Rhyming Chaos
Rhyming Chaos
American concentration camps
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American concentration camps

Andrea Pitzer—author of 'One Long Night'—on mass internment and other human rights abuses in Trump's America.
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Christian Friedel as Rudolf pushing a wheelbarrow next to a wall with barbed wire
Screenshot from the film The Zone of Interest, which tells the story of the mundane domestic life of Rudolf Höss, the real-life longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz. Höss and his family are depicted in their villa next door to the death camp; no scenes in the film take place inside the camp. Image source: The Atlantic.

Andrea Pitzer is the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, among other books, host of the excellent podcast Next Comes What, and writer and publisher of the newsletter Degenerate Art.

In this podcast we discuss:

  • How the ethics of journalism as taught in the U.S. system empower Trump

  • The definition of “concentration camp” and if Trump’s camps meet the definition

  • Forced labor in Nazi Germany and Trump’s America

  • How Trump uses the perception of crisis in America for political gain.

  • The economic incentives behind the ICE bonanza and how companies profit from detention systems (in history and now)

  • Vladimir Nabokov and what he might think of Trump’s America

  • And much more…

Other links:

Andrea Pitzer on How to Get ICE Out of Your Town: text, video.

Nazi Republican candidate for California governor Kyle Langford’s Auschwitz tweet: Screenshot by AuschwitzMuseum.

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