercise that right. Considering ways that even small or unfocused demonstrations play an important "basic training" role in developing skills and building a movement, Andrea analyzes how to add more strategic elements as numbers grow.

The episode further explores picketing Tesla dealerships as an excellent approach in the current environment. Looking at America's past role in encouraging the ideals (though often not the actual practice) of democracy, Andrea outlines the moral vacuum left when those in the nation's capital decide to actively denounce democracy. We're entering dangerous territory. Solving the current crisis will likely come down to mass protests in the long run, and there's a lot we can do to make sure democracy wins.

Do the Right Thing — Ukraine, Russia & How to Push Back Mar 06, 2025

Russia and America have more in common than their betrayal of Kyiv, and we need to push back on this shift.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/blues-for-ukraine

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This week's episode of Next Comes What looks at the meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week in light of Andrea Pitzer's previous experiences in Russia. She looks at what Trump and JD Vance were up to in the Oval Office, as well as recounting the morning she woke up in Moscow on a 2022 trip for book research to discover that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Andrea addresses how disinformation works, why it's short-sighted to condemn a whole identity as evil, and the ways Fox News plays to the worst impulses in citizens of both countries. Putin fans are cheering on what Trump did because in the end, both leaders have a similar view of how to govern and prefer a mafia state to any real democracy. Andrea offers some simple approaches for how to support Ukraine and stresses the need to recognize the way that we, too, are succumbing to competitive authoritarianism here in the US. We have to find ways to stop the destruction of our democratic institutions before there's nothing left of them to save.

Jamming the Musk Machine — Effectively Tackling Authoritarianism Feb 27, 2025

Effective resistance is happening around the country, but it still needs you to work.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/how-does-actual-resistance-work Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Summing up just one day of recent court rulings, Andrea Pitzer explores whether judges are being assertive in upholding the law against onslaughts from Donald Trump and Elon Musk. She explains why attacking Musk can be so effective and shares a few of the ways he's being strategically ridiculed. From demonstrations at Tesla dealerships to town halls—even where elected representatives don't show up—people are making their voices heard in ways that will build momentum. Andrea considers additional powerful examples from Nazi Germany and Hawaiian sugar plantations where those in terrible circumstances managed to throw sand in the gears of authoritarian or exploitative rule. The episode looks at the role of violence in structural change across a century of examples, and draws some working conclusions about how to build the biggest and most effective movement. Andrea finishes by giving you concrete ways to find a community of people willing to work with you, or even to get out a message on your own, to stall or stop the disintegration of democracy.

2 Ways to Avoid an Authoritarian Abyss — Courts & Crowds Not Kings Feb 21, 2025

How the people and the courts will make or break American democracy under Trump 2.0.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/heroic-work-from-ordinary-people

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week Next Comes What visits one of the dozens of "No Kings" protests around the country on Presidents Day and discovers just how unpopular Elon Musk has become. Talking with federal workers, concerned students, former Republicans horrified by Donald Trump's actions, and other everyday people, Andrea Pitzer finds out why demonstrators are showing up in greater and greater numbers. She dissects the roles that our courts and public protest can play in reestablishing U.S. democracy. Looking at why Congress is unlikely to resist Trump's attempts to steamroll its authority, Andrea considers the small steps all of us can take to begin smothering the extremism dismantling our country today.

Trump's Time Bomb — Gitmo's Past Ticks into Our Next Nightmare Feb 14, 2025

How decades of abuse at Guantanamo undermined democracy and built a black hole of detention for Trump today.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/choking-on-the-mess

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The latest Next Comes What episode takes on the "worst of the worst" mythology that Trump's cabinet used to justify sending immigrants to Guantanamo this month, and how this bucket of lies is no different than those that have been handed to the American public for years about the island. Andrea Pitzer talks about her own visits to Guantanamo a decade ago for pretrial hearings of detainees and to see the conditions of detention. She considers the ways in which falsehoods about people held there, torture undergone by detainees, and the very nature of whether the government can own memories have warped American justice under six presidents. Andrea traces how Gitmo's past has been seized on by Donald Trump to launch a new era of mass detention on the island. The issue concludes with the ways the administration's efforts to mislead have been undermined by journalists and everyday people, which court cases are already having an effect, and what you can do to help keep the steroidal twenty-first century expansion of this nightmare from becoming permanent.

Incel Clown Posse — Seizing the Narrative from Musk and Trump Feb 06, 2025

Freedom--how does it work? By putting a stop-work order on Trump and Elon.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/seizing-the-narrative

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week, Next Comes What headed into DC to see what would happen in front of USAID headquarters the day Donald Trump and Elon Musk shut it down. Andrea Pitzer talked to workers protesting out front and to the politicians who held a media event to point out the harm Trump was inflicting on millions of the poorest and least powerful people in the world--and to the U.S. itself. She considers how much our democracy depends on Americans holding onto power by asserting their rights and speaking their minds in public. That means our elected officials, too. Andrea considers what we—and they—ought to be doing these days, and how a robocall she got from her congressman was a good first step to pushing back against the kind of authoritarian state Trump is trying to impose.

