Next Comes What

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.

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.
Get more from Andrea and support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-trump-is-gone
 Subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DegenerateArtNewsletter?sub_confirmation=1
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews
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 while Andrea takes the rest of April off to finish her next book, SNOWBLIND.
Subscribe to support this podcast and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
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/

Trump is using deportations to create an international concentration camp system. We need to shut it down.
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/planet-of-the-camps
WATCH
YouTube: https://youtu.be/UWjrDtHkPwg 
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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

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/