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

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

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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.

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

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mSClVKYVFlU

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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.

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

Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/Mc_NuxKJ1AM

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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.

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

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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Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/shredding-public-knowledge

Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/s768y0SrCp8

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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/

None of us know what exactly will end Trump's rule. But we can keep expanding the possibilities.

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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

Watch this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4s0_Cx5rYM

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews

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