Trump Corruption Overdrive — Who Pays? And How to Fight Back. Jan 31, 2025

Trump isn't just pushing corruption to get a cut of the action--he wants to run the whole game.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/corruption-overload

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Today's episode of Next Comes What looks at the 31 flavors of Trump's corruption and ways to block him. Andrea Pitzer shares her experiences observing corruption in Russia and explains how the Trump administration seems to be trying to catch up. She looks at the relationship between racism and corruption, then outlines the perils of our polluted information sphere (and how it got that way). She explores the corruption of the Supreme Court, of Republican legislators, and the office of the presidency itself, as well as laying out the straight-up grift that undergirds nearly everything Trump does. Summarizing a Carnegie Endowment report on how people around the world have fought corruption in recent decades, she notes the difficulty of ridding a country of it once tipping points have been reached. Andrea then points to effective means of keeping corruption at bay or rolling it back on a local level, many of them available to you in your community.

Freezing Trump Out -- Lessons for a Grim Time Jan 24, 2025

A cold day in hell on the streets of DC as the city shows us how to handle Trump. Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/a-cold-day-in-hell Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Today's episode of Next Comes What is a report from the nearly empty streets of DC, a tale of two cities, one of which snubbed DonaldTrump. Andrea Pitzer goes to Capitol Hill and Capital One Arena, talking to those visiting town for the inauguration. She finds pattern in the rhetoric served up to her by supporters of Trump and discovers the cold heart of his support. Andrea attends a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial at Metropolitan AME church, and hears Al Sharpton spin a very different story about America. She compares the two visions of the future on offer then runs into a tiny four-person protest of students who have come to the city with handmade cardboard signs. Looking at the executive orders announced later the same day, she points to a path forward in the grim era that has now begun.

A Better Way to Take On Trump 2.0 — Inauguration Episode Jan 17, 2025

What to expect when you're expecting an authoritarian.

Our inauguration episode. Read the post that inspired this episode.

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This episode of Next Comes What is about how to manage the next four years, starting from Day One. Andrea Pitzer discusses the amazing ways that countries around the globe in danger of losing democracy are trying to save themselves right now, the new dangers that the twenty-first century presents to those facing authoritarianism, and some of the most effective ways to confront the threat barreling down on us.

She looks at heroic examples in Poland, Myanmar, Brazil, and South Korea, as well as times when everyday Americans have helped change the U.S. into the country they wanted it to become. And she outlines the very real risk, if we're not careful, of people on the left falling into an existence just as removed from reality as the one adopted by MAGA on the right. And she explains how to stay engaged during the crisis now confronting us.

How Authoritarians Abuse and Use the Homeless Jan 10, 2025

Homelessness has long been used to criminalize suffering and expand detention.

Read the post that inspired this episode.

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Today's episode of Next Comes What is about the relationship between homelessness and concentration camps around the globe, as well as a close look at those living without a home in America today. Andrea Pitzer explains how homelessness has historically been used as a political weapon to expand detention for other groups of civilians. She recounts how Mussolini, Hitler, and even Herbert Hoover went to war against the homeless between World War I and World War II, and narrates the terrible worldwide legacy of their actions. In the second half of the episode, she interviews Brian Goldstone, the author of the forthcoming book There Is No Place for Us, which tells the story of five families who are all part of Atlanta's Black working homeless population. Goldstone lays out the violence that consigns people to homelessness, and discusses with Andrea the concrete ways listeners can take action to secure housing for everyone currently without it — and keep those of us who are lucky enough to have it from losing it.

Why Determination Beats Inspiration Dec 31, 2024

Not everything will go wrong. Some thoughts for the New Year. Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/everything-won-t-go-wrong

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Today's episode of Next Comes What is about finding holiday joy even in bleak times. In preparation for the New Year and a new administration coming in, Andrea Pitzer recounts how people in extreme conditions in the past held religious services, celebrated feasts, and even set up circus performances. She considers stories of Arctic explorers celebrating Twelfth Night or turning their clothes inside out to bring good luck in the New Year, with little possibility that they would survive the winter. Even presidents who tried to do the right things historically have often failed in their efforts. Andrea looks at actions by Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman that were undone by their political foes. And yet—just as in the camps and in the High Arctic—not everything that could have gone wrong did. She makes a plea for determination over inspiration and hopes that everyone might choose to embrace their agency in 2025.

The Power of the Quiet Voice Dec 24, 2024

From years of teaching self defense and martial arts, some tips for difficult holiday conversations.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/fighting-words

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-comes-what/id1779885475

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lUaIWeKl0oET2DJVTWhy4

Those times you want to punch somebody over holiday dinner, but you don't? Andrea Pitzer is here to say "Well done" and to give you some options between starting World War III and just enduring nasty rhetoric. In this short holiday-themed episode of Next Comes What, Andrea talks about the years she spent teaching martial arts and self defense and offers ideas for fraught conversations when you're more interested in getting your point across than winning. From the power of reaching people with the quiet voice to minding your footwork and not wasting your energy, here's hoping you can enter 2025 with no hangovers, no arrest record, and no regrets.

