Next Comes What

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We can send the people pushing fascism on us back into their holes without buying into hate.

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The latest episode of Next Comes What opens with a reminder to get to a No Kings event this weekend. Andrea Pitzer then considers how some authoritarian element is always bubbling away in any society and will crawl out given the opportunity. But sometimes you have to pay attention to see it. She notes how easy it is for millions of Americans to not notice ICE operations now that senior officers aren't making a big national spectacle of everything they do. Nonetheless, arrests and detentions have never stopped--and in many places have gotten worse. On a global scale, Andrea notes the moment she realized the same rhetoric and ideas used to defend the 2003 war in Iraq had come from the Vietnam war decades before—and are now being used to support Trump's war in Iran.

When trying to defeat the fascist impulse seizing so much of the country right now, we do have to think strategically. But being heartless isn't the same as being strategic. Noting the increasing number of Democratic politicians supporting anti-trans bigotry, Andrea argues for learning how to talk to voters who have bought into propaganda without further entrenching the bigotry inherent in that propaganda. The episode closes with thoughts on how to buckle up for the long haul in changing our institutions, while recognizing that the November 3rd election holds the possibility of a tidal shift. Andrea encourages everyone to get out and vote.

00:00 Mass Deportations & ICE Arrest Surges 03:10 USAID Cuts & Global Food Security Crises 05:30 Authoritarianism, Protests & the Midterm Threat 09:20 Russia Dealings, Putin, & Zelensky Tensions 13:10 Parallels to Vietnam & The Costly Invasion of Iraq 15:45 U.S. Aggression vs. Iran's 92-Million-Person Civilization 19:15 Elon Musk's DOGE, Starlink Shutdowns & Political Spending 22:30 The Transgender Rights Battleground & Political Retrenchment 26:15 Building Pro-Democracy Movements & Distinguishing Cowards from Enemies 28:00 Closing Thoughts & Call to Action

The roots of everything that ails the country go deeper than Trump, so we need to think beyond November 3rd.

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This week's episode considers three recent news events and how they reveal the larger challenges facing the county. But first, Andrea Pitzer turns toward the November 3rd elections and the No Kings march coming up October 17. She encourages listeners to plan for both and so as much as possible to help defeat Trumpism at the ballot box. Victory there is critical, she suggests, but not sufficient. Andrea then looks at the botched execution of Christa Pike last week, the horrors of the Cornell Seven assault case, and the revelation that U.S. Senator Dr. Roger Marshall, an obstetrician, sued hundreds of his own patients and had them arrested. The instigating events of all these instances of deep animosity toward women in our country happened when Trump was not president.

Andrea then turns to the recent elections in Brazil, which in recent years saw its institutions hold against the rise of authoritarianism. The judicial system acted against president Jair Bolsonaro, barring him from running for office until 2030, due to his attempts to subvert elections and foment a coup. Last weekend, his son ran in his place, and won the first round of voting. The runoff will take place later this month. Andrea discusses the ways that the authoritarian-industrial complex is hard to eradicate, in part because the real movers behind the politicians are those with money and power. And they want more of both. The episode closes by looking beyond November 3rd to the greater changes we'll need to make, and a nod toward the value of performative actions in long-term success.

0:00 Keep Your Hands Off Our Vote 3:15 The Lame Duck Reality in DC 5:40 Roots of the Crisis: The Reagan Precedent 7:20 Botched Executions and State Cruelty 13:10 Women as the Social Safety Net 16:45 The Breakdown at Cornell 20:30 Predatory Medical Debt and Systemic Inequality 23:15 The Orange Wave and Brazil's Global Far Right 28:00 Why Ending Trump Isn't Enough 31:30 The Authoritarian Industrial Complex

Authoritarians reveal themselves, even to followers who prefer not to see. And that leaves an opening for change.

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This week, Next Comes What looks at the disillusionment that eventually takes place for most people who succumb to the cult of personality in an authoritarian society. Andrea Pitzer looks at events in recent weeks that are providing the spark for that awakening among many Trump supporters. With higher gas prices driving the point home, we also see everyone from next-door neighbors to judges and Republican politicians beginning to stand up against Trump, or at least to edge away from association with him.

Andrea compares this growing repudiation of the president and his policies to the case of Mitsuye Endo, a Japanese American U.S. citizen who was fired from her state job in California and detained in camps with her family during World War II. In other cases brought by Japanese Americans, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court rubber-stamped the bigotry of the day while rationalizing actions they understood were wrong. But when it came to Endo—a U.S.-born Christian with no ties to Japan or even the Japanese language—the judges could find no pretext at all to provide cover for what was, at root, a detention program based simply on racial exclusion.

