How We Survive This Mess

Andrea Pitzer's new podcast draws on the history of wannabe strongmen around the world to reveal how we thwart Trump

We have an incredible gift. That’s the good news coming from Andrea Pitzer.

The author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps cannot think of another example in history when people had two and a half months to prepare for the arrival of a regime aspiring toward authoritarianism. Nearly always, these regimes arrived with a shock.

The resulting befuddlement can help explain any denial or compliance, at least in retrospect. We won’t have that excuse.

The reactionary fury Trump and his cronies have promised fits right into some of the worst of American history. Yet, it also suggests a break from our somewhat democratic traditions as stark and potentially violent as January 6th. An insatiable lust for revenge will fuel that break in our constitutional order. We see the proof of this already in the nominations of lawless predators like Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth. Still, absorbing the magnitude of moments like these can be numbing.

This is true even if you know what’s coming, even if the Republican candidate for president has stated it in definite terms, even if the crowd at the RNC held signs declaring the exact totalitarian intentions of this new regime. It may still not feel real, but we know it can happen here.

But how do we know when we’re “here?”

And that’s where history helps, especially a global history of concentration camps. Authoritarianism and mass detentions go together like Trump and Vance (after Trump tried to have Vance’s predecessor decapitated).

Before the election, I interviewed Andrea Pitzer. I warned her that if the election went the “wrong way,” I would have to bug her about doing a project. I knew and feared her work and perspective would be essential to understanding a second Trump regime.

Unfortunately, I was right. Her insights are invaluable now and as many people as possible need to hear them. So, I need to do everything possible to get this information to every American who cares about our collective future.

The project is Next Comes What.

It’s a podcast series, and in this first episode about “How We Survive This Mess,” Andrea provides an essential framework for seeing this moment and confronting the threats we face as effectively as possible.

Please check it out. If you dig it, please subscribe and give us a 5-star rating to get into any available algorithm and earhole. And if you want to support this effort as we try to put out an episode a week for the foreseeable future, please subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art.

If you’re like me, you probably help but wonder what you would have done if you lived in Europe in the 1930s. Or Chile in the early 1970s. Or Russia in the last decade or so.

Or you will after you check out this episode. And for me, the answer isn’t simple. But the answer has to be “something.” Because doing nothing in a time like now is still making a choice—a perilous one.