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How Humor Can and Can't Fight Authoritarianism

Next Comes What

Release Date: 12/06/2024

The Concentration Camp Tendency Goes Global show art The Concentration Camp Tendency Goes Global

Next Comes What

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:  Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: 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...

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Why Dictators Love to Suspend Habeas Corpus show art Why Dictators Love to Suspend Habeas Corpus

Next Comes What

The constitutional right that keeps you from disappearing—and why Trump wants to suspend it. Read the post that inspired this episode: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: 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...

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How to Keep Grifters from Stealing Your Soul show art How to Keep Grifters from Stealing Your Soul

Next Comes What

Who really invents the world we all live in? We do.   Read the post that inspired this episode: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What:   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...

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How to Fight the Concentration Camp Tendency show art How to Fight the Concentration Camp Tendency

Next Comes What

What matters more than money to Trump and his billionaire allies? Read the post that inspired this episode:   Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: 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...

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How Antisemitism Warps — History's Most Flexible Weapon show art How Antisemitism Warps — History's Most Flexible Weapon

Next Comes What

Hate cultivated over time becomes a tool to destroy everything, and it's happening in America today.    Read the post that inspired this episode:   Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What:     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...

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Trump's Intolerable Acts show art Trump's Intolerable Acts

Next Comes What

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:   Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What:     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...

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How to Defy a Death Cult show art How to Defy a Death Cult

Next Comes What

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: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: 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 looks at...

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Keeping Musk Rattled — Don't stop. It's working! show art Keeping Musk Rattled — Don't stop. It's working!

Next Comes What

How taking on extreme wealth can fight the entire Trump agenda. Read the post that inspired this episode:  Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What:  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.   ------   For this episode, Andrea Pitzer checks out a local ...

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Not A Reality Show — Sooner or Later, We're All at Risk show art Not A Reality Show — Sooner or Later, We're All at Risk

Next Comes What

A local community tackles Trump's destructive agenda and politicians who collaborate with it.  Read the post that inspired this episode: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: 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.    ------  Andrea Pitzer...

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Time to Act — Fighting Ignorance While We Still Can show art Time to Act — Fighting Ignorance While We Still Can

Next Comes What

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: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What:   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...

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More Episodes
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.