Substackers Against Nazis
An open letter to Substack leadership
Hi readers—Below is a letter to the Substack founders that I helped draft as part of a group of publishers seeking answers to questions about the platforming and monetizing of Nazis. We are all publishing the letter on our own individual Substacks today for visibility, and to make our readers aware of our asks and concerns. Thanks for reading.
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.
Signed,
Substackers Against Nazis
Thanks for reading. If this letter resonates, 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.
PS, readers of Closing the Loop. During the six months I have been on this platform, I have witnessed its format deteriorate, becoming more and more like a conventional social media platform, with increasing emphasis on memes and click bait instead of nuanced presentation. My subject matter was never going to compete with political or entertainment blogs, but the incentive for anyone to subscribe to my substack has suffered. To counter that, I’ve decided to severely curtail my commenting activity and to cease restacking altogether. Subscribers can expect me to continue posting occasionally, primarily on the topics of climate change, and current technological and policy issues.
These plans are of course contingent on the owners of Substack taking appropriate action to address the issues called out in the body of the post.
An update: Hamish has responded on his own Substack, but I was not able to acccess it from my account. Perhaps he has blocked me (which is certainly his right). The short answer is that he is fine with Nazis being on Substack because he is a free speech advocate. He went on to say that the only material proscribed is that calling for violence, which if you think about it is a contradiction to the notion of free speech. One can surmise that if someone called for the “elimination“ of the Jews or for “getting rid“ of immigrants that would be OK with Hamish because the words do not necessarily imply comitting acts of violence against them, and likewise it is OK for MAGA Republicans to refer to Democrats as “vermin“, because although Hitler used the same expression to describe Jews, Roma, disabled people, homosexuals, Slavs, Africans, etc. and later carried out pogroms against them, and while formerly we in the US thought of rats and mice as being “vermin“ and hired exterminators to deal with them, calling someone “vermin“ is not an unambiguous call for violence.
In short, my take on the response is that it places its author in the same basket as Elon Musk, whose definition of free speech is whatever puts money in his pocket.