Well, ugh. This is one of those complicated ethics issues that takes a long time to understand and write about, requires a great deal of my time and yours, and on a cost-benefit basis, seems like a misalignment of resources. However, I can’t ignore it, and it is an important case.
As you know, Substack has exploded in recent years as a profitable web platform for subscription opinion newsletters across the political spectrum and on almost every topic imaginable. (As a result, free blogs like mine are going the way of the Diplodocus.) In November, The Atlantic published a piece by Jonathan Katz titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem.” It’s behind a paywall, but the gist of the article is stated up front:
“…just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.
Substack, founded in 2017, has terms of service that formally proscribe “hate,” along with pornography, spam, and anyone “restricted from making money on Substack”—a category that includes businesses banned by Stripe, the platform’s default payment processor. But Substack’s leaders also proudly disdain the content-moderation methods that other platforms employ, albeit with spotty results, to limit the spread of racist or bigoted speech. An informal search of the Substack website and of extremist Telegram channels that circulate Substack posts turns up scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack—many of them apparently started in the past year. These are, to be sure, a tiny fraction of the newsletters on a site that had more than 17,000 paid writers as of March, according to Axios, and has many other writers who do not charge for their work. But to overlook white-nationalist newsletters on Substack as marginal or harmless would be a mistake….
Reacting to Katz’s article, nearly 250 writers hosted on the platform signed an open letter on the issue, beginning with “We’re asking a very simple question that has somehow been made complicated: Why are you platforming and monetizing Nazis?” and concluding with, in part, “Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism?… 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.”
The Substack management responded with this. The short version:
I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse. We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts….history shows that censorship is most potently used by the powerful to silence the powerless…
It wasn’t good enough for some substackers. One of them whom I know a bit—he’s a baseball writer with delusions of wider expertise– is now on a similar platform called Behiiv (not one of my typos, that’s really how they spell it), and sent an explanation of why he left Substack. The essence of it:
“Substack wants to have it both ways: it wants people to believe that it’s opposed to extremism but it doesn’t want to risk losing the business of extremists, the business of those who are OK with sharing a platform with extremists, or to get any heat from the usual assortment of terminally online edgelords who claim to be all for free speech but, in practice, tend to defend only right wing jackasses. That sort of spinelessness is simply not something I can abide, particularly because Substack aims to be more than just some neutral content platform. Rather, it seeks to serve as a social media platform and it actively promotes certain content to the point where it’s indistinguishable from endorsement. So I made my decision to leave.”
In a long, long essay, writer Jesse Singal on his own substack newsletter went into excruciating detail regarding the problems with Katz’s argument. He quoted Ken White, the former Popehat blogger, stating in an article that “It’s notable that the critics of Substack’s ‘Nazi problem’ do not offer a specific definition of what content they’d moderate.” Singal went on to write that “those who critique liberal approaches to policing speech often have little to offer in the way of workable alternatives… in my experience, they have tremendous difficulty thinking beyond ‘Let’s ban the things that offend us.’ They don’t actually understand the speech ramifications of existing and compromising in a cacophonously pluralistic society, perhaps because they often live and work in nearly impermeable bubbles of like-minded peers.”
Exactly. If this kerfuffle is reminiscent of anything, it is the horror expressed by progressives when Elon Musk took over Twitter.
Singal points out the Terms of Use on Beehiiv, which my baseball acquaintance finds welcoming:
Content Standards
These content standards apply to any and all content published to Beehiiv. Content must in their entirety comply with all applicable federal, state, local, and international laws and regulations. Without limiting the foregoing, content must not..
–Contain any material that is defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, violent, hateful, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable
–Promote sexually explicit or pornographic material, violence, or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age.
–Infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other intellectual property or other rights of any other person.
–Violate the legal rights (including the rights of publicity and privacy) of others or contain any material that could give rise to any civil or criminal liability under applicable laws or regulations or that otherwise may be in conflict with these Terms of Use, any applicable Publisher Agreement and/or our Privacy Policy.
–Be likely to deceive any person.
–Promote any illegal activity, or advocate, promote, or assist any unlawful act.
–Cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety or be likely to upset, embarrass, alarm, or annoy any other person.
–Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or organization.
-Involve commercial activities or sales, such as contests, sweepstakes, and other sales promotions, barter, or advertising.