Somebody To Hate Dec 20, 2024

Defending immigrants from camps and chaos

This week's episode traces the ties between immigrants and concentration camp history then turns to an immigration expert to discuss what Trump will do next. Andrea Pitzer dives into the past of a centuries-old law used to lock up foreigners in America—the very law Trump allies hope will expedite mass deportation. Then she talks about the situation on the ground with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, who describes Trump's plans for the coming months and the big obstacles to executing them. They offer concrete ways the public can help at-risk immigrants, from volunteering with the Council itself to passing laws in their own communities.

Read the post that inspired this episode.

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We've Tried Nothing (and We're All Out Of Ideas) Dec 13, 2024

People have organized in hard times before. There's almost always something that can be done.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/going-to-roanoke

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-comes-what/id1779885475

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lUaIWeKl0oET2DJVTWhy4

This episode looks at what regular people can do when a government aims to actively oppress those it's meant to serve. Andrea Pitzer discusses ways individuals have come together in the face of repressive measures to build community and protect the most vulnerable. Looking at examples from Myanmar to Soviet Russia and Chile, she finds commonalities in very different settings. Then turning toward America, she shows how simple yet extraordinary resistance has a history going back to before the end of the Revolutionary War. Taking a trip this month to Roanoke, Virginia, to be part of one woman's attempt to organize her city, Andrea outlines the community's strong response and offers an adaptable blueprint for anyone who wants to do the same in their hometown.

How Humor Can and Can't Fight Authoritarianism Dec 06, 2024

Humor as a weapon in oppressive states. Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/laughter-in-the-dark Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe This episode looks at how humor works in resisting strongmen and the ways comedy might be a useful tool against the next administration. Andrea Pitzer considers why dictators (and wannabes) are vulnerable to mockery and explores examples from Syria to Serbia--including some from America's own past. In a political universe that's been repeatedly infiltrated by entertainers (Reagan, Ventura, Trump, and more!), it's worth asking whether satire works differently these days. Andrea finds success stories and cautionary tales as she sketches the limits, risks, and untapped potential of jokes. Outlining the ways the temptations of cynical humor might divide us from the very people whose help we need to make real change, she asks questions about who gets to be in on the joke in a democracy.

Who Are the Baddies? Nov 29, 2024

Why propaganda works and how we fight it

This episode looks at evil in the world and how the stories people hear shape their political thinking. Andrea Pitzer considers the horrors of governments running concentration camps, and her encounters with people who insist that one group of perpetrators is supremely evil in ways other humans could never be. From Germans to Russians, Palestinians to Israelis, and even Americans, she asks listeners to consider the power of narrative in shaping hatred.

Using the viral is-it-blue-and-black-or-is-it-white-and-gold debates about The Dress a decade ago, Andrea talks about the persuasive worldviews that lead people to abandon reality and her own experience growing up immersed in a delusional perspective. She addresses the commitment that moneyed, powerful interests have in building these narratives as a distraction—one that further isolates and divides the public, the better to fleece it. She closes with why this process isn't inevitable and how you can shore up the country and the world to resist it.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art to support Next Comes What.

America Goes Rogue -- And How We Come Back Nov 22, 2024

In our second episode, we consider where we're headed with a rogue president in charge of a rogue state. We take a look back at how people stood up against torture after 9/11 and show how everyday Americans are already defying Trump allies this week.

Andrea Pitzer returns to a longtime source, Mark Fallon, who was at one time NCIS chief of counterintelligence for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In the months after 9/11, Fallon worked to stop the torture program at Guantanamo in its early development, later going public to denounce the U.S. embrace of illegal methods.

When she first talked to him almost a decade ago, Fallon told her that the torture program had turned the U.S. into a rogue state, and that accountability would be required to return the country to democracy. In light of Trump's willingness to ignore the rule of law both domestically and abroad in ways far beyond most U.S. presidents, Andrea considers what it means to have a shameless executive in charge of a rogue state and how we might follow Fallon's example by standing up in the face of unethical or illegal activities. She offers a heartening early example from Oklahoma of people doing just that.

How We Survive This Mess Nov 14, 2024

From the moment election results started rolling in, people have been wondering how bad life will get during a second Trump Administration.

A decade ago, Andrea Pitzer went around the world to talk to people who had survived authoritarian rule, in order to write the first comprehensive history of concentration camps, ONE LONG NIGHT.

In this first episode of Next Comes What, recorded three days after the election, she talks about different ways that authoritarians have come to power, how Trump's rise relates to them, the real danger we're now in, some good news about why it won't all go the way Trump is planning, four areas where we'll likely see aggressive measures in January 2025, and a long list of ways (large and small!) for you to use the next two months to protect yourself and help preserve democracy.

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