The Torturers' Club & The Business of Barbed Wire

To help keep concentration camps from becoming a permanent feature, figure out who's in the torturers' club and who sells the barbed wire.

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This week's episode looks at what it means to be in the middle stages of a concentration camp regime—which is where the United States is at now. Andrea Pitzer discusses how the shift from performative incidents of violence and terror at the beginning gives way to a more institutionalized and methodical approach, one in which the bureaucracy of the police state becomes more entrenched and self-sustaining. This explains the transition from theatrical street actions, like those of Gregory Bovino, former face of the Border Patrol, to the lower-profile, more methodical approach of (relatively) new DHS head Markwayne Mullin.

To consider how this quieter entrenchment and creation of a self-sustaining concentration camp machine unfolds, Andrea looks at who makes the physical means of detention and harm, and how the ideas on how to harm are spread. She focuses on two historical examples--that of Oliver Brothers of Pittsburgh, the company that made barbed wire for the first concentration camps in Cuba, and the evolution of the tactic of la parrilla—"the grill"—a form of electrical torture used under dictatorship in Chile a half-century ago. She then turns to modern appliances that aid in atrocities: electroshock gloves, ankle monitors, and omnipresent surveillance cameras. She notes a new airline contract supporting ICE deportations—possibly involving running detention facilities as well. The episode ends with a look at ways to stall, block, and shut down the torturers' club and the businesses that profit from the deliberate infliction of human misery.

00:00 - How Concentration Camp Regimes Actually Form

02:18 - The 1890s U.S. Tech Supply Line Behind Reconcentración

05:14 - The Evolution of Extrajudicial Torture Tactics

07:15 - How Police State Systems Move from Malice to Institutionalization