– Give the impression that they emanate from or are endorsed by us or any other person or entity, if this is not the case…
That’s pretty funny. “Contain any material that is defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, violent, hateful, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable”? “Cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety or be likely to upset, embarrass, alarm, or annoy any other person”? In other words, “Let’s ban the things that offend us.”
And, apparently the people who offend us as well. In his explanation for why he had left Substack, my acquaintance wrote that he had no interest in Singal’s analysis because…”he is a leading figure in the laundering of anti-transgender extremism and the platforming of widely debunked anti-trans horseshit. As such, he bears considerable responsibility for the transphobic moral panic which has spread across America over the past several years and which continues to do great harm to the most vulnerable people among us as a result. I am not going to presume that there is not some putatively reasonable rebuttal to be lodged in favor of Substack in all of this, but I’m not interested in it if it comes from Jesse Fucking Singal. And I sure as hell have no interest whatsoever in continuing an association with any platform who views Jesse Fucking Singal as its champion.”
Well, that’s unemotional and rational! Because he doesn’t like the writer’s position on transgender issues, he won’t consider his thorough analysis of the Substack-Nazi controversy.
In the end, I rate this episode as just another chapter in the Left’s drift toward censorship and the silencing of its foes. These people think Donald Trump is a Nazi. The President is running on a theme that brands almost half the nation as “Nazis.” Substack is on the ethical side of this argument. It is worth allowing a handful—I think the number is around 15—of Nazi and white supremacy newsletters to spew their bile in order to protect the freedom of speech that self-righteous social justice warriors would whittle away under the deceptive rubric of “preventing hate.”
Ethics Alarms 
These people have no idea what Nazis really are. To them, it’s just Anyone Who Disagrees with Me. Suppression of Women’s “Health Care”! Kids in Cages! Killing Affirmative Action! Dogs and Cats Living Together!
And the so-called Neo-Nazis would have never survived the real Nazi Germany. Here’s a free tip to the skinheads: Nazis hated modern music. Heavy Metal would have been considered decadent and good little Hitler Youth would never listen to it. Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget about the constant marching! A whole generation ended up with flat feet!
What a time to be alive!
Coupled with the left’s censorious tendencies is also the unshakeable belief that they are infallible in their doctrine. It is actually rather strange to see so many people sneer at the Catholic Church’s adherence to doctrine, or to the claims of Biblical inerrancy and Papal Infallibility, and yet the Left continues to proclaim its own unquestionable tenets and demands in submission to Science. Worse, it is done with an abject horror that someone might question those tenets, and with utter condescension at anyone who questions the Science. But even worse is, alongside the sanctimonious assertion of certitude, the utter inability to articulate a cogent defense for any of their beliefs. Their apologetics amounts to “Believe what we demand you believe, or we tar you and silence you and ruin you.” For me, who cares deeply about Catholic Apologetics and loves the model of St. Thomas Aquinas, who devoted himself to finding and presenting the strongest critiques of Catholic Theology before rebutting them, I find it distressing that so many people espousing Leftist cant are incapable of mounting even the semblance of a defense.
I don’t want to make a straw man of their stance, so I want to state outright here that what follows is merely my perception. It is not a rigorous investigation or controlled study of Leftist argumentation. But what I do observe is argumentation that at best follows the Marxist/DEI mentality. If this person is qualified because she is black, female, and gay, and not because of any merit on her part, then it stands that an argument is won based upon the same criteria. If someone who is on the Left states something, it must be true because he’s on the correct side of the Marxist divide, and any deeper analysis is both unnecessary and foolhardy. To analyze any deeper is to give credence to the thoughts and values of those on the wrong side of the Marxist divide, and that simply cannot be.
I would appreciate it if anyone who has actually deeply read Marx could present a cogent argument and be open to rebuttal and cross examination. I can certainly understand to a degree viewing human history as a battle between oppressor and oppressed. History is certainly rife with examples of oppressors and oppressed. However, this seems to me far too simplistic, and the relativistic nature of oppressor over oppressed never allows for any true progress to a higher ideal, because there really isn’t an ideal to progress towards. It also is depressingly nihilistic, from the standpoint that either the oppressed remain forever oppressed, or eventually they become the oppressor. So ultimately one is either evil or a slave, and there’s no good outcome. But I am most undoubtedly making a caricature of Marx’s arguments. I believe he envisioned some utopia where the oppressed throw off the chains of their oppressors and then live in a Communist paradise, but certainly the empirical evidence shows the oppressed become the oppressors. And certainly when things go wrong, someone needs to take the blame.