Seeing many recent examples of people recognizing that their faith in Trump was wrongheaded or even immoral, Andrea suggests that we've come to a similar moment in which Americans are being forced to choose. Not everyone will walk away from Trumpism, but many will, for reasons that may be ethical or practical—or both. The episode ends with suggestions on how to respond to those who do.

00:00 Introduction: Shifting Public Opinion & Political Dynamics 02:48 The Rising Costs of Living and Cracks in the GOP Coalition 05:36 Institutional Capitulation and the Defense of Democratic Norms 08:24 Leaving MAGA: Personal Realities and Disillusionment Stories 11:12 Human Toll: Immigration Crackdowns, ICE, and Affected Families 14:00 Legal Pushback: How Judges Are Challenging Federal Overreach 16:48 Historical Echoes: The Mitsuye Endo Case and Wartime Detentions 19:36 The Midterms and the Ripple Effects of Raging Unpopularity 22:24 Complicity, the Thanksgiving Table, and Long-Term Cultural Shifts 25:12 Conclusion: Guardrails for the Future and Continuing the Fight

Corrupt power will always inflict more harm if it can benefit from that additional suffering. But we don't have to let it happen.

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This week's episode of Next Comes What looks at an inspector general's report on Alligator Alcatraz, describing the uses there of a form of solitary confinement known as "the box"—a violation of the rules of detention. Andrea Pitzer gathers accounts of far worse use of the box than was described in the reports, explaining how detainees were beaten, shackled, and left in the cage alone in the hot sun. She then traces the use of "the box" in the early stages of other concentration camp systems, including Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Vietnam during the war. The box, however, predates modern concentration camp systems. In the US, it has deep roots slavery, prisons, and the contract labor system that rose up to fill the need for workers after slavery was abolished. The box has been used in countless places across centuries, and Andrea shares a story of one prisoner, Arthur Maillefert, who died in "the box" in Florida in 1932.

Despite the limitations of the inspector general's report, Andrea argues that its findings can be a vehicle for further investigation and accountability. And that accountability is crucial, because as long as corrupt powerholders exist, they will aim to have a new worst place to put demonized people and targeted groups to make examples of them. The episode ends with thoughts on how we can take action close to home to end a form of abuse that occurs daily around the country and around the world.

00:00 Inside "Alligator Alcatraz": The Reality of Modern Detention Camps 03:15 Why Every Lawless System Relies on Solitary Confinement 05:40 From the Soviet Gulag to the Box: A History of Camp Isolation 08:20 The US History of Solitary: From Quaker Experiment to Prison Abuse 11:10 The Dark Legacy of the Sweatbox in American Prisons 14:35 Concentration Camps as an End Run Around Due Process 16:50 The Business of Mass Detention: Private Prisons & ICE Contracts 19:10 Trump 2.0, Third-Country Deportations, and Stateless Detainees 22:45 The Gap Between Official Rationale and the Reality of Torture Boxes 25:10 The Danger of Normalizing Lawlessness and the Final Trap

Companies and agencies are spying on everyone they can.

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Our episode this week gathers a series of recent surveillance scandals, in which everything from public cameras to your AI agent and even your television may be monitoring you. To put the current snooping in context, Andrea Pitzer looks at the history of mass political surveillance. In the Nazi era, Heinrich Himmler dreamed of having five men to track every individual suspect. East Germany hired or co-opted more than one in seven citizens to spy. And the U.S. has its own history on this front, with a massive surveillance operation put into place during the civil rights era, with the goal of targeting Black Activists, Native Americans, and feminists.

In the modern era, Andrea notes that governments often have willing partners in tech companies, using tools that far surpass twentieth-century capabilities. Corporations are typically more interested in collecting data to increase their bottom line, while governments want surveillance to secure power and target public opposition. But in the end, companies are prone to collaborating with governments, especially if they can profit from it—even if doing so lets law enforcement take unethical or illegal actions. The problem of tech and AI isn't that they're aware or human (they're not). From China to the US, the real threat is the oligarchs and aspiring dictators who would happily eliminate our freedom for another dollar or an ounce of power.

00:00 Introduction and Recent Tech Surveillance 02:55 The Fallibility of AI and Stolen Discoveries 05:10 Human Contractors and Data Privacy 07:20 Historical Precedents of Authoritarian Surveillance 09:10 The Panopticon and East Germany's Stasi 12:00 COINTELPRO and the Erosion of Privacy Guardrails 14:30 China's High-Tech Xinjiang Surveillance Model 17:30 Historical Parallels of Surveillance 20:00 The Role of Tech Monopolies and AI in Modern Surveillance 22:30 Policy, Resistance, and Actionable Steps Forward

Here's how to take on the global right-wing nostalgia for the glory days of fascism.

