loader from loading.io

How to Prevent a Full-Blown Dictatorship

Next Comes What

Release Date: 07/03/2025

THIS is what momentum looks like show art THIS is what momentum looks like

Next Comes What

A sea change is underway. Take heart, and keep going. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode:  WATCH YouTube:   TikTok:  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...

info_outline
Survival shouldn't require sainthood show art Survival shouldn't require sainthood

Next Comes What

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:    Read the post that inspired this episode:    Watch YouTube:   TikTok:   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...

info_outline
What 'ABOLISH ICE' Should Mean show art What 'ABOLISH ICE' Should Mean

Next Comes What

The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards. We can end the current nightmare. Subscribe to to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode:   Watch this episode :   TikTok:  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...

info_outline
Finding Your Outside Voice show art Finding Your Outside Voice

Next Comes What

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. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode: Watch this episode YouTube:   TikTok:   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...

info_outline
Why This Is Bigger Than Trump show art Why This Is Bigger Than Trump

Next Comes What

Donald Trump is just a symptom of our national disease. We have to--and we can--change the system that coughed him up. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode: Watch this episode:   TikTok:  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...

info_outline
This is your brain on propaganda show art This is your brain on propaganda

Next Comes What

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:   Read the post that inspired this episode:   TikTok:    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.,...

info_outline
Shredding Public Knowledge show art Shredding Public Knowledge

Next Comes What

Why the Trump administration (and a lot of other people) are trying to kill journalism, and what we can do to stop them. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode: Watch this episode:   TikTok: 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...

info_outline
No one knows exactly what will end Trump show art No one knows exactly what will end Trump

Next Comes What

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:   Read the post that inspired this episode:   Watch:     TikTok:     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...

info_outline
Quiet, Piggy show art Quiet, Piggy

Next Comes What

Trump's denigration of women is part of the authoritarian playbook. Here's how to stop it. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode: Watch this episode:   TikTok:   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...

info_outline
Update your bingo card show art Update your bingo card

Next Comes What

What if you threw a party to transform the country—or at least your little corner of it—and everybody came? Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode:   TikTok: 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...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

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 

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

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.