It seems obvious to the Left that Nazi viewpoints, by which I assume they really mean white supremacist viewpoints, should be suppressed, but can the Left really articulate why they should be suppressed? Is it because they fear that those arguments might persuade others to become white supremacists? Or is it because they fear reading something unpleasant and have to hide from it? If the former, what does it say about the critical thinking of the public that they could be so swayed by white supremacists? What does it say that the Left seems worried that their arguments would be less convincing that the claims of white supremacists? Or, if the Left is afraid of encountering something uncomfortable, why not simply avoid reading the vile stuff? I suppose the Left might claim that given a platform, white supremacists might work themselves into a frenzy and lead others into violent acts against non-whites. After all, the connectedness of the Internet allows all kinds of fringe thoughts to find social connections and support groups. And yet white supremacy flourished long before the Internet, and it has been the societal shift towards truly upholding the idea that all men are created equal that white supremacy has become a fringe thought.
Can white supremacy be finally extinguished through censorship? In my study of all the Christian heresies that have cropped up over the past two thousand years, the reality has been that heresies never truly die out. They can be suppressed, they can be the target of campaigns of extermination (cf. the Albigensians), they can be ruled against in Ecumenical Councils, they can be outlawed by civil authorities, but in truth, they never fully disappear. Even today we have some Judaizers, plenty of those with a Gnostic bent, those who deny Jesus’ humanity, those who deny Jesus’ divinity, those who deny the trinity, those who deny God’s superabundance of grace, those who deny man’s participation in his own salvation, and so on. So if the most ruthless, the most diabolical, the most authoritarian, most connected world-wide organization (of course I mean the Catholic Church) cannot extinguish bad ideas entirely, what makes the Left think they can do so?
We are in a battle, every single one of us, a battle for truth and goodness. Trying to censor our adversaries is ultimately not going to work. And if we fail to equip ourselves to fight for truth and goodness, we’ll end up walking naked into the storm.
Great thoughts, Ryan.
I see a t-shirt vendor on Facebook every so often shilling science-themed t-shirts with stuff like this on them: “I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned”
As if Religion has a monopoly on answers that can’t be questioned.
Well, one reason is that the left is full of white supremacists. Think about it. Isn’t the underlying assumption behind DEI and affirmative action is that most minorities will never be able to compete with whites (and Asians) on a level playing field? Why do they pass Ph.D. dissertations of people like Claudine Gay and grant them tenure when they never would for a white candidate? It is because they don’t believe that a black woman could ever achieve that level. Every time there is an economic downturn, black and brown people are disproportionately affected. If there is a natural disaster, black and brown people are disproportionately affected. Every disease that ever existed affects whites less severely. According to the left, 11% of the world population, from an area with few natural resources, has completely dominated the entire world, all cultures, and all governments. That same 11% enslaved every other race on the planet and the only reason that black and brown people aren’t all slaves anymore is because the whites decided to stop enslaving them. All evil on the planet is because of that same 11% and there has been nothing the other 89% can do about it. That is a pretty compelling argument for white supremacy, isn’t it? I mean, in racial IQ studies, composed and run by whites, whites come in 3rd! What evil racism!
The left has to point to the right as white supremacists or people might figure out that white supremacy is at the heart of leftist ideology.
This year, a Satanist group put an occult display – I believe it was Baphomet – in our state capitol building, which caused no small amount of consternation among the solid conservative majority in the state. There were calls to tear it down, remove it…all kinds of stuff.
Our governor, a Republican, gave what I thought was a pretty good response: “Like many Iowans, I find the Satanic Temple’s display in the Capitol absolutely objectionable. In a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech, and I encourage all those of faith to join me today in praying over the Capitol and recognizing the nativity scene that will be on display – the true reason for the season.”
Substack has some objectionable content on it…its own version of Baphomet? Don’t eliminate it. Don’t censor it. Don’t force it elsewhere. Objectionable speech should be countered with more speech. Logical arguments and cogent thinking are what give people the chance to understand why some ideas are bad when compared to other ideas. Forcing silence just makes it more enticing. Want your children to be white supremacists?…just do what the Left does and attempt to kill it without debate. That will make super attractive to juvenile minds that don’t know better. People who simply want to eliminate talk of white supremacy and Hitler and Nazis are those that are probably too stupid to rationally counter it.
Maybe that’s why the Left wants to silence so many different topics.
“maybe.” Comment of the Day.