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This week's Next Comes What looks at the victory of the authoritarian, reactionary party AfD in last weekend's election in eastern Germany. Andrea Pitzer considers a few of the regional specifics of that election, and considers other universal aspects of the global rise of neo-Nazi and Nazi-adjacent movements. What the twenty-first century models have in common is the open demonization of immigrants. There is no way out of the current political crisis, Andrea suggests, without addressing that demonization head-on.

Summarizing a recent Syracuse University study, she explores the ways that various kinds of media function, not only providing misinformation and disinformation, but also setting moral frameworks that make an argument about whether immigrants are seen as fully human. The Syracuse researchers found that fact-checking statements does not automatically adjust the underlying moral narrative the original misinformation was supporting. Andrea argues that defeating the authoritarian threat cannot happen through attempts to moderate a few of the right's most extreme tactics. A long-term solution requires friends of democracy to directly address perverse frameworks and messaging by offering not only substantially different policies but also a narrative that directly counters the one that fascists have been selling.

00:00 Introduction: The Arc of Right-Wing Sabotage and Fascist Ideology 03:15 The Role of Anti-Immigrant Paranoia in Modern Right-Wing Politics 06:40 Case Study: The Rise of the AfD in Germany and MAGA Parallels 10:15 Deliberate Propaganda: How Disinformation is Created and Spread 14:35 Incidental Propaganda: The Media's Role in Amplifying Far-Right Narratives 19:10 Moral Disadvantage and Partisan Media Exposure (The Syracuse Study) 23:55 Economic Anxiety, Tariffs, and Industrial Decline in the US and Europe 28:20 Historical Parallels: Nostalgia for Fascism and the Concentration Camp Tendency 33:10 The Global Wave of Apocalyptic Fever and Tech Oligarchs 37:45 A Long-Term Framework and Strategy to Defend Democracy

The data center revolt and the pushback against detention camps have something in common. The public is realizing it has power.

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This week, "Next Comes What" considers how the oligarchs driving the AI boom and the president of the United States are all driven by a desire not just for wealth but for unlimited power that gives them control over humanity itself. Andrea Pitzer looks at Donald Trump's attempt to use the entire apparatus of the federal government to make reality whatever he says it is, with disastrous consequences for the country and the world. The CEOs pushing the AI boom portray themselves as the saviors of humanity, but in reality are inflicting tremendous damage by steamrolling communities and workers with new tools of technology that cannot deliver on the disingenuous promises being made by the tech titans. Meanwhile, both the president and the CEOs are warping the global economy.

Yet what they demand is not inevitable. Just as with the local--and occasionally even bipartisan--pushback on ICE's attempt to convert existing warehouses into concentration camps nationwide, the data center revolution is now facing resistance from unhappy Americans across the political spectrum. Andrea looks at what it means when people wake up to the power that they have, considers the risks of any big social reaction, and explains why it's important for the anti-data center movement to become bigger than simple backlash. Before the current momentum can get diverted to benefit those who seek only more exclusion and control, supporters of self-governance need to harness this revolt and build a coalition that embraces democratic values, linking the health and stability of local communities to a bigger concept of what kind of country we ought to be.

00:00 - The Illusion of Power and Real-World Harm 03:45 - Manufactured Reality: Renaming Lake Ontario to Erasing Public Health Data 07:12 - Billionaire Philanthropy, Tech Oligarchs, and the Drive for Absolute Control 11:05 - The Reactionary Playbook: How CEOs and Politicians Conflated Cultural Grievances 14:50 - Gil Duran on The Nerd Reich, The Sovereign Individual, and Tech Governance 18:30 - The Grassroots Anti-Data Center Movement: A Cross-Partisan Populist Revolt 22:15 - Risks of Unchecked Resistance: Avoiding Scapegoating and Isolationism 26:00 - Corporate Encroachment, Public Resistance, and the Fight for Democratic Accountability

As elections loom, resist the calls to throw away your moral compass.

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With so many pundits calling for meeting Republicans and independent voters where they're at before the midterms, this week's "Next Comes What" considers what that means. Andrea Pitzer discusses how the days in which fringe candidates could be dismissed as irrelevant are long gone. The fringe extremists are running the country now. Andrea looks at the ways that Trump and his advisers are vile actors committing heinous acts, and notes that it's impossible to compromise on the very issue of every person's right to exist without being terrorized by the government and their neighbors. There's no way to compromise on these issues without doing harm to vulnerable people and our political system itself.

Walking listeners through a different approach, she suggests finding a political stance based on values, and then trying to bring other people toward that by addressing needs that they themselves can understand—and emphasizing the policies they, too, will benefit from. The good news, Andrea suggests, is that Trump's agenda is deeply unpopular, and becoming more so. The challenge before us is to offer a better vision of what government, and we ourselves, can be.

