Substackers Against Nazis
A collective letter to Substack leadership
This first came my way via Frankie de la Cretaz, whose newsletter I strongly recommend subscribing to. Another thing I recommend is deplatforming Nazis, something that Substack—like so many places on this internet of ours!—has quite a lot of trouble with. Have a read, forward it and share it and—if you’ve got a substack—post it on there as well.
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:
“Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly flouting terms of service that ban attempts to ‘publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes’...Substack, which takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, makes money when readers pay for Nazi newsletters.”
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.
Thanks for reading. If this letter resonates with you, please share this post with others. If you’re a publisher who would like to join this collective effort, we encourage you to repost the letter on your own Substack.
I've been on the left since I was a teenager. Fight nazis and white supremacists with better organizing and smarter arguments. Shutting down freedom of speech always backfires. You may notice that the same liberal/leftists who organized to shut down hate speech and right wing speech are now themselves getting shut down by anti-Palestine censorship. Chomsky made it clear - your belief in freedom of speech means nothing unless it is freedom of speech for people whose positions you despise. There are clear laws for incitement to imminent violence. Other than than freedom of speech is a hard fought freedom that the left and union movements have worked for for decades; tyrants and authoritarianism and corporate capitalist pseudo-democracy always thrive on suppressing speech and controlling narrative. Don't fall for it - speech suppression used against the enemies of the left will soon be wielded against the left itself. And bonus points? You may have missed that the US is already corporations plus government military industrial complex fascism. The assassinations of JFK RFK MLK Malcolm Fred Hampton - this was just the opening move, we've seen full fascism in the corrupt shutdown of the Bernie campaign in 2016 (exposed by Wikileaks) and 2020 (corrupt DNC maneuvering to get Biden in place of Bernie). So how exactly are you saying that only the "official" fascists of the far right, and the GOP, are of concern? CNN - MSNBC want very much for left and liberal sensibilities to defend capitalist fascism against GOP Maga fascism. Maga is a symptom of the problem, not the cause - just as many who voted Maga voted Obama in 2008, the reason the GOP right wing rhetoric gets support is because the corrupt democrats have always blocked any real populist left agenda, so the GOP can just co-opt it as it has nowhere else to go. When we line up with establishment candidates like Biden or Clinton how well is that going to turn out? So no, I am not buying the attack on substack for standing up for free speech. Look deeper into what is going on here, stop lining up with DNC talking points.