Substackers Against Nazis

December 14, 2023   Issue #656

I was an early adopter of Substack, and have been writing this newsletter since April, 2018, or over 5.5 years. Over that time there has been controversy with Substack. Some of it was minor, some much more weighty, and I’ve had to take time to work out my own positions and what to do about them. I prefer, when I can, to use my position to work behind the scenes, sending emails and talking to people involved to let them know where I stand.

But something new has arisen and the circumstances are different. As a platform, Substack of course hosts newsletters with widely and wildly varying opinions; that’s no different than any other venue. In most cases I’m OK with that, because I enjoy a healthy variety of diverse viewpoints.

But the keyword there is healthy. There are many newsletters on Substack that are antithetical to that health. Anti-vaxxers, for example. Now, I don’t necessarily want to run them off, but if you are hosting a person who is claiming something that has the obvious and provable effect of making people sicker, then you have to decide on just what side of your Terms of Service something like that falls.

But there are others here who are far worse. There are several white supremacists and even neo-Nazis who have newsletters here, including, for example Richard Spencer — feel free to read about him if you don’t know who he is.

You may be familiar with the “Nazi Bar” story: if you own a bar and let a Nazi drink there, they invite their friends, and pretty soon you’re running a Nazi bar. The best thing to do is kick them out on sight.

Substack is in a chillingly similar position. An article was recently published in The Atlantic by Jonathan M. Katz about this that is well worth your time reading (the link goes to a free version hosted on MSN), and Katz has written a follow-up on his own newsletter (and another as well).

I am very disturbed by this. So are others, and many Substackers got together to draft a letter to the Substack founders outlining the issue and asking for answers. I am not a practicing Jew, but I was raised Jewish and was taught a lot about the Holocaust including how it grew — which included, in essence, platforming Nazis. But you need not be Jewish in any way to understand that you can’t let even one Nazi into your bar. Not one.

I did not participate in drafting the letter, but overall I agree with it. Over 100 Substack newsletter publishers are posting the letter today, and to raise awareness of this I am joining them. It’s below.

Let me be clear: At this moment, I am not planning on leaving Substack. I think it’s too early to do that. With 22,000 subscribers, I think I have a platform that makes my voice a little louder here, and I don’t want to lose that. I imagine some of you might want to unsubscribe, knowing that some small percentage of your money goes toward a venue platforming Nazis. I understand that, and cannot and would not want to stop you.

However, in cases like this, an audience = a megaphone. I hope you will stick around while we writers try to get some answers from the executives. If you want to say something yourself then that’s fine, but please be polite; vitriol at this stage will likely do more harm than good.

What we want is for Substack to be a safe place for people to write their newsletters, and that starts first by asking the right questions, and getting answers. Let’s see what those answers are.

[Note: This is being sent to all my subscribers, not just paid ones, and I have opened up comments to everyone as well. Please keep it civil.]

Dear Chris, Hamish & Jairaj:

We’re asking a very simple question that has somehow been made complicated: Why are you platforming and monetizing Nazis? 

According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem: 

As Patrick Casey, a leader of a now-defunct neo-Nazi group who is banned on nearly every other social platform except Substack, wrote on here in 2021: “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling. The cause isn’t going anywhere.” Several Nazis and white supremacists including Richard Spencer not only have paid subscriptions turned on but have received Substack “Bestseller” badges, indicating that they are making at a minimum thousands of dollars a year.

From our perspective as Substack publishers, it is unfathomable that someone with a swastika avatar, who writes about “The Jewish question,” or who promotes Great Replacement Theory, could be given the tools to succeed on your platform. And yet you’ve been unable to adequately explain your position. 

In the past you have defended your decision to platform bigotry by saying you “make decisions based on principles not PR” and “will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation.” But there’s a difference between a hands-off approach and putting your thumb on the scale. We know you moderate some content, including spam sites and newsletters written by sex workers. Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism? 

Your unwillingness to play by your own rules on this issue has already led to the announced departures of several prominent Substackers, including Rusty Foster and Helena Fitzgerald. They follow previous exoduses of writers, including Substack Pro recipient Grace Lavery and Jude Ellison S. Doyle, who left with similar concerns. 

As journalist Casey Newton told his more than 166,000 Substack subscribers after Katz’s piece came out: “The correct number of newsletters using Nazi symbols that you host and profit from on your platform is zero.” 

We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be.

Signed, 

Substackers Against Nazis

Et alia

You can email me at [email protected] (though replies can take a while), and all my social media outlets are gathered together at about.me. Also, if you don’t already, please subscribe to this newsletter! And feel free to tell a friend or nine, too. Thanks!