00:00 - Midterm Elections and the Threats to Democracy

02:15 - Natalie Harp and Donald Trump's Inner Circle

05:40 - The Rise of Extremist Rhetoric in US Politics

08:20 - Misinformation, Bad Advisors, and Political Control

12:10 - Anti-DEI Backlash and Structural Discrimination

15:35 - Global Impacts: USAID Cuts and Foreign Military Actions

19:50 - The Evolution of the War on Terror and Extrajudicial Power

24:15 - Historical Compromises and the Erosion of Democratic Values

27:30 - The Risks of Unchecked AI and Corporate Influence

30:10 - Why Moral Politics Matter: Staying Grounded Against Extremism

To help keep concentration camps from becoming a permanent feature, figure out who's in the torturers' club and who sells the barbed wire.

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This week's episode looks at what it means to be in the middle stages of a concentration camp regime—which is where the United States is at now. Andrea Pitzer discusses how the shift from performative incidents of violence and terror at the beginning gives way to a more institutionalized and methodical approach, one in which the bureaucracy of the police state becomes more entrenched and self-sustaining. This explains the transition from theatrical street actions, like those of Gregory Bovino, former face of the Border Patrol, to the lower-profile, more methodical approach of (relatively) new DHS head Markwayne Mullin.

To consider how this quieter entrenchment and creation of a self-sustaining concentration camp machine unfolds, Andrea looks at who makes the physical means of detention and harm, and how the ideas on how to harm are spread. She focuses on two historical examples--that of Oliver Brothers of Pittsburgh, the company that made barbed wire for the first concentration camps in Cuba, and the evolution of the tactic of la parrilla—"the grill"—a form of electrical torture used under dictatorship in Chile a half-century ago. She then turns to modern appliances that aid in atrocities: electroshock gloves, ankle monitors, and omnipresent surveillance cameras. She notes a new airline contract supporting ICE deportations—possibly involving running detention facilities as well. The episode ends with a look at ways to stall, block, and shut down the torturers' club and the businesses that profit from the deliberate infliction of human misery.

00:00 - How Concentration Camp Regimes Actually Form

02:18 - The 1890s U.S. Tech Supply Line Behind Reconcentración

05:14 - The Evolution of Extrajudicial Torture Tactics

07:15 - How Police State Systems Move from Malice to Institutionalization

10:13 - Inside the Modern Private Detention & ICE Expansion

12:12 - High-Tech Surveillance: Flock Cameras & Electric Shock Gear

14:55 - How Local Resistance is Shutting Down Detention Sites

17:42 - Grassroots Tactics: Organizing, Protests, & Documenting Abuse

21:30 - Ending Human Rights Violations at the Local Level

A panoramic review of immigrant persecution under Trump 2.0 so far and a look at where we are now.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer reviews what has happened with the Trump administration's strategic violence against immigrants in the U.S. during the year and a half since his return to office. Andrea mentions three crises that the government hopes people will simply ignore, but which are causing tremendous suffering: cuts to USAID, climate change, and the systemic persecution of immigrants. All three are critical to attend to, but for this episode, she focuses on what has happened since January 2025 on the immigration front.

Running through the Trump administration's attempts to use wartime laws to deport detainees to a gulag in El Salvador, and Stephen Miller's longstanding dream of building tent cities, she shows how those dreams played out in reality. Those deported to El Salvador faced horrific abuse, and two tent-style concentration camp projects led to Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in Texas, and the Everglades camp in Florida that the administration named "Alligator Alcatraz." Both camps have inflicted tremendous suffering on detainees. The Florida camp has been shut down, but Camp East Montana still holds thousands of detainees.

The tent-city project went badly enough that the government has pivoted repeatedly to other approaches, including a short-lived attempt to use Navy overseas contracting architecture to build concentration camps domestically. This also hit roadblocks. Next, Trump and his allies turned to trying to acquire existing warehouses and retrofit them for Amazon-style mass detention in a nationwide network of concentration camps. Local resistance to these sites was fierce and fast. Now the government is pivoting to building new facilities at sites it already owns or controls, which will make pushing back against them a more complicated and challenging effort. Andrea closes the episode with a few thoughts on how people have resisted thus far, and the innovating spirit that has inspired everyday people to find novel and effective means to put sand in the gears of the deportation machine.

00:00 - Introduction & The Three Growing Crises 03:15 - Day One: Early Moves & Expanding ICE Power 06:42 - Tent Cities & The Everglades Detention Infrastructure 10:15 - Federalizing Police & Los Angeles Deployments 13:50 - Border Operations & Community Resistance Tactics 17:30 - Minneapolis Crackdown & Gregory Bovino's Removal 21:10 - Warehouse Expansion: ICE's Strategic Shift 25:05 - Local Movements Stopping Detention Centers 28:40 - The History of Camp Resistance & Lessons Ahead